This Land is Not My Land on Amazon-

AD Winans' PEN award winning book This Land  Is Not My Land is now available as an e-book on Amazon (click to view). The print copy can also be ordered through the same site at Amazon.

"Winans' This Land Is Not My Land demonstrates his wide range. Winans disowns much of modern America. He puts me in mind of that character in Paul Theroux's Mosquito Coast.  He takes Allen Ginsberg's America to new places."

     ---Richard Real, Beat Scene

A.D. Winans is a native San Francisco poet and writer. He is the author of over fifty books, including North Beach Poems, North Beach Revisied, and This Land Is Not My Land,which won a 2006 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for excellence in literature.  Recent books include Billie Holiday Me and the Blues, No Room for Buddha, Love-Zero, and the just released San Francisco Poems.

  

In 2009 PEN Oakland awarded him a lifetime achievement award. In November 2010 BOS Press published a 365-page book of his Selected Poems.  In 2012 Little Red Tress Press published his book San Francisco Poems.  He is a graduate of San Francisco State College (now University).

From 1972 to 1989 Winans edited and published Second Coming Press, which produced a large number of books and anthologies, among them the highly acclaimed California Bicentennial Poet’s Anthology, which included poets like David Meltzer, Jack Micheline, Charles Plymell, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Ishmael Reed, Josephine Miles, Bob Kaufman, Gene Fowler, and William Everson.

He worked as an editor and writer for the San Francisco Art Commission, Neighborhood Arts Program, from 1975 to 1980, during which time he produced the Second Coming 1980 Poets and Music Festival, honoring the late Josephine Miles and John Lee Hooker. He has read his poetry with many acclaimed poets, including Jack Hirschman, Diane DiPrima, Bob Kaufman, Jack Micheline, Harold Norse, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and all of the past and current San Francisco Poet Laureates.

In April 2002 a poem of his was set to music By William Bolcom, a Pulitzer Prize winning composer, and performed at New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Writers like Colin Wilson, Studs Terkel, James Purdy, Peter Coyote, Herbert Gold, and the late Jack Micheline and Charles Bukowski have praised his work.

"A.D. Winans is one of the few writers I have met (and I have met too God Damned many of them) who doesn't act like a writer or think of himself continually as a writer, and maybe that is why he writes better than they do.  I always prefer a poet I can tolerate for more than ten minutes; that's rare, and so is A.D."
     ---Charles Bukowski

There are less than a handful of signed copies still available. If interested in purchasing a signed copy please leave a comment below, and A D Winans or this site's administrator will contact you.

New Publication by AD Winans

NYQ Books™ Announces the Publication of On My Way to Becoming a Man by A. D. Winans

NYQ Books™ is proud to announce the publication of On My Way to Becoming a Man by A. D. Winans.

On My Way to Becoming a Man vividly takes the reader on a journey from boyhood innocence to adulthood.

Winans speaks the power of truth as he takes us down a long road of political

narrative, beginning with his boarding of a troop train, heading for boot

camp, to the jungles of Panama, through the political turmoil of Vietnam and

beyond.

As in life, the poems are filled with both pain and beauty. They possess an elegant simplicity and clarity, conveyed with heartfelt expressions of a wise observer.

You might not always like or agree with what the poet has to say, but there is

no denying the poems are presented in a powerful, honest, and uncompromising

literary style.

A.D. Winans is an award-winning poet and a member of PEN. He is the author of over sixty books of poetry and prose. He edited and published Second Coming for seventeen years. His archives are stored at Brown University. He worked for the San Francisco Arts Commission for five years as an editor and writer. His work has been published internationally in over 1,500 literary journals and anthologies.

In 2002 a poem of his was set to music and performed at Alice Tully Music Hall. The New England Conservatory of Music accepted several of his poems to be set to music and performed at a later date. In 2006 he won a PEN Josephine Miles award for excellence in literature and in 2009 PEN Oakland presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014 he received a Kathy Acker award in both poetry and publishing. 

He has served on the Board of Directors of several literary and art organizations, and is currently an advisory board member for the proposed San Francisco International Poetry Library.

NYQ Books was established in 2009 as an imprint of The New York Quarterly Foundation, Inc. Its mission is to augment the New York Quarterly poetry magazine by providing an additional venue for poets who are already published in the magazine.

Press Release • PO Box 2015 • Old Chelsea Station • New York, NY 10113 Click for Link

Contact: Raymond Hammond, Editor; 917.843.8825; Email Him

Publication Information: 5½ x 8½ in.; 116 Pages; ISBN: 978-1-935520-25-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014934950.

Website :Click to View

Suggested Retail: 14.95 USD; 15.95 CAN; 8.95 GBR; 10.50 EUR; 13.95 AUS

Availability: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell’s, Small Press Distribution.

To the Trade: Ingram Distribution, SPD

Great Photos

Two Amazing photographs: The first one is AD Winans reading at an August 2014 CD Release of work by the late Beat poet Jack Micheline

 This second photo is a photo with AD Winans reading at the CD Release mentioned above also includes Phil Deal on sax! Great photos!! 

Activist and Poet Nellie Wong Gives Public Reading with AD Winans

For More Info Click on Each Link in this Post

Award Winning Poet: AD Winans

Award winning native San Francisco poet A D Winans and Oakland native poet and activist Nellie Wong will be reading from their works on September 16, 2014 at Adobe Bookstore.

A D Winans has been published internationally and translated into ten languages.  He will be reading from his new book This Land Is Not My Land, NYQ Press and from new poems.  He is the former editor and publisher of Second Coming Press and received a 2014 Kathy Acker poetry and publisher award.  In 2006 he received a PEN National Josephine Miles award for excellence in literature and in 2009 was presented a PEN Oakland Lifetime Achievement Award.

Nellie Wong

Nellie Wong was born in Oakland and has published four books of poetry.  Her work has been translated into Chinese, Spanish and French.  She traveled to China in the First U.S. Women's Writer's Tour with Tillie Olson, Alice Walker, and others. She is a well-known activist, and has been honored by the San Francisco Women's Foundation and University of California, Santa Barbara.

When:     September 16, 2014

Where:    Adobe Books

                3130 24th St 

                San Francisco, CA 94103                                       

Time:       7:00 PM

Song based on the poem "Prisoner of Loneliness" by A.D. Winans

Spike Sikes, A San Fran blues singer sings this song based on the poem "Prisoner of Loneliness" by A.D. Winans, with a nod to his old friend Kell Robertson.

Strange Dreams

STRANGE DREAMS

strange people have taken over
my body, shameless homesteaders
who stake their claim
like old time California gold miners

the men are elderlywith grey beards
and drive horse and buggy carriages
the women wear dresses
that hug the floor
there are no children, no dogs
just one black cat with a pointed tail


the town cryer
keeps me awake all night
a court jester roams at will
through my dreams

a king dressed as a queen
winks at me
an army of red ants
crawl inside my head
a monster lies under my bed
feasts on the living dead

a midget woman courts my favors
offers herself in twenty-eight
exotic flavors

we make love in a sea of hot lava
the night collapses like
a building under the weight
of a bulldozer

I am summoned to appear before
a military tribunal
my good conduct medal called
into question

a rip tide tears at my brain cells
my landlord cancels my lease
the trial winds up in a hung jury

the baliff writes down
his phone number
tells me to give him a call
he has a hot three-some
he thinks I might be interested in

The son of Freankenstein
shows me the way to the roof top
where down below
a faceless mob waits
with pitchforks and fire bombs

a drummer boy from the civil war
works his way into my heart
Betsy Ross hands me a confederate flag
the ghost of John Wayne sounds
the bugle charge
the night an insatible nympth
feasts on a  bed of fallen stars

Brain Scan with Thoughts Attached

Poem: Brain Scan with Thoughts Attached

Back from an MRI
Brain Scan
I listen to a Miles Davis album
Black Hawk San Francisco 1962
Where a young Latina and I
Grooved on the vibes

Here at home
Jazz in my head jazz in my bed
Jazz waking up the dead
Miles, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young
Serenade an army of poets
Sitting on my bookshelf

T.S. Eliot playing the banker
Walt Whitman walking the battlefields
Williams Carlos Williams suturing wounds

Kaufman walking the 
streets of New York
Juggling a “Golden Sardine”
Sings a duet with Billie Holiday

Blake playing cards with God
Lorca playing Russian Roulette
Micheline dancing with Mingus
Gary Snyder building word bridges
Me doing a tango with a fallen angel
And suddenly I’m not alone anymore
The words falling like soft rain
In a winter green garden

Two New Poems by Winans

POEM FOR THE FRIEND WHO TOLD ME I NEED TO STOP DWELLING ON THE PAST

a friend of mine tells me
I need to stop dwelling on the past
that nostalgia is an anchor
that will weigh me down
he's like the lyric
to that Hank Williams song
"I saw the light, "I saw the light."
a song he sang to Minnie Pearl
his feet sticking out the side
of an open convertible
on its way to Memphis
I'm still groping for that light
a hundred shadows from my past
hitchhiking along for the ride

angels have traded in their wings
for a ticket to my dreams
the phantom of the opera
has a front row seat in my nightmares
mutilated poems wrap them self
in my arms
pit tomorrow against yesterday
nomadic thoughts camp inside
my brain cells
master to none  servant to many

old flames light  burned out torches
in my loins
there is no place to flee
no resting stop at the end
of a long journey
from here to nowhere

I spend the afternoon
at Martha's coffee shop
with hot coffee and a newspaper
for company
tomorrow those same
newspaper lines
will be past history
should I pretend
they never existed?

I am ten months into
my seventy-seventh year
winter will soon be here
with her cold claws
and heavy rain
forcing her way into the walls
of my mind
were she of human flesh
she would crack open
my memory vault
find miles of past memories
that flow like Li Po poems
down a river old as time
should I ignore her
tell her to come back next winter
that now isn't the time?

I have written one too many
memorial poems
for friends who have passed-away
should I shut them out of my mind
focus on tomorrow
build a graveled path that leads
to the promised land?

my emotions are trapped in quicksand
no place to run  no place to hide
endless chatter comes from
the 4-walls where death
hides between the cracks

the past is my lover
she clings to my body
like a child to a mother's bosom
she sleeps in my memory cells
like a phantom bank that accepts
only deposits  refuses withdrawals

I think of her
like I think of San Francisco
the city of my birth
the salt air smell at ocean beach
the Marina Greens
north beach and the Fillmore
all filled with memories

my past is my present
the future a gypsy fortuneteller
my existence
a slow chugging locomotive
on an anonymous journey
known only to the conductor
punching invisible tickets
in the hands
of faceless passengers

GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

I drove the freeway to Tucson
1060’s Hipper Era
pulled over twice by the police
long hair and California license plates
got me  two citation warnings

three days in redneck country
was like a year
drinking at Western bars
with cowboys who eyed me
like I was an Indian escaped
from the reservation
unsure why I had come here
nothing beautiful nothing natural
except for the stunning sunset

a poet friend calls me
says Ginsberg has flown back
from India to become the resident
Guru of the Haight Ashbury
while I rack up a third warning ticket

cowboy drunks give new definition
to the word redneck
no room for compassion here
no room for poets
words like a campfire
with no match to light them
die in the desert heat

I pull up roots drive north
the death mask sunset
rides a passing cloud

I stop in the desert
pop open a bottle of water
have a one way conversation
with a cactus plant
wonder what my shrink
would think
the beauty of solitude
I could have
a million conversations
in a single morning dialogue

I return home keep
a notebook by my bed
write down my dreams
but when I wake in the morning
someone else's handwriting
is on the pages

no one will analyze
the blood between the lines
see the ghosts walk the halls
restless souls from my past
that stalk me like a starving wolf
in the dead of winter
looking to fill his hunger
on wild game
or words that cling to flesh
like scraps of exotic food

Winans Receives Water Color Bukowski Portrait

and THE WINNER...................... is A.D. WINANS

Bukowski's Grave Site (RIP)

In honor of the 20th anniversary of Charles Bukowski’s passing — the author left this world on March 9, 1994 — Silver Birch Press raffled off an original 18×18″ watercolor portrait of Bukowski by Bradley Wind. The winner (A D Winans) was chosen in a blindfold process on Sunday, March 9, 2014. This portrait is from the personal collection of Silver Birch Press, acquired after the portrait appeared in the Silver Birch Press Bukowski Anthology.

Four Poems by A D Winans

LI PO

he sat beneath the trees
talking to the leaves
wine flowed into miniature glasses
of silent sound

intoxicated on its flavor
he tasted it like a brewmaster
gazed at the sky
spoke a poets dialogue
to the passing clouds
the red wine flowing
through his veins

his poems floated
downstream
calm as the aftermath
of a storm
poems swirling
swimming inside him
like a dolphin rises
from the heart of the sea

EARLY BIRTHDAY POEM

sitting here fifteen days
before my seventy-eighth birthday
I drink my morning coffee in solitude

wear the early chill of morning
like a quilt of stitched memories
my mind a nosy intruder
plots the course of my life

the eye can't see
the naked universe
nor caress the fertile stars

the moon a graveyard
shines its eyes down on me

surely that is not me
I see in the mirror

the months the years
revolving doors

like the trick mirrors
at the Funhouse
at Playland at the Beach

friends fewer in number
wait for me in my dreams

like ducks in a blind

left with a cup of morning coffee
a spoon that stirs memories
of  young women

the pleasure of warm flesh
on fresh linen sheets
hot as an iron pressed
to a singed garment
turned to bones that rattle
in the graveyard of my dreams

the conversations that lasted
into the early morning hours
turned to idle chatter
with ghosts from the past

Pink and green tile

Monceau

Kneeling child statue

Monceau

2

GHOSTS FROM THE PAST

I drove the freeway to Tucson
1960's Hippie Era

pulled over twice by the police
long hair and California license plates
got me  two citation warnings

spent three days with an ex-lover
who lived with a professor

who taught a course in astrology
at the University of Arizona

who the first day of my visit
felt  the back of my head
and asked me if anyone
had ever told me
I had the same head shape

as RFK

who I later met

in Washington, DC
two years before his murder

three days in redneck country
was like a year
drinking at Western bars
with cowboys who eyed me
like I was an Indian
escaped from the reservation

unsure why I had come here
nothing beautiful nothing natural
except for the stunning evening sunset

back home my friends drunk
in bars on Grant Avenue
shooting pool at Gino and Carlo's Bar
eating grub at Sam Woo's where
the waiter Edsel Ford insulted
the customers as the dumb-waiter elevator
brings up food no other Chinese
restaurant can match

a poet friend calls me
says Ginsberg has flown back
from India to become the resident

Guru of the Haight Ashbury
while I rack up another warning ticket

cowboy drunks give new definition

to the word redneck
no room for compassion here
no room for poets
words like a campfire
with no match to light them
die in the desert heat

I pull up roots drive north
the death mask sunset
rides a passing cloud

I stop in the desert
pop open a bottle of water
have a one way conversation
with a cactus plant
wonder what my shrink
would think

the beauty of solitude
I could have
a million conversations
in a single morning dialogue               

I return home

keep a notebook by my bed
write down my dreams

but when I wake in the morning
someone else's handwriting
is on the pages

No one will identify

the blood between the lines
see the ghosts walk the halls

restless souls from my past

like a starving wolf
in the dead of winter
looking to fill his hunger

on wild game

or words that cling to flesh
like scraps of exotic food

EARLY INSOMNIA POEM lost in the never never land of insomnia a dark forest ravished by storms where dreams go to perish my  mind hijacks my destiny speaks in tongue devours the silence walks hunchbacked like a gypsy tailor pushing a garment cart a sacrificial virgin burns in volcano ash a Tijuana Jesus nailed to a plastic cross winks at the twelve wise men making a return trip to the manger after a shopping spree at Wal-Mart’s a fortune teller trades in her crystal ball for a tarot card reading the lone survivor of a shipwreck floats aimlessly at sea my love returns from the  Bermuda triangle in the disguise of a mermaid the Pope pleads for humility God answers with lightning Jesus responds with thunder a bee colony drips honey between the legs of a dairy queen a haunted house coughs up an angry ghost drunk on death Dante gives up his seat in hell to Rosa Parks who recites the lord's prayer backwards to a  honky sheriff in Selma, Alabama Saint Peter empties purgatory the FDA declares sleeping masks a fraud Van Gogh demands his ear back a new born baby is sacrificed at the Louver a French Mistress closes her legs in protest| the mirror mocks my image twenty-plus years of sleeplessness camp inside my skull hot as volcano ash Satan recruits me God makes no counter offer a whisper of sleep camps inside my eyeballs I surrender with a whimper drown in a series of Hail Mary's recited by sexy nuns in see-through attire