Jim McLeod has spent his career teaching at colleges and universities in Idaho and Washington. His poems have appeared in publications including Washington State University Press’s Deep Down Things: An Anthology of Inland Northwest Poetry. His creative life has been enriched by friendships with a number of fellow poets, among them the Pacific Northwest’s Richard Hugo and Scotland’s Somhairle MacGill-Eain. Like many others, he has been deeply influenced by Theodore Roethke, the subject of several of his scholarly publications. But Jim is no ivory tower academic. These poems ranging from the lyrical to the farcical reflect his wildly eclectic enthusiasms and experiences. The son of an orphan, he has spent his life reclaiming his family’s lost heritage in Scotland. He relishes local folklore and has written a book on lake monster legends. He and his wife and colleague Judith Sylte, editor of this collection, have led years of study tours to Scotland, Greece and Turkey and happily traipse around remoter corners of the globe. Friends and family know him as an all-round infomaniac whose profligate curiosity fills dozens of notebooks with facts and ideas on everything under the sun. McLeod is candid about his personal struggle with manic depression and alcohol, which colors a number of the poems. They reveal him as a shapeshifter, a Houdini of moods. He wrestles with hard choices and personal losses, wryly or angrily reacts to events in the news, and laughs at life’s comic absurdities. He is a father and a lover. Tender in one poem, playful the next, he is also the irrepressible cornball whose young granddaughters fondly dubbed him “The Jokester.”

Making the Arrows: Collected Poems 1970-2015

Literature & Fiction

McLeod, James R.

Poetry

Wordcraft

<p>New collection of poetry by Northwest poet and publisher. "David Memmott's GIVING IT AWAY is mature, sophisticated, visionary work. These diverse poems range far and near, inside and out of time and place. They intimately explore what we all want to know: How does the dream of life shape our every waking moment?" -- George Venn, author of THE MAGIC CIRCLE "David Memmott's sense of place extends from his piece of ground in northeastern Oregon to the space-time continuum of the universe itself. By turns prophetic, polemical, sensual, and humorous, these poems speak in stalwart witness to the outer and inner landscapes that he calls home." -- John Daniel, author of THE FAR CORNER "GIVING IT AWAY is infused with the generous and expansive spirit its title evokes...A fine and fresh contribution to the literature of the Northwest." -- Barbara Drake, author of BEES IN WET WEATHER and WRITING POETRY</p>

Giving It Away

Memmott, David

<i>A Democracy of Ghosts</i> is a love story of four couples, set against the backdrop of the real-life Herrin Massacre of 1922. This clash of miners and strikebreakers in Bloody Williamson County, in Southern Illinois, resulted in the deaths of 21 men -- 19 of them the "scabs" tortured and murdered by average men, women, and even children in what was once the most radical community in America. John Griswold has drawn from contemporary eyewitnesses and news accounts, an ethnography of the area, histories, and his own grandfather's letters to create the lives of four fictional couples whose ambitions, self-doubts, and social and sexual jealousies contribute to this great American violence that still echoes down through time.

A Democracy of Ghosts

Griswold, John

Literary

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