Whispers In The DarkThe poems in this collection come from a writer with an unique background and wildly improbable perspective. His life-long experience as a professional gorilla actor (Trading Places, American Tourister Gorilla), mime/butoh artist and founder of America's oldest Living Statue company, has given him both the time and inspiration to view and write about the world from a rare vantage point. His worldly travels and bizarre adventures have provided him with a trove of lush material, which has found its way into many of these poems. Although most of the poems in this collection are longer works, he has included four extended haiku sequences. McLeod is an award-winning haiku poet and zen practitioner. His first collection, Small Town, Big City was selected as one of best haiku books of 1987. He is currently finishing up his autobiography called Gorilla Tales, which is a humorous look back at his experiences in a state-of-the-art gorilla suit. His experimental novel, called Leaping With Your Legs Locked will be forth-coming from Stone Buddha Books. He has been a featured guest on numerous television shows, including The Today Show, Regis & Kathie Lee, Good Morning LA and Entertainment Tonight.McLeod is equally adept at writing about lost love, intellectual drinking sessions, circus side-show attractions, femine sensuality, beloved pets, metaphysical considerations, wine tasting, book critics, bookstores, death - and surreal looks at subjects as diverse as Jane Fonda's workout, poetry competitions and student art films. He writes with both humorous irony, acute sensual awareness and a keen understanding of the foibles of our human condition.If you enjoy the work of Billy Collins and David Sadarius, we think you'll want to add Donald McLeod to that short list.The poems in this collection span from 1987 to 2016.Donald was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, grew up on a small farm in California's Mendocino County and currently lives in Los Angeles with his cat Benny and a personal library of over 2000 books.
About the Author: Donald McLeod's writing career began at the age of five, when he created what he calls his Bessie Stories. These were almost nightly reverse bedtime stories he told to his parents for a period of five years. The stories were his imagined reflections of the goings on in his small town of Greenwood, California where he grew up, and featured his fictional "bear" friends, Bessie, Bruce, Boo, Benny and Caterpillar. As a slightly more mature writer, McLeod has written both fiction and non-fiction, screenplays, haiku and longer poetry, much of which is found in this collection. For five years he was co-editor of the literary journal Vol. No. Magazine. His poetry has been published in many literary magazines in North America, Europe and Japan. McLeod has been a professional mime/movement artist for the past 46 years. He is perhaps best known for his work as the American Tourister Gorilla in the company's 15 year luggage campaign, and for his acting work in feature films, which include the gorilla in Trading Places & The Man With Two Brains, along with his portrayal of TC the werewolf, in the classic horror film The Howling. He lives in Los Angeles with his cat Benny, and a revolving collection of raccoons, possums, squirrels and wild birds.