Leviathan

So pleased to be sharing the news of my latest collection of poetry, Leviathan, which won the 2014 Iron Horse Single-Author Contest. The chapbook will be out in just over two weeks, but you can pre-order now for just $4! You can get a sneak peek at the title poem here, and here’s what Carrie Jerrell, contest judge, and Laurie Kutchins, Pulitzer Prize finalist, have to say about the manuscript:

“Leviathan is a collection both celebratory and elegiac. Wilkins moves deftly from the natural landscapes of rivers and forests, to the domestic landscapes of garage sales and truck stops, to the emotional landscapes of terror and wonder brought on by fatherhood. He captures each of them in language and imagery as rich as the heart itself. Though the waters and people who populate these poems are often bracing, Wilkins never loses hope for long.” -Carrie Jerrell, author of After the Revival

“There’s alchemy in Joe Wilkins’s poems. Colic, junk, gutted factories, and rotten tomatoes become gold; castaway, castoff things at garage sales become luminous lists of all the things that keep us human. Some of these poems take us into birth-country; others, into the clutches of parenthood, into both literal and metaphorical floods. We think a chapbook is a little book, but no such thing with Leviathan. True to its title, this is a giant of a book with big-soul poems. This is no chamber quartet, but rather a full symphony of sonic energy and fierce, percussive love.” -Laurie Kutchins, Pulitzer-Prize finalist for The Night Path