You read that right! I have a new chapbook entitled A Thin Line coming out. I’m as surprised as you may be because I really don’t consider myself a poet, but I gathered some poems that seemed to go together and submitted them to a contest at Bass Clef Books. I submitted because the contest was judged by and honors a longtime poet friend of mine, George Drew. Here’s an interview with George. Like me, George loves the sound of language, the musicality.
What is A Thin Line about?
My slim collection deals with my parents and the ends of their lives. I wrote all sorts of things while I was sitting in waiting rooms with them. There are so many feelings to process as a care giver. I lost both parents in 2019: Dad in January, Mom in December. They’d been divorced for something like fifty years by then.
I didn’t WIN the George Drew Chapbook contest, but I made the list of finalists. I suspect that as Madville does, Bass Clef likely offers contracts to the top two or three collections, because, why not? I as a publisher always think that I’ve had all these really good submissions, and a) it’s a shame to only publish one of them, and b) I have had the advantage of some really smart readers selecting from those submissions.
With that in mind, I’ll take my wins where I can get them! My new publisher at Bass Clef tells me that A Thin Line will be out late this year, or early next! I will let everyone know when it is available.
