Ellis Profile

In High School I set out to be a Journalist. At the time I couldn't even define 'poetry'. A Newspaper, which once had the largest daily circulation in the US, published a poem I had written. I had no knowledge that a teacher submitted it. A US Senator knew it was published before I did. A week later I got a letter from the President of the Los Angeles School Board, followed by another letter from another Senator. In fact I was the last of over 300,000 people people to know I was published. Not a bad year for a seventeen year old. I was soon after given a writing scholarship to an elite University, but I was upset that I wasn't accepted for overall academia or grades. It would take ten years and nearly a million people to convince me that I was a poet. Those things are for others to decide. A writer should concentrate on writing. Even today I struggle to define the word 'Poet'. It sometimes excludes my love for drama, Journalism, and music. I think poetry has all of these elements. It is everything Theater is. It is happy, sad, beautiful and dramatic. Poetry is too broad to define. I am more honored to be called a 'Human Being'. When I started to write seriously, I had a simple plan: Take twenty years to learn to write well. Take the next twenty years to worry about fame , publication or success. How time flies. I also made a list of who I thought were the ten best poets or lyricist of our time. And for years I just dreamed of being in my own top ten. Even number eleven would have been nice. Today in my supposed maturity, I just dream of touching a reader profoundly. If a reader can remember something I've written ten years later, I can be pleased. My other goal is to become a greater reader. I'd like to read a thousand poems a year.