John Philip Drury

On Saturday, September 28, 2024, at 7:00 pm, there will be a book launch for Bobby and Carolyn: A Memoir of My Two Mothers, my first book of narrative nonfiction, which Finishing Line Press published in August 2024. After reading a short chapter and the "Disclosure" that follows it, I will answer questions, discuss the memoir, and sign copies of the book (which does include two of my poems). Everyone's welcome!

Here are the poems I read via Zoom at the West-East Bicoastal Poets of the Pandemic and Beyond reading on May 19, 2024:

“Valentine for LaWanda”
“Falling in Love at the YMCA Pool”
“Crossing the Lagoon”
“Honeymoon in Venice”
“Listening to A Love Supreme”
“E Pluribus”
“Poised”
“Beginning with a Line from Turgenev’s On the Eve”

Here’s the set list for my portion of a reading at the Pop-up Poetry Festival of the West Chester Poetry Center on April 14, 2024, including nine sonnets from The Teller’s Cage and a sestina that appeared in the Winter 2024 issue of The Hudson Review:

Here’s the set list of poems I read at the Poetry Stacked event in Langsam Library at the University of Cincinnati on March 6, 2024:

“Sestina on Six Words by Michael Peterson” (from The Hudson Review , Winter 2024)
“Ghazal of the Vaporetto”
“Chaconne” (preceded by the poem’s “Production Notes” in The Teller’s Cage)

A video in which I read “The Projectionist,” an elegy for Liam Rector that appears on pages 53-54 of The Teller’s Cage, is available on YouTube on this link: “John Philip Drury reads The Projectionist from NINE MILE 2” . The poem was originally published in the Fall 2020 issue of Nine Mile. I am grateful to the late Bob Herz for accepting it.

Here's the set list of the poems I read at the book launch for The Teller’s Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati on January 18, 2024:

“The Poet as a Seven-Year-Old Baseball Fan”
“New Song of the South”
“Reverse Pindaric Ode for Olympic Athletes Who Don’t Win Any Medals”
“Valentine for LaWanda”
“Poised”
“The Projectionist”
“Cincinnati Haiku”
“Library in a Dresser Drawer”
“The Teller’s Cage”

(At least one poem from each of the book’s six sections.)

Lisa Ampleman conducted an interview with John Philip Drury in early January, and it now appears on the Cincinnati Review website, timed to coincide with the book launch for The Teller's Cage: Poems and Imaginary Movies at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cincinnati on Thursday, January 18 at 7:00 pm. Here's the link to the interview: https://www.cincinnatireview.com/interviews/interview-with-john-philip-d...