Uncategorized | May 03, 2006

As the assistant managing editor for metro news at the New Jersey Star-Ledger, David Tucker has acquired the reputation of a tough, gruff newsroom boss, the sort of presence whose persistence and sheer relentlessness embodies the hard-nosed, hard-news glory days of journalism. In fact, he was part of the team that won a Pultizer Prize for breaking news reportage with the Star-Ledger‘s coverage of New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey’s resignation in August 2004.

But Tucker’s also a poet. His poems appeared in The Missouri Review (24:1) in 2001, and they reflect his newsroom experience, as is clear in the titles of those poems: “City Editor Looking for News”; “My Father Taking Arms Against a Sea of Troubles, Etc.”; “For Them”; “Downsizing”; “And This Just In”; “You Know.” He won the Slapering Hol Press (SHP) chapbook competition in 2003, and the manuscript for his new boook, Late for Work, was selected for the Bakeless Prize at the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, by Philip Levine, and has just been published by Houghton-Mifflin.

As part of National Public Radio‘s celebration of National Poetry Month, Tucker is featured in an audio story, “Newsroom Poetry,” which originally aired as part of Fresh Air on May 2. It includes Tucker reading from one of the poems first published in The Missouri Review.

We think you’ll enjoy.