Our poetic journey

I've often been asked by the media to describe our poetic journey and how Dave and I differ as poets. 

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A professional drummer/percussionist and educator, Dave has collaborated on many songs that later led to him writing lyrics of his own. Most of his poems in this book were in fact initially written as song lyrics, thus the presence of repeating choruses though out. Actually it was Dave who first sparked the idea for us to walk this path we tread today – he decided to take a writer’s course to learn what he might be able to do with his short stories that he has compiled over the years. Most of those stories have remained unpublished to this day due to other projects taking precedence, but Dave plans to release some in the near future. His poem “UFO Dream” is the theme of one of his soon-to-be novels that he has been working on.

I began writing poetry as a teenager, which allowed me to express the issues and emotions from a broken home, abusive childhood and being on my own at 13-years old. Through poetry she learned how to see beyond these hurts and discover a world outside of my own mind, where I learned that my life really did have value and that I had a purpose to fulfill. I discovered that I am quite passionate about poetry and continue to write in this genre between marketing our books and working on new manuscripts.

 

Poetry was the beginning of my writing career, but it also provided a way for me to release the coveted emotions that I could not, would not release. You see, I could not share myself really with others; I didn’t know myself, so how could others ever really know me? Being alone much of my childhood and youth, I learned from observing and poetry became a way of recording and analyzing my interpretations of what I saw. Writing poetry allowed me to understand the past, stages of angst or strife, and how I fit into this world.

I grew up in an abusive, broken home with no fixed address and because of this I had a lot of rage, self-hate and confusion going on in my mind. The only thing that kept me sane and functioning in society was the power of poetry. I would write and write, and then burn it so that no one would ever know. Over time though I began to keep some of the bits of torn paper, scraps of napkins… these were kept in boxes or in binders. The first time a visitor found and read one of these, well - that really upset me, but their response actually became a validation of the writing. Eventually I was able to show them to others who would then encourage me to enter contests and query publications. After winning a few awards, I was prompted by readers to tell my story with a book.

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When I began the developing the manuscript for Towards Understanding in 2003-'04 I was intimidated by the sheer mass of work that needed to be gone through. In fact, there were over 300 poems written on loose-leaf pages – some were definitely not fit for others to see and were easily eliminated, others needed some tweaking. 

Trepidation set in once the release date was announced, though. The scariest notion is that we cannot predict how any one reader will interpret our work the way it was meant. 

Poetry is an internal craft, a private craft of therapy and recordings of observations on life. Yet, this genre also requires a slightly different marketing approach – like reading the poems on live radio, in front of groups of people, and talk about the past. This required some practice, and repetition certainly built confidence over time – but what inspires me to continue promoting this book is hearing how much my story helps others.

The process of writing poetry, for me, is a matter of inspiration. I may not write for months and months – when all of a sudden a poem rises out off my chest and I can hardly get the pen to move fast enough to record the phrases in time. It is an amazing process – they just seem to come out all at once. The thoughts are so sudden and violent that I am often left with just snippets of what I heard in my head, but I keep them anyway.

I have returned to poetry time and time again – pouring out the grief from losing beloved pets, expressing thoughts on society, changing relationships, and dealing with my parents’ suicide. I’ve learned to use poetry to express humor, love and joy as well. This art-form of expression has been one of the greatest joys in my life - to play with words, painting with them, using new and old styles, techniques and rhythmic patterns.

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