by Garry Cox
As an educator, poet and runner I am a lifer. I have the blessed opportunity to create new works and compete in my sport (Track & Field). I have qualified for The National Senior games to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in May 10-23, 2022. I will compete in the age group 74-79. My events are the 50 meter and 100 meter dash.
Brief History
I have been blogging and writing poetry since I retired from Rio Salado College in 2008. When I retired I was the director of a large adult Learning Center that served the basic educational needs of adult students either in need of academic advancement or learning English as a second language. At the heart of my approach to working with students was to build their confidence by putting them on a clear path to realizing their innate abilities to learn and to be productive in our society. I often thought of myself as simply a glorified cheerleader for the dreams and aspirations of my students. I loved my work and even today, I can’t stop being a cheerleader.
A prime example would be one of my many blog series, New Poets Wednesday. New Poets Wednesday is simply an additional venue with social medium support for any would-be poet to showcase their work, simply by emailing me a poem. In truth the New part of the equations simply means persons who have written poetry that has yet to be published. Some of our poets have had commercial success as writers but are just now giving poetry a try.
Core beliefs
I believe writing is precursor to thought, not the other way around. The feeling part of life always precedes our efforts to explain it. So you write about feelings and see where that takes you.
Poetry is an invitation to advance our thinking and deepen our feelings about the world we live in. It is a sharing of truths, your truth, my truth, the truth of our human experience. A good poem will celebrate these truths with a style and grace that exists in every tongue spoken on our planet.
Advice to new writers
I believe success in all creative writing can be expressed in three simple terms.
Write every day
I got this from one of my college writing teachers. “A writer is someone who writes.” When I asked him to explain he said, “When you write, you’re a writer. When you don’t write, you’re not a writer.” So write everyday
Find your voice
While it is chronologically true that I found my voice very late in life, I think a deeper truth is that voice comes only after dealing with important events in your life. I found my voice through my first blog series, Garry and Bernice. Bernice was my life partner for 19 years before she passed in 2011. I created the blog to honor her memory and to honor the life we had together. Because of her importance to me, I was very diligent in creating a lasting image of who this woman was, to me and to the world.
I knew early on that I had struck on something vitally important to my creative soul. I started to realize my growth when one of Bernice’s daughters, having followed the series in my website, “I appreciate seeing my mother in a whole new light.” As the series developed, I realized that I had fallen into a certain rhythm, a certain consistency. It may have been obvious that I was stretching the limits of my personal memories, but it was also true that in that stretching I had found my voice. That unique style that is recognizable in everything I write.
Find your audience
As the Bard of all Bards, Will Shakespeare might say “ay there's the rub”.
And by that I mean, the ultimate challenge.
To see more of my work including popular blog series What I Did on My Covid-19 Vacation, New Poets Wednesday and the Bernice and Garry series go to my website www.garrycox.com