Writing the Significant Soil

Winner of the Homebound Poetry Prize in 2021, Writing the Significant Soil by David Anthony Sam explores the long relationship of human life with nature without sentimentality or the cold distance of the clinical eye. Sam's poems reveal his own close connection with the Appalachian Mountains and the red clay of the MidAtlantic and Virginia as he searches for meaning in the act of living on and with the land by using the poetic ink he makes from the soil. The history of Virginia, bled into the earth by war and human struggle to live, interplays with the war we have made against nature and the land. The collection admits the danger we humans impose on the natural world while revealing a simple faith that that natural world will abide even as we as individuals give our identity back into the land we sprang from. The soil is significant in and of itself as life-giving place and because of our history of living on it.
This collection went on to win the Poetry Prize of the Virginia Professional Communicators Association and first place for poetry by National Federation of Press Women.

David Anthony Sam, proud grandson of Syrian and Polish immigrants, lives in Virginia with his wife, Linda. His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Sam's most recent collection, Stone Bird, was released in 2023 by San Francisco Bay Press. Writing the Significant Soil was awarded the 2021 Poetry Prize by Homebound Publications and the 2022 Poetry Prize by the Virginia Professional Communicators. Six other collections are in print including Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018) and Dark Fathers (Kelsay Books 2019). Sam teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College and serves as Regional VP of the Poetry Society of Virginia.