"I am daring love to be anything else,

To be on its best behavior wicked, to be heartache

In its prime..."

The first two-and-a-half lines of A. Loudermilk's poem "Daring Love," introduces this Poets Weave program featuring his poems.   Loudermilk grew up in Illinois, taught for a while at Indiana University and has held other teaching posts.  He now lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

His book Strange Valentine (Southern Illinois Univeristy Press, 2005), received a Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award in 2004.  He is also the author of The Daughterliest Son, which won the Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Competition and was published in 2002. Additionally he is a winner of The Chas B. Wood Award for Distinguished Writing from Carolina Quarterly, the Phyllis Smart Young Prize in Poetry, and the Cream City Review Poetry Prize.

His poems have been published in Tin House, The Redneck Review, The Louisville Review, Margie, The Mississippi Review, and other journals. His essays have been printed Journal X, River Teeth, The Journal of Consumer Culture, and the Journal of International Women's Studies.