Patrick

About me

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I am a poet, fiction writer and creative writing teacher. For 35 years, I served as an inner-city parish pastor in the south Bronx, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. Much of my work reflects the struggle of life in those communities.

I have published two books of poetry “The Devouring Land” (link to book page) and “Quitting Time” (link to book page), and am working on a third.

My poetry, short stories and essays have been published in over 70 journals and anthologies, in the United States, the UK, Ireland and Israel.

I am also a fiction writer. My novella “Searching” was serialized in 33 issues of The Alley News, and its sequel “Returning” is running in the same newspaper. I was the founding editor of The Phoenix of Phillips, a literary magazine by and for the most diverse neighborhood in Minnesota.

Awards and Honors

  • Mentor Series in Poetry, Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis
  • Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board
  • Nominated twice for Pushcart Prizes
  • 1st Place, Lutheran Reformation 500th Anniversary Poetry Contest
  • Poetry and Fiction awards from Crossings Art Center, Alabama Writer’s Conclave, Philadelphia Stories, Bacopa Literary Review
  • Co-producer and part of writing team for “La Natividad” in collaboration with In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theater”
  • Lead writer and producer for Morrisania Youth on Fire Players “Christ is Born in the South Bronx”
  • Selected for The Vine Arts Center Gallery’s show: “Anguish and Hope”
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Teaching and Arts Administration

  • Writer in Residence, Roosevelt High School
  • Writer in Residence, Andersen K-8 School
  • Writing teacher and lecturer, St. Paul’s Home (senior apartments), Our Saviour’s Housing (shelter), Luther Seminary, St. Olaf College, Eastern and Susquehanna Universities, Young Leaders Program
  • Contributing writer, The Alley News
  • Founding Executive Director, South Bronx Ministry Neighborhood Development Corporation
  • Founding Executive Director, Centro Nueva Creación, Philadelphia
  • Co-Founder and first Executive Director, Semilla Center for Healing and the Arts, Minneapolis
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Invite Me!

I am available for readings, craft talks and workshops, and extended writing residencies. I have a special interest in connecting the written and spoken word with other art forms, and with the environment and communities of witness and hope.

I am fluent in Spanish, and have written grants for and consulted with a variety of arts and other non-profit organizations.

Contact me at: phcreate@gmail.com

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Publications

The Devouring Land

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An exploration and celebration of immigration, struggle and joy in the city, and the gift of water.

What others are saying

Patrick Hansel’s debut book of poems, The Devouring Land, is a necessary riposte to the heartless, deafening conceit of the moment. These poems succeed in carrying the burden of faith, loss and love into a darkness perhaps only poetry can breach. “That what we thought was curse/ was blessing.” Poetry that turns the heart inside out to reveal women half snakes, free trade as sacrifice of the innocent, toes that grow memories rooted among the worms. Beautiful, courageous, blessings sung into the void of our ever-shriveling moment.

Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet, Author of Failure and The God of Loneliness

With these beautifully crafted narratives, which are both spiritual and deeply visceral, Patrick Cabello Hansel creates a powerful litany exploring the limits and demands of faith and the struggle of bearing witness to the lives of the undocumented, disappeared, and marginalized; of all those on the run from poverty and war. In these poems the unseen and the dead step forwards, take back their voices and their names, and find a place to sing.

Jude Nutter, author of I Wish I Had a Heart Like Yours Walt Whitman

Signed copies, $15 plus $3 shipping (use Pay Pal or Venmo)
Or ask your independent bookstore to order you a copy from:
http://mainstreetragbookstore.com/product/the-devouring-land-patrick-cabello-hansel/

Quitting Time

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An homage to my father, who lived and loved through the trials and triumphs of the 20th century.

What others are saying

Recalling the best of poems about fathers by their sons—those of Roethke, Thomas, Hayden, Li-Young Lee—the poems here are about generations and the vantage that maturity allows us on the personal past. Quitting Time is a family story, a story we sense that Cabello Hansel needed to tell, in poems he felt compelled to write. That he wrote them with such grace and craft, such candor and openheartedness is to our delight. And also to our getting of wisdom, because we learn a great deal from this book—about the Dust Bowl, about the War, and about the comings and goings of commerce in a one-man barber shop in a factory town.

Richard Terrill, Minnesota Book Award Winner, Author of What Falls Away Is Always

These new poems by Patrick Hansel are all really one poem, a sequence that is at its heart a great tribute of a son’s love for his father unlike any I’ve read before. War, the Great Depression, homelessness, the hazards of farming, hair cutting and day work, this is the essential American immigrant story, a story of strife and rage and glory. “the eyes of the dead…will open like broken wings” — “And the earth remembers”. Yes, and so do poets, remember and seek “Justice, mercy, bread.” Just we all need now, Justice, mercy and bread. Amen.

Philip Schultz, Pulitzer Prize Winning Poet

I loved it. I don’t usually gobble down poetry but I completed the book in one day! Why, oh, why? Was it the Midwestern images of a hard-working and hard suffering man? The familiar ring of a person with deep feelings layered over the years and expressing them in physicality rather than words? The drip, drip, drip of small events that add up to the shape of a man?

This is a personal and beautiful story in poems, told by an adult son, of a father’s life and the hardships that shaped him. I so enjoyed reading it, reflecting on it and enjoying the imagery. It is thought provoking and beautifully written.

Anne Damon

Patrick Cabello Hansel has created more than a tribute to his father. It is a poetic love story; a biography of man who struggled and survived; a graphic journey through the ravages of the Depression; a brutal march though the fox holes of a World War; a blue collar insight of a barber eking out a living for his family. Patrick grabs you by your hand and by your emotions all the way to the final capstone poem. . .well worth the trip.

George Dahlman

Signed copies: $17, plus $3 shipping (use Pay Pal or Venmo)
Or order it from Bookshop here.

Buy both together and save

$30, plus $4.50 shipping in the U.S.