Begging for Vultures
New and Selected Poems, 1994-2009
By Lawrence Welsh; Foreword by V. B. Price
University of New Mexico Press
The poetry of Lawrence Welsh crosses many borders, from South Central Los Angeles, where he was raised, to El Paso, where he has lived for almost twenty years. A newspaper man turned poet, a punk rock songwriter who became an English teacher, an Irishman at home in Texas, Welsh gives voice to the famous, the infamous, and the forgotten.
Welsh manages to do in a few words what others fail to achieve with entire tomes. He creates a world so alive that it does not disappear with the turn of the page, but lingers inside the imagination, open to independent exploration.'--Irish America
This writing is an earthly gift and proves that desert souls and cantina dwellers come from the same fractured spirit as they wander over the terrain in search of answers.'--Bloomsbury Review
Lawrence Welsh is an associate professor of English at El Paso Community College. He has also taught at the University of Texas at El Paso and the Southern New Mexico Correctional Facility. An award-winning journalist, he has served as writer-in-residence at a wide range of schools and organizations. Welsh has published in over two hundred magazines and is the author of seven books of poetry.