05/31/09

Roy Bentley is the author of twelve books of poems: 3 full-length collections and 9 chapbooks. His most recent book-length collection The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana won the 11^th Annual White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 2005 and is available from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble online. (See link below to order a copy.)  In 2001, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in poetry, and has won an Ohio Arts Council individual artist fellowship in poetry 6 times, as well as a recent individual artist fellowship from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs. Here's a reading of the poem "On the Diamond behind Garfield Elementary, Melvin White Proves There Is but One Boog Powell". 

Roy lives in Stuart, Florida where he has finished a novel about a forty-something ne'er-do-well Ohioan who hears what he takes to be the voice of God command: Go, start me a dive team.  The book is called Gem City.  (God makes an appearance as a 300-pound mechanic named Thumper who works at a Shell convenience store/gas station in Dayton.)  The plot involves a bunch of hard-working Ohioans, outliers of mixed race and heritage, falling in and out of love and founding The Church of the Diver in the process--oh, and it turns out: Osama bin Laden is hiding in the Gem City!  (Where better?)

A chapbook entitled Woman & Alligator: The Florida Poems is out from Pudding House Publications. Here's a portion of Connie Willett Everett's review in Ohioana Quarterly, Winter 2007: "The Florida Poems trace Bentley's transplantation south, moving to accommodate his wife's new job.  Florida may be familiar, even desirable, vacation land for Northerners, but living there is another matter.   ...Ohio has its abolitionist past, and Florida has, well, something else.  ...His avid readers will want to grab this book for their collections.  New readers will discover Bentley at his best."

Here's a video, courtesy of YouTube, of a poem about beginning to write and share what you write: Why Mark Chapman Got Both Legs of His Good Pants Wet

For more information, about this or other books, my email address is: bentley.roybentley@gmail.com. Funerals in the South, a chapbook, is available. Email me an address and send me a check. The cost is $10 (postage and a mailer and handling included. Checks payable to Roy Bentley...)

Great News! The Florida Division of Cultural Affairs announced its Individual Artist fellowships in poetry, and I was awarded $5000. (My 5-page submission received the highest score among this year's applications!)

Books: The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana (White Pine Press, 2006), Any One Man (Bottom Dog Books, 1992) and Boy in a Boat (University of Alabama Press, 1986)

Chapbooks:  The Idiot's Guide to the Afterlife (Pudding House Publications, 2009), Funerals in the South (Pudding House Publications, 2008), Woman & Alligator (Pudding House Publications, 2007), Strange Privacies (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2006), Bentley Hotel (Pudding House Publications 2005), Greatest Hits: 1980-2001 (Pudding House Publications, 2002), Reparation (Pudding House Publications, 2001), The Edge of Heaven (Bottom Dog Press, 1988) and The Way into Town (Signpost Press, 1984)

Order a copy of The Trouble with a Short Horse in Montana today! http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Trouble-with-a-Short-Horse-in-Montana/Roy-Bentley/e/9781893996779/?itm=4

or: http://www.amazon.com/Trouble-Short-Horse-Montana-Poetry/dp/1893996778/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218381899&sr=8-1

Here are two poems from the audio CD, 16 Poems: "The Wreck of the Barbie Ferrari" and "Strange Privacies"... which is no longer available for sale.

Click here to watch another video from my YouTube site: Converters

Or one from My Space: Twins