UPCOMING READINGS:

November 14, 2025, 7 p.m.: Sunnyside Arts, 45-18 Skillman Ave, Queens, NY 11104

COMPLETED READINGS:

October 7, 2025, 6 pm:  Bean Runner Cafe, 201 S. Division St., Peekskill, NY — book fair, hosted by Carla Rae Johnson — info at (914) 217-6385 or https://beanrunnercafe.com.

July 24, 2025, 4 p.m.: Kendal, 67 Cummings Rd., Hancock, NH — (603) 643-8900

June 20, 2025, 6 p.m.: Otto’s Shrunken Head, 538 E 14th St, New York, NY — “Adverse Abstraction Poety Series — Phone: (212) 228-2240

May 15, 2025, 7 p.m.: Calling All Poets (CAPS) — online at https://www.callingallpoets.net   

April 12, 2025, 3 p.m.: Florida Library, 4 Cohen Cir, Florida, NY — info at (845) 651-7659      

April 5, 2025, 3 p.m.: New England Poetry Club, Jamaica Plain Branch of the Boston Public Library, 30 South Street, Jamaica Plain, MA. Phone: (617) 524-2053, email: jamaicaplain@bpl.org     

March 23, 2025, 3 p.m.:  Tompkins Corner Cultural Center, 729 Peekskill Hollow Rd. Putnam Valley, NY — website for info https://www.tompkinscorners.org/    

December 3, 2024, 6 pm:  Bean Runner Cafe, 201 S. Division St., Peekskill, NY — a “salon” with Mary Newell & Jared Harel, hosted by Carla Rae Johnson — info at (914) 217-6385 or https://beanrunnercafe.com.

October 26, 2024, 3 p.m.:  Briarcliff Manor Library, Briarcliff Manor, NY — Located next to Law Memorial Park — info at website — https://briarcliffmanorlibrary.org.

September 19, 2024, 7 pm:  Norwich Bookstore, 291 Main St., Norwich VT — For information, contact events@norwichbookstore.com or (802) 649-1114 — website https://norwichbookstore.com.

February 8, 2024: Winning Writers has featured JKZ’s book, “The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dogen,” along with one of the poems — “Dogen Takes a Ride in a Self-Driving Car” — from the volume. You can read it here.

February 1, 2024: JKZ’s manuscript, “Shapeshifter,” has won the Cowles Poetry Book Prize from SEMO University Press. Unfortunately, the university abruptly withdrew funding, so the book will not be published.

January 29, 2024: “The Further Adventures of Zen Patriarch Dogen” will be released on March 15, 2024. This book is inspired by the life of Dogen Zenji, the Japanese monk credited with the foundation of the Soto school of Zen. The premise of the book is that Dogen is present in the world today, and expresses his perpective on 21st century American life, as well as on Zen principles. JKZ participated in an online reading on March 9, 2024, which you can access here.

Praise for “Dogen”:

While “wanting you to not know/ anyone/ has been/ here/ at all,” James K. Zimmerman, in the persona of Dōgen Zenji, offers the reader a glimpse of enlightenment as embodied presence in situations taken, sometimes humorously, from our contemporary world. Reader, you will find here wisdom, and its sister, compassion. —Gillian Cummings, author of The Owl Was a Baker’s Daughter

The poet holds moments of life in his open hands, sings them and lifts them beyond words, bringing me to deepest stillness. I treasure this unique book and shall keep it close to my meditation seat and my heart. —Judith S. Schmidt, Ph.D, author of In the Garden of Love and Loss

Zimmerman’s Dōgen encounters the modern world of the self-driving car and the dentist chair, imagines the process of frying an egg, listens to the aye yamma hew of his monkey mind. A slow and attentive reading of this spare collection offers a taste of the continuity of motion found in stillness.                       —Kathryn Weld, author of Afterimage and Waking Light

Literally enacting on the page cycles of thought, cycles of nature, cycles of life and death, Zimmerman taps into the beauty, strangeness, difficulty, and promise of the meditative life. While he deals with the abstractions of self and mind, creation is never far from his view and there are stunning moments of beauty like the “one shooting star across/ the velvet skin of midnight” that bring the fullness of the world to his work. Just as “…a thought sings in (silence),” I thought about these poems long after reading them.— Lynn Schmeidler, author of History of Gone and Half-Lives

See the “About” page for purchasing options.

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April 8, 2023: “The Loon God of Megunticook Lake” won the national prize of the Joe Gouveia Outermost Poetry Contest, sponsored by WOMR radio in Provincetown, MA. The judge was Marge Piercy. Although the Contest includes a monetary award, the poem will not be published online or in a journal.

August 27, 2019: JKZ’s poem, “This Is the End of Winter, This Is the Beginning,” won the E.E. Cummings Prize from the New England Poetry Club. Go to the “Poetry” page on this website to read it.

July, 2018: JKZ’s poem,“Listen to the Deer Tick Sing,” has been published online by American Life in Poetry, a site curated by Ted Kooser, US Poet Laureate from 2004-2006. This is a persona poem (i.e., written in the first person, but from the point of view of an individual other than the author). The page also includes commentary on the poem by Ted Kooser. Here’s the link: Deer Tick

July, 2018: In December, 2017, JKZ’s poem, “Fog on the 180 (Kings Canyon)” won the Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry from Reed Magazine. Here’s the link to the Contest Winners page, which includes commentary on “Fog” by the contest’s judge, Ellen Bass:  Reed   And here’s a link directly to the poem itself: FOG

Ellen Bass’s commentary on “Fog”:

“James K. Zimmerman’s “Fog on the 180 (Kings Canyon)” is a haunting poem. Its language, with its repetitions and paradoxes, skillfully evokes the fog and captures the experience of seeing trees emerge from the mist. This well-chosen diction, along with the music of the lines, creates a feeling of mystery that matches its theme. From its intriguing opening stanza (to begin with/there is nothing there/to begin with), I was carried along effortlessly, again matching the travel in the poem. It was a pleasure to choose “Fog on the 180 (Kings Canyon)” as the winner of this year’s Reed Magazine Edwin Markham Poetry Award.”

11/1/16 — The Poetry Foundation, one of the premier organizations for poetry & poets, has posted “The Emptiness of Thought” — from “Little Miracles” — on its website as the Poem-of-the-Day.  You can read the poem here:  Poetry Foundation profile

5/14/16 — “Family Cookout”, the title poem of the book “Family Cookout” — winner of the Jessie Bryce Niles Chapbook Competition from The Comstock Review — has been posted as a featured poem in the May issue of Winning Writers.  Here’s the link:  Winning Writers

4/18/16 — A video of the reading at St. Francis College on 3-16-16 is now posted on YouTube:  Reading at St. Francis College

4/1/16 — Thanks to Vallum for selecting the poem, “Epiphany”, as their poem of the week on 2/29/16.  You can read it — or listen to JKZ reading it aloud — Vallum.