*Shortlisted for the 2012 ReLit Award for Poetry The Ditch Was Lit Like This is Sean Johnston’s return to the ancestral and poetic roots that have shaped his language and consciousness. Structured in five sections, the work interplays the convergence of memory and personal history. Johnston’s movements to establish roots through his use of the anecdotal, unexpected, and profound are both wise and revealing. Johnston’s poetry strives for a kind of minimalism in which the written word leads the reader to discovery.