USFL is the fifth in a series of limited edition, tiny chapbooks from [free poetry for].
From the [free poetry for] website: When the chapbooks are printed, they are disseminated throughout public space (cafes, airports, buses and bus shelters, trains, waiting rooms, etc.). The purpose of the series is to heighten the awareness of poetry by putting it in odd and unusual places and spaces, where poetry isn’t traditionally understood to belong.
The eleven very-short-form, minimalist poems in this collection represent some of the author's most experimental work. The collection was written during Lent (February–April), 2012 in Lafayette, Colorado.
J. D. Nelson (b. 1971) is the author of eleven chapbooks and e-books of poetry, including purgatorio (wlovolw, 2024).
in ghostly onehead (Post-Asemic Press, 2022) is his first full-length collection.
Nelson’s poetry is greatly influenced by Dada and Surrealism, and also by the developments of the Beat writers, especially Jack Kerouac’s spontaneous prose technique and the cut-up technique pioneered by William S. Burroughs. Most of his poems are created through the cutting up and collaging of his own freewriting. Nelson also writes haiku and senryū in English.
His poem, “to mask a little bird” was nominated for Best of the Net in 2021. Four of his haiku were nominated for The Haiku Foundation 2023 Touchstone Award for Individual Poems.