My latest book is Openings.  Please click here for a sample.

My initial influences were Frank O'hara and the New York Scool, as well as the Beats.  From there, I've been influenced by French theory and many Women poets of the last thirty years (thanks to my graduate thesis director, Chris Tysh).  

My work is constructed from an awareness of the sounds and structures of language.  I am always thinking about new ideas and different ways of writing.  I believe that, in order to grow as a poet, I have to keep challenging myself with various subject matter, form, genres and experiments.  Some of my ideology is informed by the visual and musical Arts (i.e. the risk-taker as a danger to convention...such as Jackson Pollock and Ornette Coleman).

Literary interests include: Hybrid genres, 20th Century American poetry, Surrealism and Abstract, Comtemporary and Experimental Literature, 20th Century Arts movements, Urban Studies/Arts, Women poets, French lit theory.

Favorite poets/writers: Frank O'Hara, Rose Marie Waldrop, Amiri Baraka, Lyn Hejinian, Alice Notley, Leslie Scalapino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ayn Rand, many others....

I finished my MA in Creative Writing from Wayne State University in Detroit (save Detroit!!!).  My creative thesis, Sleeping in Curves, Waking in Angles, was directed by Chris Tysh and Carla Harryman.  In it, I explore reactions to urban place and space through three sections, each with its own concern. 

 
Pen, David Welper, 1996.

"American Movies," "Man (Living is less than fabric)"; denversyntax.com, 2006.

"Accoustics"; Metrosphere, 2006. 

excerpts from Sleeping in Curves, Waking in Angles; xchanges, Wayne State University, 2003. 

"Girls and Boys," "Kids," "Break/Cut"; xchanges, Wayne State University, 2002.

"Parachutes," RC Review at Univ. of Michigan, 2002.

"Open-Red,", "Voices"; University Reporter, October 2001.

"Poem [open me]," MetroTimes, (Summer Fiction Issue), July 2001.

"The Other Side," GumballPoetry.com, July 2001.

"In the Movies," RC Review at Univ of Michigan, Spring 2001.

"Delicate Box," Cellar Roots at Eastern Michigan Univ., Spring 1999.

"QZX (Jealousy)," Cellar Roots at Eastern Michigan Univ., Spring 1998.