My new book of poems, contract signed!

Contact signed for the poetry collection MY BOOK OF THE DEAD:  Poems (2012-2020).  Cloth edition will be released in Fall, 2021.  It will include a few of my line drawings.  During the last years, line drawings were in a way, my version of ‘knitting,’ to maintain calmness.  My first creative impulse was drawing, so, please don’t take me literally when I compare it to ‘knitting.’

It’s very exciting and no humblebrag here when I also say, I’m honored to share my work with the public during these tumultuous times.

In earlier posts I’ve included in my blog entries a few of the

published poems.  In order to preserve the integrity of the new work, most of the poems have not yet been published.

So, what’s next?

For one–definitely prose.  I’m at my writing desk with a new

novel, something I’d not planned.  I also have a novel that was put on the back burner some years ago that I took out earlier this year with plans to re-work and finish.  And finally, I have a non-fiction work in the works.

In 2017, the shock of the presidential elections led me into a depressed state.  I worked on the depression but the residual disappointment caused me to think I might give up writing altogether.  By 2018, I had reconsidered and decided to turn my efforts to the poetry collection I’d started working on in 2012.  In my case, substantial collections may take about ten years so I’d been in no rush. While in the last few years I found it difficult to return to writing with the vigor and optimism in what social change that writing from outside dominant culture might accomplish, some hope remained in poetry.  With the goal of completing and placing MY BOOK OF THE DEAD:  Poems, I have renewed courage and hope, not just for my own writing but for the rest of the country and hence, the planet.