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Deborah Tosun Kilday of the National Beat Poetry Foundation, awards
PW Covington a plaque recognizing him as the Foundation's
'New Mexico Beat Poet Laureate' (2024-2026)

BARKHAMSTED CT- On Saturday, August 31, 2024, the National Beat Poetry Foundation recognized PW Covington, of Albuquerque, as their ‘New Mexico Beat Poet Laureate’. Covington’s two-year term begins September 1^st, and will run through August of 2026.

PW (Patrick Wayne) Covington was born in Victorville, CA in 1974. His childhood included years in Greece and various communities across the USA, as a member of a Cold War military family.
He attended High School in the rural town of Cuero, TX until being expelled in the 11^th grade for publishing and distributing an underground newspaper critical of campus and district officials. He immediately tested for and was awarded his GED.

PW completed four semesters at Victoria College in Victoria, TX before enlisting in the US Air Force, where he served as an Air Transportation Specialist. Covington earned medals and awards for his duty in Somalia and the Persian Gulf as a member of the 2^nd Mobile Aerial Port Squadron.
He is rated 100% Service-Connected Disabled by Veterans Affairs.

Covington is the author of six full length poetry collections, including his debut, Like the Prayers of an Infidel, One American Airman’s Experience of Service, War, and Return (Hercules Publishing. 2010), Sacred Wounds (Slough Press, 2015), and malepoet. (Gnashing Teeth Publishing, 2021). He has also published a novel, Dear Elsa, Letters from a Texas Prison (2014), and a collection of short fiction titled North Beach and Other Stories, which was named a Finalist in LGBTQ Fiction by the International Book Awards in 2019.
He has also worked as a stand-in or background performer on film and television productions such as Better Call Saul (AMC), The Cleaning Lady (FOX), and Duster (forthcoming from HBO).
His latest poetry collection, titled Vintage Denim, has a release date of January 1, 2025, from Indie publisher Alien Buddha Press.

PW Covington has spent decades traveling to perform and perfect his work.
He has been an invited featured poet at poetry festivals from the Rio Grande Valley of Deep South Texas to Havana, Cuba, and has delighted audiences with his energizing reading style in performances from Woodstock, NY to San Francisco’s Beat Museum.

Throughout his term, Covington plans to highlight the vital role public libraries play in their communities and around the world, He intends to visit every public library system in the state of New Mexico, including those on tribal land and military bases, before the end of his term.
He is also developing plans to bring contemporary Indie and ‘outsider’ poets, writers, and artists together in observation of  2026’s Centennial celebrations of Historic Route 66. Events will spotlight the role that poetry, particularly poetry of beat lineage and sensibilities, has and continues to play in our nation’s mobile and expansive cultural identity.

“My life has been largely defined by two vital axes; Route 66 and the Rio Grande River. Living as I do, right where these two forces and avenues cross each other, in the city we like to call ’Burque, my soul is fed with an ever-flowing, ever-moving energy,” says Covington.
“Just like the waters that flow to the Gulf from melting mountain snow, and just like travelers that have ridden that highway to the West and back again for a century, my poetry can go through some dark and desolate places, but the energy and power of movement is always there,” he said.

Other poets and artists honored by the NBPF include and have included current National Beat Poet Laureate Mark Lipman of Massachusetts, and Lifetime Beat Poet Emeritus, Ron Whitehead of Louisville, KY.