Bill Ratner

Bill Ratner, author of the poetry collections: Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake (Slow Lightning Lit,) Fear of Fish (Alien Buddha Press,) and To Decorate a Casket (Finishing Line Press,) is a Best of the Net Poetry Nominee (Lascaux Review.)

His work also appears in Best Small Fictions 2021 (Sonder Press,) Missouri Review (audio,) Baltimore Review, Chiron Review, Feminine Collective, and other journals.

Bill is a 9-Time Winner of the Moth StorySLAM, 2-Time Winner of the Hollywood Fringe Festival Extension Award for Solo Performance, a volunteer grief counselor, a committee chair in his union, Screen Actors Guild-AFTRA, earns his living as a voice actor, and teaches Voiceovers for SAG-AFTRA Foundation and Media Awareness for Los Angeles Unified School District. Member: SAG-AFTRA, Actors Equity Association, National Storytelling Network.

Published Writing

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Poems

* To read poem or interview, click on underlined link.

Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake – Book review • Spillwords Press

“They Send Me to the City to Stay with My Auntie” – Poem • Gargoyle Magazine

“Thrusting Into Reverence”– Poem • Eyes Forward

“Fear” and“Radio” – Poems • Bombfire Lit

Walt Whitman Birthplace Association – Reading

The Coachella Review – Interview

The Fascinating Life of Voice Over Artist Bill Ratner – News Article • The Voice Shop

The Thieving Magpie – Two Essays

The Baltimore Review – Essay

"Emily" – Poem • Ramingo’s Porch

The Bear Review at Vulpes Bastille Gallery, Kansas City – Reading

“View From Here” – Poem • Blue Lake Review

“Killer Art” – Poem • McQueen’s Quinterly

“Accident” – Poem • Shark Reef

“Calavera” – Poem • Oddball Magazine

“Fear of Fish” – Poem • Cultural Daily

“If It Wasn’t For You” – Poem • Lascaux Review

“Madame Reclaimer” – Poem • Ekphrastic Review

“Our Losses Return to Us" – Poem • Silver Birch Press

“Quarantine Ride” – Poem • MacQueen’s Quinterly

“That Your Heart Longs For” – Poem • Abandoned Mine

“The Clinic” – Poem • Loch Raven Review

“Things at Work That Pass for Art” – Poem • The Courtship of Winds

“Wabash Banner Blue” – Poem • HeadStuff

Books

* To download press release click on book cover image.

Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake is a poetry book of humor, elegy, childhood adventure, and adult insight. A book of remembering, forgetting, reinventing, and re-mythologizing the world with a brilght lightness of heart, blended with the detail of fine china and the honesty of a condemned man, or a toddler with an outrageous command of language, detail, and style.

Nine time Moth StorySLAM champion as well as, Grief Counselor in the State of California, Bill Ratner, gives us this finely-crafted poetry, to go along with his previous collections TO DECORATE A CASKET, from Finishing Line Press and FEAR OF FISH from Alien Buddah Press.

Lamenting While Doing Laps in the Lake offers us two aspects of poet Bill Ratner. Part 1, “Youth,” is a memoir in fragments, recalling a boy’s upstanding Midwestern family who, one by one, die. The poems remain faithful to the child’s perspective as he strives to make sense of these losses. In part 2, “Age,” Ratner observes the world of his adulthood, weaving the sublime, the ridiculous, and the unpredicted into a thrill ride that unhinges logic and leaves us with an expanded sense of possibilities.

— Terry Wolverton, Poet, Author of Ruin Porn

Buy LAMENTING WHILE DOING LAPS IN THE LAKE

Alien Buddha Press is proud to announce Bill Ratner’s first full-length poetry collection, Fear of Fish.

“These highly original poems stir things up—a wild concoction of exploration, confession, and surreal fantasy, each topped with a soupçon of wry wit. Whether mourning the early demise of his beloved parents and older brother or riffing on being the one left behind to come of age on his own, Ratner’s poems find life’s humor and sweetness. They kick off their shoes and dance with Death.”

---- Alexis Rhone Fancher, NYQ Books poet and Cultural Daily poetry editor

Buy FEAR OF FISH

Finishing Line Press is proud to announce Bill Ratner’s first poetry chapbook, To Decorate a Casket.

“Reading these poems, one can't help wondering if Ratner is a storyteller at heart who's found the form of the poem to convey the snapshots and short tales of his life, or if he's a poet who, like Homer, poured his dactyls into the epics of his time. Like a good storyteller, Ratner sidles up to you, whispers the opening of a tale, then brings in the big guns of poetry to make it all work. These poems are masterful, touching, evocative, and Ratner himself is a master-builder at work, a man who shapes words out of airy nothing and commands them to speak.”

---- Jack Grapes, Chatwing Books poet and founding editor of literary journal ONTHEBUS

Buy TO DECORATE A CASKET

Parenting for the Digital Age from Familius Publications is a how-to parenting guide written by one of America's most successful media personalities who suddenly found his children bombarded by media messages he had helped create.

Buy PARENTING FOR THE DIGITAL AGE