I live in a remote fishing village on Mexico’s Pacific coast where I spend my days in awe. I love where I am. I was born into a family that left two countries in escaping communism. I stay politically and socially aware, whether I want to or not. I was raised in the midst of a consumptive and competitive affluence that I never felt “a part of”, that didn’t feel “right”. I found refuge, relief and satisfaction in sobriety, exercise, researching, writing, editing and community service.

I like backstories, histories, the connections between people, places and things. I also like studying the etymologies of words, for example, how our concept of “normal” is derived from the idea of conforming to a common rule, a term taken from the ancient Roman carpenter’s square, the “normalis”, a tool which helped frame right angles. My out-of-square curiosity often leads me spelunking into cavernous rabbit holes of culture and thought. It’s stuff I don’t talk about with most people. That’s where the Obscure Thinkers Society comes from, from my wife saying, “You should start an Obscure Thinkers Society.”

…

I started writing down snippets of phrases and ideas in my teens, crafting them into poems year after year. I went on to have a career in sales and marketing that left me feeling empty despite it taking me exactly where I thought I wanted to be. I started a career as a journalist in my forties, taking a full plunge into my passion for counter-culture literature and traditions in my fifties.

In 2020, Lisa Marie Järlborn, the editor of of Love Love, a Beat/Factory/Punk-influenced magazine based in Paris, asked me if I had any poems I wanted to submit for her second issue. I sent her Cogito, Ergo Sum. She published it, alongside poems by Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders, Nina Živančević and Charles Plymell. That felt good.

…

Since moving to Mexico in early 2022, my poetry has been published by several kind literary journals, including Voices, Love Love Magazine, Seppuku, Culture Matters, Maintenant, Book of Matches, BeatLife, Beatnik Cowboy, DoubleSpeak and GAS: Poetry, Art and Music.

My other published work includes profiles of “counterculture” instigators for pleasekillme.com, liner notes for music projects by Peter Stampfel and by Mike Watt, and the editing of Charles Plymell’s email correspondences into two books, for Bottle of Smoke Press.

…

This is the start of the Obscure Thinkers Society. It’s a collection of my published poems, which make a collage of their own, together with the people and culture I prefer. Welcome. Enjoy.