# John Dorsey (poet)

John Dorsey (born 1976) is an American poet, playwright, newspaper journalist, and screenwriter. Dorsey is the author of over ninety collections of poetry. Former Poet Laureate of Belle, Missouri, he is the recipient of the 2019 Terry Award, given at Poetry Rendezvous. Dorsey is also a founder and co-editor of the Gasconade Review, with Jason Ryberg and River Dog Press, with Victor Clevenger. Dorsey is known for his prolific writing career as a poet, and as a major influence on small press, grassroots poetry movements in the U.S. Since 1992, his poems have been published in more than 2000 literary magazines and anthologies.

## Personal life and education

John Dorsey was born on a military base in Hawaii in 1976, but spent much of his childhood in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Hempfield Area High School, he first attended Westmoreland County Community College, where he completed an Associate's degree in English & Philosophy. He later moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to attend The University of the Arts, earning a B.F.A. in Writing for Film & Television in 2002 and studying under screenwriter Charles Purpura. From 2005 to 2014, Dorsey worked as a Staff Writer and Columnist for the Toledo Free Press newspaper. Since then, he's lived in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and Belle, Missouri, serving as the latter city's first poet laureate. In 2022, Dorsey was diagnosed with advanced basal cell carcinoma.

## Style and subject matter

Dorsey's poetry engages a "spare and exact" poetic style, as described by critic Chase Dimock, to explore themes of personal relationships, human struggles, the working class, and the complexities of everyday life. His work is known for its raw honesty and vivid storytelling, reflecting on the often traumatic or marginal lives of people around him with "balanced empathy." In his review of Dorsey's collectionYour Daughter's Country, Glynn Young writes:
   Dorsey tells stories about the people he knows and loves. He writes about grandparents, cousins, friends, the parents of friends, aunts and uncles. He writes about their pets, the towns where they lived, their work, their dreams, their tragedies, and what happens in their lives.
Poet and editor Kristofer Collins has called Dorsey's style "unadorned and lean," while describing the thematic focus of that poetry as "concerned with blue collar themes, life below the poverty line, and existence on the margins of contemporary American society." Another Pennsylvanian poet, Jason Baldinger, further connects Dorsey's work to the empathetic examination of working class life, writing:
   There is a celebration in his poems of working class life; you can see the rust belt ribs of his growing up near Jeanette in his poems. The poems are not so much sad as they are an elegy for outsiders in dead end places. There is always hope and grace in his words.
An additional theme of Dorsey's poetry is that of the experience of disability and growing up with cerebral palsy.

## Selected published works

* Teaching the Dead to Sing: The Outlaw's Prayer (Rose of Sharon Press, 2006)
* Sodomy is a City in New Jersey (American Mettle Books, 2010) ISBN 978-0-9562912-6-4
* Tombstone Factory (Epic Rites Press, 2013)
* Appalachian Frankenstein (GTK Press, 2015)
* Being the Fire (Tangerine Press, 2016) ISBN 978-1-910691-12-0
* Shoot the Messenger (Red Flag Press, 2017)
* Triple Threat (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2019) ISBN 978-1-64092-975-3
* Your Daughter's Country (Blue Horse Press, 2019) ISBN 978-0578464596
* The Afterlife of the Party: New & Selected Poems, 2016-2018 (Ragged Lion Press, 2019)
* Which Way to the River? (Osage Arts Community Books, 2020) ISBN 195241136X
* The Prettiest Girl at the Dance (Blue Horse Press, 2020) ISBN 978-0578818788
* Afterlife Karaoke (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2021) ISBN 979-8-88596-996-3
* Maple Leaf Zen (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2022) ISBN 978-1-64092-951-7
* Pocatello Wildflower (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2023) ISBN 979-8-88596-992-5
* Holocaust Agave: Selected Chapbook Poems 2021-2023 (Cyberwit, 2024) ISBN 978-8119654680

## Film and theatre

Dorsey has also worked as a writer for film and theatre. His first play, Moon Magnets, featuring David M. Zuber and Rebecca Lovett, premiered Off-Broadway at the Producers Club in New York City in 2001, and was produced by Paladin Music & Entertainment. As a screenwriter, he wrote Buffalo Diamonds (2011), produced by Paladin Knight Pictures and directed by Chris Lance and Missouri Loves Company (2020) also directed by Chris Lance.
More recently, Dorsey worked as a literary Dramaturg on the Julia Sun play Almost Gold.