Although I consider myself primarily a fantasy book writer, this year hasn't seen much in the way of novel writing for me. Instead, I had poetry on the mind. So I went with that rather than trying to force what obviously didn't want to emerge on the page. Which has led to the release of my second book of poetry, Upon Life's Journey (published October 15, 2024).
I had a lot of fun with this one, the poems written from shortly after the release of Dancing Words in April 2022 to mid-September 2024; about a year and a half. Separated into sections, I chose 5 'themes' to encompass my work: Origins & Space; Nature & Camping; Structured Poems; Life & Social Commentary; and Thought, Reality, & Stream of Consciousness.
Some of the poems are short (on our latest camping trip at the beginning of September of 2024, one of our members mistook the length of haikus, and inadvertently created what we called the 'Kevku', with a structure of 1 syllable, 3 syllables, 1 syllable [which I then also refined to make the 1 syllable words homophones], because it amused us), and some are multi-pages. Three of the longer poems originated for a fun contest called 'Literary Taxidermy', where writers are given the opening and closing lines of different literary works that they incorporate into the start and end of their own piece without changing the word order--yet everything in between is the author's voice. For the purposes of publication, I did later alter the wording of the intro and finale (after the contest had concluded) to avoid any plagiarism issues, so if you ever worry that I had something traumatic occur in my youth when reading The Ship in the Sea of Life, fear not; that opening and end is inspired by 'Manuscript Found in a Bottle' by Edgar Allan Poe.
[Hope for a Shattered Future was likewise taxidermized from the Langston Hughes poem 'As I Grew Older', as was Seek the Light.]
The Prime 53 poems in the structured section also originated from a poetry contest, spawning 12 poems over two contest periods. They have a specific rhyming structure and syllable count (inspired by prime numbers), a form created in 2019 by the editor of Press 53 poetry (check out www.press53.com/prime-53-poem-summer-challenge if you want any details on those). Everything else simply popped into my brain in one form or another along the way (a couple from listening to music or from just setting pen to paper to bring about some interesting stream of consciousness pieces).
I think the most important thing to remember when reading poetry (or at least, when reading my poetry) is that a poem means what you determine it means. I might have had some insights I wanted like to share, or some emotion or thought I hoped to bring to light, and I could certainly explain what a given topic meant to me (although there are some, especially some true stream of consciousness efforts, that simply wanted to exist, and I might struggle with their meaning too). But what you get out of a poem is what you get out of a poem; whatever thoughts, emotions, questions arise when you read my words, that's the point of the poem to you in that given moment. You are never wrong in whatever thought or emotion a poem inspires in you, even if it doesn't match what someone else feels or understands in their own interpretation. Yes, I can tell you what I meant, but the power of poetry, in my opinion, is in discovering how you interact with the words.
Can a poem ever gain sentience, or does it remain but "words birthed on a page, a structure that can only find life through the mind of another?" (from Sentience)
I had a lot of fun with this one, the poems written from shortly after the release of Dancing Words in April 2022 to mid-September 2024; about a year and a half. Separated into sections, I chose 5 'themes' to encompass my work: Origins & Space; Nature & Camping; Structured Poems; Life & Social Commentary; and Thought, Reality, & Stream of Consciousness.
Some of the poems are short (on our latest camping trip at the beginning of September of 2024, one of our members mistook the length of haikus, and inadvertently created what we called the 'Kevku', with a structure of 1 syllable, 3 syllables, 1 syllable [which I then also refined to make the 1 syllable words homophones], because it amused us), and some are multi-pages. Three of the longer poems originated for a fun contest called 'Literary Taxidermy', where writers are given the opening and closing lines of different literary works that they incorporate into the start and end of their own piece without changing the word order--yet everything in between is the author's voice. For the purposes of publication, I did later alter the wording of the intro and finale (after the contest had concluded) to avoid any plagiarism issues, so if you ever worry that I had something traumatic occur in my youth when reading The Ship in the Sea of Life, fear not; that opening and end is inspired by 'Manuscript Found in a Bottle' by Edgar Allan Poe.
[Hope for a Shattered Future was likewise taxidermized from the Langston Hughes poem 'As I Grew Older', as was Seek the Light.]
The Prime 53 poems in the structured section also originated from a poetry contest, spawning 12 poems over two contest periods. They have a specific rhyming structure and syllable count (inspired by prime numbers), a form created in 2019 by the editor of Press 53 poetry (check out www.press53.com/prime-53-poem-summer-challenge if you want any details on those). Everything else simply popped into my brain in one form or another along the way (a couple from listening to music or from just setting pen to paper to bring about some interesting stream of consciousness pieces).
I think the most important thing to remember when reading poetry (or at least, when reading my poetry) is that a poem means what you determine it means. I might have had some insights I wanted like to share, or some emotion or thought I hoped to bring to light, and I could certainly explain what a given topic meant to me (although there are some, especially some true stream of consciousness efforts, that simply wanted to exist, and I might struggle with their meaning too). But what you get out of a poem is what you get out of a poem; whatever thoughts, emotions, questions arise when you read my words, that's the point of the poem to you in that given moment. You are never wrong in whatever thought or emotion a poem inspires in you, even if it doesn't match what someone else feels or understands in their own interpretation. Yes, I can tell you what I meant, but the power of poetry, in my opinion, is in discovering how you interact with the words.
Can a poem ever gain sentience, or does it remain but "words birthed on a page, a structure that can only find life through the mind of another?" (from Sentience)
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