david k. leff

David K. Leff is an award-winning poet and essayist, and former deputy commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection.  He is the Canton, Connecticut poet laureate, deputy town historian, and town meeting moderator.  He was a volunteer firefighter for 26 years.

In 2016 and 2017 David was appointed by the National Park Service to serve as poet-in-residence for the New England National Scenic Trail (NET).  He has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize, and has twice been a finalist in the Connecticut Book Awards.  David has received two silver medals from the Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), and was grand prize short-listed for the Eric Hoffer Book Award.  His work has appeared in anthologies, newspapers such as the Hartford Courant, and magazines including Appalachia and Yankee.

The author of seven nonfiction books, three volumes of poetry, and two novels in verse, David’s work focuses on the connection of people to their communities and the natural environment.  He often explores commonplace elements of the world around us that have hidden meanings and unusual links to each other. 

David has been the book review editor of Connecticut Woodlands, the quarterly magazine of the Connecticut Forest & Park Association and is now poetry editor. He is a staff writer for The Wayfarer Magazine.

David’s papers are located at the Special Collections and University Archives, UMass/Amherst.

View his work at www.davidkleff.com

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the blue marble gazetteer

Trade paperback | List: $18.00

About the Book: Journey from sky into forest and neighborhood to within the self in a time of climate crisis. Beyond all the warnings, find awe, wonder, and earthbound hope.

In his new book, Blue Marble Gazetteer, David K. Leff issues a sadly true assessment of the climate change which threatens all living creatures. He asks, “Must every feathered thing be a canary, / every backyard, street corner and hilltop a coal mine?” Still, he finds astounding beauty in our threatened world with its “angel-winged gulls floating . . . // seizing advantage on the living fringe.” These poems pulse with the beat of life and are joy in their eloquence and loving depiction of people, creatures, places and things in a world which, though it may be in crisis, is still that marvelous blue-green marble in the sky seen from outer space.

–Rennie McQuilkin, CT Poet Laureate (2015-2018)

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Echoes from walden

978-1088004388 |  Trade paperback | List: $18.00

Icon of environmental consciousness, independent living, and social justice, Henry David Thoreau has probably generated more poems about him than any other secular individual. Beginning with his contemporaries and continuing today, they illustrate our changing views of the man in a passionate form of expression rich in emotion and meaning.  A whole library of books has been written about Thoreau, but maybe poetry best explains why his legacy is both enduring and endearing.

*Featuring the classic Thoreau Country photographs of Herbert W. Gleason (1855-1937). (Gleason made extensive study of Thoreau’s writings and explored the places Thoreau wrote about. His photographs have illustrated Thoreau’s works since 1906.)

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Available in Paperback and ebook.
*Receive 20% off when you purchase in our store
+ Free shipping on orders over $40.00 with coupon code: INDIESTRONG