You can hear the Buffalo in Peter Johnson’s voice. He has lived in Barrington for a long time, but that unmistakeable Upstate New York curl in his voice cuts through any hint of a Rhode Island accent. 

Johnson’s Buffalo, NY roots — the years living in the snowbelt and later working in a steel plant — run deep in his latest book, I’m Old, Not Dead: Dispatches from the Desk of an Aging Poet.

“This book means a lot to me,” Johnson said, during a recent interview at a coffee shop in Warren.

I’m Old, Not Dead is a hybrid of sorts. It has six parts — there are three essays and each essay begins with a prose poem; the fourth part is a short fiction story; and the fifth part is a series of dispatches.

“And then at the end I have a 35-page mini-memoir, which is a mix of all kinds of things, like little short vignettes… like about how working in the steel plants formed me as a writer,” Johnson said. “It’s a very different kind of book.

“This book’s important because it’s probably my best book of prose poems.”

The essays and poems and fiction stories run a direct line into Johnson’s life. 

“So much of it references Buffalo,” he said. “This kind of ties together my whole career, my whole life, being raised Irish Catholic, being real hard core working class but going to a prestigious prep school. I did nine years of Latin and five of Greek. How many people can say that?

“My father was a mailman — he worked two jobs — then he would come home and eat and then go to the steel plant. He did that for about 13 years.”

In the memoir, toward the end of the book, Johnson recalls a poetry reading he did in Buffalo where his father showed up. He stood in the back while Johnson entertained the crowd from the front of the room. 

“I wondered whether he’d be embarrassed,” Johnson said. “Whether he’d be … whatever.

“He loved it. He was so proud. He would take the book to the local libraries.”

Johnson is particularly proud of I’m Old, Not Dead and what it means — he is proud of the work that led to it, and of the stories it tells. Even the title is pulled directly from real life. 

“When my agent died, after that I faced real agism,” he said. “Like whenever I would try to get another agent or editor.”

Johnson said one prospective agent was blunt. 

“She said ‘I just want to tell you I can’t represent your book,’” Johnson said. He asked her why — was it something about the book itself?

Her response: “I don’t know. I didn’t read it.”

Johnson asked how she could possibly reason that approach. 

“She said ‘I couldn’t bring it to my agency because they would wonder how many books you have left in you.’ I couldn’t believe she said that. She put it in an email too. So I wrote her back.”

Johnson’s book’s preface details his response: “Even I had to laugh as I pointed out to her that 1) I’m old, not dead; 2) unlike UFC boxers, writers become better as they age; 3) I’m still surfing [could she do that?]; and 4) I think what you just said is illegal.”

The preface also offers a deeper description of I’m Old, Not Dead.

“… although it would be inaccurate to call I’m Old, Not Dead a ‘last book,’ especially since I have a new collection of prose poems and a collaboration with an artist forthcoming, it is what you might call a ‘final reckoning,’ in the same what that ‘Of All That Ends’ by Günter Grass and ‘Roadside’by Czeslaw Milosz fit into that category. Both these collections involve aging writers examining their life-long thematic and stylistic obsessions and preoccupations…”

Johnson said he is a little frustrated the book was not picked up by a larger publisher, although he was quick to add that Blazevox Books did a stellar job with it. 

“It’s already submitted to awards, and maybe it gets something, but who knows… I don’t care — it got out,” he said.