Port Townsend (WA) Poet
John Delaney
My Latest Book
"When I was 28, in 1978, I started OAT (Overseas Adventure Travel) with the idea that there was a touch of inquisitiveness and adventure in all of us. I believed that as an adventure travel company owner I could help others transform their lives through travel. They would see the world differently . . . perhaps breaking stereotypes of people and places, accepting differences of other people, enriching their own inner lives as they explore outwardly and grasping the importance of nature, culture, history, and our earth. John Delaney’s choice poems, reflections, and photographs in Nile—itself inspired by an OAT trip to Egypt and sites along the Nile—are a tribute to the transformation that happens to us and others as we journey into new lands."
–Judi Wineland, founder of O.A.T. (Overseas Adventure Travel)"
MY BOOKS
This list includes poetry volumes, books on cartography, and reference works/guides to Princeton manuscript collections. While most are available from Amazon, I would prefer that they be ordered directly from the publishers where possible.
Galápagagos (2023)
ISBN 979-8-88838-361-2
"This wonderful book dedicates a poem to some of the many iconic species found in the Galápagos Islands. What is remarkable about each of these poems is that it quite nicely captures the essence of each species in a few words and – at least for those of us who have been here – immediately gives you a fantastic visual impression of the animal’s behavior. And for those who have not had the fortune of visiting, this book may make that idea all the more enticing."
–Rakan A. Zahawi, Executive Director, Charles Darwin Foundation (which operates the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island)
"The Galápagos Islands elicit many feelings: awe, respect, curiosity, understanding among them. Numerous authors have published their writings about this natural wonderland — ranging from science to fiction in subject, and from stodgy to enlightening in style. Almost without exception, these publications (mine included) have been centred around scholarly Darwinian thinking. So it comes as a pleasant surprise to see them depicted here in John and Andrew’s Galápagos through a very different prism: poetry and photography as the traveller sees them."
–Tui De Roy, award-winning nature and wildlife photographer, naturalist, author of thirteen books on the Galápagos Islands
Delicate Arch (2022)
ISBN 978-1-64662-790-5
“As recognized by the founders of the National Park Service from the beginning, appreciation of the national parks is vital to their protection. Although others have written countless words about our treasured lands, few have had the power to convey their wonder as succinctly as John Delaney in the place-based poems of Delicate Arch. Intriguing, selected facts and revealing photographs add other layers of meaning to the poet’s meditations on time and the essence of places. Simultaneously whimsical and emotional, the crisp verses from this wanderer to remote locations awaken our imagination and curiosity, offering us a different way of appreciating nature’s gifts.”
–Q.T. Luong, recipient of the National Parks Conservation Association’s Robin W. Winks Award for Enhancing Public Understanding of National Parks, photographer/author of Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey through America’s National Parks
Twenty Questions (2019)
ISBN 978-1-63534-969-6
"How refreshing, in the age of open form and the conversationally informal poem, to find a contemporary poet who brings new life to the short, tightly woven rhymed lyric! That’s the gift John Delaney gives in Twenty Questions. Not all of his poems are strict in their schemes, but many are, and they’re wonderfully succinct, verbally playful, and often very funny, as in the villanelle “Fashion Designer” (“Blessed is the man who counts his blisses.”) One quality I love in poems is wit and word play. Delaney provides ample samples. In the poem “Purple Finch,” he manages to rhyme “acorn” with “egg born.” “Eulogy for My Body” wins me over immediately with its opening line: “One thing I know: you’ll be the death of me.” This collection’s title, Twenty Questions, comes from a familiar childhood word game. And just as its title suggests, playfulness, pursued with a questioning curiosity, most often leads not to answers, but to more serious questions."
–Ed Harkness, author of The Law of the Unforeseen (2018), his most recent collection of poems