David Sam

David Anthony Sam's most recent poetry collection, Geographies of the Dead, was published in October 2024 by Kelsay Books. Eight other collections are in print: Memories in Clay, Dreams of Wolves (2014), Dark Land, White Light (1974, 2014), Early in the Day (2015), Finite to Fail: Poems After Dickinson (2017), Final Inventory (Prolific Press 2018), Dark Fathers (Kelsay Books 2019), Writing the Significant Soil (Wayfarer Books 2022), and Stone Bird (San Francisco Bay Press 2023). Writing the Significant Soil has won the Homebound Poetry Prize and the poetry prizes of the Virginia Professional Communicators Association and the National Federation of Press Women.

Sam was born and spent his childhood in McKeesport PA, a coal and steel suburb of Pittsburgh. His home at the end of 36th Street abutted a woods, and the games he played on that street and the time he spent in those woods all influenced his poetry as well as his sense of the holistic ecology of all things. His neighborhood was filled with immigrants and children of immigrants, and his grandparents themselves came from Poland and Syria.

In 1961, the family moved with his father’s factory to Belleville, MI, a far suburb of Detroit. Small town life near a lake and the rural farm fields and woods within a short walk along the railroad tracks also appear much of his verse.

A first-generation college student and graduate of Eastern Michigan University and Michigan State University, Sam has taught creative writing, English literature, and composition at EMU, Marygrove College, Oakland Community College, and Pensacola State College. He was partner/manager of Gondolier Music & Electronics from 1972-1985 in Belleville before moving into higher education as an administrator.

With his wife and life partner, Linda, he lives now in Locust Grove VA, not far from the eastern mountain chain. They have two children, Michelle and Ryan, and three grandchildren. In June 2017, Sam retired as president of Germanna Community College. He currently serves as North Central Region Vice President on the Board of the Poetry Society of Virginia and teaches creative writing at Germanna Community College.

His poetry has appeared in over 100 journals. Sam’s most recent collection, Geographies of the Dead: Elegies and Meditations, was published by Kelsay Books in October of 2024. Stone Bird, was released in 2023 by San Francisco Bay Press and his collection, Writing the Significant Soil, was awarded the 2021 Poetry Prize by Homebound Publications and published by Wayfarer Books July 2022. 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 the President of the Poetry Society of Virginia.