Strange Country

"In Strange Country Jon Thompson addresses the voices, amongst others, of 'the traffic of fear', and bids their speakers join the living. It is also an invitation to the reader to enter a specifically American poetry of the here-and-now. The accomplishment of Strange Country begins with the exact measure of its line and its discovered idiom in the face of what may well be termed the present contradictions of a strange country. What sustains that accomplishment is a poet's attention to a 'wide-open polyphony' equal to the multiple realities of its subject." - Kelvin Corcoran

Born in Columbus, Ohio, Jon Thompson was educated at University College, Dublin where he received a B.A. in English Language and Literature and an M.A. in English and American Literature (with a thesis on Robert Creeley). He did a Ph.D. at LSU, and has taught at North Carolina State University ever since where he is now a Professor in the English Department. His poetry has appeared in many journals including The American Literary Review, Blackbox Manifold, Colorado Review, The Common, Hayden's Ferry Review, The Iowa Review, New Ohio Review, Shearsman magazine and The White Review. His first collection of poems was The Book of the Floating World (Parlor Press, 2007). His next book, published by Shearsman Books in 2009, was a collection of lyrical essays, After Paradise: Essays on the Fate of American Writing. He also provided an Introduction for D.H. Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature, in the Shearsman Classics series, which appeared in 2011. Shearsman has published two collections of his poetry, Landscape with Light and Strange Country.Thompson also edits the international online journal, Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry & Poetics and Free Verse Editions, which has over 30 titles on its list.