In this episode of Next Up to The Mic, we welcome Billy Stanley who was our featured reader at Poets Speak Loud at the Lark Tavern on March 27, 2006.
Billy Stanley grew up in the backwaters of the D’arbonne Bayou on the outskirts of West Monroe, Louisiana. After exhausting his literary ambitions in the twin cities of Northeast Louisiana he took off to Provincetown Massachusetts to become Stanley Kunitz‘s garbageman for a few summers. He humbled himself before Yusef Komuyakaa at the end of Cape Cod. Dave Brinks agitated him on the streets of the Big Easy as Billy yawped his bona fides. He then fell in Love and shoveled snow in New York’s capital. Shaker ghosts in Watervliet haunted him on early morning sunrises in the dead of winter. Adam Goldsworthy teaches him the poetry of nature as Livio Levante teaches him the riches of nature.
Billy says that “Poetry is man’s attempt to rationalize the magnificence of nature in the face of our human hubris. Hope you like mine, I do.”
When he is not writing you can find Billy on Facebook and in real life tending to his Texas Bonsai, harvesting produce, and tapping trees for maple syrup in his Pine Hills neighborhood.
Please welcome, next up to the mic, Billy Stanley.
Bonus Photos
Music Credit
Our theme music was “Imagination” by Danijel Zambo. License code: 44TCGFPF1L1434BE
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