NaPoWriMo Poetry Chapbook Contest Finalist To Be Published by Local Gems Press in a collection of 30 themed poems from R.J. Huneke titled American Political Asylum.

I could not be happier to have been selected a finalist in the contest, I am ecstatic to announce that my first ever book of poetry will be published by Local Gems Press.

The 2018 Local Gems Press NaPoWriMo Poetry Chapbook Contest was a challenge.

I had never written poetry to a theme, even one as loosely interpreted as a I created for American Political Asylum, and to then write a poem a day for thirty days straight for April’s NaPoWriMo was a daunting, refreshing, and invigorating task.

I regard poetry as the freest form of expression through writing.

Whether mimicking Shakespearian sonnets or a stream of consciousness flow a la the beats, Ginsberg and Kerouac and Dylan, or simply divulging a work equally as visual on the page as it is said verbally, like ee cummings, I find writing poems liberating.

Having written non-fiction and fiction for many publications over many years, even poetry’s sonnets have a freedom of verse, akin to song lyrics, that transcend standards of diction, grammar, and punctuation.

Much as I enjoy breaking the rules in prose, poetry is all about making your own rules.

You choose the rhythm, you write the song, and you write the letters in an order to show a smoking cigarette butt, whose poem’s title trails the top of the tendrils of smoke and ash (thank you Ed Stever for that example that will always stick with me).

You can make your own ways to express stanzas, or go to one of the oldest and most challenging (to do it right and make it impactful with bite at the ending) of poetic structures and forms in the haiku.

Yes, there are haiku in the upcoming book.

And yes, friends and family, I am again working on my Holiday Haikus for the 2018 season (late as usual haha).

But let us get back to the book, folks.

American Political Asylum will feature works reflecting my feelings of America, from the past, the present, and the future.

And in so doing this required some happy works of an American puppy named Indiana Jones, but also some grim works tackling the hostile political climate that has assaulted American society of late.

As many around the globe flee their lands and war and atrocities they seek asylum in places like the US of A.

So the ‘Asylum’ refers to that but also to the random madness seen around the world and especially here, in American, which I love and choose to live in.

For me, the asylum inches closer around us, Americans, daily.

And so, my thoughts, rants, philosophical views, my raving and morbidly dry sense of humor, and my love of the country I was born in take center stage amongst thirty very different poems.

If nothing else, I believe they are different than what many have done before and I hope they are at least half as entertaining to you as they are to me.

If so, let me know, and I will know my job, and my pen’s, was a success.

Updates on release dates and the incredible cover art will be coming to you, Eager Readers, as soon as I have them.

Happy New Year!

~RJH