Jim Cory is a poet and a fiction writer interested in history, ornithology and architecture. He has reviewed books for newspapers, penned essays for print and online publications (including the Gay & Lesbian Review, and Chelsea Station), authored numerous chapbooks of poetry, established a poetry publishing cooperative in Philadelphia and edited the works of important American post-modern poets James Broughton (Packing Up for Paradise, 1997, Black Sparrow Press) and Jonathan Williams (Jubliant Thicket, 2005, Copper Canyon Press). He most recently assembled for posthumous publication the volume Have You Seen This Man? (2019, Sibling Rivalry Press), a selection of poems by his late friend Karl Tierney, an important part of the 80’s/90’s poetry scene in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. He has been the recipient of a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and a fellow at Yaddo and MacDowell.

I started writing poems in grade school and published my first at 20. That was close to a half century ago. By the time I was writing at a regularly publishable level, gay poetry began to flourish via magazines such as the James White Review and Evergreen Chronicles. Along the way I became less interested in the poem as a vehicle for “my story” and more interested in the poem as something to delight and surprise the reader, intellectually and emotionally. Make the poem about its subject matter, not about yourself. For the astute reader—presumably most or they wouldn’t be there—gay is assumed.

Where I’ve been and what I did there: I spent the first eighteen years of my life on a farm in Maine. I thought I was going to become a mathematician, but a scholarship from the Rhode Island School of Design convinced me to try a totally different path. New York City beckoned and for a decade I survived a checkered artistic career as a fashion designer and illustrator, graphic designer and emerging painter. I took a six year break in Portsmouth, NH before coming to Philadelphia in 1988 to study with a spiritual teacher. I acquired a three story row house which has become my ultimate project, an environment like no other - my studio, gallery and sanctuary.

My experience in the Philadelphia Queer community is relatively limited. I’m a bit of an outsider, even though I’ve lived here for thirty five years. I was already forty two years old when I moved here, a solitary artist who supported myself by working in advertising but maintained my independent creative practice behind the scenes doing my thing on a daily basis.