I was lucky enough to borrow the time of Keith Dunlap, local poet, former attorney and owner of Black Cat Coffee in Portland, Maine. Join me for this rich conversation with Keith about his path to becoming a prolific and published poet, inspiration and facing rejection, and finding a home for poems that seem to arise from within.

Keith Dunlap’s first collection of poems, Storyland, will be published in June 2016 by Hip Pocket Press. His work has appeared in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Georgetown Review, Jabberwock Review, Poet Lore, Sou’wester, and The Tule Review among other places. He received his BA in English from Columbia College in 1987, his MPhil in Classical Literature and Philology from Columbia University in 1992, his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 2000, and his JD from Washington and Lee University in 2007. In the Eighties in NYC, he played drums in a series of bands and worked at rock clubs, (including CBGB’s,) and restaurants, while attending school. He was a member of the avant-garde theater company, The New York Art Theater Institute at the same time. He lives in Portland, Maine, where he and his wife, the novelist, Jenny Siler, own a coffee shop, Black Cat Coffee.

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