Annum began as an intentional exchange between two longtime friends, Nick Barrows and Forrest Griffen. Both come from worlds shaped by poetry and music, and this book grew naturally from their love words and their bond as friends.
For Forrest, it marks a return to poetry after years in broadcasting and for Nick, it continues his lifelong connection to the written word and music. This collection is a year’s worth of lived experience, thought, and observation, turned into deeply personal poems created simultaneously during the course of only 12 months.
Pub Date: Fall, 2026
ABOUT NICK BARROWS
Nick is a Cincinnati, Ohio native whose words have appeared in Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking, & Light Industrial Safety; Trained Monkey Press; Semantikon and several Aurore Press anthologies.
Books of poems include: For You’re Courage (2019, Aurore Press), Versus (2012, co-authored with Mark Flanigan, Aurore Press) and Rockets on Bibles (2007, self-published). His musical escapades include Eagle To Squirrel, JetLab, Jack Burton Overdrive, MacReady U.K. and Hare Hunter Field. Nick is also the local music director at Inhailer Radio and you can hear him every Saturday from 11am – 3pm.
ABOUT FORREST A. GRIFFEN
Forrest is a lapsed poet and radio veteran who spent the late nineties and early aughts sporadically surfacing in Midwest literary journals and regional zines.
After a long detour in the world of music broadcasting, this collaboration with Nick Barrows serves as a refocused return to his poetic ambitions. A native New Yorker and former Cincinnati resident now living in Kyle, Texas, Forrest spends his time balancing life with his wife and two children—all while finally tuning back into his deeper observations and putting his cognitive detours back on paper.