Glenn D’Alessio lives in West Brookfield, Massachusetts, where his life and work are shaped by a deep connection to craft, landscape, and lived experience. A poet and carpenter, he brings the discipline of building into his writing, measuring, shaping, and assembling language with care and intention.

His early introduction to poetry began at North Country Community College in Saranac Lake, New York, where he first encountered the rhythms and influences of the Beat poets. Around that same time, a class in short fiction expanded his sense of storytelling and observation, helping to shape the quiet precision that defines his voice today.

During the summer of 1971, Glenn lived simply in a homemade lean-to at Caulkin’s Creek in the Adirondacks. It was there, alongside his first dog, Seico, a white dog marked by a ring around one eye and her tail, that he experienced a kind of clarity and companionship that would remain with him for life. Since then, he has never been without a dog.

That enduring bond finds one of its fullest expressions in Some Tanka in Thanks to Elroy, Not the Most Cantankerous Dog, a collection inspired by his rat terrier, Elroy. Through tanka and free verse, the poems capture moments of humor, companionship, aging, and quiet understanding, offering a gentle, unguarded portrait of the relationship between human and animal.

His poetry more broadly reflects a lifelong engagement with labor and environment, from framing houses and working with wood to considering the broader impact of how we build and inhabit space. Themes of memory, family, craftsmanship, and the natural world run throughout his work, often grounded in small, precise details that reveal something larger beneath the surface.

Whether writing about the weight of tools, the passage of time held in a board’s grain, or the quiet presence of those who came before, Glenn’s work seeks to uncover the structures, both physical and emotional, that shape human experience.

His published works include A Carpenter’s Building: Homes for His Poems and Some Tanka in Thanks to Elroy, Not the Most Cantankerous Dog, with additional collections forthcoming.