Peter Johnson

Peter Johnson’s prose poetry has been awarded an NEA and two Rhode Island Council on the Arts fellowships. His second book received the James Laughlin Award from The Academy of American Poets. New books are: Old Man Howling at the Moon (Madhat Press, 2018), A Cast-iron Aeroplane That Can Actually Fly: Commentaries from 80 Contemporary American Poets on Their Prose Poetry, editor (MadHat Press, 2019), and Truths, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty: A Short Primer on the Prose Poem, With Selected Letters from Russell Edson (MadHat Press, 2020). A book of short stories, Shot, was just published in January of 2021 (Madhat Press).

  • “Truscon, A Division of Republic Steel, 1969-70: A Prose-Poem Sequence Disguised as a Lyrical Essay, Itself Aspiring to Be a Fictional Memoir” by Peter Johnson

    Peter Johnson’s essay, “Truscon, A Division of Republic Steel, 1969-70: A Prose Poem Sequence Disguised as a Lyrical Essay, Itself…

    Issue #123 November 2021
  • Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term, Crickets and Lucky Strike Lanes

    Just as the pharmacist drove the vaccine into my arm
  • The Edson Letters by Peter Johnson

    As Russell Edson’s close friend and faithful correspondent during the last twenty five years of his life, Peter Johnson initiated…

    Issue #111 November 2020
  • My Friend, Nice Socks & The Last Dance

    My friend wanted to have breakfast at the local strip club.
  • A Nun to be Named

    I’ve been thinking about the nun who wouldn’t let me pee in fifth grade.
  • “The Prose Poem and the Problem of Genre”

    When it comes to deciding on whether a work of short prose is a prose poem, a flash fiction,
    Issue #94 June 2019