Leonard Gontarek is the author of St. Genevieve Watching Over Paris, Van Morrison Can't Find His Feet, Zen For Beginners and Deja Vu Diner (Autumn House Press, 2006). He is the editor of This Is Forever The Room, The Balloonists Are Coming Back From The Clouds, and Rain Of The Haunted Trees, anthologies of children's poetry. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, New England Review, Field, Volt, Fence, Mudfish, Many Mountains Moving, Exquisite Corpse, New Zoo Review, Rattle, Painted Bride Quarterly, XConnect, The Quarterly, The Best American Poetry 2005, among others.

He has been nominated for five Pushcart Prizes and twice received poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. His poetry has been awarded prizes by the Atlanta Review, Poet's Attic, Mad Poets Review, Mudfish magazine. He was guest editor of The American Poetry Review - Philly Edition, 1999, and has been a contributing editor at APR since 2000. He coordinated the City Book Shop Reading Series, 1992-1995; The Voice
At HMV, 1995-2000; The Philadelphia Poetry Festival, 2002-2003; The Philadelphia Reading Series, 2002-2005. He taught for five years in the Vermont Poets-in-the-Schools Program and The Annual Writers' Conference at the University of Pennsylvania, 1997-1998 and is a poet in the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership.

Leonard Gontarek interviewed by G. Emil Reutter:

Q. Have any poets influenced your work and when you are not writing what poets do you read?

A. There are books that have been influential — License To Carry a Gun, Andrei Codrescu, Lovers In The Used World, Gillian Conoley. Those two span thirty years.I could name fifty poets easily who have influenced me. I know, you want a few names: Lowell, Merwin, Ashbery, Oppen, Levertov, Snyder, Lawrence Raab, John Koethe, Charles Wright, Stephen Dobyns. What poets do I read when I’m not reading? Can a poet separate in that way? Maybe there are a couple poets I can read for pleasure solely. Yves Bonnefoy, who has had the luck of interesting translators, so you get good variations of the same poems, and Wallace Stevens, who I read the most regularly of any poet. I think I read fiction that is somewhere between poetry and fiction for delight. All of Julio Cortazar. All of Evan S. Connell, who has a book-length poem unlike any other: Points For A Compass Rose. Ava by Carol Maso falls into this category, and Reader’s Block by David Markson.

Q. There are many new poets emerging in the Philadelphia area. What advice would you give them as they begin to share their works?

A. I think it takes a good ten to twenty years to establish one’s own style. Not that we don’t write good poems along the way. I note this, in particular, to suggest not worrying about things too much. Enjoy all aspects of the process. It is likely true that the process is all we have at times. I read somewhere that in two hundred years probably only five or six poets writing at this time will be remembered. If this is the case, I would definitely advise enjoying the ride. Not to worry about things that are out of our hands.

Q. If you weren’t a poet what would you be?

A. I would be wandering a beach, with my pants rolled to my ankles, looking for myself. I’m serious. Of course, I do that as a poet, but poetry lends me more dignity and grace and occasional glimpses of wisdom. For that, I am grateful.