Ben Clark grew up in rural Nebraska and now lives in Chicago, where he is currently a graduate student at the Art Institute of Chicago and a poetry editor for Muzzle Magazine. He has worked as an English teacher, librarian, tile maker, track coach, and in a microwaveable popcorn factory. He performs, workshops, and teaches poetry all across the country.

Books by Ben Clark:

Other poems on the web by Ben Clark:
"if you turn around, I will turn around"
"Diving Tip" (co-author)

Ben Clark's Website.

About Reasons To Leave The Slaughter:

"Ben Clark's voice welds to narrative so seamlessly, we can scarcely tell sometimes where the literal ends and the wonder begins. And this is the hub of art. His, is an armaggedon of tension holding together taut strands of unbelievable beauty and charismatic curiousity."
—Roger Bonair-Agard

"Ben Clark's poems understand the weirdness of living, of loving and being loved, of grit and breath and what bangs around in our everyday bodies. Made of asphalt and sweat and farm dirt, these are honest, important poems. I love their singing."
—Marty McConnell

"The speaker in Clark's poems is an expert photojournalist, leveling his lens at his own tumultuous history, cramming simultaneous beauty and horror to into his single steady frames. Reasons to Leave the Slaughter didn't leave me feeling anything, it stays with me — as if it were my pet two-legged dog, who snaps at everyone but me."
—Robbie Q. Telfer