HogPress

02/24/2026

Excellent review of Dr. Amit Shankar Saha's poetry book 'Undecember' which we published last May. Read it here: https://parchamonline.in/2026/02/18/book-review-undecember/
Thanks for posting this first, Amit...

Review of Amit Shankar Saha’s Undecember: The Thirteenth Month Reviewed by Subashish Bhattacharjee In Undecember: The Thirteenth Month, Amit Shankar Saha extends the calendrical imagination that sh…

02/24/2026

Announcing the release of D.H. Jenkins' new book of poetry titled 'Memory of Rocks and Shells', now available worldwide in paperback, hardcover, Kindle, and Apple Books versions. Audio book to be released soon...
Here's the back cover info:
A sweeping, multi‑voiced poetic odyssey in which art, nature, memory, and music intertwine, revealing the hidden harmonies that shape the human experience.Memory of Rocks and Shells gathers the wide, shimmering world into five vivid constellations—Optics, Artifacts, Ekphrastics, Animals, and Jazz. In this far‑ranging, deeply humane collection, D.H. Jenkins traces the connective tissue between seeing, remembering, and being alive.From the luminous corridors of museums to the deep quiet of oceans, from Bronze Age pendants to van Gogh’s star‑splintered skies, from the wild poise of mountain lions to the blue fire of Coltrane’s horn, these poems collapse time and distance. Jenkins’ language—by turns intimate, visionary, and steeped in historical and artistic memory—reveals the hidden correspondences between human life and the living world that surrounds it.Whether entering a Buddhist temple, diving among whales, walking into wartime Europe “through a mirror darkly,” or listening to the ecstatic pulse of jazz, the speaker moves through landscapes where art, nature, and spirit converge. What emerges is a powerful meditation on beauty, loss, ancestry, survival, and transcendence.This collection invites the reader to pause, witness, and remember: that every object holds a history, every creature a lineage, every painting a world, and every moment of attention a doorway into the sublime.
About the Author
D.H. Jenkins earned a BA in Literature from American University in Washington, D.C., an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and an MFA from the University of Arizona. For seven years he taught as an adjunct professor at universities in the USA and then was awarded a Soros Teaching Fellowship in the Czech Republic. He continued his expat career as a lecturer in Oman, an ESL teacher in Micronesia, and finally as a professor of Speech, Writing, and ESL in East Asia.While a professor for UMUC—Asia, working and living in Japan and Korea, he received the Bylee Massey Award for a project in the Humanities, as well as the Drazek Excellence in Teaching Award. He now lives in New Zealand where he enjoys hiking in the Southern Alps as well as snorkeling in the Pacific Islands.D.H. Jenkins’ plays have been staged in California, Arizona, Australia, and Japan. His poems have appeared in Jerry Jazz Musician, Kinds of Cool—an interactive collection of Jazz Poetry 2025 (Unsolicited Press), The Tiger Moth Review, The Global South, The Ekphrastic Review, The Wave, Kelp Journal, Ocean Poetry Anthology 2024 (Kelp Books), and Ocean Poetry Anthology 2025 (Kelp Books).
Go to https://hogpress.com/jenkins-memory-of-rocks-and-shells/

02/03/2026

We're just about ready to release D. H. Jenkins' book of poetry titled 'Memory of Rocks and Shells'. Jenkins lives and works in New Zealand. Here are the current cover design options (courtesy of Polytekton). Any favorites anybody?

01/18/2026

Poet Gopal Lahiri's book of poetry titled "Wasp and Filament" is now available worldwide through HogPress. Here is the synopsis of the book from the back cover and a review by one of our other prolific poets, Duane Vorhees. More information at https://hogpress.com/lahiri-wasp-and-filament/

Wasp and Filament is a thoughtfully curated collection of seventy-five poems, exploring a broad range of themes including meditation, ecological awareness, nature, urban environments, and surreal experiences.

The poems are arranged into five distinct sections, with titles such as Hibiscus Eyes and Renewal, Gossamers and Strands, Abundant Seeing, Urban Reverberations and Shorts which features concise poetic forms, including haiku and haibun, enriching the book’s textual variety.

These divisions are based primarily on tones, textures and resonances of the poems. As the readers go on reading, the poetic landscape suspends time and space and allow them to attune to the moments of seeing that perforate each day.

Through vivid imagery and layered metaphors, these poems conjure a rich and evocative poetic landscape. The verses traverse with a measured intensity, inviting readers to accompany the poet on a journey that is both introspective and outward-looking.

Evocative and soulful, the seventy-five poems in this collection reflect the collective threads of humanity and our quest for knowing the boundary between real and unreal across the uneven terrain of human existence. And they flow with a quiet ferocity urging readers to join in this poetic journey.

What Readers Think

“Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,” a Russian woman wrote long ago (In Memory of M. B.) on the death of a troubled, exalted man. The poem, indirectly—due to Soviet censorship and repression—emblematized the determination that the poem’s subject, Mikhail Bulgakov, maintained, despite the general despair that had taken hold after the Czar gave way to the commissars. And then an Indian man, in our own age of war and terror, responded with his own poem (Akhmatova, Are you still there?). Where her work was, by necessity and craft, oblique and understated, his is bold and vivid. The deaths come alive. By analogy, this is the effect that Gopal Lahiri affects throughout Wasp and Filament, his latest collection of poetry. He subtly transforms the mostly unnoticed ghosts that surround us into vivid, searing spirits that won’t be exorcized, while letting the reader fill their bones with personal imagination and invention. “No roses this time on the mass grave.” Read this book with your mind and eyes wide open.

Duane Vorhees
Poet and Critic

01/01/2026

We published another book of poetry before last year's holidays...Jeremy Toombs' "Fair to Middlin'" is now available worldwide. More information at https://hogpress.com/toombs-fair-to-middlin/

12/29/2025

We just released a book of poetry by one of our new authors. Anne McGee Tibbitts' "riversongs" is now available worldwide. Check out the book website for more information.
https://hogpress.com/tibbitts-riversongs/

06/09/2025

New book by Wayne Burke, now available worldwide at Hog Press

Here's the book story:
You are ten years old. Your stomach aches. Your grandfather’s hand rests on your shoulder like a weathered leather glove—silent, steady, and more comforting than any advice ever spoken. You’re in a JC Penney, dodging your grandmother’s wart-picking scrutiny and your brother’s thumb-sucking despair. You’re in a swing, singing about your uncle, until he storms out with a belt like a black snake. You stop. You always stop.

This is not a memoir. It is a field guide to survival in the rusted-out towns of New England, where the church bells ring and the pot roast simmers, but love is frozen solid in second-floor apartments. Where boys become men by slamming into each other on football fields, only to be spit out into factories and bars. Where the All-Star never makes it, the coach laughs when he hits you in the face, and the only glory is someone else’s.

You meet Jen in Walgreens. She hasn’t eaten all day. You buy her candy. She calls you Duane. You don’t correct her.

You dream of Nietzsche, of Kerouac, of Bukowski on a bicycle at the Oscars. You write poems like postcards from the edge of memory, where the dead don’t speak, but their silence is deafening.

You are Baby Wayne. Or maybe you were. Or maybe you never were.

About the Author

Wayne F. Burke writes both poetry and prose. He is the author of eighteen published books, including eleven poetry collections—most recently Black Summer, 2022; one short-story collection—Turmoil and Other Stories, 2020; a novella—No Tab for Sully, 2025; and five nonfiction works—most recently the van Gogh file: Potato Eaters, Preachers, and Painters, 2024.

Originally from Massachusetts, he has lived in the central Vermont area (USA) for the past thirty-five years.

More info at: https://hogpress.com/burke-whatever-happened-to-baby-wayne/
Available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle versions...