Advice & How To General Nonfiction Christian Nonfiction Business Poetry BIOGRAPHY
1. Introduction
I have been writing poetry since I was a small boy, I remember scribbling short poems onto desks when I was in grade three. And poetry has therefore been my favorite genre since my earliest time in school. I have been juggling it as long as I can remember, scribbling something onto a piece of paper was one of my favorite past times, in this way, I was able to document some of the little things that I experienced in my daily life in short poems.
I have been reading poetry since the time when I was a toddler, over the years, I have gone through thousands of classic tittles. I am not sure if there is any major classic book that I haven't gone through the pages. by the time I graduated high school, I was an avid reader of everything trendy and interesting, only a few years ago did I start to believe that I can publish great poetry as well. I may not be the best author in the world. but I have something that people of all ages and social class can truly enjoy.
2. My First Publication
I wrote my first book “MEDIA MONER” during the last year of my high school. This book was inspired by the way mainstream news media outlets were at the time, they were the biggest and only source of news at the time, social media was still in its infancy stage and was just getting its footing. Back then in the early 2000s watching news, either local or international was a very stressful experience. After watching the evening news, I would go to bed tired, exhausted and very stressed, sometimes the kind of information given in the news would fill my heart with anxiety. Writing poetry was one of the best ways to relieve that stress, especially those that come from news reports.
3. Literary Friends.
I have had friends, whom I say were great story tellers. In our small town, life was really good, internet wasn’t everywhere yet, and face to face communications were the norm. you could sit with someone for hours on as they tell you one story after another. I didn’t know how to tell good stories at the time but they inspired me to give a try.
My old time friends Jiji and Kaki are the two fellows that have greatly influenced my writing and life at large, when you hear them speak you are led to think that they know everything, Jiji was very good at debates, I don’t remember a single day when he lost a contest. Kaki on the other hand was a great story teller, I don’t know where he got his stories from, we simply enjoyed them, we never cared about his sources either, he had lots of them too. One thing I loved about this little fellow was that I never got bored around him. He would flood your ears with thousands of stories at a time and there is no single moment when he will tell you the same story twice. Jiji was somehow a fanatic. When there is a discussion then individuals get stuck at a point where nobody has any further information, all are ignorant, that’s when he jumps onto the dance floor, claiming he knows it all, I have never met anyone who loved arguments more than Jiji, even a simple discussion he would turn it into an argument. He had a strange way of convincing people to believe his claims, even though you had with you solid facts that proved him otherwise, you still couldn’t beat him.
4. Inspiration And Favorite Books.
I have always been fascinated by the English language, first the grammar and later on literature in high school. English was my favorite subject in school and I got a straight As in the final tests. It was one of the subjects in which I passed with flying colors.
One of my best gifts was when my brother gave me a copy of the oxford English dictionary as a Christmas present. It was brand new and had a Compact Disk attached to the inside.
After receiving the gift, I immediately started spending time reading through the pages of this book and one day my friends found me reading the dictionary and were shocked. “Are you really OK?” They asked me. “You are not supposed to read a dictionary like a story book, but instead read other books and use the dictionary to look up the Meaning of the words that you don’t understand yet.”
My classmates in high school did not understand why I spent some of my free time reading just the dictionary, “you are crazy,” they would say, what they didn’t know was that in the dictionary, I mean the original printed Text, There are example sentences, cross references, related words, phrasal verbs, idioms, proverbs, figures of speech and so much more literary stuff & content placed beside the words that comes with the explanation of meaning of a word on any given page of a dictionary. It’s not just describing what the word is about, but a web of content on how the word has been used so far in the past during the growth and development of the English language. That rich information is a goldmine for an aspiring poet. Although I didn’t know at the time, I just felt drawn to perusing the pages of the Big big Book, the dictionary is one of the most influential books in my poetic career.
5. Favorite Hangout Places
(I) Stationery Section
- I used to wonder why the stationery section was my favorite section inside the supermarkets. Every time I went into supermarkets with my parents, I would find myself wandering off into the stationery section. I would walk aimlessly across the aisle, not knowing what to do or what exactly I was looking for. I would pass through the same section multiple times and still never getting bored.
(II)Libraries
Books are my favorite past time. I would rather sit down and peruse a good book than to go out and take a walk in the park. I have read many works of classics since childhood, which consists the popular classics we all know today, I have read many from an early age, some of my favorite authors are Leo Tolstoy and Roald Dahl.
When I joined college, it felt overwhelming for me, I had moved to a mega city, a place that is so different from my little hometown, which I had grown up in. the place appeared to me so chaotic. Campus life overwhelmed me. So I sought refuge in the university library. I spent most of my free time there, weekdays and weekends. I remember a time when one of my best friends got so annoyed with me as he said, “what exactly are you doing in the library?” even when we are out in the school compound having some fun. We call you to join us, but you tell us that you are in the library. What exactly do you do over there?” They were really baffled, because every time they kept calling me, they found me in the library. So they gave up on me. The school library saved me so much negative influence and bad company that could have done its damage on my life and career. I pinned the souls of my shoes to the library floor because I felt it was the safest place in the world for me to spend my free time and also to enjoy my leisure to the fullest.
6. Series Overview
As you can see the series covers many topics and many subject fields which includes science and technology, healthcare, love and romantic relationships, humor and comedy, travel and adventure, business and economics, literary works and so much more.
However I don’t present myself as an expert in any of those fields but instead I use poetry to describe difficult to understand topics or to make boring topics more interesting for readers to explore and not just think of them as another mind boggling jargon.
And I am going to end with this favorite poem which I wrote a while back.
Let me tell you a story, it goes like this…
“Once upon a time there lived a rat and a cat, they were very good friends, they lived happily in their wooden shack, they shared everything between themselves, when one of them got some food, he would share it with the other. One day the rat did something very bad, he annoyed the cat who then out of rage slapped him very hard, the rat was seriously injured by the blow and then died. That’s the end of my story…”
Yarn spinning is a skill that is deeply ingrained in our blood, we are descended from a long line of great story tellers, there is no story we don’t know how to tell, we always find time to amaze our audiences with great tales, both the contemporary and the legends of the old... |
