Cross-Country, by Mark Gibbons

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Cross-Country is a long poem written after a four day journey in a U-Haul from coast to coast. Like all travel poems it is an account of that experience in the ways that poets wander and record time. Mark Gibbons made the trip in 2018. A native Montanan, he spent twenty years as a professional mover driving the western states but had never ventured farther east than Nebraska. Cross-Country was written after he flew to Boston, drove a U-Haul down to New York and then headed west, his destination, Seattle.

This poem turned chapbook is Gibbons' brief attempt to retrace that journey across the American landscape and his own mind-scape, the stages and pages of interstate highways, natural and historical landmarks, his perceptions and visions contemplating the undefinable boundaries of fatherhood and time. Cross-Country is a different love poem wanting to be a recipe for survival.

Mark Gibbons. Montana Poet Laureate (2021-23) is the author of eleven books of poetry. He's also edited poetry collections for Drumlummon Institute (Helena, MT) and FootHills Publishing (Kanona, NY). Gibbons holds an MFA from the University of Montana and has taught poetry over the last three decades while working a variety of blue collar jobs to pay the rent. He lives in Missoula, Montana, with his wife, Pam.