Happy Halloween!

We at Poetic Furs would like to announce our next featured poet, covering the months of November and December, to round out the year of 2018. Our featured poet this time is  PariahLycan. Here are a few favorites from our featured poet:

tavert's scrawled words, left bare
Three Paths they Walk
Two Birds (Gift)

And now, get to know the poet from a few interview-style questions below:

1. When did you begin writing poems and verse?

PariahLycan: "I tried writing poetry since childhood, but it never managed to click. I never had a sense of cadence or rhyme, and it was only in college that I managed to get a voice with poetry. I needed to get a sense of style, and I hope to keep developing it from here."

2. What inspires and/or motivates your poetry the most?

PariahLycan: "I get inspired by and try to inspire a visual element with poetry, with imagery or story. Themes of psychology, the natural world, and personal development also work their way in, as well as themes inspired by my relationship with my home state of Oklahoma, USA."

3. Does your work take influences from any poets in particular?

PariahLycan: "I started writing poetry by experimenting with different poetic forms, like Japanese Waka Poetry and Middle Eastern Ghazal, trying to fill in the spaces with my own work. Eventually, that translated into my own style, taking elements from multiple authors in these styles. It’s less a particular poet and more poetic traditions I try to follow."

4. And, similarly, who might be your favorite poet of all time?

PariahLycan: "Dante Alighieri! I enjoy a wide variety of poetry, but what Dante did with the Divine Comedy is what I dream of making someday."

5. What about your favorite poem of all time? Explain?

PariahLycan: "The Emirati poetic novel 'The Diesel' by Emirati author Thani Al-Suwaidi. The piece is metaphysical, philosophical, and vaguely political while still conjuring beautiful images and magical scenes. It is also criminally underrated, and I pass my copy along to others at every chance."

6. Aside from poets, do any others arts or artists inspire you?

PariahLycan: "Visually, I’m inspired heavily by photographers Ansel Adams, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Joel-Peter Witkin, authors Tamora Pierce and Susan Cooper, and filmmakers David Fincher and Alejandro Jodorowsky. Aesthetically, I adore Romantic Era and Southern Gothic."

7. Similarly, do you practice any other arts besides poetry?

PariahLycan: "I am primarily a prose writer and photographer, though I have dabbled in other media with debatable success!"

8. And what hobbies and interests, if any, do you have outside the arts?

PariahLycan: "By day, I am an Entomologist and Wildlife Biologist, which thankfully brings me out into amazing places and exposes me to unique species I rarely get to see."

9. Would you like to provide one interesting fact about yourself readers should know?

PariahLycan: "My grandmother would sing my sister and I to sleep with the most wonderful lullaby when we were very young. It was only until I was nearly 22 before I realized she was singing the song 'I Will' by the Beatles. That song still makes me think of the warmth of her house."

Thanks again to  PariahLycan for agreeing to be our featured poet for November/December 2018.

P.S. We will be retiring the featured poet journals for next year, but we plan on bringing them back the following year. Poetry is obviously not the most prolific artform in the Fandom, so consider this as us taking time to refresh the springs of verse here. It is our hope to expand the scope of Poetic Furs this coming year; and we would like to hear any ideas for how to do this. What could we do to improve the page?

~ Corvus32346 (Founder)