Prize-winning poet Gerald A. McBreen, Coordinator of Auburn’s Striped Water Poets, was recently awarded the title of Senior Poet Laureate of Washington State 2012.
The contest, for American poets age 50 and up, is in its 20th year and is sponsored by Amy Kitchener’s Angels Without Wings Foundation of Monterey, Calif. A winner is selected for each state with one national winner.
With this award McBreen has the unique distinction of holding three Poet Laureate positions simultaneously. In celebration of its centennial year (2009) the city council of Pacific appointed him their Poet Laureate. A few months later Auburn Morning Toastmasters honored him with the same title.
Among his other awards he was named Poet of the Month in the summer issue of the online publication Irish American Post.
McBreen’s winning poem “Fellow Traveler” will soon be published in the anthology.
For information about future contests visit http://www.amykitchenerfdn.org.
Enjoy these two poems by Gerald McBreen.
LEFT BEHIND
Those of us left on this side
will often see your impish smile
hear the child in your laughter
In our thoughts
we watch you skip and run
Wrap yourself in our love
take it with you
–Gerald A. McBreen
THE KENNEDY JIG
When they shoveled dirt on the casket
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
forgave the diggers
forgot the assassin
What’shisname
came back after dark
and in the flickering light of the forever flame
danced an Irish jig over his grave
–Gerald A. McBreen
