Downstate

The poems in Downstate recount journeys from David Gardiner's native Chicago and Polish neighborhoods of his childhood, to the Southern territories of his distant American past, to the contemporary Ireland where he has lived over the past twenty years.

Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote: "The truth is, that, every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors. Human blood, in order to keep its freshness, should run in hidden streams, as the water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean pipes." Gardiner's work does not forget his ancestors, who extend back proudly through past the Civil War in America on one side, and to twentieth-century Poland on the other. These poems explore a rich subterranean heritage uniting the cities and landscapes in which he has lived and worked stretching from Dublin to Chicago to New York uniting pasts & presents as families break and build again.

David Gardiner is a writer, publisher and professor, and lives in New York City. He splits his time between the U.S. where he teaches Irish Studies and his duties at Trinity College Dublin. Since 1989, when he attended University College-Galway, he has commuted between Ireland and the U.S. A published poet and critic, in 2004, he became founding editor of the international journal, An Sionnach: A Journal of Literature, Culture, and the Arts (Creighton University Press) and in 2005 he took over directorial duties of Creighton University Press. His doctorate was earned at Loyola University, under the direction of the late Prof. Seán Lucy. Before that, he studied at the University of Chicago, the University of St. Thomas, & Penn State University. He has published numerous books, articles, and poems. Gardiner is currently a visiting scholar at Boston College, New York University, and the University of Ulster.