Seventy

70 poems to celebrate Richard Leach's seventieth birthday in 2023, 66 selected from over a dozen previous collections, and four new poems. Short poems, long poems, formal verse, free verse, blues lyrics, ekphrastic poems, abecedaria! From serious to light in tone, themes ranging from Eve and Adam after the garden of Eden to the comic book character Ben Grimm. Poems on the passage of time, poems for friends, and poems for jazz music and musicians. Leach is a sacred poet whose words for hymns and anthems have been set to music by many composers and are widely published and sung. He has written secular poetry extensively since 2009, sharing it on social media and collecting it in self-published books. His work has also appeared in print in Rattle magazine and in numerous online publications including One Sentence Poems, Better Than Starbucks, and Heroes Are Gang Leaders Gianthology. Born in Bangor, Maine, he graduated from Bowdoin College and Princeton Theological Seminary and was a pastor in Connecticut. He is also a visual artist whose chief medium is paper collage. He lives in Stamford, Connecticut.