Secret Conversations

Secret Conversations ~ Reflections in Nature is an enchanting collection of poems, drawings and photographs that evoke the beauty, humor and lifelong observations of a poet who cleaves to wild spaces. Sentient author, Tom Conlan weaves lyrical verse throughout the lovely artwork of several artists including his wife Glenda Conlan. This is a compilation of artistic expression that celebrates nature by a man who worries for... "mother earth, for gentle beings." This lovely collaboration is reminiscent of the writings of Wendell Berry, farmer and naturalist. Conlan's poems are deeply elegiac and speak of the enduring strength of his connections to animals, plants and, of course, love:

"In old age when mammoth limbs fall in the wind

gnarled beauty remains like the sparkle in the eyes

of a greying couple paired still in old age"

- Ellen Lord, Poet & Author of Relative Sanity (2023)

Thomas Ford Conlan lives, writes, and tends his modest grapevines on a small farm in the highlands of Northern Michigan. Before settling down, he sailed the world's oceans from the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic and on to warm Caribbean currents. He finally found his home on the Great freshwater Lakes and has travelled extensively though the American west. Tom now takes pleasure in poetry and the search for the elusive brook trout in backwater streams.

Tom's prose and poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Walloon Writers Review, Tulip Tree Review, QU Literary Review, UP Reader, and Michigan Trout Magazine. Tom was a finalist for awards in the Bellingham Review, the Northwind Treasury, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Tom attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop, holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Queens University of Charlotte and a Master of Science from the US Naval Postgraduate School in Monterrey, California.

For signed a signed copy of Secret Conversations, Tom's lyrical memoir My Journey Begins Where the Road Ends..., and his epic novel Gentle Spirits.