What is your book all about?

The book is a compilation of my thoughts, emotions, feelings and experiences faced in my life.

What inspired you to write the book?

I was inspired to write this collection of poems, A Poet’s Reverie to share my thoughts and emotions. Silence is a tomb that far too many of us sit in, my hope is that my words may help bring support, hope and the knowledge that no one is alone in this world and that light awaits us at the end of the tunnel after we travel through the darkness.

What is your target audience for the book?

My target audience for the book will be the ones who need the flicker of optimism and unbiased real world facts in their lives as my poems would help my target audience to do away with any illusory, unreal ideas about life, humans and animals, by life both included likewise  and mother nature as well. All lives matter. Every soul lives and every heart breathes. Compassion is the key for a better world where all life forms coexist with love and peace and where there’ll be no exploitation and speciesism just as for a better world there’ll be no sexism or racism.

What do you hope readers could get out from your book?

In one word, hope. Today so many dreams are left out of sight, simple dreams, dreams like freedom, equality and even life. I hope through my writings I can show from different perspectives how we can learn to live a more compassionate life, a life that would take us closer again to Mother Nature, instead of the constant adversarial involving that is characterized by the conflict and opposition that we’ve become.

What are your future goals/plans for the book?

I’ve just started my writing journey as a professionally published author with this debut book of mine, A Poet’s Reverie. I know some of the poems I’ve in this book have a thematic appeal so deep to leave a mark on reader’s psyche that I’ve set my goals not only to republish this book in its second edition again but to even write a few short stories based on the thematically structured poems in my book, a few of which would create a beautiful story of animal compassion and why it’s so important to understand compassion on a deeper level more than we think we do. This I think is a special feature of my book that’ll aid in the future goal setting and achievement of my book as it would unfold a story that I’ll write with mother nature as a protagonist and our animal friends as the other characters in my story that’ll revolve around some human protagonists’ characters and their lives, like that of an animal rights campaigner and activist like me who fights to abolish cruelty against animals and stop their exploitation.

More about myself and the story behind my poetry book

In my search for perfection as a humanist, activist poet I, Carl Poten, realized the beauty of my soul’s reverie as it poured out itself to my heart’s desire to give shape to my idealistic thoughts in pursuit of compassion, justice, love, fairness, and equality.

Writing, especially poetry, has something like always been of a cherished dream for me that I’ve had always held very close to my heart. Writing earlier hasn’t ever been a full time career for me but surely now I would like it to become my full time career as my life’s priorities changed. Spiritually writing has always been an emancipation for me as it’s my soul’s passion not only allowing an avenue, a pathway to deal with a lot of the hurt and pain that I’ve come across within my life and work, but also a way to express the ‘real me’, and the ‘real’ feelings that were buried as I was led to believe that feelings must be put to one side and we simply need to continue within this commanded lifestyle where our comforts outweigh the costs, at any cost, including life but I couldn’t ever agree with such mundane ideas about life and feelings. I believed that the sacred and the profane are but two sides of the same coin and the absurd obsession that this world has with the drab profaneness of life and its experiences is but a spiritual morbidity and there’s still an inherent desire left in us to merge the sacred and the profane.

This is what I thought that led me to my idea to believe that the subtle side of life and emotions are inherently sacred as much as our feelings are based on our profaneness and that the union of the sacred and the profane is the key to one’s spiritual evolution as to me the sacred was never “literally” antagonistic to the profane.

To become a full time author has always been a dream kept far in the back of my mind and buried far too deeply within my heart as I struggled through the demands to survive each new day. Now I’ve the opportunity, and hope with the release of my dream debut book, A Poet’s Reverie as my first publication, I initiate my journey by walking on this new pathway as a full time writer. I only expect that my readers would find solace, relief and hope through my writings just as I do.

Being a vegan myself for the last few years and my early years of my activism related to PETA demonstrations and being a part of sea/oceans conservation campaigns like Sea Shepherd shaped  and moulded my thoughts in an intricate manner which eventually led me to write more for the voiceless animals in trying to become the voice for them to help spread awareness against animal cruelty and cultivate compassion for all animals thus doing away with the idea of speciesism and helping people realise  that no matter what, all lives have equal right to live and to be loved. A pig deserves as much love and right to live as a dog, free like a dog and not as a victim of animal agriculture in a farm. 

As it breathes like a dog and there’s no difference because all is life. So a pig’s life or a cow’s life out there is not to serve our table but they’ve their lives in their own right. Mankind’s never ending love for reckless freedom has paved the way for the destruction of mother nature in so many ways that our environment is getting toxic with heavy carbon emissions and carbon footprints due to animal agriculture industry of meat and dairy. On top of that, other normally acceptable facts to us are to accept that it’s okay to litter the oceans with our plastics. There are so many ways that lead us to a conclusion that our human choices that so grossly afflict the lives of our animal friends and mother nature’s balance and  serenity are not just our personal choices anymore.

I always dreamed in my younger days of writing novels and poetry, also painting, although this was a gift I was far from blessed with, and having my writing and imagination to fall back on, was never hard to leave behind, though I do have a very keen mind and an eye for art and can fully appreciate , not only the beauty, but the emotion of great paintings and artwork in any form. I feel more than blessed that now after so many years, I am finally in a position to do what I’ve loved for so long but not been able to do, now that I’ve the chance of pursuing my life’s dream, and I’ve every hope that my dear readers will feel this after reading my book. I truly believe that my unique poems in this book will offer a lifetime of a memorable experience for my readers that they would love to cherish as they would relate to my feelings and thoughts and eventually my book thus might very well leave an indelible impression on their minds for many years to come. I try to pour out my soul’s feelings as a ‘soul poet’ when I write as I consider my writings, my poems to be the poetry of the soul and with this humble effort of mine if my poems are able to appeal to every soul, I would say my efforts have then been amply rewarded and I couldn’t ask for more.

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Massive thanks to Author’s Lounge for hosting me.