Books
Waiting to Deliver
314 pages
Published March 17, 2022
Using poetry, prose, and photography, Waiting to Deliver tells the story of a young man’s journey into the world of commercial fishing for salmon on the waters of Cook Inlet, Alaska. Starting as a 27-year-old greenhorn schoolteacher from Indiana, Patrick Dixon worked as a deckhand for two seasons before buying his own boat and permit. Through a series of missteps inspired by ignorance, inexperience, and bad luck, he stumbles through twenty years of learning how to survive the dangers inherent in working on the water, nursing a perpetual sinking boat, staying afloat financially, and becoming a member of a fishing community.
Mending Holes
94 pages
Published July 1, 2025
Patrick Dixon's first full-length book of poetry, 'Mending Holes' (MoonPath Press), is a collection of poems inspired by his 20 years working as a commercial salmon fisherman on Cook Inlet, Alaska. From his two years spent as a deckhand to his inexperience as a skipper fishing a leaky wood boat to finally learning how to best catch the sockeye salmon he chased as they made their way up the inlet, these poems serve as a container for larger issues such as coming of age, finding knowledge, the frustration of inexperience, the timeless beauty and danger of the sea, and the trials of growing old and leaving what you loved.
Praise for Mending Holes
Patrick Dixon conjures his past life as an Alaskan fisherman with his considerable poetic and storytelling gifts and a capacious memory for the perfect detail. That world's thrills, exhaustion, danger, jonesing, friendships, boats, whiff of diesel layered over fish, and orange pink sunsets all feel close enough to touch. So does the push and pull of yearning, fear, and wonder that remain. This is a beautiful account of an old life lived completely in the crystalline present, and the cost and reward of giving it up in time.
Kathleen Flenniken, former Washington state Poet Laureate and author of Plume and Post Romantic
Patrick Dixon, with decades of commercial salmon fishing behind him, has convincingly captured the reality of his time and place—the smells of fish, the light at the end of a day, wooden boats moldering on the beach, nets full of fish and empty nets holding the next year’s hopes, the greenhorn he was, the old man of memories. He asks, late in this alternately heart-stopping and heart-warming collection, “How did I get to be so lucky?” We are all lucky that Patrick has given us such an intimate, honest, literate look into his examined life.
Nancy Lord, author of Fishcamp and Beluga Days
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Thank you for your interest in my books.
Mending Holes
Poetry
Waiting to Deliver
A Memoir