Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC would like to reintroduce to you to MJR Montoya.

MJR Montoya’s collection, The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy, was published in late 2017 by Swimming with Elephants Publications, LLC after winning 2nd place in our 2017 chapbook competition.

“These poems are a way of telling you what I saw, at least the remnants of those things. My poems have codes in them. They have forms that have long since lost favor. They have rhyme schemes and syllabic structures of old and new places. They have formlessness that abides by current trends, but embraces none of them wholesale. They are, as Milton once wrote, poems that attempt to champion the unnamable and the indeterminable. Mine are the equations of empty sets and irrational numbers as much as they are of ritual and nostalgia. I have decided not to appease all critique. I am at rest, because the people I trust most have said that there is something in them, something of where I am from, what became of my home, and what is becoming in the world. And for the first time in a long time I’m not ashamed of my part in this story. With all that I am, let these poems be a part of my apology to the world and to my beloveds, an apology for each moment as it passes to the next…” 

 

Pick up  MJR Montoya’s collection, The Promethean Clock or Love Poems of a Wooden Boy, from Amazon  or Barnes and Noble today!

Manuel (MJR) Montoya

Manuel (MJR) Montoya, was born and raised in Mora, New Mexico.  He is a professor at the University of New Mexico.  He blends studies of philosophy and literature with studies of international relations, economics and management to understand the evolution of the global political economy.  He received his undergraduate degree at UNM, with graduate schooling from New York University, Oxford University, and Emory University.  He is engaged in community work to support the creative economy, he is dedicated to work that eliminates child exploitation worldwide, and he is passionate about handmade craft – he has been an amateur watchmaker for 12 years.  He has published poetry and short stories in various national publications.