Are you drawn to the mysterious allure of Gothic poetry and horror fiction? Gothic literature has captivated readers for centuries, delving into the depths of human emotion and the unknown.
Since childhood, I have been aware of a different dimension where death and shadows are entwined, both inevitable and unavoidable. Seeing a woman pass into a wall on two occasions and dreaming dreams that were from another time or place reinforced in my consciousness that what we see is not necessarily what we know. It was with this belief and with the aid of mythology and ritual that I started to write.
For years, I had been ignoring a particular yellow file on one of my bookshelves. The idea of going through all those scraps of paper after so many years seemed too much of a challenge. I finally plucked up the courage and delved into the contents, which I now offer up to any reader brave enough to pass their time being locked into a nightmare. I wrote them all when I was still in the bloom of youth, and they represent quite an interesting but very dark body of work.
In school, we were fed a diet of Keats, Wordsworth, Milton, Wilfred Owen, and the incredibly boring T.S. Elliot. The latter comment may upset some people, particularly those who think T.S. was a decent bloke. Fascism is not something he should have supported, On my own account, I discovered Shelley and was impressed by his political outspokenness, which, in turn, gave me the courage to experiment in verse.
Montague Summers’ book, The Vampire in Europe, a 1929 chilling account of the history of the vampire legend, had a great influence on the creation of my poems. Another influence was John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a 17th century Christian allegory, which is difficult to admit, me being an atheist. But its allure for me is the simplicity of his writing with a combination of humor, adventure, and suspense.
Beyond all that, several inexplicable and odd experiences through childhood and over the period of my writing have played a part as well. I was left to my own devices at a very young age, and in my solitude, I engaged with my mythological muse, Hecate, whom I credit with fueling my imagination and keeping me out of trouble.
Words can be like gems or sticks. A coalition of words can become a diamond necklace or a broken picket fence, whichever way one wishes to use them, and as such, I use them for my psychological horror stories and poetry. Dark fantasy can be alluring, but dark reality is sometimes unavoidable and can cascade one's imagination deep into the hollowed skulls that litter the subsoil beneath our feet, to be returned once again to the world in the voice of a writer. Similarly, pathos and humor can change a day from clouds to sunshine where kindness and laughter find a place.
My soon-to-be-released book, Strange Fruit: A Collection of Dark Allegories, Fantasy, and Madness, contains a tumbrel of unusual short stories—some sad, some strange, some dark and some funny but none ordinary. A collection of Gothic poetry, Poems to Steal Your Dreams, is also in the works. Some of my poems can be viewed in video format on YouTube. “The Hydra,” my favorite, is written in what some may call an old-fashioned or archaic style, with imagery that is quite dramatic and worth reading for that alone.
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