Hello sunshine of my country
how good it is to be alive today
so much light
so much light around me
Allan Johnston
ALLAN JOHNSTON earned his M.A. in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Davis. His poems have appeared in many journals, including Poetry, Poetry East, Rattle, and Rhino. He has three full-length poetry collections (Tasks of Survival, 1996; In a Window, 2018; Sable and Selected Poems, 2022) and three chapbooks (Northport, 2010; Departures, 2013; Contingencies, 2015), and received an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, Pushcart Prize nominations (2009 and 2016), and First Prize in Poetry in the Outrider Press Literary Anthology competition (2010). His translations and co-translations of poems from French and German are in Ezra, Metamorphosis, and Transference. He teaches at Columbia College and DePaul University in Chicago. He reads or read for Word River, r.kv.r.y, and the Illinois Emerging Poets competition, and co-edits JPSE: Journal for the Philosophical Study of Education. His scholarly articles have appeared in Twentieth Century Literature, College Literature, and other journals.