"Pastoral" and the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize

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My poem “Pastoral” placed in the Honorable Mentions for the Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize for 2024, alongside a bunch of great international poets as well as some local friends. The poem is set in upstate New York and looks at the ephemeral and distinct divisions between our human world and the natural one right on the other side of the fence line, late in the evening, when the wilderness and all it contains feels so much closer, larger, and more wonderous.

The poem also appears in my book Cistern Latitudes from Roadside Press, and will be released in April 2024. You can order copies from Roadside Press or look around at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. I’ll also have a limited number of signed copies.

My thanks to the judges for selecting the poem, and to Roadside Press for publishing this poetry collection.

Roadside Press to Publish Cistern Latitudes

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Roadside Press and I are working on my next full-length poetry collection titled Cistern Latitudes, with a publication date slated for late spring 2024. The sibling publishing wing of Roadside Press, called Gutter Snob Books, previously published my poetry chapbook Proper Etiquette in the Slaughterhouse Line in 2022, and I couldn’t have been happier with how that one turned out, so I’m pretty excited. Roadside Press is just as dedicated to supporting their authors and putting out beautifully designed books, so I know this new book is in good hands.

Cistern Latitudes will contain 60 new poems, or as I called them, 60 small descents into moments and places that once witnessed tectonic shifts in destiny that are now as silent and still as subterranean pools of water, clear and dark and carrying the truth that life and the world may have lost its way, that tragedy may linger in the corners of our past, but there are still latitudes and geographies out there that harbor safe, calm, and magical futures if we look for them.

I’ll post more details when the book becomes available, but for the moment, here is a sample poem that will appear in the collection. Thank you for reading!