A Life Above Water

A Life Above Water is a cycle of poems that examines both the natural and human worlds and explores the boundaries between the two. The manuscript is concerned with personal ecologies and mythologies the ways that things are interconnected and the stories that we create to explain those connections. The manuscript is arranged in three concentric sections, each subsequent division nesting within the previous one. The reader is drawn into the broad, inclusive view of All These Indigestible Parts with its focus on the animals of the forest and birds of the air, the apparent cruelty of the natural world and that which is human about the animal through Fellowship and Baked Goods which looks at peopled communities and the ways we interact with one another, to the tighter, more personal focus of The Great Slowing and its themes of loss, shortcoming and redemption. The poems are individually free-standing and complete, but taken as a whole form a broad yet detailed portrait of the world around us and our place within it. By turns analytical, scientific, lyrical, whimsical and spiritual, A Life Above Water is a book that fits neatly into the canon of contemporary poetry while offering a unique, fresh and accessible perspective.

While he is best known for his appearance on ABC-TV s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Doug Van Gundy has been writing poems since he was five years old and leading poetry and writing workshops for the past ten years. His poems are rooted in his West Virginia heritage while retaining a wide appeal, never veering into the provincial. Doug has presented papers at national conferences, taught composition to inmates and college freshmen, helped high school teachers integrate writing into their classrooms, led creative writing weekends for university students and worked with poets from age 5 to 75. He also organized and hosted the now defunct Augusta Poets Gathering. His work has been published in numerous regional literary magazines and has won prizes in both the Eve of Saint Agnes and Lullwater Review competitions. His poems have been included in the anthologies xconnect: Writers of the Information Age, and Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry. Additionally, he has appeared on Grace Caveleri s The Poet and the Poem program on Pacifica radio. A portion of one of his poems has appeared in an ad for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Doug is a tireless teacher of and advocate for poetry. He holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree in poetry from Goddard College in Vermont. In addition, Doug is a well-known musician and performs and teaches the traditional music of West Virginia on the fiddle and banjo throughout the eastern US and Canada. He is a member of the old-time string duo Born Old.