My name is Stephen Coger. As a child, I lived experiences as poetry: seasons' lighting and timings, the silences between cicadas' songs, but I dulled my mind with false food and technology and lost this direct, vivid enchantment. I regained my life by reigniting wonderment through travel and by returning to poetry. And again I see how carefully the lightning bug folds its wings, and again I am unafraid to be known or read.
I write poems because it makes my lived experience indelible.
That someone besides me gets a moment's diversion is of some consequence to me. I do keep a secret tally of how many people cry or laugh or moan or sigh, but I am no longer delusional enough to believe that I write for anyone but myself. This poetry is a form of positive greed, then.
I published my first poems while in elementary school, and did not publish again until studying creative writing as an undergraduate. I write like I am bold and vulnerable as birdsong, and I frequently write about grief, love, and most recently I wrote about the frantic stupor of the herring when I surfaced too close in the black night pond. I travel often and stories from India, Argentina and Arkansas often make their ways into the poems.
I enjoy simile more than metaphor, and I use images from nature--trees, ponds and the skies--more than I draw from pigeons and cities' concrete.
I write for me, but hopefully there is something in here for you.
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All great photos are courtesy of Ironside Photography.