Keith Taylor (photo credit: Doug Coomb)
Hi Everyone,
I hope you are all doing as well as can be expected during what is HOPEFULLY the last few months of this pandemic.
I’m so thrilled to share this audio recording of Keith Taylor reading from “Let Them Be Left” his stellar new chapbook from Alice Greene books! The poetry in this chapbook is wonderful. It transported me to a better place.
Alice Greene & Co. books are so aesthetically pleasing. If you don’t know this publisher, check them out here. I’m just in love with their products. You will not be sorry to own this stunning book.
Another beautiful one to check out from Alice Greene is Holly Wren Spaulding’s new book, “Familiars.”
Also, I am happy to announce I’ve started a podcast! Keith Taylor’s reading is also uploaded to Spotify as the first episode of a podcast called “Let’s Deconstruct a Story or Enjoy a Poem.” You can enjoy Keith’s reading on Spotify anytime if you go here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Z3kQKEci3XNxgjIpH9Obn
KEITH TAYLOR READING FROM “LET THEM BE LEFT.”
PLEASE CHECK OUT OUR OTHER EPISODES ON SPOTIFY here.
Bio:
Keith Taylor is originally from Western Canada, but has lived for the past 45 years in Michigan. He has authored or edited 18 books and chapbooks. His most recent are Let Them Be Left (Alice Greene & Co., 2021), and Ecstatic Destinations (Alice Greene & Co., 2018). His last full-length collection, The Bird-while (Wayne State University Press, 2017), won the Bronze medal for the Foreword/Indies Poetry Book of the Year. His poems, stories, reviews, essays, and translations have appeared widely in North America and in Europe. More than two years ago, he retired from the University of Michigan, where he taught Creative Writing for 20 years.
Before that, he worked as a bookseller in Ann Arbor for almost 20 years, but over the years he has also worked as a camp-boy for a hunting outfitter in the Yukon, as a dishwasher in southern France, a housepainter in Indiana and Ireland, a freight handler, a teacher, a freelance writer, the co-host of a radio talk show, and as the night attendant at a pinball arcade in California. Taylor has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and from the Michigan Council for the Arts and Cultural Affairs. He has been Writer/Artist In Residence at Isle Royale National Park (twice), the Detroit YMCA, The International Writers’ and Translators’ Centre of Rhodes, Greece, the University of Michigan Biological Station, and Greenhills School.
This Is Not a Poem
in which the poet discovers
delicate white-parched bones
of a small creature
on a Great Lake shore
— JC Oates
thought of Keith when I read that…