Jim Daniels offered some poetry for young writers that showed it’s OK not to take one’s work too seriously sometimes.
The author of more than 30 collections of poetry visited Northeast Community College during the final week of classes as the final author in the Visiting Writers at Union 73 Coffee Shop.
Along with his poetry collections, Daniels has written seven collections of fiction and has four produced screenplays. His collection of essays, An Ignorance of Trees, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press in 2025. He also has read poetry as such venues as minor league baseball stadiums and had poetry sent to the Moon as part of the Moon Arts Project.
While reading in Norfolk, Daniels offered several one-line poems, including one about modern medicine, “I fell asleep reading the fine print on the sleeping pills.” He also discussed growing up in Detroit, his “misspent past” and showed he is comfortable dealing with such serious topics as the loss of innocence or trying to understand a suicide.
Oftentimes alternating between serious and light-hearted poems, Daniels demonstrated tremendous versatility that appeared was appealing to student writers.
His most recent books include The Luck of the Fall, fiction, Michigan State University Press, 2023, and the poetry collections Gun/Shy, Wayne State University Press, 2021, The Human Engine at Dawn, Wolfson Press, 2022, and Comment Card, Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2024. He has also edited or coedited six anthologies, most recently RESPECT: The Poetry of Detroit Music, Michigan State University Press, 2020.
Jim Daniels Interacting
Writer Jim Daniels shares a laugh with a student while reading poetry, prose and answering questions about writing as the final speaker in the Visiting Writers Series. (Northeast Community College)
###
