Passion for Creative Writing: Recent Episodes
John Wojewoda
Join me on my creative journey. I am a writer who has recently rediscovered their voice. This is a blog about my creative writing and it's about yours as well.
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Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by a lyre. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess". The word Lesbian in Sappho’s poetry is a reference to the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos, not having anything to do with any sexual predilection.
John Myers O'Hara (1870–1944) was an American poet. Born in Iowa into a wealthy family from Chicago, he studied at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years. In his thirties he moved permanently to New York, where he worked as a broker on Wall Street and also wrote poetry. In the 1929 stock market crash, O'Hara and his whole family lost their fortunes, but he continued to work in a brokerage house. and write and publish poetry.
Besides his own poems, O'Hara also produced rather creative translations of Greek, Roman and French authors, such as the critically successful Poems of Sappho (1907).
Passion for Creative writing has been selected by FeedSpot.com as one of the top 20 creative writing podcasts on the web https://blog.feedspot.com/creative_writing_podcasts/
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I find the writing of Ernest Hemingway to be fascinating. It feels like authentic artifact. His was a daring new style in 1921. It was a break away from the more stylized prose that had written in the past. In this podcast we discuss how Hemingway became a symbol of masculinity. We also share some of his advice to creative writers. If you want to support this Podcast, please consider buying this episode as an NFT on the Opensea NFT marketplace.
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These two short stories, A Carnival Jangle and Anarchy Alley, by African American writer Alice Dunbar Nelson were written in the 1890’s. They deliver a fascinating glimpse of the culture of New Orleans at this time, a wildly diverse city full of creativity and free thought. This is the New Orleans just before the explosion of Jazz music and the musical innovations of Buddy Bolden. Dunbar Nelson has been recognized for her exploration of something that came to be called the ‘Creole Condition’ - the experience of mixed race people in the era after the civil war.
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English author Walker Zupp talks about his new book “Martha”, published by Montag Press. Born in Bermuda in 1996, walker talks about his feelings of alienation from English society, saying that technically he’s a foreigner in British society, even though he isn’t because Bermuda is part of the British Empire. He is of the opinion that people find art deeply repulsive. He is currently writing a book about a white family in Bermuda - which he says will be like the Bermudan Sound and Fury. I look forward to reading that book in the future. Click here to get his novel ‘Martha’ from amazon.
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In this episode we look at two very different 19th century American writers. Civil war veteran and short story writer Ambrose Bierce, as well as African American writer and activist Alice Dunbar Nelson.
In this day and age of political division, the politics of these two individuals still have reverberations in modern America. Bierce, his commitment to the Federalist cause clearly demonstrated in his story “The Horsman in the Sky”.
Alice Dunbar Nelson, writing for The Monthly Review, a piece about flowers and death, a story of deadly heart break, is a voice that would not exist without the victory of the union north. The voice of a woman, one of African American heritage, is one that we are grateful to hear, in spite of the oppressions of racism and sexism.
I admit it’s a loose connection, but I find it compelling. Listening to the poetic language from long ago, we get a glimpse of different time and place, authentic voices of the past sharing what is their truth.
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The story 'The Vampyre' - written in 1816 is the product of the 'year without summer'. In that year summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest that they had ever been between the years 1766 and the year 2000. One night that summer at the villa Diodati in Lake Geneva Switzerland the writer George Gordon Noel Byron, also know as Lord Byron, suggested that those present should each write a ghost story. There were at least two writers there who's writing would go down in history. One was Mary Shelly, who two years later would published the book Frankenstein, the other was Byron's physician, John Polidori, who wrote the short story 'The Vampyre', which is the first appearance in fantasy fiction of a vampire. The previous summer to 1816 - Mount Tamboro in Indonesia had erupted sending volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere. People in Europe had no way of knowing why summer didn't come in 1816. Low temperatures and torrential rain caused disastrous crop failures in Europe, North America and Asia. Mary Shelly wrote in her travel journal 'Never was a scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness; the vast expanse of snow was chequered only by these gigantic pines, and the poles that marked our road: no river or rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye.'
Lord Byron wrote a poem that summer called Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they rak'd up,
And shivering scrap'd with their cold skeleton hands
The feeble ashes, and their feeble breath
Blew for a little life, and made a flame
Which was a mockery; then they lifted up
Their eyes as it grew lighter, and beheld
Each other's aspects—saw, and shriek'd, and died—
Even of their mutual hideousness they died,
Unknowing who he was upon whose brow
Famine had written Fiend. The world was void,
The populous and the powerful was a lump,
Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless—
A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.
The rivers, lakes and ocean all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships sailorless lay rotting on the sea,
And their masts fell down piecemeal: as they dropp'd
They slept on the abyss without a surge—
The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave,
The moon, their mistress, had expir'd before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd; Darkness had no need
Of aid from them—She was the Universe.
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Mike’s novels The Wraith of Skrellman, The Apocalypse of Lloyd, and I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore are available from Montag Press. His forthcoming book "The Many Fentanyl Addicted Wraiths of Sault Sainte Marie" is coming out in the fall from Tailwinds Press.
Mike grew up in Sault Ste. Marie, which is small a city in Ontario, Canada. It's on the St. Marys River, north of the U.S. border, near 3 of the Great Lakes. He currently lives in Toronto Canada, having graduated from Ryerson University with a degree in journalism. Mike works as a stenographer for the deaf at York University, a job which he says is perfect for a writer. He discusses how leaving the home of his youth was a source of sadness because both the time and the place are now gone, and the trilogy explores the theme of missing a place that you can’t go back to. His heritage is Franco-Ontarian, however Mike says he has been affectively anglicized.
He has described his writing as post-modern. His admiration of the writer Donald Barthelme, who was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction, has been an influence. Mike says reading Barthelme has allowed him to be as maximalist and zany as he wants to be.
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Listen now | A reading and a critique by John Wojewoda. Poe, in 1829, acting as an agent for his aunt Maria Clemm, sold a 21 year old slave named Edwin, to a man named Henry Ridgeway.
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Paul Miller talks about his new book ‘Albrecht Drue, Ghostpuncher'. Originally from Texas, author Paul Miller discusses the archetype of the cowboy and how it was one of the sources of inspiration for his novel. This is a work inspired by the likes of William Burroughs and Marvel comics. As Paul says, it is the literary version of someone kicking in your door, smashing up your furniture and pissing on your walls. The lead character encounters the ghost of a jive turkey seventies pimp and realizes that he can punch the ghost in the head. This is the first in a series of five books that Paul is releasing. You can get a copy of the book here.
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Professor Angus Fletcher of Ohio State University department of English, author of ‘Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature.’ This is a book that looks at literary invention as unique technical breakthroughs that can be viewed as both narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Professor Fletcher will be talking about literature and storytelling as technologies, how to innovate literature and story and the reasons that computer AI cannot innovate literature but humans can.
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I am very honored to be interviewing Marko Vignjevic, Serbian author based out of Belgrade. Marko talks about the literary scene in Belgrade, and reads from his latest book published by Montag Press: ‘Catalogue Diabolique’. You can see Marko’s Amazon page here.
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This is the first in a series of readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets. I talk about how I learned to read poetry. I read and provide a small analysis.
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In this pod-cast I discuss the International Fiction Writers’ Conference that I have been organizing. This conference will take place Sunday April 25th at 3pm. If you are reading this before the above date you can sign up here.
We have four speakers:
Speaker 1 - Professor Angus Fletcher will be sharing new neuroscientific understandings of how narrative structures interact with brain chemistry - providing fresh insights into the science of Poetics.
From 3pm - 4pm: Professor Angus Fletcher of Ohio State University department of English, author of ‘Wonderworks: The 25 Most Powerful Inventions in the History of Literature.’ This is a book that looks at literary invention as unique technical breakthroughs that can be viewed as both narrative and neuroscientific advancement. Professor Fletcher will be talking about literature and storytelling as technologies, how to innovate literature and story and the reasons that computer AI cannot innovate literature but humans can.
Speaker 2 - Writer and director Kostas Ouzas will be sharing how the independent fiction writers he works with have created their own custom audiences using digital marketing.
From 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm: Kostas Ouzas is a writer and director, known for The Car Yard (2009), Plague (2015) and Don't Look Back (2011). Based out of Melbourne Australia, Kostas is the founder of Self Publishing Hero, which is an academy that helps independent authors use digital advertising to make a full time income. He argues that there has never been a better time to be a writer, and has helped many writers find, engage, build and monetize their own fan base through digital marketing.
Speaker 3 - Charlie Franco will be discussing Montag Press, the Bay Area indie publishing house he founded, and the current state of indie publishing.
From 5:15 pm - 6:00 pm: Charlie Franco. General Manager and found of Montag Press. MONTAG PRESS is a BAY AREA-based publisher of original fiction and drama. Montag Press publishes the highest quality stories and plays for paperback and e-book distribution through established online retailers. Charlie will be talking about the current state of Indie book publishing.
Speaker 4 - John Wojewoda, author and event organizer, will be discussing NFT and blockchain technologies as it pertains to independent fiction.
From 6:15 pm - 7:00 pm: John Wojewoda, from Toronto Canada author of Three Wojewoda Plays and organizer of the event. John will be discussing NFT Book Publishing, particularly in relation to .crypto domains. He will be discussing the potential that blockchain technologies may have for the creative book publishing industries, and will give a quick overview of how publishing a book on a blockchain might work.
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