A Poetry Reading with David Michael Belczyk and Gerald Constanzo

About Travelers:

In these impressionistic, roaming poems, David Michael Belczyk journeys into memories and across cities and continents—Bayeux’s “soaring spires,” Rochester’s “shuttered clapboard houses,” Granada’s “aisles of palm through iron bars,” Puerto Rico’s “wind and rivulets [that] ran through the open doors”—as he searches for “a sacred place . . . hallowed by the ones that went before.” These are poignant songs of longing and desire that evoke the complexities of attraction to the real and imagined, the actual and the mythic, the love that compels the poet to meander for meaning “toward the end of all roads.” — Orlando Ricardo Menes, The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds
David Michael Belczyk’s Travelers is an ambitious, conceptual collection that covers a lot of territory, both geographical and emotional. This series of love poems to places examines the important connections we make to specific locations, environments, and the influence those things have on our lives. A fascinating exploration. — Jim Daniels, Gun/Shy and The Luck of the Fall
Travelers is Belczyk’s serenade to places and to place; multiple journeys of body and of mind. These poems constitute a nuanced seeking after desire, and the sometimes perplexing results of that search. —Gerald Costanzo, Regular Haunts: New and Previous Poems
The poetry of geography says that every place awaits the traveler. It’s what the poet imagines each place to be as well as what it becomes when he goes there. Local or distant, it becomes personal in the poet’s imagination. Take a trip with David Michael Belczyk in these instant poems, and you’ve seen the world. — Samuel Hazo, The Less Said, the Truer

About David Michael Belczyk:

David is a poet and fiction writer. His newest poetry collection, Travelers, is scheduled for a June 2023 release with publisher Circling Rivers.
His recent novel, City of Bridges, was published by Wipf & Stock. In an ancient city that seeks itself among its mythical past, a courier is killed upon a bridge. A century later, the narrator and his friends join the city's renewed search for the item the courier carried, but they are drawn deeper into the unsolved mystery of the courier's death.
David's first lyric-novel, Elynia, was published by Dark Coast Press. It explores the unexpected relationships between four generations of characters and their communication across the divides of time and place. Their kaleidoscopic lives persevere in hope despite a relentless storm that erodes their monuments and memories.
David's first poetry collections, Forms and Vessels and Called Perpetual, were published as companions by Culturatti. Liguori Press published The Final Act of Creation, a poetic contemplation of the death of Jesus that gives a unique and lyric voice to the generative power found in suffering. For Advent 2020, Wipf & Stock published a companion, The First Act of Creation, that explores the identity and beauty of the human person through the Incarnation. Proceeds from both works are donated to charity.
Duquesne University commissioned David to create Nine Lessons, a new poetic version of a century-old choral reflection. Nine Lessons was performed with Duquesne's choirs. David's poetry has also featured in photographic works and was used as lyrics for musical compositions by Guenko Guechev.
David founded award-winning Judith Literary Press, which produces poignant new works from diverse authors, including bilingual poetry about the cultural history and conflict of the Southwestern U.S., young poetic perspectives from India, and new formalism bent to the surreal. Judith has also released revised editions of David's early poetry and new works: Unexpected Guest and Somniloquy, which explores dream-stories collected from friends and strangers across the world.

About Gerald Costanzo:

Gerald Costanzo is a graduate of Harvard and of The Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins. For more than fifty years he has been a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University where he founded the University Press. Originally from Portland, Oregon, he resides in Mt. Lebanon, PA and Nehalem, OR. His most recent book, Regular Haunts: New and Previous Poems was selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser for his series at the University of Nebraska Press.

Host or Publisher Riverstone Books