David Parker Allen
David Parker Allen is an American songwriter, poet and entrepreneur. His first book, Whaling Town, is a collection of free verse poems scheduled for release in late October 2025.
"We can smell the salt and sea in our blood...a book steeped in...the bite of memory and unexpected warmth of now...
- Matthew Lippman, award-winning American poet and author of We Are All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On
Projects
Whaling Town (October 2025)
"Allen walks the reader through moonlit forests, moist streets, brass-filled nights, and the machinations of middle age. His poems are grounded, sublime, mysterious and move with the blunt honesty of a man weighing the tin in his pack. The poems are refreshing. Ambient, Mysterious. Things run so deep we can smell the salt and sea in our blood. With language both tempered and ecstatic, Allen gives us a book steeped in the salt of old ports, the bite of memory, and the unexpected warmth of the now." - Matthew Lippman, award-winning American Poet and Author of We Are All Sleeping With Our Sneakers On"
Whaling Town is an American tale of place, people and self-discovery in a gritty world both in and out of our control.
The title poem, Whaling Town, is an immigrant story both fading and urgent set in New Bedford, MA, the American whaling town Melville made famous and once known as, “The City that Lit the World”.
The additional prose poems take place in small towns across the Mississippi Delta, South, Gulf Coast, Mountain West and in the streets of Chicago and New York.
Forgotton Wail
Currently in the recording process, Forgotton Wail includes songs written as components to the poems Song For Charlie Patton, The Delta and Roaring 20's, which appear in Whaling Town.