And at some point I would like to talk my publisher into doing an anthology of my poetry alongside some teen readers' poetry. It would be fun, and really wonderful to get their stuff out there.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I have my Poetry 180 project, which I've made my main project. We encourage high schools, because that's really where, for most people, poetry dies off and gets buried under other adolescent pursuits.
What I wanted to do was use literature and different kinds of stories and poems as a springboard, tapping into the creativity of our teens - I wanted teenagers to come up with their own creative responses to literature - using books themselves as a starting point.
I want to promote poetry to the point where you got all the baldhead kids running around doing poetry, getting the music out of the way and having only words, the spoken word, and then see what happens.
I can find some way to make poetry out of my life's experiences.
I wrote a lot of poetry when I was a teenager - mostly desperate love poetry!
So now I have a collection of poetry by Aaron Neville and I give it to people I want to share it with. I'd like to publish it someday.
I've always wanted to write poems and nothing else.
I like to encourage young talented writers to try and help them get published and so forth, but that's all. That's the best I can do.
On a practical level, poetry isn't something anybody has really made a great living at. I might sell some books and, once in a while, someone might pay to hear me read.
I want to write a book of poetry, as well as children's stories.