We are proud to present five poems by A. Loudermilk, five poems that have little in common except for a edgy shrewdness. While none of these pieces are traditional, they vary from the rhythmic to the Bukowski-esque, rapidly alternating between romance, whimsy, violence, and shame, crossing barriers of genre and mood in giant, fearless leaps. These poems barely fit in the mind, let alone on the page.
A. Loudermilk's The Daughterliest Son won the Swan Scythe Press 2001 Chapbook Contest. The full-length manuscript "Daring Love" was finalist in 2001 for both Tupelo Press and Sarabande Books poetry contests. Poems appear in The Mississippi Review, The Madison Review (as winner of the Phyllis smart Young Prize in Poetry, see mendota.english.wisc.edu/~MadRev/html/two.html, The Redneck Review, Rhino, The Yalobusha Review, Heather McHugh's New Voices 1989-1998 from The Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. Non-fiction and cultural criticism appear in Journal X, River Teeth, the anthology Car Crash Culture (Palgrave, 2001), The Journal of Consumer Culture, and elsewhere. He grew up in southern Illinois and has never been far from home. He teaches creative writing and composition at Indiana University, Bloomington. You can reach him at aloudermilk111@yahoo.com.
A.'s works here at Unlikely Stories are:
2002:
Three Ways (and Sixteen Personalities)
El Diablo Nuevo
Murderer's Prayer
Rags in a Row (a Lesson in Plumbing)
Crooked County (at The Bluebird with You)