Peter and Orlando talk with Georgia writer and longtime teacher Alan Caldwell to discuss his first poetry collection, The Only Verse. You hear Caldwell read “Running for No Reason” and we explore how his work faces depression, grief, marriage, and memory with clarity and care. We also trace his path from fiction to the Carrollton Just Poetry group and discuss how story and image power his poems.

 

The Only Verse by Alan Caldwell

Credit: Close To The Bone Publishing

In this episode, you meet Alan Caldwell, a former teacher whose first collection of poems, The Only Verse, turns lived experience into language that feels unguarded and precise. We open with Caldwell’s aim for readers and students who recognize themselves in the work and want to know it is possible to move through darkness. His poems make room for that hope without pretending the hard parts do not exist.

You hear Caldwell read “Running for No Reason,” a poem that moves from a child’s autumn sprint to the shock of a firearm and back toward hard-won steadiness. The imagery is tactile. Leaves crisp underfoot. A revolver appears on its own line. The turn happens both in tone and on the page, a shift that shows how the collection uses juxtaposition to mirror the mind in crisis and recovery. We talk about how Caldwell trusts scene over explanation and how that choice invites you to feel alongside him.

The conversation widens to marriage, regret, and the craft community that helped Caldwell slow down on the line. He recalls encouragement from poet Eleanor Hoomes and the Just Poetry group in Carrollton, where he now helps keep the circle going. We close with why these poems land for us: they tell small stories, not to decode a life, but to make connection possible. You leave with a sense that poetry can keep you company and that good moments count, even when they are hard to hold.