Alan Britt

Alan Britt


Alan Britt teaches creative writing, poetry, and composition at Towson University. He is committed to combining creative multi-media, student participation, along with a little fun to enhance the learning environment in his classes. His poetry, flash fiction, essays, and interviews have appeared worldwide in such publications as Agni, Arson, Christian Science Monitor, Clay Palm Review, Confrontation, English Journal, Epoch, Fire (UK), Flint Hills Review, Fox Cry Review, Gradiva (Italy), Kansas Quarterly, Latino Stuff Review, Magyar Naplo (Hungary), Midwest Quarterly, New Letters, New Voices (Trinidad & Tobago), Pacific Review, Pedrada Zurda (Ecuador), Poet's Market, Puerto del Sol, Queen's Quarterly (Canada), Revista Solar (Mexico), Sou'wester, Square Lake, Steaua (Romania), plus the anthologies, Fathers: Poems About Fathers (St. Martin's Press:1998), Weavings 2000: The Maryland Millennial Anthology (Forest Woods Media Productions, Inc.: 2001, St. Mary’s College, MD), and La Adelfa Amarga: Seis Poetas Norteamericanos de Hoy (Ediciones El Santa Oficio. Peru: 2003.

His recent books are Vermilion (The Bitter Oleander Press: 2006), Infinite Days (The Bitter Oleander Press: 2003), Amnesia Tango (Cedar Hill Publications: 1998), and Bodies of Lightning (Cypress Books: 1995).

Alan received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Tampa and the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. He occasionally publishes the international literary journal, Black Moon, from Reisterstown, Maryland, where he lives with his wife, daughter, two Bouviers des Flandres, and two formerly feral cats.

The imagery in Britt's poems connects itself to an idea and is, therefore, deeper and more meaningful than embellishment or decoration. In this manner, a linguistic experience is born, one that is palpable to the five senses. No accent pieces needed-Britt does more than get close to the bone-he gets to the heart of the thing itself and makes it resonate with something deeper than exactitude. His images are painted as if vibrating, as if his letters were tuning forks. Britt's imagery, therefore, evokes a mood and meaning simultaneously.

--excerpted from Dr. Maura Gage's introduction to Infinite Days

Here's what's being said about
VERMILION

Images are the key to what is serious in life: lying, as such, but the great and only occasion to understand what is truth. I enjoy poets like Alan Britt who know where to look for truth.

--Yves Bonnefoy

Vermilion, the new volume of poetry by Alan Britt, is a concise but very humane piece of poetry. Two moods flood this volume-a mystic mood, and then a contemplative mood. The first one is not canonic, because if one can talk about a mystic feeling, this suggests the construction of each poem as embodying a sort of mantra. Eagles, white pelicans and above all the snow leopard are savior-animals and symbols not only for the sacrifice, but also for the pilgrimage that all of us, as interior monks, must undertake in our lives.

--Ruxandra Cesereanu