Interview with poet Paul Guerin

Kicking off a new week with me is poet Paul Guerin to chat about his new chapbook, Poetry from My Heart: A Journey Through Feelings.

During his virtual book tour, Paul will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Welcome, Paul. Please tell us a little bit about yourself
As a very young boy, I lived in a small Irish townland village called Castletownroche. The village was situated in the very beautiful and pastoral County Cork. I had an Irish uncle who played in a showband and who taught me to fish at age four. I wrote a poem about that. My mother was absent and I never knew my father. I wrote another poem about that. We lived in abject poverty. I survived by the grace and loving kindness of an old Irish grandmother sporting a black dress, black shawl and a wicked temper driving a razor-sharp tongue. I called her Nana.

Nana taught me to fear her retribution and used it to keep me safe and provide security that I could find nowhere else. Well into my teens, my inner world was cast in fear and I had no real sense of belonging or attachment to anyone or to anything. The inability to handle those feelings eventually led me to substance abuse. My journey along that road has generated much of the poetry of adversity, hope, and inspiration that you will find in this book. I truly hope that those poems in particular will salve the souls of those of you who are still trudging that happy road to destiny on your way back from hell.

Not surprisingly, I have had difficulty in maintaining healthy relationships throughout my life, and much of the love poetry is about those failures and many, many, sorry attempts to return to love. Those painful/happy experiences had a major influence on my writing.

What do you enjoy most about writing poems?
I enjoy the emotional freedom that writing brings. If it is a good poem, it will touch the heart and nurture the soul and even bring chills to the body!

Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?
Sure. In terms of insights, my poems span a spectrum of emotions, including love, hope, inspiration, solitude, and adversity. For example, I just wrote a love poem about hopes and [perhaps] dreams, for a return to love with a partner.

It’s called “Can we return to love?”

“Can we return to love”

I felt your love again today
My lovely long-lost friend
I wonder if it’s here to stay
I hope this love will never end

It was not many years ago
When our love was in the kiss
And we held it fast and let it grow
Hoping for eternal bliss

As the years passed by, we fell apart
No-one really was to blame
It just went bad and broke our hearts
We dropped into a world of shame

Damaged souls racked in pain
Fighting trauma deep within
We tried so hard, then tried again
But one dark day we just gave in

Our time apart has helped us grow
Some kindness reappeared
Though we’ve yet to say I love you so
Not all is lost as we had feared

I wonder now if this is real
Are new feelings just a dream
Is this the old love that I feel
Returning like a rushing stream

I dream of us in love once more
Of the magic we knew back then
Holding hands along some shore
Starting out in life again

I hope I’ll feel your love again
Bringing sunshine to my soul
No more doubts and no more pain
Our long-lost love will make us whole”

 

For me, that poem is in the “chill” category!

 

Another poem I wrote recently is mildly on the side of adversity and a more of bit of fun.

Here it is:

“Clever Cat”

If I am such a clever cat
Why don’t I know just where it’s at
If I could bend the curve of time
I wouldn’t need my lifetimes nine

If I could see a future clear
Observe my troubles far and near
I wouldn’t have to live in fear
And wouldn’t care just who was here

If I choose to sit in solitude
I hope that you won’t think me rude
As long as you don’t feel eschewed
Or think meowing simply crude

If I can purr my way through life
Ignoring fear, avoiding stress
I certainly don’t need more strife
I’ll stay demure I won’t impress

I won’t be such a clever cat
But I will know just where I’m at
I’ll eat and drink and get real fat
And leave my ego on the mat”

Just a cute poem with a bit of a message.

 

What form are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
I like to write in rhyming couplets using four-line stanzas. In my teenage years, I attended an English Public School as a [live-in] boarder. There, I had the chance to study Elizabethan history and English literature. It was there that I discovered and read poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, Keats and Shelley and William Shakespeare to name a few. Part of my studies involved analyzing the meaning of the works and another part was observing the writing styles.  It was there that I fell in love with the rhyming couplet style of writing.

What type of project are you working on next?
I just published Book 1 of A Willing Heart Series. Book 1 is entitled Poetry from My Heart – A Journey through Feelings. The poems reflect feelings arising from real life experiences which I call “designer moments”. My hope is that they will resonate with and bring comfort to readers who face similar challenges and experiences. This first book of poetry also is my legacy to my family and friends.

Presently, I am working on Book 2 and I have about 40 poems written so far, including the two shown above.

When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?
Likely, the answer to this question is that I dabbled in poetry from an early age, but it is only recently that I came out of the literary closet, so to speak. Deciding to “let the inner poet emerge” wasn’t easy, particularly for a professional person, known for providing down-to-earth and sound advice to business clients over many decades. Of course, the fear was that my inner poet wouldn’t be taken seriously.

It was not surprising therefore, that it took considerable courage to write about my innermost thoughts and feelings and then a whole lot more courage to proceed to publication and share those secrets with the world at large. But I proceeded throwing fate to the wind and published Poetry from my Heart; A Journey through Feelings. Once I had made the decision to come clean and share the real me, I felt a great sense of freedom!

How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for not-yet-published poets?
I can’t help much with this question as I did zero market research, except for sharing poems with some close men friends to get their feedback. Because the poems are about feelings and emotions, most of them span the test of time. That’s true also about my nature poems and the poems about places sacred to me. None of these will change over time. What I can say to a budding poet, is don’t hide in the literary closet. Take the risk and get your poetry out there somehow. My publisher, Tellwell Talent Ltd, was reasonable in cost and very helpful in guiding me through the construct of the manuscript and then setting up distribution arrangements online. They are also providing me with excellent post publication marketing assistance.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Not exactly sure what you mean by “writing quirk”, but what comes to mind is that in the rhyming couplet style of writing there is a limited vocabulary which can cause word repetition. To counter the “quirk”, I am learning to move away from the couplet style, when necessary, to lose the repetition and still draw out the emotions I am reaching for. In Book 2 of A Willing Heart, likely you will see less of the rhyming couplet style and more of what I call prose-like poetry.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
If I answer this honestly – I did not have enough sense of security in my life while growing up, to think too far ahead. I was a survivor and it was mostly “one day at a time” for me during my childhood. In my late teens, when I was given a choice, it was a doctor or an accountant. If you look in my book, you will see that the accountant won out!

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Yes, sure! Firstly, thank you for your interest in me and in my poetry. I hope you will enjoy Poetry from My Heart; a Journey through Feelings. I especially hope that you, the reader, will relate to my poems on a personal level. All of us have experienced “designer moments” of feelings of love, hope, inspiration, adversity and aloneness. Its good to remember them, feel them again and let them out. That is a great healing process and the road to finding emotional freedom.

Links:
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