Opening Post

Welcome!

My name is Clay F. Johnson and this site is dedicated to both my own poetry and to the poetry that I love, both new and old.  I have been writing poetry and short stories off and on (mostly off) for the past five years—university studies, family/social obligations and career expectations have all added to periods of limited creativity or "off-ness."  Even though I have had to refuse my artistic inclinations at times, writing poetry is dear to my heart.  I like to classify much of my poetry—not all—as Dark Romantic, a sort of "pleasing melancholy," an ethereal Gothic of ruin and decay amid unspoiled nature in all her beauty and chaos.  And with regard to all things Gothic and Romantic, some of the poets whom I never hesitate to turn to include Coleridge, Wordsworth, Mary Robinson, Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and my beloved Keats.

Even though I have been writing intermittently for the past five years, I have never attempted to publish any of my work—until recently, that is.  I began sending out some of my favorite poems to journals and magazines that I was familiar with back in March of this year and I am extremely excited to announce that one of those poems has been accepted for publication.  Being a complete novice to publishing etiquette, I am hesitant to publicize exactly where my work will appear just yet.  However, I will say that my poem will appear in a collection of poems and will hopefully be available on Amazon later this summer.  You can be sure I will post that link when I find out more.

Being that I am just now creating this little website and that I have absolutely no followers, I cannot say with certainty what will become of it.  I would like to think that I will slowly get followers and even befriend other poets and writers whose work I admire (and vice versa) and use this as a medium to share and support their literary endeavors.  Or perhaps the dust will begin to settle immediately after publishing this piece, and thus my first and last BlogSpot post will be in the early hours of Friday the 13th, 2016—an already dark and gloomy spring eerily reminiscent of that "year without a summer" of 1816...okay, I'll stop.  But no matter which direction this site takes, you can rest assured that I shall never stop writing as long as living blood and inspiration flows within me.

Thanks for reading and please keep checking back.

Clay F. Johnson