All My Rowdy Friends will be available March 10 @PunksWritePoems Press and at Amazon #smallpress #poetry

On March 10th PunksWritePoems Press will release All My Rowdy Friends, my newest chapbook of poetry. PWP, a new small press, is located in Chesterfield, VA, a sprawling suburban county where I spent my adolescence after moving from rural towns like Farmville, and Franktown, VA. Like going from 0 to 60, moving to the burbs, in terms of social activities, pretty people, and culture. If it wasn’t for close circles of friends, and working for Sam Goody/Musicland I would have lost my mind (or perhaps because of said friends and Musicland that I lost my mind, in the good way, of course. Cue evil laughter). Jason Bates and company are doing a heckuva job over there, at PWP,  eschewing the inclusive academic publishing model in favor of a Democratic one (as in all inclusive--like Whitman meant “Democratic” to mean). Thus the name of the press. Punk, in its inception, was about doing it yourself. Everyone was welcome to get involved. No experience necessary.

What’s special about this book, this project, is that Alpine Strangers, two of my friends from Emerson, (btw...some of the drafts of the poems in Friends are that old. Which of course means that I am old, for which I am grateful) recorded “covers” of many of the poems. The Alpine Strangers are Nate McFadden and Cody Grimm, and between them they have decades worth of experience spinning records, recording skits, curating sounds, sound effects, and aural pleasures. Click on any of the links to find their podcasts, recordings, and musings. I recorded a bit for Nate in the Emerson days  for his radio show, and Alpine Strangers took one of my World War Two French Resistance poems and kicked it out here.  My second best art has always been theatre, and like my previous chapbooks, many of these poems are dramatic monologues, perfect for Alpine Strangers. I can't say enough about their efforts, especially Nate McFadden, kicking it like a storytelling master. I'll be posting more information about those tracks as they are uploaded. You'll also hear yours truly read a few as well. Poetry is meant to be heard. It's not just for the page.

This book would not be possible without friends, people who have supported me inside and outside the rooms of poetry, family, friends, fellow artists and former students. Friends is both very personal and very abstract for me. The subject matter is often dark: addiction, gender dysphoria, self destruction, despair, but there’s also hope, acceptance, love, and recovery for these folks, and for all of us.

To continue with the music analogy Friends could be described as this: take a bit of the Velvet Underground, a bit of Jane’s Addiction, add some southern funk, and a whole lot of geek nerdery... and there you have it.

All My Rowdy Friends will be available March 10 at PunksWritePoems Press, and at Amazon.

Two of my older chapbooks, which are both out of print, The Barleyhouse Letters, and the award winning Field Recordings, are available as ebooks on Amazon.  You can peruse my fiction there too, Seven Days on the Mountain--a YA “chase” adventure novel, and two chapbooks of linked dystopian science fiction: Toxic Tourism, stories and poems about the wastelands, and Stream, stories about a future city ever connected and deprivatized.