Author Interview 2 Spotlight Author
Liberian Literary Magazine Promoting Liberian Literature , Arts and Culture
Author Interview 2 Spotlight Author
JACK KOLKMEYER
Liberian Literary Magazine conducted an interview with Jack Kolkmeyer , a poet , a lover of music and the finer things of life� .
LLM : First , we would like to thank you for granting this interview . Let us kick off this interview with you telling us a little about yourself …. Tell us a little about yourself
Having just turned 70 , the various career paths of my life have always intertwined in the most mysterious of ways . I have had 4 distinct careers in my life : teaching , writing , broadcasting and city planning . Interestingly , they have all involved writing of very different styles and they have always merged in different ways . Currently retired , I now focus on writing poetry and screenplays , living in South Florida .
I attended Ohio University in beautiful Athens , Ohio / USA from 1964-68 , totally immersed in the study of literature , languages and geography . Somehow for me , all those things went hand in hand although I never fully understood it until much later in my life .
Then there was Africa ! I lived and worked in Liberia as a US Peace Corps Volunteer from 1969-72 and then again briefly in 1975 , as a teacher and agriculture extension agent . My work was mostly in Lofa County among the Kpelle people but I also lived and worked for a year in Monrovia for the Department of Agriculture under Secretary Doc Sirleaf .
After Liberia , I went to graduate school at Indiana University to study urban and regional planning and community development .
That became my profession for 35 years , mostly in Santa Fe , New Mexico , with intermittent forays into teaching , professional music writing and broadcasting . So my love for literature , language and geography , really came full circle .
Why writing ?
I have always been a writer in one form or another . To me , writing is being an artist or a documentarian or filmmaker . I literally have hundreds of journals form all points of my life , taking note of all the events and people that have always surrounded me .
I started writing when I was very young …. 16 or so … around 1962 when I had an English teacher who told me , quite bluntly , that I had a brain and a gift for writing and it was my obligation to use them . I ’ ve published a number of poems , articles on music and musicians and various city planning topics but never any books until now with Higher Glyphics .
Mostly though , I have always been and wanted to be a poet . There is something about writing poetry that has always fascinated me . As a poet , you can be brief or epic , straight-forward or obtuse . The parameters of poetry always intrigued me .
But I have also loved writing as a teacher , as a broadcaster and as a city planner . Each of those disciplines requires
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