George Clowers
I read something, a Frost poem perhaps, at the age of eleven, and thought, “I want to write something that affects others the way I was affected.” The music I heard at home and my mother and her sisters singing to her piano playing set off a desire to write what I was seeing and feeling. Little did I know a poet was just waiting to be given expression. In reciting an “I Am a Negro” essay and being called to recite it often, that helped merge the listener to the recorder.
Throughout having a poem rejected as not being my own by an eighth grade teacher, being mentored by an English author one summer, and running around with the wrong crowd for a few years, the story always followed me: the story of what people liked to do.
As kids we sat around telling bad jokes and listened as the older folks debated the issues of the day. In my turn it was to either recite the ‘songs’, or capture the essence of what was being said, in poetic fashion.
It is the same today as I’ve been able to publish a novel, a novella, a poetry collection, and a short story. The fifty-year journey is completed. We’ll see what happens going forward.