Peter Johnson: Still Howling at the Moon, Still Looking into the Abyss

Peter Johnson has been having quite a year.

With the publication of I’m Old, Not Dead: Dispatches from the Desk of an Aging Poet and now Observations from the Edge of the Abyss, Peter has been looking back at a long and wonderfully unruly literary career while continuing to write with the energy, humor, and curiosity of someone who has no intention whatsoever of stopping.

And now there are two terrific ways to hear more from Peter himself: a new interview with Ocean State Stories and a video reading from the DMQ Virtual Salon.

In his wide-ranging interview with G. Wayne Miller for Ocean State Stories, Peter talks about growing up in South Buffalo, his working-class roots, his years as a steelworker and manual laborer, his eventual turn toward literature and teaching, and the many writers and experiences that shaped his work. It is also a wonderfully funny account of how a writer becomes a writer.

I’m Old, Not Dead brings together essays that often begin with poems and move through autobiography, cultural criticism, fiction, memory, and humor. The book confronts aging, loss, disinformation, disappearing cultural narratives, and the erosion of shared values, but it does so without surrendering to despair. Peter describes the book as notes in a bottle launched into the sea by an aging humanist trying to make sense of the world around him.

And then there is Observations from the Edge of the Abyss, his newest collection of very short prose poems, published by BlazeVOX [Books] in 2026.

Read the interview: Q & A with poet, author and Providence College emeritus professor Peter Johnson at Ocean State Stories.
https://www.oceanstatestories.org/q-a-with-poet-author-and-emeritus-professor-peter-johnson/

Watch the reading: Peter Johnson reading from Observations from the Edge of the Abyss for the DMQ Virtual Salon.
https://youtu.be/DspLRrsdoR4

Explore the book: Observations from the Edge of the Abyss, and I’m Old, Not Dead  both published by BlazeVOX [Books], 2026.