James Jay
has taught poetry at public schools, jails, community colleges, Northern Arizona University, and given Irish Literature lectures at the Arizona Highland Celtic Festival. He currently teaches poetry for the Missoula Writing Collaborative.
He received the Copper Quill Award for his poetry, and his work has been featured on National Public Radio’s Poetry Friday on KNAU. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including, Alligator Juniper, Nerve Bundle Review, and A Dozen Nothing. His fourth book of poems, Whiskey Box, was recently published by Foothills Publishing.
For a decade, he served as the president of the Northern Arizona Book Festival. He has an M.A. in Literature from Northern Arizona University and an M.F.A in Creative Writing from the University of Montana. He owns a pub with his wife, the musician and runner Aly Jay. They have two sons and three dogs (they’re all a wily pack).
In his spare time, he plays the ancient Irish game of hurling as a full-back for the Thomas Meagher Hurling Club.
James owns a pub with his wife, the musician and runner Aly Jay. They have two sons and three dogs they're a wily pack.
As often as he can he plays the ancient Irish game of hurling as a half back for the lhomas Meagher Hurling Club in Missoula, Montana.
”A few winters ago. I began writing poems, many of them sonnets, on the discarded, insides of cases of whiskey boxes.
As it turns out, the cardboard whiskey box is better for the task of carrying a poem than the laptop, iPad, lined notebook, yellow legal pad, or any other devices I’ve scrawled them onto over the years.”
The first victim was a Connemara 12 year Irish Whiskey case. One of Mark Gibbon's early books of poems is titled Connemara Moonshine, titled after the region in Ireland where Mark's family came from James traced a circle, and inscribed the words place whiskey here. "With the flaps pulled from their large industrial staples, the whiskey box folds out into twelve sections, and I wrote a sonnet or some variation into each one of these. Alter a few hours, the thing was done.
James shoved the box into an oversized envelope and mailed it off to Mark Gibbons.
“As I left the post office I thought about the similarities between poetry, specifically the sonnet and whiskey. Somehow the same container worked well for carrying both There had to be something to it Both poetry and whiskey are taken in quickly, imbibed briefly and intensely. Both poetry and whiskey work best when visited often Both poetry and whiskey embolden the soul.”