Writing in Sand

I grew up in Kellogg, Idaho USA and attended Idaho State University and Boise State University. I was born of an immigrant father from Camborne, Cornwall, England and a mother who grew up in upstate New York. Three generations of my family and I worked for the Bunker Hill Company mine in the Silver Valley of the Coeur d’ Alenes in North Idaho.  My family made mining a career, while I found summer employment that helped finance my college education. Bunker Hill was my working scholarship. I have worked as a teacher in public schools and a local community college, and as a bookseller. I live in Southeastern Idaho and continue to write.

This first published work is a collection of my poems from the last twenty-five years. At first, I kept writing without a goal of publishing. That kept me going for a long time–twenty-five years. Some of my early poems were about my immigrant father and his family from Cornwall, England coming to a mining community in North Idaho. I originally intended my early poems to be a tribute to my father’s entire mining career. To me, he was Superman without a cape. He was never more animated and energetic than when he was working on his ore train. He became a super charged younger man. But then, I fell in love with my craft. I wanted more and my writing grew.

Subsequent influences on my writing were the Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, and America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins. Neruda’s magic of transforming common household items, such as chairs, tables, plates, forks, and knives into objects of distinction and importance for his poetry subjects widened my lens for choosing subjects. I found narrative poems everywhere I looked in common items. Collins mesmerized me with his often-humorous narrative poetry. Common objects for him came to life with their own personalities and life lessons.

I’m excited about this publication of my first poetry collection. I look forward to promoting all things Poetry on this site. I hope you choose to return and learn with me. It will be a journey with a payload like my father’s ore train.