Poet: Robert Furrow
Poem: Little Man
Award: 2011, Honorable Mention
"I am 87 years old, and wrote some poems while attending New Underwood High School, but let my interest drop after that. I graduated in 1944, then enlisted in the Navy. I liked it so I stayed for 30 years, then worked another 20 years in Civil Service for the Navy.
About 1975 I got interested in poetry again, as well as lyric writing. Several entries to a Nashville contest got nowhere.
Then while I was living in Pennsylvania, a friend got me started posting poems on line, at Prose-n-Poetry.
I built quite a collection and got some very nice critiques from other poets. Then in 2002, Prose-n-Poetry decided to publish an anthology, called "Tides of the Heart, the Best of Prose-n-Poetry." They selected four of my poems, and I even got a little royalty money from that.
That was the year I moved to Spearfish, and joined the Spearfish Writers Group. One of our exercises was to write a short story. My story kept getting longer and longer so I finally turned it into a book. I published it in 2009, under the title "The Accidental Executioner." I call it a murder-mystery-romance novel.
When I found I could get a book published I decided to collect all my other works and put them in a book. In 2012 I published "Lyrics, Limericks and Poems." Little Man is included in the book. As a matter of interest, I submitted Little Man to Cowboy Poetry and they rejected it. They said, not because it was a bad poem, but it didn't fit their guidelines."
