Seems like every few years I have to imagine a new Paul Baerman. We’re up to Paul 9.0, I believe, and my latest iteration is Poet.
I’ve been inspired to assemble a handful of my poems as song lyrics, and to find support for commissioning music so we can perform it, at least around central North Carolina. Of course I have written a little poetry in the past:
For example, this spring (2024) I put together a couple programs of music and (my) poetry at a local CCRC and for a performance at a church-like place. To my surprise, the verse — read by professional actors, thank heavens — was well-received, and made me feel inspired.
Once upon a time I won 1st place for poetry in the Seventh Biennial Greensboro Awards (sponsored by the Writers’ Group of the Triad). The judge, Janice Fuller (a Professor of Poetry at Catawba College) described my submissions as “Delicate and well-crafted…each poem with its own distinctive diction and its own effortlessly realized form.” Mind you, this was in 2010.
I also won a poetry prize in the Jefferson Society Literary Contest at the University of Virginia, where I was a grad student teaching Modern American Poetry. Mind you, this was 1982.
Wish me luck. Maybe I’d better post a poem or two here. Stand by.
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