Peter Meinke, the official Poet Laureate of St. Petersburg, is the undisputed dean of Tampa Bay poets.

I first met Peter Meinke some time in the late eighties. I was in junior high school and he was signing books at some book festival in Tampa Bay. My mother bought his short story collection The Piano Tuner for myself and his book of poetry, Night Watch on the Chesapeake for my father. I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay, in the naval town of Norfolk, Virginia, so the title seemed appropriate.

Being someone who regularly attended open mics, book festivals, and poetry reading across Tampa Bay, I saw Meinke and his work frequently.

When I lived in a bookstore in Paris, I even found his collection of poems from the late sixties, Liquid Paper on Shakespeare & Co‘s shelves.

Meinke’s style has not been a big influence on my own writing. He comes from the Billy Collins school of poetry – and I have deep reservations about Billy Collins.

That’s not exactly true. Actually, I can’t stand Collins, but that’s a subject for a future post.

But I have nothing but love for Meinke.

He has found a home in the prestigious Pitt Poetry Series, which regularly publishes his collections. But mostly, he has found a home in St. Petersburg, even though he often takes positions at universities across the country, having retired from Eckerd College many years ago.

I probably haven’t done a good job of explaining why you should read Peter Meinke if you are not from the Tampa Bay area. And that’s a failing on my part. So let me just suggest that you read his signature poem (for those who followed him across various reading in the early nineties) – Supermarket.