Barn Brand

I am a Bronx born and bred 79-year-old community-based poet, and tinkering gardener, who resides in both the desert of southwest Arizona and the woods of northern New Jersey. When not writing, baking bread, or growing veggies, I can be found cycling quiet roads with a cohort of incredible friends. I ride over 4,000 miles each year.

To me, the writing of poetry is an attempt to bridge a feeling from one mind to another - sometimes we transfer intense emotions that attach to the reader’s core, sometimes what we offer is more lightly felt, but always it is the emotion that travels with the story that is paramount.

Reverence, grief, depression, love, hate, forgiveness, humor, and harmony - our emotional history, how we integrate it and how we share it makes us who we are - and that is why poetry matters.

My poems have appeared in the Paterson Literary Review, on One Art: a journal of poetry, In the Wise Old Owl, on Masterlink, on Recovering The Self and on Suburban Witchcraft Magazine. My poem "Lost and Found Too Late: was awarded Best Poem at the 9th Annual Foothills Art & Poetry Exhibition. And I am co-author of First Day at The Center.