David Alec Knight

David Alec Knight is a Canadian Author and Artist. His work has appeared in many anthologies and journals internationally. He was recipient of the Ted Plantos Memorial Award for Poetry, 2021. LEPER MOSH from Cajun Mutt Press in 2022, was his first book to feature his own art on the cover. David released his third and largest yet collection of poetry, CROW CITY BLEEDING, again through Cajun Mutt Press, in 2025. It features his artwork on the cover, and a foreword by Mort Castle.

Recent work has appeared in Verse Afire, Night Owl Narrative, Tickets To Midnight Volume 3, Starman Oddity Anthology, Stormwash: Environmental Poems, The Aleph Review, and Poetry Is Dead II: When You're Dead You're Dead. 

My name is David Alec Knight. I use my middle name as an Author because there are a lot of "David Knight"s out there who are not me, aren't related to me, and some even Authors also. I even wrote a poem about all this and what an issue it can be, and I called it "Disambiguation", in my most recent book, Crow City Bleeding (Cajun Mutt Press, 2025).

I come from a working-class / middle class background. My grand-parents were working class all their lives, but my parents managed to achieve careers in teaching so, they by most standards were middle class. I've worked all kinds of jobs, and while work doesn't define who I am it is still a significant part of who I am. And of course "work" in its many forms as experienced by me and others is a concern in my writing. Living in a community that is part of Canada's Rust Belt can't be avoided either, as a fact, or an influence on my writing, most especially in Crow City Bleeding.

I write primarily poetry, and mostly in free verse, but I will write in rhyme if that's what the poem tells me in its gestation it needs to be. I don't believe in slant rhyme or forced rhyme, feeling that if one has to do that, either one hasn't worked hard enough in the revision stage or maybe the poem needs to be free verse or blank verse. Poets need to listen to the poem in its birth.

Poem by David Alec Knight