The former poet laureate of Grand Rapids, Michigan, Rodney Torreson won the Seattle Review’s Bentley Prize, and Storyline Press named him runner-up for the national Roerich Prize for first books. Torreson lives in Grand Rapids with his wife Paulette, where he taught at Immanuel-St. James Lutheran School for thirty-six years. In 2007, he created the online youth poetry journal, Through the Third Eye. In 2015, the Dyer-Ives Foundation honored him “for his longstanding commitment as a poet, teacher, patron, and advocate for poetry in West Michigan.”
His three full-length collections of poetry are The Jukebox Was the Jury of Their Love (Finishing Line Press, 2019), A Breathable Light (New Issues Press, 2002), and The Ripening of Pinstripes: Called Shots on the New York Yankees (Story Line Press, 1998). In addition, he has published two chapbooks: The Secrets of Fieldwork (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and On a Moonstruck Gravel Road (Juniper Press, l994). Torreson also edited an anthology, Cultivating a Sense of Place: Poetry by West Michigan Youth, 2009.
Paperback: 136 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books (August 17, 2023)