Passion for Creative Writing John Wojewoda

Sappho (c. 630 – c. 570 BCE) was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her lyric poetry, written to be sung while accompanied by a lyre. In ancient times, Sappho was widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets and was given names such as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess".  The word Lesbian in Sappho’s poetry is a reference to the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos, not having anything to do with any sexual predilection.
John Myers O'Hara (1870–1944) was an American poet. Born in Iowa into a wealthy family from Chicago, he studied at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. He was admitted to the bar and practiced law in Chicago for twelve years. In his thirties he moved permanently to New York, where he worked as a broker on Wall Street and also wrote poetry. In the 1929 stock market crash, O'Hara and his whole family lost their fortunes, but he continued to work in a brokerage house. and write and publish poetry.
Besides his own poems, O'Hara also produced rather creative translations of Greek, Roman and French authors, such as the critically successful Poems of Sappho (1907).
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I find the writing of Ernest Hemingway to be fascinating. It feels like authentic artifact. His was a daring new style in 1921. It was a break away from the more stylized prose that had written in the past. In this podcast we discuss how Hemingway became a symbol of masculinity. We also share some of his advice to creative writers. If you want to support this Podcast, please consider buying this episode as an NFT on the Opensea NFT marketplace.


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These two short stories, A Carnival Jangle and Anarchy Alley, by African American writer Alice Dunbar Nelson were written in the 1890’s. They deliver a fascinating glimpse of the culture of New Orleans at this time, a wildly diverse city full of creativity and free thought. This is the New Orleans just before the explosion of Jazz music and the musical innovations of Buddy Bolden. Dunbar Nelson has been recognized for her exploration of something that came to be called the ‘Creole Condition’ - the experience of mixed race people in the era after the civil war.


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English author Walker Zupp talks about his new book “Martha”, published by Montag Press. Born in Bermuda in 1996, walker talks about his feelings of alienation from English society, saying that technically he’s a foreigner in British society, even though he isn’t because Bermuda is part of the British Empire. He is of the opinion that people find art deeply repulsive. He is currently writing a book about a white family in Bermuda - which he says will be like the Bermudan Sound and Fury. I look forward to reading that book in the future. Click here to get his novel ‘Martha’ from amazon.


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In this episode we look at two very different 19th century American writers. Civil war veteran and short story writer Ambrose Bierce, as well as African American writer and activist Alice Dunbar Nelson.
In this day and age of political division, the politics of these two individuals still have reverberations in modern America. Bierce, his commitment to the Federalist cause clearly demonstrated in his story “The Horsman in the Sky”.
Alice Dunbar Nelson, writing for The Monthly Review, a piece about flowers and death, a story of deadly heart break, is a voice that would not exist without the victory of the union north. The voice of a woman, one of African American heritage, is one that we are grateful to hear, in spite of the oppressions of racism and sexism.
I admit it’s a loose connection, but I find it compelling. Listening to the poetic language from long ago, we get a glimpse of different time and place, authentic voices of the past sharing what is their truth.


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The story 'The Vampyre' - written in 1816 is the product of the 'year without summer'. In that year summer temperatures in Europe were the coldest that they had ever been between the years 1766 and the year 2000. One night that summer at the villa Diodati in Lake Geneva Switzerland the writer George Gordon Noel Byron, also know as Lord Byron, suggested that those present should each write a ghost story. There were at least two writers there who's writing would go down in history. One was Mary Shelly, who two years later would published the book Frankenstein, the other was Byron's physician, John Polidori, who wrote the short story 'The Vampyre', which is the first appearance in fantasy fiction of a vampire. The previous summer to 1816 - Mount Tamboro in Indonesia had erupted sending volcanic ash into the upper atmosphere. People in Europe had no way of knowing why summer didn't come in 1816. Low temperatures and torrential rain caused disastrous crop failures in Europe, North America and Asia. Mary Shelly wrote in her travel journal 'Never was a scene more awfully desolate. The trees in these regions are incredibly large, and stand in scattered clumps over the white wilderness; the vast expanse of snow was chequered only by these gigantic pines, and the poles that marked our road: no river or rock-encircled lawn relieved the eye.'
Lord Byron wrote a poem that summer called Darkness
I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;
Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread
Of this their desolation; and all hearts
Were chill'd into a selfish prayer for light:
And they did live by watchfires—and the thrones,
The palaces of crowned kings—the huts,
The habitations of all things which dwell,
Were burnt for beacons; cities were consum'd,
And men were gather'd round their blazing homes
To look once more into each other's face;
Happy were those who dwelt within the eye
Of the volcanos, and their mountain-torch:
A fearful hope was all the world contain'd;
Forests were set on fire—but hour by hour
They fell and faded—and the crackling trunks
Extinguish'd with a crash—and all was black.
The brows of men by the despairing light
Wore an unearthly aspect, as by fits
The flashes fell upon them; some lay down
And hid their eyes and wept; and some did rest
Their chins upon their clenched hands, and smil'd;
And others hurried to and fro, and fed
Their funeral piles with fuel, and look'd up
With mad disquietude on the dull sky,
The pall of a past world; and then again
With curses cast them down upon the dust,
And gnash'd their teeth and howl'd: the wild birds shriek'd
And, terrified, did flutter on the ground,
And flap their useless wings; the wildest brutes
Came tame and tremulous; and vipers crawl'd
And twin'd themselves among the multitude,
Hissing, but stingless—they were slain for food.
And War, which for a moment was no more,
Did glut himself again: a meal was bought
With blood, and each sate sullenly apart
Gorging himself in gloom: no love was left;
All earth was but one thought—and that was death
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour'd,
Even dogs assail'd their masters, all save one,
And he was faithful to a corse, and kept
The birds and beasts and famish'd men at bay,
Till hunger clung them, or the dropping dead
Lur'd their lank jaws; himself sought out no food,
But with a piteous and perpetual moan,
And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
Which answer'd not with a caress—he died.
The crowd was famish'd by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heap'd a mass of holy things
F