First, a few words about me. I'm an old poet, born in 1945 in Tampa. I practise law and write poetry and short stories and novels, and an essay here and there. I live on a farm in Tennessee, and for the last few years I have been lawyering less and writing more. I received my first university diploma from the University of Lyon, in France in 1965. I received a doctorate in law from the University of Toledo, Ohio in 1988 (Editor-in-chief of law review). I received an LLM in international and comparative law from the University of Brussels in 1990. I've studied at other universities where I didn't get a degree but where I simply had a good time learning: Abilene Christian, University of Lausanne, UNC Chapel Hill (Romance Languages and Philosophy). It's been a good run.
Poetry is not a hobby for me. It's a life form. Poetry exists in every culture on Earth, and to the extent that we move away from it as a culture, we become less than whole. Poetry is a source of living waters, and a real poet absolutely must drink from that well. Read my poem The Angel of Thirst which you can find here on Shanky Bottom.
Now, about the site. This is where I will post most of my writing. I have decided to publish independently to be able to keep control of my work, within reason, and to make it much more available to the public. I celebrate and have embraced the technology that makes this possible. I can write a poem in the morning and you can be reading it that afternoon. I can correct errors almost instantly. Of course I celebrate that.
My objective is to provide a publishing platform that makes my work available quickly to readers who read primarily on electronic devices. I will happily share my experiences in this effort with other writers and thinkers with similar interests.
I am enthusiastically engaging with various AI engines in my creative efforts and am sharing many of those exchanges or conversations verbatim here on Shanky Bottom. Many of these exchanges have utterly fascinated me. One that has apparently fascinated readers is What percentage of toddlers will splash in a mud puddle?
I believe my efforts here can be helpful to others who are trying to get their work out to readers as quickly as possible. And like it or not, most of our young people, including the generation below me, are doing most of their reading on their phones. I have decided that I'm going to jump in and make it easy for them to read my poetry and stories and other work on the devices that they have in their pockets.