Gary Metras is the author of the poetry books The Moon in the Pool (Presa Press, April 2015), Captive in the Here (forthcoming, Cervena Barva Press, 2015), The Night Watches (Adastra Press, 1981), Destiny’s Calendar (Samisdat Press, 1985), and Until There Is Nothing Left (Ridgeway Press, 2003), along with thirteen chapbooks, most recently, Two Bloods: Fly Fishing Poems (Split Oak Press, 2010), Francis d’Assisi 2008 (Finishing Line Press, 2008) and Greatest Hits 1980-2006 (Pudding House, 2007). His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in such journals as The American Voice, Another Chicago Magazine, The Bellingham Review, The Boston Review of Books, California Quarterly, The Common, Connecticut Poetry Review, Gray's Sporting Journal, English Journal, Hurricane Review, Istanbul Literary Review, New England Watershed, North Dakota Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Poetry, Poetry East, Poetry Salzburg Review, Sanctuary (Journal of the Mass. Audubon Society), Wind, Wild Earth, Yankee, Tears in the Fence (UK), and former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry, along with the recent anthologies Pushing the Envelope: Epistolary Poems (Lamar U. Pr.), Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams (Coffee House), Visiting Frost: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Robert Frost (Iowa), Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge (Grayson), Birth: A Literary Companion (Iowa), and Atomic Ghosts: Poets Respond to the Nuclear Age (Coffee House). He is a past recipient of the Massachusetts Fellowship in Poetry. His Two Bloods: Fly Fishing Poems won the Split Oak Press Chapbook Award, and his Francis d’Assisi 2008 was selected as a Recommended Massachusetts Book of the Year (2009) by the Mass. Center for the Book. He has read his poetry from cafes to universities, including Kent State, Univ. of Detroit-Mercy, Detroit Arts Center, and Sarah Lawrence College. He presented and/or been a panel member for: “Small Is Beautiful” (Panel and Presenter), Nat’l Writers Union & Univ. of Mass—Con’t Ed. Writers Conference, Publishers Panel, Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar, “The Poetry of Place,”Conn.River Education Institute, (MA), “Teacher, Reader, Writer: Teaching Literature to High School Students from a Poet’s Perspective,” The Five College-Public School Partnership, Mt. Holyoke College, and “Poets Symposium,” Lecture, Reading and Introductions for “The Art of the Book in the Pioneer Valley,” Northampton, MA. He is the editor, publisher, and letterpress printer of Adastra Press. He has worked as a store clerk, tobacco picker, short order cook, hod carrier, air traffic controller (U.S. Air Force), bookstore manager, high school English teacher, and college writing instructor. He holds degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Goddard College. He is the past president of the Pioneer Valley Chapter of Trout Unlimited. He fly fishes the streams and rivers of western Massachusetts as often as possible.
