Yes, I admit it. I’m a frustrated poet. (Isn’t everyone?) I’ve been writing to some degree for most of my life, but around 1999 I started getting serious about it, and took a creative writing course at Denison University with Khaled Mattawa as the professor. Since then, I’ve also studied with Roy Bently, David Baker and Ann Townsend, and with the Salon writing and critiquing group, sponsored by Pudding House Innovative Writer’s Programs.
I’ve had a few publications in some print and on-line journals, including, After Hours II, the Millennium Papers, Lunarosity, and in a Chapbook collection of Salon Poets, Whatever House We Come From, published by Pudding House. In 2011, Pudding House Press accepted my chapbook, After Enough Time, for publication.
For Steven Smith, Wherever He May Be.
I wrote this poem concerning an event that really happened to me, pretty much the way it’s described here. The event in question happened some 14 years before I actually wrote it, but when I did, it all came out at once in the space of less than an hour. I like to say it took me an hour and fourteen years to write it. Music for this exists.
Coffee to Go
Another poem inspired by a traumatic event in my life. I got up one morning and there was NO COFFEE! My wife, Rochelle Volen-Smith, shares authorship on this one. She came up with the chorus and part of the first verse. This one is much more light hearted than my usual output. Music for this exists.
Sharp Gray Reality
This started out as a single sentence poem that I wrote for a Khaled Mattawa’s creative writing class, which I took at Denison Univerisity in Fall of 1999. It’s basically an amalgam of several experiences I have had in hospitals. This one is included in my chapbook, After Enough Time.
Alexander’s Time Machine
Yeah, I’m geting older. Friends have moved on. That’s what happens if you live long enough… This one is included in my chapbook, After Enough Time.
Stuff
Dedicated to all you packrats out there, but one in particular.
Battle
Anyone out there ever get stage fright? I do. I sometimes end my readings with this one.
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