About Abbott Ikeler

My poems and stories happen in Rhine villages, Boston suburbs, Maine classrooms, London streets, Indian temples. It’s helped to have spent years as an expat in England and Germany, helped to speak and read a second language, helped to come home to a good wife, good children and good dogs.

It’s always dangerous to talk about influences, but here are a few poets and storytellers whose words move me most: Jhumpa Lahiri, James Agee, Edith Wharton, Thomas Hardy, Emily Bronte, A.E. Housman, Virginia Woolf. Each of them has told us what a writer is supposed to tell us. Namely, what it feels like to be that person, having that experience, at that moment, in that place.