Dan Denton

At the age of 13, Dan read an original ode to Jesus at an evangelical church camp in Alabama. The Christians loved it so much that an elderly minister felt called by God to anoint young as a consecrated vessel to do God’s work for the rest of his life. Denton Dan became an atheist, and frequented underground punk shows and stole books from libraries. But who’s to say that living a gutter drunk life in his early 20’s, and reading back alley poems to the homeless isn’t God’s work? Who’s to say that screaming broken stanzas over the grind of an assembly line isn’t a layman’s Gospel? That smuggling paperbacks in lunch buckets past sleeping factory security guards isn’t the work of a missionary? After losing all his poems and stories a half dozen times to homelessness, vengeful ex-lovers, and general vagrancy, his last rehab, and found salvation in strong coffee and concrete factory floors. Denton finally graduated from what might be His writing has been published online, and in print journals, in multiple newspapers, and anthologies. He has two previous chapbooks; Bury My Heart in the Gutter (EMP Press, 2018) and Give Us This Day Our Daily Grind: an Ode to the American Factory Worker (Lunch Bucket Brigade, 2020.) He has read his poetry in support of 100k poets for change in multiple states and has read at underground poetry festivals with some of America’s best outlaw poets.

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