What:
In high school, I played basketball and had a cheerleader girlfriend. During practice one day, I was injured—calcium deposit, water-on-the-knee and a torn ligament, and the doctors put me in a cast for six months. Once I was no longer a basketball star, the girlfriend dropped me. That’s what started me on my writing path. I wrote god-awful love poems to this girl for months because I couldn’t deal with my broken heart through sports. After a while, I found I liked this way of expressing my sadness, my despair, my anger and, eventually, my joy. It was freeing.
My first poem was published when I was nineteen, a sophomore at Western Michigan University. Since then, poetry has been my “go-to” response to most experiences in my life. I have ventured into writing one-act plays, poetry’s second cousin. I think of poetry as an introvert—quiet, silent, happy to be alone and a play as the extrovert—loud, outgoing, the life of the party. They are clearly related, both oral art forms. When I write a play, I use the tools of the poet (creating interesting, condensed dialogue), but add the one thing every poet craves: an audience. It’s such a rush to see your work performed and your words spoken by actors while you sit in the audience and watch!
Why:
Like most writers, I write to stay sane, to make sense of the world and my small part in it and to express my feelings, experiences and thoughts through words and images. Writing is a miraculous activity. Through mere ink marks on a piece of paper (or lines on a computer), a writer can make someone laugh or cry, experience fear or excitement, or shake a person to the core to help them feel again. And that is what I want in a poem: to not only amaze the reader with images and language, but to reach in their heart and shake it until they feel more alive and present in the world. I want them to feel the poem with their whole body.
Every year, I have a spiritual experience where I pull out a book by John Woods (my former teacher) and read aloud his poem “Striking the Earth.” The poem moves me intellectually, emotionally, and physically. I am a different person after reading it, reborn, to use religious language. That’s what I want my poems to do, and I keep writing with the hope that, one day, I can make that happen.
How:
My writing process is sporadic, at best. I find quiet bits of time here and there during the week to sit with pen and paper. Often, I read first to get inspired; anything by James Tate pricks my creative spirit. Or I look through my notes for quotes, facts, conversations, questions to write about. Recently, I read in Harper’s magazine that sixty percent of “Americans aged 18 to 25 feel extremely lonely nearly all of the time.” The poet in me asks why? What is causing this? Using that quote as an epigram, I write to explore that fact, to ponder the reasons, and hopefully, to discover intriguing ideas about the issue. It’s pure speculation, but isn’t that what every poem is—a voice hoping to capture a truth? If I’m lucky, the poem surprises me and the reader. If I’m unlucky, I chalk it up to practice and forgive myself. As John Ciardi once said, “failure …is the poet’s only real business. The one hope is for a better and better failure.”
My most recent book, Alive in Your Skin While You Still Own It, is an eclectic gathering of poems. In fact, ten of the poems in the book are over forty years old (I found them cleaning out my office). I’ve always had trouble writing thematically, so this book is assembled in three broad sections: Nothing Personal, Between You and Me, and A Beautiful End. Now that I consider it, I guess all of my poems fall into one of those categories.
Bio:
David James has published six books, six chapbooks, and has had more than thirty of his one-act plays produced in the U.S. and Ireland. His second book, She Dances Like Mussolini, won the 2010 Next Generation Indie book award. He has taught writing at Oakland Community College for over twenty years. He can be reached at jamesfam3 (at) charter (dot) net.
Links:
Alive in Your Skin While You Still Own It, Kelsay Books, 2022
Wiping Stars from Your Sleeves, Shanti Arts Press, 2021
Nail Yourself into Bliss, Kelsay Books, 2019
A Gem of Truth, Main Street Rag, 2019
Thank you for visiting!
Linda K. Sienkiewicz is a writer, poet, and artist.
Learn more about her multi-award winning novel, In the Context of Love.
Learn more about her picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab.
Learn more about her poetry chapbook, Security
See LinkTree for all her social media links.