Poetry Post and Riposte, 2020-2022

This is a collection of lyric poems by two poets separated by half a world, but united in collaboration and friendship. Kenneth Durham Smith and David Keith Johnson met at a bus stop in north Seattle between thirty and forty years ago. Striking up a conversation, they found they were both Midwesterners (Kenneth from Michigan, David from Nebraska), both holding down jobs as attorney assistants and both practicing poets. Their friendship has endured across the decades and (after Kenneth relocated to London) across the globe. In June of 2020, their ongoing conversation spawned something like a formal scheme they call Post and Riposte On no specific timetable, either Kenneth or David offers one of his poems to the other as a sort of provocation. Once two poems are juxtaposed, a one-word theme is agreed upon.

Kenneth Durham Smith and David Keith Johnson met at a bus stop in north Seattle between thirty and forty years ago. Striking up a conversation, they found they were both Midwesterners (Kenneth from Michigan, David from Nebraska), both holding down jobs as attorney assistants and both practicing poets. Their friendship has endured across the decades and (after Kenneth relocated to London) across the globe. In June of 2020, their ongoing conversation spawned something like a formal scheme they call Post and Riposte On no specific timetable, either Kenneth or David offers one of his poems to the other as a sort of provocation. Once two poems are juxtaposed, a one-word theme is agreed upon.