I Owe 20 Years Of Writing Success To Poetry
Poetry changed my life ‘lit’-er-ally… pun intended
During my teenage years I went to an all boys high school in New Jersey. I was depressed a lot during that time because my mom was sick and there were no girls at school to talk to.
The only good thing about going to that all boys, Catholic high school was this: 1. If you averaged a 3.5 GPA or higher you could find some sort of scholarship at a college down south, 2. Boys will be boys so that meant lots and lots of laughs and carrying on, 3. Sports… and that’s about it!
One day my close friends and I drove down to an open mike poetry reading at a cafe in the college campus neighborhood of Rutgers University.
I remember the first open-mike reading we attended there. A college student stood on stage and got laughs from the crowd. His performance alone made me decide I was going to go to college purely to be an open-mike poet!
Maybe I didn’t tell my parents about my epiphany, but honestly, nothing could’ve stopped me.
I remember visiting a small “suitcase school” down in North Carolina, in the Bible Belt, with my parents. They…
