Dear Whispers’ Family,
It is an honor to work with my co-editors Inge Wesdijk (Daginne Aignend) and Jack Horne. The
positive feedback I get from contributors that work with them is a joy. I
proposed a short interview for readers and writers to get to know them a bit
better. It is a pleasure to share their
thoughts with you.
Please take time to thank them as without their commitment
to our online journal, Whispers would
cease to be. Inge and Jack, you are talented and insightful writers and
editors. It is a gift to be able to work
with you.
Blessings to all,
Karen O’Leary
Whispers’ Editor
I live in a small village in the province Groningen which is
situated North-East in the Netherlands. When I look out the window of my
small apartment, I see the cows in the meadow. It's quiet and that's the
way I like it. When I need some change of scenery, I stay with my friend for a
while.
I started to write as a teenager to express my feelings, I
had a diary and sometimes a poem popped up. I always liked it to play with
language in a humorous way and wrote a lot of Dutch limericks which I
sadly lost. About 6 years ago, I started to write in English. I felt I wanted
to share my words and would reach a broader readership this way. At first, I
wrote all rhymed poems about my feelings, but my poetry has evolved from
describing the beauty of nature to more critical poems, all in free verse
nowadays. Sometimes I like to write
special poetry forms but mostly it restricts my spontaneity because I have to
think too much about syllables, subjects etc. My best poems are the spontaneous
ones.
It has become a part of my life. When I don't write for a
while I get restless as if something has to come out. Sure, I have these
moments that I don't have the slightest idea what I should write about. The
prompt that works for me is to take two sentences, each from different pages
from a book as a basis for a poem.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Where are you living? Can you tell readers the assets
of living in your current community?
I live in Plymouth, Devon (South West England).
Plymouth is famous for its Drake & Pilgrim Fathers/Mayflower connections, but
I live about 5 miles from the sea. Where we live is fairly close to the moors.
In fact, my current workplace is on the threshold of Dartmoor. From my
bedroom window, I can see hundreds of trees in the nearby woods - I
often sit here at my desk & enjoy happy memories of walking our
dogs, Pads & Nero...many years ago.
When did you start writing poetry and why?
As a youngster, I enjoyed writing limericks, but it
wasn't until I was around 11 & fell in love for the first time (with a girl
in my class at school) that I felt the need to write serious poetry. I
poured out my feelings for her in my secret notebook but was too shy to
ever let Suzanne read any of my ramblings. (Maybe that was just as
well...) Years later, I realised that ladies usually respond very
favourably to poetry & I wrote sonnets for several women, who had stolen my
heart. I also found that poetry can be a catharsis & was helped enormously
by writing poems during bad times of my life - my gran & dad
died of cancer; my wife left me for someone whom she'd met on the
internet; I eventually met another lady, but the relationship was very
short-lived... Well, no one's life is all sunshine & no rain - as someone
once said, we need rain to see rainbows - but some of those poems were the most
powerful I've ever written.
What drives your passion for writing poetry today?
Sometimes, my muse just doesn't want to work! At times like
that, I read my favourite poems - Frost's, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy
Evening”, Shakespeare's “Sonnet 29”, Wordsworth's “I Wandered Lonely as a
Cloud”, Carol Ann Duffy's “Valentine”, Spike Milligan's “A Silly Poem” - &
by the time I'm halfway through reading those, my muse is
positively champing at the bit. (When I want to write prose, I always read
Susan Hill's “The Woman in Black” & that has the same effect!) When my muse
is active, I find I have ideas dancing round in my head & they won't rest -
or let me rest - until I put them down on paper (or on the computer screen). I
don't think I could live without writing!
