Ghost Gear: Poems

by Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum

Ghost Gear chronicles the poet’s coming of age in a working-class neighborhood in Nashville, a fractured place where fathers worked overtime at the nearby Ford Glass plant and kids roamed the streets. These poems of an urban life are joined by verses inspired by tales told by McFadyen-Ketchum’s father, who took his children to explore the natural world surrounding the city and regaled them with stories of his own childhood: a near drowning by tidal wave on the Aleutian Chain, a near copperhead strike in the black willow swamps of Shreveport, sleeplessness after a science fiction radio story. In Ghost Gear, the “citied south” joins tales of the father, a longer ago childhood bleeding into a more current one to create a mythology all its own.

Genres: Poetry

78 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2014

About the author

Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum is a poet, editor, and educator. His first collection of poetry, "Ghost Gear," is forthcoming with the University of Arkansas Press and his anthology, "Apocalypse Now: Poems and Prose from the End of Days," was released on December 21, 2012. He also writes reviews, interviews established and burgeoning writers, edits journals, and produces a podcast.

Andrew's work recently appears or is forthcoming in journals such as The Writer's Chronicle, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Ascent, Glimmer Train, American Literary Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, Poet Lore, The Missouri Review, storySouth, Blackbird, InsideHigherEd.com, Eclipse, Copper Nickel, New Letters, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Potomac Review among others.

He is Acquisitions Editor for Upper Rubber Boot Books; is editor of an anthology; writes a web-column, poetry=am^k, as a Contributing Editor for The Southern Indiana Review; and is Founder and Editor of PoemoftheWeek.org and Managing Editor of AdHominem.weebly.com.

Andrew is also an experienced freelance Writing Coach, Copy-Editor, Tutor, and Ghostwriter. He holds a Masters of Fine Arts Degree from Southern Illinois University - Carbondale and is an Instructor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Colorado - Denver.

Reviews

[Shaylin · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The earth thumping its chest/ like the first shovelfuls of soil on a grave"

--Lost Creek Cave