To Pay for Our Next Breath Volume 12: Poems

The TRP Southern Poetry Breakthrough Prize: Kentucky

In tackling music, art, television, family, and environmental & health crises, To Pay for Our Next Breath confronts the human need to make sense of love and disaster by processing them through the work of others, with art helping push people through difficult times. Through analyzing the place of art in our lives, Alfonso Zapata examines the give-and-take nature of creation, empowering the artist, while simultaneously uplifting the reader/viewer/listener in giving art meaning beyond the mortal boundaries of the artist.

ALFONSO ZAPATA is a poet living in Lexington, Kentucky. He received his MFA in poetry at The University of Kentucky, and has attended The University of Toledo and The University of Southern Mississippi, where he obtained his master’s degree in poetry. He is the recipient of the Jim Lawless IV Poetry Prize, and the 2022 & 2023 University of Kentucky MFA Poetry Awards. His work has appeared in Sho Poetry Journal, and he is the author of the chapbook, Together Now (Belle Point Press, 2024). He can be found editing and re-editing supposedly finished poems in various coffee shops in the area.