About

Butchart Gardens, Victoria, BC, Summer 2009. Photo by E. Nesdoly

If writers were musicians, poets would not be the rock stars, the pop icons or the members of the symphony orchestra. In fact I doubt they’d even rate as mainstream among readers as jazz does among listeners. They’re pretty much to writing what indie bands are to music – autonomous, little known, more focused on producing their content than becoming wealthy or famous.

Despite the generally cold shoulder of readers, we poets keep writing anyway because we love poetry and get some kind of strange fulfillment producing more of it (Billy Collins says it so well).

For me poetry writing has flowed out of journaling. Sheila Bender’s book Writing Personal Poetry introduced me to contemporary verse.

Canadian poet Nathan Harms and webmaster of Utmost Christian Writers website has been my mentor. Without his encouragement I would have given up writing poetry ages ago – I think. Although the yen to “build for the epiphanies of my life / little piles of words” would probably persist even if I were in solitary confinement and reduced to a pencil stub and the backs of envelopes.

I hope you enjoy the poems and photos I’ve posted here. A few of the poems have been published elsewhere before, but most are on their first outing.

If you like them a lot you can get more of the same in my books (Calendar and Family Reunion). See the “Books” tab for ordering and downloading information.

Happy reading – and thank you so much for coming by.

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