Intimate Conversation with author BJ Brown
A graduate of NC A&T SU, BJ Brown began his amateur writing career penning reviews for Honeysoul.com. BJ has published individual poems with The Poetry Place, NWLiterature.org, and Poet's Ink. In 2007 he published his first poetry book entitled Diary Of An Affair via PublishAmerica. He recently released his first chapbook, Grey/Blue, on Lulu.com. As a freelance critic, he also writes for Soultracks.com, Heed Magazine, and Blogcritics.org.
A graduate of NC A&T SU, BJ Brown began his amateur writing career penning reviews for Honeysoul.com. BJ has published individual poems with The Poetry Place, NWLiterature.org, and Poet's Ink. In 2007 he published his first poetry book entitled Diary Of An Affair via PublishAmerica. He recently released his first chapbook, Grey/Blue, on Lulu.com. As a freelance critic, he also writes for Soultracks.com, Heed Magazine, and Blogcritics.org.What specific situation or revelation prompted you to write your book?
All my life, I've written poetry as a way to express the emotion that I am experiencing at any given point and time. In the past it was typically how I expressed my love or infatuation with someone. Well, when I went through my divorce and my affair, I was filled with more emotion than I could have ever wished for. I found myself writing poetry just to keep my sanity at times. At the same time as all of this was reading different poetry books by Saul Williams, Dead Emcee Scrolls more specifically.
While I was reading, I noticed the unique structure of his book. It wasn't all poetry. It was a compilation of poems, thoughts, and writings all centered in around his central theme. Once my affair and divorce were done and I could focus on pulling my poetry, thoughts, and discussions together into a similar piece of work about my experiences. I found that structuring my book in that way would allow me to tell the emotional story of what I went through without fully chronicling the story itself. It seemed to be an intriguing way to tell my story. Doing so also turned out to be quite therapeutic.
Take us inside the book. How did you decide to structure the chapters?
Suppressive Fire is a chapter explaining how my emotions built up to my breaking point. Digitized Emotion is a chapter showing how my affair with an old flame began from a supposedly innocent email. Decaying Eternity showed the dynamics of how my marriage failed. She Still Lingers Within goes through how the affair began. Self goes through how both my affair and my marriage ended. In each, I tell the story through poetry, clips of actual discussions, and thoughts.
Who do you want to reach with your book and the message within?
This book is an exploration of love, passion, relationships, depression, and everything in between. It is meant to reach anyone who has experienced the hardship of failed love, the difficulty of being and staying in love, as well as any curious about the mind state of one within an affair. I hope it provides insight into how someone views or values love and their partner.
What do you think makes your book different from others on the same subject?
Rather than explaining the details of the affair as a novel would, my poetry book explains the emotion. It's intended to make the reader feel rather than simply observe the situation the story tells.
How will reading your book shape the readers lives?
I hope this book helps people evaluate love and relationships in a way that causes them to be more caring about their partner's emotional needs as well as be more aware of their own. Sometimes we all tend to get so caught up in simply getting by with the day to day responsibilities that we forget how passion really feels with the one we love.
Where do you find your inspiration?
Other poets such as Jon Sanders (author of Ordinary Poems For Extraordinary People In These Ordinary Times) and Saul Williams were the main influences. Aside from them I found that listening to music was a great catalyst for a number of lines I came up with in my poems. Artists like MeShell N'DegeOcello, Prince, The Foreign Exchange, Janelle Monae, Sia, Dwele, Goapele, and Amel Larrieux were the common soundtrack to my writing sessions.
What else to you have in store for future books?
Well, I recently released my first poetry chapbook entitled Grey/Blue on Lulu.com. It is kind of me flexing my poetic muscle and tackling a number of different subjects like Obama getting elected and how historic that event was. I also included a few poems where I simply challenged myself to describe something or someone like a memorable character from a movie.
I am also working hard on another poetry book entitled ExIsT. I'm hoping that this book turns out to be more than just a compilation of poetry much like Diary Of An Affair. It is to be themed around self discovery and reflection. I'd like for it to be kind of an emotional handbook for those times when we find ourselves questioning where we want to go or be in life. I'm really excited about finishing this one since I think this effort could have a more broad affect on people than my previous work.
Of course this is all in the midst of the music and video game reviews and articles that I write for Soultracks.com, Heed Magazine, and Blogcritics.org.
Relevant Author Links:
Author Facebook site - www.facebook.com/Bunneh3000
Author blog on poetry and writing - http://bunneh3000-poetry.blogspot.com/
Author poetry compilation (with free samples) - www.writerscafe.org/writers/Bunneh3000
