Poem Collection
“We rarely see poetry like this anymore: gritty, direct, burdened by what’s genuine, what’s human, what counts.”
John Surowiecki, Author of Pie Man, winner of the Nilsen Prize for a First Novel
Cover Art by Neil Scollan
Cover Art by Paul Ott
A brief collection of poems about you and me, the front-desk hotel clerk with a past, the aging divorcee, the hair artist, the painted fox in the park, the purple pariahs in the neighborhood, the gay man finally standing, the email too late to a dying friend worlds away – and things similar and often familiar to us in our daily meanderings and daydream reveries.
Only When the Light’s Just Right is a glimpse at the human condition - aging, relationships, and daily life. The reader sees the “unusual route through factory streets” and then “shuffling a block through brick-red leaves scattered over sidewalks.” Scollan’s poems hold us close to the moments lived in a life’s journey.
-Leah Hute de Maines, Poet-in-Residence Emerita at Northern Kentucky University
Only When the Light’s Just Right (2022)
Finishing Line Press, Georgetown Kentucky
Cover Art by Neil Scollan
“In Unaccounted For, the second book of poems by Paul Scollan, we are treated to a wonderful tour through the author’s memory in his sympathetic voice honed by long experience. In poem after poem of beautifully crafted evocations of the joys of childhood, the absurdities of war, the uncertainty of belief, and the various and surprising changes that time imposes, we are treated to wonderful descriptions of the people and places that have come to live inside him: real people in real places, the former often mentally ill or down on their luck, the latter often bypassed by ‘progress',’ but both bestowing us wtih something deeper and more lasting.”
-Ken Lee, author of Sweet Spot and Lake Effect
Unaccounted For (2015)
Antrim House, Simsbury Ct.
“Bag Full of Bags is Paul’s third book of poetry. He often writes “love poems” about ordinary people, often gone unnoticed and unrecognized, who show extraordinary grit and courage in their will to survive, trudging forward against all odds. Other subjects are more attuned to the spiritual, a theme that weaves in and out of all his poetry.”
-Steve Foley, author of A Place at the Table
Bag Full of Bags (2019)
Antrim House, Simsbury Ct.
Cover Art by Neil Scollan
Liberty Street Hill (2010)
Antrim House, Simsbury Ct.
“Liberty Street Hill is more than the title of a poetry collection. It limns a microcosm of a world peopled by memorable characters whom the poet skillfully imbues with individuality, dignity and complexity. These poems make it clear that Paul Scollan has paid meticulous attention during his life. When we become his readers, we reap lasting benefits from the wisdom his attentiveness affords.”
-Steve Foley, author of A Place at the Table