Last month I had one of those great moments that come along infrequently for guys like me. Frankly, I was not sure what to do with it but it’s something that blew me away. I’ve waited a while to share it here – largely because I wanted to give the people who gave me this award time to change their minds. They haven’t so I feel it is okay to go ahead and let others know.

From time to time I write poems. Some of them I have posted on here. I do not normally submit them for publication but last fall I did. I’ve been working on a Master of Arts in English at ETSU (its a long story but it is a great experience). I submitted two of my poems to the Mockingbird. It was a blind submission (which means no names) and Joseph Campana (a poet, critic, and scholar of Renaissance literate at Rice) selected my poem (“River of Salvation”) as the winner of the 2017 Mockingbird Prize for poetry. Another poem (“Midlife”) was also selected for publication.

What most people do not know about me is that I have been writing poetry for years. I’ve never called myself a poet because, well, I’d never published any. Now, I have and I am blown away. Just thought I’d share that here.