Artist: Pearlfire Press Presents Bob Vance

Okay.  

Somewhere along the line I found out that following all the rules never got me anywhere. Not with my creative work anyway.  

In spite of that I won a couple of prizes, published in a wide-ranging list of magazines in the US, Canada, the UK, and Europe; got a little money here and there for college classes, got an incredibly un-marketable degree in Creative Writing and Literature, got nominated for a Pushcart award, had a couple plays produced, discovered photography by way of painting, was poor, and then, about 25 years ago, got a marketable skill as a social worker, counselor and, now, life coach. I did some acting with a little minority theatre troupe that was eventually shut down by Arts program cuts. They didn’t do enough rehashes of Oklahoma or Glass Menagerie I guess.  

The poems are the result of my being bored to death with what has happened to American poetry. They are also the result of, for a time during the nineteen-eighties, finding an audience almost exclusively with a group of Activist Poets who named themselves the Twilight Tribe. We believed that the act of reading aloud, being heard, and hearing others’ work, would naturally improve our own. We were right, mostly.  

Once upon a time some of us were shot and nearly killed by someone who was an utterly absurd failure as a thief: robbing a bunch of poets and their arty friends at a vegetarian restaurant coffee house! What a fool! I’ve spent the past six years re-finding those writers. Now I collect some of their poems and send them out regularly in an e-mail newsletter along with assorted other BS. If you are interested in receiving this newsletter, you can reach me through bvancehome@sbcglobal.net. Rule number one of being on that email list? Do not be afraid to delete. Do not be afraid of feeling outrage. Swear words are language. Language is holy. Do not be afraid of terrible news or poems that use it. Do not be afraid of poems that refuse to pretend that tigers won’t soon be absent in the wild.  

Finally I stopped trying to separate my creative enterprises. Pearlfire Press is the main extension of that effort. Thanks to my life partner, Susan. Buy one. They aren’t perfect. But hey…   it’s what I do. 

Oh… and if you are interested in the work I do as a Life, Family and Vocation Coach, check out my coaching blog: http://sightlinecoach.blogspot.com/