If the Academy of American Poets can raise money for its upkeep through their Adopt-A-Poet program, we here at Poems and Poetry figure that we can offer you our Wedenesday”s Poet, free of charge. No contributions expected – just show your support for poetry and words by visiting our Wednesday poets, enjoying their work and passing it on.

I began writing poetry in Chicago at age 15, when I was named corresponding secretary for a gang of young punks and hoodlums called the Semcoes. A Social Athletic Club, we met at various locations two Thursdays a month. My job was to write postcards to inform my brother thugs–who carried switchblade knives and stole cars for fun and profit–as to when, where and why we were meeting.

Thus begins Robert Sward“s informal biography and explanation of how he came to write poetry. His credits include Uncle Dog and Other Poems, Kissing the Dancer and Other Poems and Four Incarnations: Collected Poems 1957-1991, all available in full online at UPenn”s Online Books Page, as well as a dozen other books of fiction, non-fiction and poetry. He is a winner of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and received Honorable Mention for the 2005 Pablo Neruda Prize in Poetry from Nimrod/Hardman for “The Kit-Kat Club” and other poems. His newest book, God Is In The Cracks, is due out in the Fall of 2006. For now, enjoy excerpts from it in the online broadside, My Rosy Cross Father, presented by Beau Blue Presents.