Gilbert Arzola And David Bergman: Two Poets From Passager Books

Join The Ivy Bookshop for an evening to celebrate two winners of the poetry prize from Baltimore’s own Passager Books: Gilbert Arzola (2019) and David Bergman (2022)!

Arzola’s collection, Prayers of Little Consequence, was published just before lockdown as the winner of the 2019 Passager Poetry Contest, and we are eager to give it a full in-person celebration. Bergman’s collection, Plain Sight, will publish in November 2023, and we can’t wait to offer a preview.

This event will take place at the Ivy Bookshop, located at 5928 Falls Road on 10/10 at 6 p.m. It is free and open to the public.

Gilbert Arzola was raised in North Judson, Indiana, one generation removed from the back of a migrant truck, where his family was one of three Mexican-American families in an otherwise white community. He started writing in the eighth grade when an English teacher said that he had “a way with words.” Retired now, he returned to writing and published his first collection of poems in 2020, Prayers of Little Consequence (Passager Books). Arzola is also a high school softball coach and author of a book about fast pitch pitching. He was the 2019 winner of the Passager Poetry Contest, and 2021 Rattle Chapbook Prize Winner for The Death of a Migrant Worker.

David Bergman, who taught at Towson University for 40 years, is the author of three books of poetry, Cracking the Code, which won the George Elliston Poetry Prize, Heroic Measures and The Fortunate Light. He is the author of the studies The Poetry of Disturbance: The Discomforts of Post-War American Poetry as well as Gaiety Transfigured: Gay Self- Representation in American Poetry. His poetry has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, The New Republic, and others. His new book, Plain Sight, will be released in November from Passager Books in Baltimore.