Welcome to The Boxcar

So this is the beginning of a project that is near and dear to me.

One year ago, in March, another student named Juliann Losey and I started a local poetry, story-telling, and spoken word event called The Boxcar Voices. As with most passionate ideas, the cerebral wheels began turning, and many starry-eyed dreams began to fill our brains and rattle off our tongues. Now, I feel like we're finally beginning to reach out and really take some steps forward into whatever it is that this project can be.

In short, we are a local, monthly event that is meant to cultivate a creative environment for writers, readers, thinkers, feelers, speakers, breathers, spectators, and anyone/everyone else. 

It's my (our) belief that everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a voice. Everyone has a song. Everyone has experiences that make up who they are. And everyone - whether they want to admit it or not - has an innate desire to share a part of themselves. Whether that is as simple as a status update, as short as a tweet, as long as a book, or as deep as a poem, everyone wants to yell out into the void in some attempt to be understood... and, at the very least, heard.

So, what's that mean? That means that this is for YOU.

Because you don't have to be the next Auden or Collins or Whitman or Ginsberg or Dickinson or Frost or Eliot to write poetry. You aren't any of those people, and neither am I. Too often I think we see the word "poetry" and instantly associate it with all of these "Great Minds" or canonical people who are all dead and gone and anthologized. If not that, then it is seen as a sophomoric act done by guys with ponytails and girls with pink, pixie haircuts; wearing turtlenecks and dark glasses with thick frames; snapping fingers in cigarette smoke and all looking very smug to the sound of bongos. I think, because of that, it sometimes gets swept under the rug with a blush and an apology. But that's not what it is at all.

What I'm getting at is that it's for everyone. Everyone can tell a story, and everyone's story is interesting. The Boxcar Voices is a platform in which to tell a story. I want to make this a big project that reaches out to people who are willing to share their stories -- be it poetry, fiction, non-fiction, rants, folktales, slam, or whatever.

This blog will be an open discussion of the project. I want to publish willing writers on here, share some of my own stuff, and share ideas with all of you about what makes storytelling, poetry, and spoken word something that I think is extremely important. Let me know what you think.