Colin Goedecke
Colin Goedecke aka The Floating Poet, is a poet & poetorialist, and poet laureate of the Truce Foundation of the United States.
An impressionist, expressionist and imagist, roving the wilds of the world, from vibrant cityscapes to salt-aired seascapes; landscapes, lifescapes; who often composes in the open air.
"I wanted to become a plein air painter," he says, "in the spirit of Monet, who I think of as an artistic grandfather, and Matisse and his edible color...and Winslow Homer; others. I found I was far more comfortable with a pen than a brush, painting scenes with palettes and rich pigments of words, language. Later adding to the mix a lens, cameras I use as '4th' eyes, in part as sketchbooks, also and more essentially to help me reveal and render what and how I see the world speaking, feel it wanting me to tell its stories."
On the outstretched canvases of his pages, natural and man-made mis-en-scenes unfold; are illuminated; sometimes quietly, sometimes exuberantly; often surprisingly; always lyrically. A natural progression was to also begin composing painterly visual poems, in widely varied series; into a growing body of equally expressive creating.
"The writerly muse arrived at a cafe in Rome in 1997," he says. "I had married into a passionately Italian family, but this was my first encounter with Italy, where I was uncorked. There at a simple table on the via del Gesu, suddenly and surprisingly I found words pouring into my mind and taking shape as a poem. Plein air poems have been flowing forth generously ever since."
"Though I never invoke them, or sit or plan to compose them: they arrive at their own time and place. And when they do, I seek to embrace the inspiration in the moment; working as freely, fluidly and light-handedly as possible, like a watercolorist; without muddying the 'picture,' gesture or mood. Holding lines in my head until I can write them down, or speaking them and recording them into my iPhone."
"The images also call to me out of the blue; subjects that invite me to see into, discover and illuminate them; convey the same kind of wonder I experience when I engage them."
He's inspired by the work of other poets, "radiant writers" he calls them, especially Joseph Stroud, Eamon Grennan, Galway Kinnell, David Whyte, Dylan Thomas, Mark Strand, Ted Kooser, Verlyn Klinkenborg, Simic, Rilke, Rexroth and Ferlinghetti. As well as a handful of composers from America's golden-age of popular music, "those colorful, graceful poets and storytellers in song" from the ´20s, ´30s and ´40s, from Cole Porter and Hoagy Carmichael to Jerome Kern and Richard Rodgers, "who delight, enchant, romance; reach inside and touch you, still, despite the passage of time and tastes."
Colin's debut collection was The Speed of Sight. Inspired over a decade, it brings readers into a series of living landscapes. From a tranquil harbor in Maine to a fanciful farmhouse in Holland. From observing a lunar eclipse, or being shaved in a Tuscan barber shop, to making family wine below the brownstoned surface of New York's Upper West Side. From enlivening portraits of friends to magnesium flashes of memory. The constant thread in these 55 poems is the immediacy of seeing; not just with the eyes but with other senses; with the emotions and imagination: the outer & inner senses.
Tastes of his poetic arts can be found at pleinairpoetry.com, thepoetorialist.com and on Instagram and elsewhere, and on his weekly live Floating Poetry broadcasts on youtube...
