The Scoop

Forrest Rapier spends a great deal of his time looking closely. He hikes Appalachian trails in search of waterfalls, drifts above coral reefs with a snorkel mask, lingers in gallery exhibits long after everyone else has moved on, and fills sketchbooks while traveling abroad. The same curiosity that draws him toward unfamiliar landscapes also fuels his poetry.

His work is preoccupied with the meeting place between art and wilderness, history and myth, observation and imagination—just about any intersection imaginable. A mountain overlook, a museum artifact, a bird moving through the understory—these become points of entry into larger questions about beauty, memory, and belonging. His poems are guided by wonder but never satisfied by easy answers. When he isn't writing, he can usually be found wandering a trail, visiting an exhibit, drawing what catches his eye, requesting books from his school library, or chasing the possibility that something remarkable might be waiting just around the next bend.