The Phoenix and the Dragon: Poems of the Alchemical Transformation is the latest collection from award-winning poet, humorist, activist, and educator Adam Byrn Tritt, and it may be his most personal and compelling work yet. Tritt's previous books include Tellstones: Runic Divination in the Welsh Tradition, and the Gainesville Community Haggada. He also has several credits as a screenwriter and a playwright.
While Tritt's poetry and essays have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, The Phoenix and the Dragon is his first collection with a cohesive theme: transformation. "Alchemy," says Tritt, "is the art of transformation. It's about taking something of little intrinsic worth and changing it into something of tremendous value--changing lead into gold, for example. When you write poetry, you take experiences common to all people--small, everyday occurrances--and you distill them into their essence."
Tritt, who won both the 2006 EPPIE Award for Poetry in an Anthology and the Book Club of South Florida Poetry Prize and is listed in Who's Who in U.S. Writers, Editors, and Poets, has also been a social worker and a middle school teacher. He is equally at home speaking in lecture halls, giving public readings in bookstores, and visiting elementary school classrooms, where he can be found surrounded by children begging him to read his story Bud the Spud just one more time. In 1995 he was an awarded an honorary doctorate for his work in Religious Tolerance and for the creation of TurningPoint, a program providing alternative healthcare for low-income individuals.
