An account of the inspiration for, and writing of, a poem of mine is featured on the website for the Waterloo, Ontario-based literary magazine, The New Quarterly. TNQ’s website includes a section called “Finding the Form”, and in June the magazine posted there my tale of how I came to write “Papyrus,” a poem published in TNQ’s issue no 162 (Spring 2022).

The article—complete with photo—touches on my 54-year friendship with the California author Dennis Saleh (1942-2020), for whom “Papyrus” is an elegy. Also discussed are some compositional choices I made in crafting the poem.