Video Transcript: Poetry I think is all around us. It’s in the air we breathe. For me, really it’s about sometimes slowing myself down, returning to the present moment and letting it inspire me. I think that’s what poetry speaks to: is the part of us that knows that our life has purpose and meanings and that knows the signs for that purpose and meaning are around us if we are willing to slow ourselves down enough and listen and look and let ourselves be guided by it. I remember as a child that I had a sense of fascination and curiosity about life, a feeling of something magical happening even. And I was always very sensitive when I was young and yet somehow or other in the day to day world of our everyday life, negotiating our jobs and our families, that gets lost or it gets buried somewhere, and sometimes, it gets buried so deep we don’t know even it’s there. For most of my life writing has actually been in the background and it wasn’t until 2001, I would say good twenty years of my life, this talent inside of me was left dormant.  And I believe that so many of us in our lives have some inner gift or some skill or some talent or something precious that we want to bring to life and yet we’re disconnected from it. And if we’re fortunate enough to find it and to bring it into the world, I think that’s the greatest, grandest gift we can give and in fact I believe it’s what our mission and purpose is on the planet. You know a lot of poetry is written almost in a way as if you have to study it to get the feeling or the meaning out of it. And for me I want my poetry to be accessible from the very get go. I want it to speak to your heart and to your soul because I believe that, just as life is a journey and we’re all on that journey together, that the best way to negotiate that journey is to learn from each other.  So, I want to make my poetry the poetry that touches the heart and transforms lives. That’s why I call myself the Transformational Poet. Because I am not just here to write poetry for the sake of writing poetry, I am here to write poetry to get people to live their lives; the lives they were meant to live; not the lives that they should live according to the world, not the lives that they should live according to their family; but the life you are meant to live from your inner energy, from your core. That’s what I want to do with my poetry. I want to help that and give permission for that in every way possible. If my poetry could awaken people to themselves, could help them to feel that inside of them there is incredible potential waiting to released and could help them open the door to that, then I believe I would have achieved something fantastic and amazing. So that’s what my poetry is really about…it’s is bringing out the best in all of us.