My latest poetry collection, Here’s Plenty from Cervena Barva Press, is now available! For more information, click here. I have been giving a variety of readings from the new book. The cover is perfect – I am grateful.
Unter der Sonne / Under the Sun (Deutscher Lyrik Verlag, 2021) showcases my German poems with English translations. For more information, click here.
My most recent narrative poetry collection, America Abroad: An Epic of Discovery (2019) is a companion to America Bound: An Epic for Our Time (2007). This book explores national legends and history and traces American adventures to the four corners of the planet and beyond. For more information, go to America Abroad.
I have given readings from Here’s Plenty here in Charlotte, in Lancaster, South Carolina, Huntersville, North Carolina, on-line with Red-Headed Stepchild, emceed by Malaika King Albrecht, and on-line with Visions International, emceed by Cal Nordt. I also read at MacIntyre’s Books in Chapel Hill at the end of October.
I attended the International Lawrence Durrell Society Conference in Athens, Greece last July 4-8. Among the many wonderful events on offer, the opening-night poetry session featured readings of the White Mice Poetry Contest prize-winning poems, which I emceed. I also read one of my poems on this year’s theme, “Ruins.” The evening finished off with a wine reception on the rooftop overlooking the Parthenon at sunset just after the rain. Spectacular!
A fun development: My poem “Love in a Time of Corona” was selected as part of the set of the new production of Shakespeare’s As You Like It at the Creation Theatre in Oxford, England. Their production included contemporary love poems mounted in the Forest of Arden. Wish I could have been there to see it!
On October 5th, I led a workshop for Charlotte Writers’ Club called Art Speaking Through Poetry. Though I have written a fair number of ekphrastic poems over the years, this was a new workshop topic for me. We enjoyed musing together about how poets can make art “speak.”
Poems of mine have appeared in the 2024 issue of Kakalak and Waning & Waxing, and a suite of poems called “Echoes from Athens” will appear in a collection of essays called Dark Durrell.
I recently attended a memorial reading for Dannye Romine Powell, who died suddenly of cancer not long ago, at Myers Park Baptist Church in Charlotte. It was a beautiful reading featuring many fine speakers: a perfect testament to Dannye’s long and distinguished literary career.
I participated in the Kakalak celebratory reading at Waterbean Coffee in Huntersville at the end of February, a delightful gathering of friends and fellow poets. Great to see everyone and hear evocative poems!
I am pleased that two of my German poems, “Sonntag in Sorrento” (“Sunday in Sorrento”) and “Menetekel” (“Warning”) will appear in the spring issue of Trans-Lit2, a literary journal in German.
I will be presenting a combined lecture on Theodore Roethke and reading of a few of my “Roethkean” poems for the April celebration sponsored by the Roethke Foundation in Michigan.
In early June I will present a paper called “Dialogue Between Regions: Midwest and South in Tennessee Williams and Thomas Wolfe” at the annual Thomas Wolfe Society Conference, to be held this year in Chicago.