Born in 1969 in Worcester, Mass., David Rowe is a dual citizen of the U.S. and Ireland. A graduate of Swarthmore, his poems have appeared in such journals as Big Bridge, The Cortland Review and Exquisite Corpse, and have been anthologized in The Southern Poetry Anthology (Texas Review Press), The Maple Leaf Rag (Portals Press) and The Great Sympathetic: Walt Whitman & the North American Review (NAR Press).  Verna Press (New Orleans) has published David’s chapbook, Salamander, or: Splitting the Word Asunder, as well as the full-length collection, Unsolicited Poems.  A Santa Fe-to-Seattle book tour promoting the latter was funded by Kickstarter.  A second full-length collection, Pre-posthumous Poems, is forthcoming.  From 2012 to 2014, he was a lecturer at ECE Paris, and currently serves as contributing editor at the journal, Dorado (New Orleans). 

At age six, David was formally accused by Ms. Fanny Schneiderman, his grade school teacher, of plagiarizing his very first poem, The Dandelion (“I saw a dandelion so bright and gay / I wanted to pick it, but it said, ‘Go away!’ / The dandelion wanted to live, not die / So I left it alone and said, ‘Good-bye!’”).  

With a negative bank account and literally the clothes on his back, David traversed the width of Spain in the summer of 2013, an experience recorded in his “Brigid’s Own Pilgrim”.

He is the proud father of a daughter named Zoya.

Portrait of the poet by Elizabeth Chen