Poetry. "'And now that I've left I dream only of returning' says Jason Irwin in WATERING THE DEAD. In this debut—part love song, part elegy to the dying factory towns of America—nothing is lost, nothing forgotten. These poems swivel on bar stools and race trains on back roads. Boys leave small towns for war or prison and fathers talk about 'someday' like it's a day on the calendar. These are poems of honor and witness; they pray and rage. Irwin gives us no easy vision of escape, instead in this powerful first collection he gives us poems of rough beauty"—Victoria Redel.

Author City: PITTSBURGH, PA USA

Jason Irwin was born in Jamestown, NY, in 1971 and grew up in Dunkirk, NY. He is a graduate of SUNY Fredonia and the MFA Poetry Program at Sarah Lawrence College. "Some Days It's a Love Story" won the Slipstream Chapbook contest in 2005. His poetry has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Miller's Pond, Sycamore Review, Confrontation, Lumina, Off the Coast, and many others. Jason's first book, WATERING THE DEAD, won the 2006/2007 Transcontinental Poetry Award and was published in 2008 by Pavement Saw Press.