My father was truly one of the last of the Renaissance men. He was an accomplished artist and a musician who could play multiple instruments with perfection. He was brilliant at mathematics and extremely well-read; he could recite Shakespearean sonnets from memory right up until the day he passed away. On the one hand, this was very intimidating; with my struggles at school, I felt that I was a great disappointment to him. However, on a more positive side, he exposed me to poetry, philosophy, psychology, music, art, and the great works of English literature. In this regard, he had a profound effect on my becoming a writer of poetry.

No, they might read too much into it. There is a difference between reading and studying a poem. If you are doing a critical analysis, if your purpose is to deconstruct the poem, then studying the life and times of the writer could be of some import. However, I do think that a lot of the beauty, a lot of the enjoyment of experiencing a poem, becomes lost when you dissect it too much.

I really enjoy experimenting with poetic ambiguity, enjambment, symbolism, imagery and metaphors. I employ punctuation sparingly; consequently, a line can be read in multiple ways. I think it invites deeper engagement and reflection from the reader.

I also don’t like titles; I believe that they take away from a reader’s participation in a poem. Titles are writer-centric; “this is where I want you to go; this is what I want you to see.”

I want to challenge the reader to delve into the poem more deeply and to consider different perspectives and meanings. I strive to encourage readers to explore the poem through their own personal experiences and feelings. What is the poem saying to them, not what does the poet want them to see specifically?

One of my readers said, “It’s a little book that takes a long time to read.” This meets one of my objectives; I don’t want the reader to sit down and finish the book all in one go. I am hoping they will connect or relate somehow with what’s been written and drift off into their own nostalgia, only to realize after 5, 10, 20 minutes that they have stopped reading.

For the most part, my poems tend to explore the human condition and themes of love, loss, disappointment, and death. I like to explore these themes, but I prefer to leave the reader unsettled, with conflicts unresolved. There is no denouement. I just paint a picture, describe a scene, and chisel out fragments of moments in life, which the reader is left to reflect upon.

My poetic influences are rather wide-ranging, extending from the Romantic era to Modernist and Contemporary poetry. The works of T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, and Edgar Allen Poe, alongside Sylvia Plath and Charles Bukowski, have all left their mark. The most profound influence, though, the one that really motivated me to want to seriously write poems, was Leonard Cohen.

Finding alone time and a quiet place to wonder about things undisturbed!

I need to be in a particular frame of mind; I have to enter my world; once I am in this world, I don’t enjoy being interrupted or pulled out. It is hard to return to where I was if something obtrudes into my thoughts. I can spend hours there, spelunking through mind caves.