How young were you when you first realized you could be a poet?
 
I started to write at 1967, 52 years ago I’m now 72.5 years old. I went into exile due to the Vietnam War era; then, typewriters, no internet, type poems one by one (no photo copies), international coupons, snail mail only, stamps, 6 month wait and 95 out of 100 never responded, much less made a comment about your poems-just a photocopied rejection letter. So for many years I continued to write but didn’t send the poems out. In 2007 with the advent of the internet I revised old poems and created new poems and have now been published in 38 different countries.
 
Why should anyone read your poetry over the next ten poets?
 
I don’t worry about other poets or competition.  I’m too old to give a damn @ 71.5 yrs. I proclaim believing in me.  I don’t worry if there are too many groceries stores or drug stores on the same corner, bring it on and come visit my small shop I will stamp on you.
 
Is Dr. Seuss a legitimate poet?
 
Dr. What? Dr. Who?  He is not even in my memory bank. Legacy is not necessarily determined by how many housewives buy Dr. Seuss children’s book.  Anapestic tetrameter consists of four rhythmic units called anapests, each composed of two weak syllables followed by one strong syllable (the beat); often, the first weak syllable is omitted, or an additional weak syllable is added at the end.  Deception, do children give a damn? I’m more impressed with children without thought who write the loveliest poems naturally with images from their heart as children tend to do.
 
Is poetry better than it was 25 years ago? Explain!
 
Who really cares, time is justice to itself not us.  What is what was then evaluated is in present a waste of poetic time.  Oh yes, review and love but never get stuck there less you lived there in time.
 
What is your single weakness as a writer?
 
As a child 8-9 yrs. old I had a rare cancer disease bone cancer in my legs.  I was carried around on my mother and father backs in pain, I rolled on the floor both legs in casts.  I missed most of grades 1-3. So I missed grammar, syntax, and pronunciation. To this day
I listen to enunciation of words, look for new words that are primarily action verbs, see how words are put together, pulled apart by syllables to hear how they sound and why I’m mispronouncing them.  
 
If you could write a poem to your President, would he like it?
 
At my age, 71 plus, I don’t much care about what the President thinks much less write a poem to him.  Yes policies do affect my living patterns, my financial security to a degree, and I certainly still have strong opinions about public and international affairs, however, as long as he doesn’t step on my toes personally, kick me out of the country, or screw too much with my mutual funds who cares?  I fought one war with resistance, and acted upon it, one stance leaving this country against an unjust war, Vietnam, is more social action in one act then most people will perform in a lifetime. Now days I’m more concerned about quiet, few phone called, allowing me time to work on my words.
 
Does poetry really change thought or is that just hype?
 
This is the best question to pounder of all the other questions above.  I guess it depends on your personal definition of purpose on this limited time on earth.  We all carry a personal torch that burns, when, how, motive you act upon it is the motivation rightly or wrongly.  My cause and disgust ultimately was Vietnam and exile, it took 10 years in exile to resolve the fundamental issue revolving into a lifetime of left over feelings, rejection and acceptance for those actions.  Change is in your mind, compulsion of desire for change are the actions and beliefs of others that have influence on your patterns your dreams. Does poetry really change thought or is it your actions resulting in the power of those words that change thought and alter history, legacy?
 
How long does it take you to write a poem?
 
How long does it take you to live your life or just one day of it or even one hour?  I have some poems on first write that have stood the test of time, I have other poems with editorial suggestions and my changes that have lead up to eight revision on one poem that comes to mind.  A poem can be stagnant or ever evolving. I have a few box full of old partial poems always there open for review or die on old yellow paper or napkins from 10-35 years ago. Where do I place time on these things?  Life chances, events unfold, social structure evolves so should poems but some things remain where they were born to stay there with a smile of justice done indeed. I have computer files and old boxes full of what I call “starter poems.”
 
Do you have a single favorite poem written by yourself?
Now this is a bit of a smart-ass question.  I have around 500 completed poems, and hundreds of starter poems…and you want me to pick one favorite poem out of all of life and its passages?  If I was forced into a corner with my nose in that corner, or someone squeezing my testicles sharp in pain I would have to say a poem back in exile days may be my favorite.  “If I Were Young Again” is a symbolic poem and real experience of Michael Lee Johnson while self-exiled in Alberta, Canada for 10 years resulting from the Vietnam War.  It can be found on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmnMyE78xCE&t=21s


​
If I Were Young Again (V3)

    Piecemeal summer dies:
    long winter spreads its blanket again.
   
    For ten years I have lived in exile,
    locked in this rickety cabin, shoulders  
    jostled up against open Alberta sky.

If I were young again, I’d sing of coolness of high 
mountain snow flowers, sprinkle of night glow-blue meadows;
I would dream and stretch slim fingers into distant nowhere, 
yawn slowly over endless prairie miles. 

The grassland is where in summer silence grows;
in evening eagles spread their wings
dripping feathers like warm honey.

If I were young again, I’d eat pine cones, food of birds, 
share meals with wild wolves;
I’d have as much dessert as I wanted, 
reach out into blue sky, lick the clouds off my fingertips.

But I’m not young anymore and my thoughts tormented 
are raw, overworked, sharpened with misery 
from torture of war and childhood. 
For ten years now I've lived locked in this unstable cabin,

    inside rush of summer winds,   
    outside air beaten dim with snow. 
                                
-1985-
(R 11-12)
 
In 50 words or less how do you give birth to a poem?  How is it conceived and delivered?
 
A poem is a spirit that comes out of frustration or naturally if drunk or looking at a loved willow tree in the summer wind thunder and rain.  How do you deliver a baby poem in clinical conditions like this without the nurses thinking you insane?
 
Would you work hard if you were published? What motivates you?
 
I am published internationally in 38 countries and I do work hard at it, so we have covered that part this question.  I’m motivated my closings: social injustices gone wrong in turmoil, marriages soured, dreams gone bad, flowers, birds eating seed, praying for what I don’t know, having a belief that I will never understand it all or why I’m her or you, when I can’t make sense of death of those younger than me or anyone at all.  Oh, motivation is when an editor says I need your interview in 48 hours or less.
 
Would you write a more profound poem on the beach or in the desert and why?
 
I have written poems about both beaches and desert territory.  I seldom have lived near either for any length of time being a Midwest person most of my life.  A profound poem is more about who/or what it’s about then where accept for the imagery so powerful behind the words.
 
In your poetry career have you ever written a verse for your mother? Give a line and explain.
 
I had a father of his generation, welder, boxer, coon fox hunter and it was seldom good.  He taught me to love nature though he often killed it, a true oxymoron. My mother was not perfect but she loved life and was a totally giving human being.  Often in exile she bailed me out of financially, spoke about Jesus as my Father. My father died at 69, my mother lived in Christ until 98.5 years. She had macular degeneration for 8-10 years before she passed.  She rode a stationary bike blind for 45 minutes each day and wondered why? My response was “mom, if not riding that bike you may have been gone years ago.” She also walked blinded 16 times each day from one end of the hallway in her condo to the other and back again, just feeling the walls on each side as she moved down that path. Yes, I wrote on poem about my mother Edith and it’s full of grammatical (dangling particles-whatever that is).  Thankfully, poetry allows “screw ups” in purpose of meaning. My mother’s favorite song was ‘I Come To The Garden Alone’…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhWOKhGdUZY.
Mother, Edith, at 98 (V4)
By Michael Lee Johnson

Edith, in this nursing home you're
blind with macular degeneration─
I come to you with your blurry
eyes, crystal sharp mind,
your countenance of grace─
as yesterday's winds,
I have chosen to consume you
and take you away.

"Oh, Jesus, where did
you disappear to,"
she murmured over and over again
in a low voice
dripping words
like a leaking faucet:
"Oh, there He is, my    
Angel of the coming."
 
On YouTube here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0x5K-qL9do
    
If you has $200,000 to put in the writing community, where would the first thousand dollars go?

This is the most difficult question of all the above since who or whom I love are not organized-and likely I would be dead unable to research unless Jesus has a computer in heaven or hell where ever I end.  But in poetry style it would go to my members of my Facebook poetry groups selecting each member privately, to the sites loving lonely pets at nearby shelters (cats and dogs), and to Carol Marcus and my daughter Dawn to keep my legacy alive after I pass.

​

Carol Smallwood, Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, is a literary reader, judge, and interviewer; her last collection is Chronicles in Passing.

​Paperback: 300 pages
Behler Publications; October, 2019
ISBN 9781941887066
$14.95
http://www.behlerpublications.com/titles-pokerwinski.shtml

Nan Sanders Pokerwinski was a science writer at the Detroit Free Press for more than a decade, worked as a science writer for the University of Michigan News Service for fourteen years. She’s been a contributing editor to Health and Alternative Medicine magazines and has written for More, Fitness, Dallas Morning News, and other print and online publications. Her journalistic byline is Nancy Ross-Flanigan and she’s received a Pulitzer nomination, several awards.
 

​Smallwood: What awards has Mango Rash won so far? How did you come to write it and how long did it take?
 
NSP: Mango Rash won first place in the memoir/nonfiction category of the 2018 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Awards and was a finalist for the Northern Colorado Writers Top of the Mountain Book Award, the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards (twice), and the 43rd New Millennium Writings Literary Awards.
I started writing about my Samoa experiences (which form the basis of Mango Rash) when I joined my first writers’ group in 2004. I’d always struggled to convey to anyone who wasn’t there at the time what it was like living on a tropical island as a teenager in the 1960s. I began writing my Samoa stories as a way to explain not only what the experience was like, but also why it made such an impression on me—something I’m not sure even I fully understood until I started writing about it.
I finished a first draft of the manuscript within two years but had to set it aside for a number of years, due to my workload and other circumstances. I kept submitting individual chapters to my writers’ groups and to writing workshops, however, and filing away all the feedback. Eventually I was able to make time for more concentrated work on the manuscript as a whole, and I spent a year or two revising it, drawing on all that feedback I’d stockpiled. So I guess you could say it took 15 years from start to finish, but it was really only three or four years of active work.
 
 
Smallwood: How do you manage to write on such a wide range of subjects and styles? In what genre did you begin?
 
NSP: I write about whatever interests me, and I’m curious about a lot of things. I also try to write about things other people are curious about, which opens up a world of topics. I began in nonfiction, as a journalist, and most of what I write is nonfiction.
Writing in different styles is something that developed over time. When I decided to write my memoir, I wanted to get away from a journalistic, magazine-y style and adopt a more lyrical, literary nonfiction style. It took a lot of study, practice, and trial and error to begin to write differently.
 
 
Smallwood: Please share with readers your literary education background:
 
NSP: I’ve had no formal literary education beyond high school and one or two college classes. I’ve learned as I’ve gone along, from reading and from writing workshops. I missed a lot of classic literature on the way up, and I’ve enjoyed catching up (as well as discovering emerging authors) in mid-to late-adulthood.
 
 
Smallwood:  I was surprised about you selecting potholes as a writing topic—how did that come about?
 
NSP: During my years as science writer for the Detroit Free Press, I specialized in looking at everyday experiences with a scientific slant. One winter I heard so many people complaining about potholes I decided to find out what scientists and engineers were doing to address the problem. I never expected to win an award for that story, but apparently the National Society of Professional Engineers thought it was prize-worthy.
 
Smallwood: Do you see a connection between your photography and writing?
 
NSP: What an interesting question! I’m not sure there’s a connection, but the two activities are complementary. When I take photographs, I shift from thinking in words to thinking in images, and that shift gives the verbal part of my brain a rest, which stimulates my creativity and gives me fresh perspectives when I return to writing. Likewise, when I’ve been working with words for a long time without doing any photography, I find that I’m much more receptive to imagery the next time I go out to shoot.
 
 
Smallwood: How has living in Michigan influenced your writing and outside interests?
 
NSP: I’ve met and learned from so many gifted writers here in Michigan, and I’ve found very supportive writing communities in every part of the state where I’ve lived and worked: Detroit, Ann Arbor, and now West Michigan. It was here in Michigan—at the Bear River Writers Conference, to be specific—that I first felt I’d found my tribe of kindred writers. As for outside interests, I’ve always been drawn to nature and the outdoors, and living in Michigan—especially West Michigan—I have ample opportunity to indulge those interests through hiking, kayaking, photography, and just living in the woods.
 
 
Smallwood: What are you working on now?
 
NSP: Right now, mainly promoting Mango Rash and keeping my blog, HeartWood (www.nanpokerwinski.com/blog) and newsletter, “Mango Meanderings,” active. But I have several projects on the back burner that I hope to get back to work on soon: a novel about outsider art, creativity, and madness; a childhood memoir with themes of individuality, inclusion, and exclusion; a multi-media project that combines autobiographical collages with micro-memoirs; and a children’s book that I’m collaborating on with my husband Ray Pokerwinski.
 
 
Smallwood: For more information about this diverse writer please check: http://www.nanpokerwinski.com/about.html