Hello friends! And Happy New Year!

2017 was an especially fruitful year for me that saw the publication of Our Sudden Museum, my most recent collection. I conducted several readings from that book throughout the year, and have been thrilled at its reception by many kind readers. If you’ve yet to purchase a copy, fret not, just click here. In addition to the publication of Our Sudden Museum, this year I learned that my next book, Severance, will be published by Salmon Poetry in 2019. A wild formal and stylistic departure for me, this collection follows the journey of two marionettes who escape the stage. I’m very excited to have this book on the horizon.

Due to being between two books, I’ve been doing more public readings and less drafting of new work; however, 2018 will be a working year as I continue on and will hopefully finish a working draft of a manuscript I’ve had in progress for around 4-5 years. Ever evolving, this book will include several thematic threads. Now it resembles tangled yarn—a ball of half-finished poems and a few converging motifs—but I’m looking forward to getting deep into the mess of it.

Thanks so much to all of you for your support of my work, and of poetry in general. These are nerve-wracking days that test our spirits and our resolve—to live and thrive—much less to write, as this article in Electric Lit highlights, but I feel the need to lift my pen and move forward into what I do—hoping any of my thrown sparks add to the growing light.

Love and peace to all—and hopes for a bright year ahead,

Robert

 

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Published by Robert Fanning, poet

River Fanning (aka Robert) is the author of six books of poetry, including four full-length collections: Severance (Salmon Press, 2019), Our Sudden Museum (Salmon Press, 2017), American Prophet (Marick Press, 2009), and The Seed Thieves (Marick Press, 2006) as well as two chapbooks: Sheet Music (Three Bee Press, 2015) and Old Bright Wheel (Ledge Press Poetry Award 2003). His poems have appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Gulf Coast, Waxwing, Thrush, The Atlanta Review, and other journals. A graduate of the University of Michigan and Sarah Lawrence College, he is a Professor of Creative Writing at Central Michigan University.