I grew up in a small Connecticut, USA town and read voraciously from a young age. I can remember reading young adult books while still in elementary school, my parents finding me reading with a flashlight under the covers, and acting out scenes from books I loved with my brother in the woods until sunset. I graduated from college with degrees in both English Literature and Elementary Education, and have taught young children for the past decade. Recently, I found my way back to literature through poetry.

I love this question. I remember looking over at my nightstand – at three books stacked and eagerly awaiting my fingers and eyes – then instead grabbing my phone and opening social media like Twitter and Facebook. At that moment, I decided I needed a bridge between the two to help me get back to literature. The answer came to me through poetry. Short poems bridged the divide between texts, tweets, posts, messages and those lonely nightstand novels.

I would say the inspiration to write had been languishing within me for years and poured out into my notebook and laptop all at once over the course of 2017. It was a tumultuous year, as I lost my grandfather but also found out my wife and I were pregnant. On top of that, I also lost a beloved cat, found myself in the middle of a charged political climate and still had work teaching second grade. The poems I wrote started out as catharsis and were slowly refined into pieces I could submit to publishers.

I am inspired by adventurous writers – not necessarily poets! I love the structure of Mark Z. Danielewski, the magic realism of Susanna Clarke, and the use of language by Karen Russell. The dry humor and charged emotions of Shakespeare’s sonnets have always been an inspiration and other poetry such as Jack Kerouac’s “pops” or Basho’s haikus have always intrigued me. I love how much meaning and feeling can be conjured up through such few words.

Tiny Footcrunch started out as just thoughts in a notebook. It wasn’t until my wife looked at some of the writing and urged me to refine them into poems that I thought there might be something of value to them. I polished some of my thoughts up into “haiku-like” poems and sent them to a trusted friend (and brilliant writer) for his thoughts. When he sent back encouragement, I decided to finish my one hundred poems and send them out to publishers.

Readers interested in knowing more can visit www.davidwassermanbooks.com for links to all my social media and to learn more about me!

I would challenge poets to try and strip away unnecessary words. We tend to use flowery language in poetry, where an apt metaphor will do. The reader will get it – don’t be afraid to lay your poem there on the page, bare.