It’s meant to be internalized: Learn from life’s lessons. Don’t repeat the same energy-draining and futile cycles that put you back where you started every time. There’s a different way. Don’t resist life which can seem tumultuous on the surface and in the external, and don’t be a slave to voices of fear posing as you in your thoughts to guide you. Don’t stay in your comfy shallow end where you are barely alive. Plunge into the deep waters i.e. Life to find the peace beneath the chaos, exposing the lies on the surface. The chaos will pass over you like a wave you dive beneath. It’s hard to swim out into the water when you try to run through breaking waves or jump over them. Dive underneath them and let them pass over you. As a metaphor for life, when you do this, life doesn’t have to be such a struggle. As the apostle Paul said “But none of these things (his troubles) move me .”
He’d had an epiphany. The bolt of lightening striking down a water spout – which is a terrifying sight- a tornado reaching from the ocean to the skies is symbolic of a channel. I put “Lightening Rod” in parenthesis because the subject in the poem gets hit with a powerful realization from beyond. He becomes conducive to getting hit with a powerful charge of Light when he swims into the deep waters fearlessly.
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
However they want. If they really get it, and each section deals with different internal struggles, that’s awesome. Most people won’t, but some part may speak truth to them whether they totally understand why or not. It’s a contemplative poem, meant to be internalized. Even a poet, speaking for myself, doesn’t always know what their poems ultimately mean, nor does the wisdom in their poems reflect their ability to be an expert at practicing what comes through in the process. So I’m as much a contemplating reader as anyone else. I just happen to be the channel this one came through.
How long have you been writing poetry?
Everyone writes poems in class when they are children. I was very good at it as far as winning best in class or being sent to some conference when forced by a teacher to write it. I only use it now when I am procrastinating writing my novel or as a warm up to writing it. I am speaking to people who think you have to be some bookish kid who wrote in journals from the time they were in diapers to pursue writing. If it’s a calling it’s a calling. If you have talent you have talent. We can a hone our talents for sure.
I never did any of that with poetry, though a novel is a different animal which requires help and guidance. A nagging voice to write never left me and so I finally decided to shut the voice up and pursue it. I don’t work at it (poetry) it’s just something that comes very easily to me. I don’t put any effort into becoming a master poet. Some people can paint without effort or play the piano brilliantly without formal lessons or practice. I can just do this for reasons I can’t explain. It’s natural.
Do you have a favorite poet?
Honestly I don’t read a lot of it. My life philosophies are very similar to Coleridge and Emerson. I love Kubla Khan though I haven’t a clue what it means and neither does anyone else. It just says something true I can’t quite grasp. And I love that. It hits me. Whoever truly wrote the Emerald Tablet, that is an epic deep poem someone could spend a lifetime studying. Isaac Newton and many others transcribed that thing. It resonates with Truth.
And let’s not forget music. Pink Floyd, especially for me, wrote beautiful and contemplative lyrics. Philosophical. Bob Dylan is a poet. The ideas in lyrics and the beat and melody of a song often directly influence poems like this. Without a particular Pink Floyd song, I wouldn’t have written this poem. I sort of spun it off tangentially from one word of a song. So don’t forget the lyricists who are poets and the musicians who they are in synch with. A lop of rappers are amazing poets as well.
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
Sounded fun. I saw that WILDSound would accept poems for free, they’ve written phenomenal reviews for a short screenplay of mine “Cuckold Picasso” which is a short film on the festival circuit doing quite well. I was curious to see how well I measured up with others who submit poems. I have a confidence, not a cockiness, about writing skills. I was testing their validity haha.
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
I’m revising my first novel. I wrote the 128k word first draft in ten months last year. I’ve written a short film script (it’s a film now) and I will write a feature film based on the novel when I’m finished with it. And yes, I used my poetry in the short film which I did not expect to do. And I love that, and they are the best lines in the film. It’s not a short film thats a poem reading. I worked a couple lines into the dialogue and it adds a powerful creepy element to a disturbing scene.
What is your passion in life?
Seek out and do that which is a little scary for me. I want to connect with people through my talents as a writer, poet and filmmaker. To communicate things that resonate universally. I want to connect to the Almighty. Last year, writing my manuscript, I realized that writing brought me closer to God. My novel is very dark, my short film is dark. But there is always a light there. Writing a novel involves a lot of trust especially when you’ve never done it. Staring at a blank screen and trusting that something will come through is critical. So it’s spiritual for me, even if I’m writing about horribly violent things. Things I’m dragging into the light subconsciously then consciously. Poetry is very much like that.
I’m not the source of any of it, it’s the truth. The best thing for me is to stay very humble and grateful when I get 500 pages when I wasn’t sure if I could write 50. Once the ego gets in the way, and I start thinking it’s me, I’m toast. That’s a personal philosophy. That’s when people experience writers’ block. I feel no pressure because my well-spring of creativity is eternal. Humility and gratitude are the keys.
So in life it’s connection (human and spiritual) and a strong desire to stretch the boundaries of my God-given talents. He planted the seeds. It’s my job to listen and act on my instincts. The little voice that tells us what to do. We need to listen to our gut more than our heads. Poetry helps me do that because it is very impulsive and I never set out to make some statement. I just write a line that is unrehearsed. Very simple. That it builds from there. The line doesn’t have to make sense either.
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
I want them to feel the rythms
and emotions of the poem as its a beautiful description of love and sentiments.
How long have you been writing poetry?
A year and half.
Do you have a favorite poet?
William Wordsworth and
William Shakespeare etc.
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
I believe that WILDsound is a very good platform for all of us, as every poem can be converted to a beautiful song so it would be so nice to see it as through.
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
I’d like for them to want it to be sung or put to music.
How long have you been writing poetry?
.Since I was nine years old.
Do you have a favorite poet?
Emily Dickinson/ee cummings
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
My script entry had its chops busted and was refused for performance, so I thought I would try a poem.
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
I write scripts but am probably going to take all the scripts I have written and turn them into or back in to short stories since they don’t seem to impress anyone.
What is your passion in life?
To be paid regularly for fiction I write. I would say writing but I am going to write no matter what, if it isn’t excepted, if it isn’t liked so maybe my passion is more like a goal.
‘Rogue Wave’ is about the way life and stress makes us feel, especially when things build up and
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
I really hope that people will think about the imagery and be able to relate to the feelings and ideas that I’ve expressed.
How long have you been writing poetry?
I’ve been writing all my life, but I’ve taken my poetry really seriously for about three years now.
Do you have a favorite poet?
I like the work of many different poets and writers. My favourite poems of all time are probably Tennyson’s ‘The Lady of Shalott’ and Alfred Noyes’ ‘The Highwayman’.
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
I stumbled across the Festival for Poetry site and submitted one of my poems. After browsing around for a while, I decided that having my poetry performed might be a good way to reach a new audience and make my poetry more accessible.
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
I have published a collection of poetry called ‘Leaf’ and a collection of short stories called ‘New Horizons’. Both are available on Amazon and iBooks.
I also wrote a play called ‘The Shakespeare Omelette’ for my students to perform, and both they and the audience enjoyed it, so I have self-published that, too.
What is your passion in life?
I really want to encourage people to see things from a different perspective than their own, or to consider different possibilities that they might not otherwise have done.
I do that through my writing, but also through my teaching and the stage productions with which I’m involved.
The theme of my poem is compassion: I looked at a children photo that taught the camera was a weapon and stood up her arms! (the photo is attached below)
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
Well, they’ll respond better if the photo comes with the poem print, but anyway the poem expresses a feeling of the way a person really wants to show itself to someone else!
How long have you been writing poetry?
I’ve been writing poems since my teen age
Do you have a favorite poet?
In the english literature Yeats and Eliot, in Spain Espanca and Lorca, in Chile Neruda, in Brazil Drummond and Moraes
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
I saw tweets of the festival, I’ve read some poems published and decided to submit
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
Yes, I write also shot stories, chronicles and novels
The effects of the NATO war on Syria on children, and on planet earth. Refugees, heartbreak, death, exploitation of resources, the death of the sea
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
I would like them to feel saddened, and appalled at the people who engineer these wars that are destroying humanity and our planet for the benefit of a few oil companies. I would like them to commit to world peace by any means necessary.
How long have you been writing poetry?
For a looong time.
Do you have a favorite poet?
I have several favourite poets…in English, Blake, Shelley…in Spanish Lorca, Machado…in Catalan Miquel Martí Pol, Vicent Andrés Estellès…
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
I am a professional actor and a poet. Everyone I have read this poem I have seen people have become quite emotional, I am curious it sounds in another person’s lips…
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
I write and have published plays, essays and journalistic articles.
What is your passion in life?
My passion is theatre, as an actor, a voice actor, a playwright, a director, a professor, and a researcher…My other passion is travelling, never as a tourist, always to contribute something, usually something artistic.
How would you like people to respond when they read or watch your poetry reading?
I would like people to respond by posting their comments to the poetry reading by telling the viewers the things they loved or loved doing as children.
How long have you been writing poetry?
Less than a year.
Do you have a favorite poet?
No.
What influenced you to submit to WILDsound and have your poetry performed by a professional actor?
I was influenced to have my poetry performed by a professional actor so as to achieve visability with the viewers of wildsound and to promote my poetry.
Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?
Yes. Movie scripts, short stories, fairy tales, poetry.
A tiny mound of flesh, as harmless as the sparrow’s egg
forged out of love or lust
the deed was done and so I came to be.
In my pulsing cocoon I lay
an unknown visitor devoid of sight, flight or fight.
Soon my cocoon of shelter will change in readiness for my arrival
and I am looking forward to my birthday
as with ecstasy I long to gaze upon the faces
of those whose loins I was forged out of.
I hear voices and a gruff voice says “stigma”
I wonder if it is my mother’s name or my fathers’.
Too many voices but it seems we are going to see the doctor.
My infantile mind says that must be my father’s name
but why does Stigma and Doctor seem to me an unusual combination?
Though I can’t feel, each part of me fears this trip.
Even though I am yet to meet these strangers I hear
My little feet try to break the barrier between my world and theirs
and yet my hands stay folded unwilling to stretch out and help.
I was forcefully ripped and torn apart
hacked to pieces by one whose honorable name
is engraved on a metal plate somewhere on a hospital door
In my prime, gone before my time
bud in flame, nipped in society’s name
A genius waiting to be unveiled turned voice of an aborted future.
The deed that made me ashen cold now lies somewhere in a plastic bin,
sent to a distant land by the hands of those who forged me
never to return from my errand.
My passing was celebrated with two cups of tea
and a smile of congratulation from Doctor to Stigma.
Before my ears were gone, I heard them call me fetus and
wish me a happy birthday.
My name is Fetus, I am sixteen weeks old…
How soon they forget me, their nameless, faceless, lifeless child.
But a voice says to me, can a woman forget her sucking child
that she should not have compassion on the child of her womb?
Yes, they may forget, yet will I not forget you.
POETRY FESTIVAL. Submit to site for FREE. Submit for actor performance. Submit poem to be made into film. 