Alan Catlin has been fighting in the trenches of the poetry wars since the 70's. During that time he has accumulated a diverse resume of credits that range from the totally obscure (and vaguely ridiculous) to well-regarded, long-standing college and university magazines. He can proudly say, without a doubt, that he is the only poet ever to publish in Wordsworth's Socks, The Margarine Maypole Orangutan Express, the Literary Review, Descant, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol and the legendary Wormwood Review. He has also shown an uncanny ability to have chapbooks, and full-length books, win contests or been published, that became the last project of the press thereby dooming them to total obscurity. The four times that happened began to feel like a jinx though he clings to the hope that these belly-up-in-small-press-land books and the defuncting of presses, were merely a coincidence. The three editors who died before they could do his book don't count. In 2020 four handsome Catlin books arrived, from four different presses, on completely different subjects. Then the plague happened. 2021 promises to be a better year. These four, new full-length books are, ASYLUM GARDEN: AFTER VAN GOGH (Dos Madres Press. 2020), Lessons in Darkness (Luchador Press a division of Spartan Books), The Blue Hotel (Cyberwit) and Memories (Alien Buddha Press). His most recent book is MEMORIES TOO (Dos Madres Press, 2021).
