Welcome to Gnarled Oak. I used to keep my micropoems here, and if you’re reading this because you subscribed between 2009 and 2012, thank you. I hope you’ll stick around for this site’s new incarnation as a literary journal.

The idea developed as I was putting together a new poetry collection, and while proofing the acknowledgments page, I realized that most of the journals that had published some of the poems in that collection had shut down: qarrtsiluni, ouroboros review, Bolts of Silk, The Houston Literary Review, and a handful of stones. Literary journals are often transient things, but some of these were true favorites, and a handful of stones was where I got my first acceptance for a poem.

Now, I don’t know if the world needs another online literary journal, but I’m pretty sure it won’t hurt anything to add a little literature, art, and beauty to the web, and anyway I had this site and URL doing nothing, so I figured it might be fun and worthwhile to see what might grow here at this old Gnarled Oak. And if I can do this even half as well as the editors of the above-mentioned journals did, I will be very happy indeed.

I hope you’ll join me, consider contributing, and help spread the word.

(Oh, and don’t forget to follow, like, or subscribe.)

Thank you.