Mike Turner
MIKE TURNER is a songwriter and poet living on the US Gulf Coast. Named 2017 Male Gospel Entertainer of the Year by the North America Country Music Associations International, Mike’s original songs have received airplay in the US, UK, Ireland, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and on the US Armed Forces Radio Network. He is co-founder of Music For World Peace Records, an indie record label specializing in original songs that promote world peace and oppose war. Mike’s poetry has been published in numerous print and on-line journals and anthologies; his first published poem was placed with Spillwords in 2019. His poetry collection, “Visions and Memories,” was published in 2021 by Sweetycat Press.
Songwriter and poet. What makes you feel most like yourself?
In terms of creative aspects, I find it difficult to draw a distinction between songwriting and poetry. Each has its conventions and forms; and each has different means of being made available to readers/listeners. I find that, once I have settled on a topic to write about, the flow of writing suggests to me if a piece might better be a song, or a poem. Song, in particular, tends to use much more repetition of phrases, lines or stanzas than does poetry; and so if I feel that a given point I’m addressing bears repetition, then I may gravitate toward song as opposed to poem.
I tend to write more poetry, than song - partly because, for me, the poetry process is faster. With a poem, I can write stream-of-consciousness, do some editing, and have a finished product that’s ready to be submitted to journals, anthologies and the like to reach readers. Song, by contrast, will involve more writing (to find phrases and rhymes), more structure and editing (to shape the work into verse and chorus), and of course the music - and then one has to record the piece before it can reach listeners. I usually have a handful of song projects ongoing at any given time, and they can take days, weeks, months to complete. Poems, by contrast, tend to come to me, and to completion, much more quickly.
When and how did you start writing?
I had a 27-year career as a law enforcement investigator - a job that revolved around facts, with very little opportunity for creative effort. What writing I did professionally was technical in nature: media releases, articles on investigative technique, procedural manuals, directives, regulations.
After my law enforcement career ended, I planned a retirement of sailing and traveling. As a lark, I took a beginner’s course in ukulele, and the writing floodgates opened - I had always enjoyed music, particularly ‘60s-era pop music like The Beatles and Motown; and by the second week of ukulele class, I’d written my first song. My fellow ukulele students liked what I wrote, which encouraged me, and I’ve never stopped - I’ve been writing now for about a dozen years.
What is the difference between a song lyric and a poetry?
Song, more so than poetry, makes use of repetition and rhyme; and the musical aspects are highly dependent on cadence and meter. For example, it’s common for songs to have a refrain or chorus that is repeated several times in the course of the piece. It’s more rare for poems to make use of such repetition.
To me, poems are linear, like a journey: we start at one place, “Point A,” and take the reader along with us on a path to an end point, “Point B.” Along the route we inform and entertain; we learn, we grow - and at the end, we’re at a place advanced from where we started.
Song, by contrast, is a bit more like repetitive story-telling with commentary, with verses that tell the tale and choruses that comment on what we learn from the experience. I think of song, rather than a strictly linear progression, as more of a labyrinth, where we start at the outside and gradually work our way into a center - and, when we arrive, find that we’re still surrounded by the verses, the choruses, the melody, the story that propelled us along the way.
Both poems and songs are instructive, and entertaining, and motivating; and both connect the writer and reader on an emotional level to impart their meaning and have their impact.
You have had song collaborations with various poets. Can you tell us something more about this experience?
I find collaboration a very rewarding process because it combines the experience and viewpoints of the participants, to produce a creative product that is richer, fuller and more expansive than the experience/viewpoint each collaborator would write about on their own.
I’ve done several projects with poets, where we have adapted their original poems into song. Most of the original poems have been free verse, some contemporary, and so lack some of song’s conventions like repetition, meter and rhyme. And yet it is just those elements that I think are necessary to support a melody to carry a lyric. And so the challenge has been to preserve as much of the original poet’s vision and verse as possible, and yet add or layer song-elements to successfully transition from poem to song. That’s why I refer to the end products as “adaptations” - they are not merely a recitation of the original poem against a musical backdrop, but rather use the language and imagery of the original poem as a starting point to convey the feeling and story in a musical format.
I enjoy these projects because they often result in music and lyrical imagery that I would not necessarily employ as an individual writer. My own songwriting tends to be in the blues, folk and country genres; yet I’ve found my poetry adaptations moving into other genres like progressive rock and world music. So these collaborations take me in new creative directions that serve to grow my experience as a writer.
I also tend to insert myself as a poet/songwriter into these projects - I choose original poems that resonate with me, that evoke emotions and a connection that I want to carry forward into the resulting song. In mating the original poems to song conventions I add phrases, lines, stanzas that stay true to the original but reflect my own experiences, beliefs and aspirations. The resulting songs are a true collaboration and partnership between myself and the original poet, and are in part both a derivative of the original while also a unique work in their own right.
Is there a song or poetry that represents you better?
It’s difficult for me to choose one poem or song that represents me - each piece is written to capture my beliefs and feelings on a given topic at a given moment in time. And so finished pieces are something of a “slice of life” for the topic they address at the time they are written.
I find increasingly that I write to certain themes again and again: love, loss, hope, redemption. I’m trying to capture aspects of the common human condition, partly so that I may better understand them within myself; partly in hopes of connecting with readers who feel the same.
There are at times a bittersweet aspect to my songs and poems, because not all of life is easy and we’re confronted with much sorrow and pain - but I try to inject elements of hope and beauty and renewal in even my darkest works, because I truly believe we’re all striving for a higher level of understanding and community, a connection to something bigger and more vital than just our individual selves.
Is it harder to compose music or write a poem?
I don’t know that I would say one is “harder” than the other, but the process of writing poems vs. songs is different for me.
Poems come to me relatively quickly, when I am inspired by something I read or hear. I typically write in the early morning, while having coffee and reading the morning news - I’ll read a headline, or a phrase, or see an image that sparks some feeling in me; and I open up the word processor on my iPad and try to capture, in words and symbolism, what I’m feeling on whatever topic has presented itself. I tend to write poems in a “stream of consciousness”, with very little initial editing. If a piece begins to come to me as a rhymed poem, I may spend a bit of time looking for rhymes that fit within the context of the narrative I’m constructing - I try (not always successfully) to avoid rhyme strictly for the sake of rhyme. But in large part I will produce a first draft within just a few moments. I’ll then set it aside for a bit, and later subject the piece to one or two light edits, honing word choice and checking rhyme and meter. At some point I’ll read the poem aloud, mostly again looking at meter and cadence. At that point the piece is pretty much “done”, and I’ll begin looking for a potential publishing outlet. I keep a list of literary journals that I run across, and look at their submission guidelines and other poems they’ve published to get a feel for how good a “fit” my piece might be for them.
My songwriting process starts much the same - a headline, phrase, topic or image that interests me - but if I decide I’m going to pursue a topic as a song, the process diverges. I first look for a lyrical “hook” to build the song around - the central point I want to emphasize in the chorus. Verse construction starts in telling the story that leads me to the “hook” in the chorus. After I’ve written a few lines I’ll start to get a sense for the cadence and structure that seem to support the words, which is the beginning of developing musical elements like melody, tempo and genre. I tend to write a lot of my music when driving my car - there’s something about the “rhythm of the road,” the tires on the blacktop, that drives my melodic and rhythmic sense; and the melody I begin to devise will direct how I’ll construct the lyrical lines, stanzas, verses and choruses. My songwriting process can take far longer than poetry - some of my songs take days, weeks, months to finalize, with a lot of editing and re-writing as I go along.
What are some challenges that you have faced in your literary path?
A continuing challenge is finding readers and listeners for my work, and building and maintaining a dedicated audience for what I write. I try to strike a balance between maintaining relationships with a core of publishers that I’ve worked with over time, endeavoring to keep an active submission in front of them; and finding new journals and anthologies to submit to, to grow my readership. I also try to maintain direct contact with a core of readers and peers - again, with the goal of getting my works read and known. I want my writing to make a difference in the world: to unite us in beauty and humanity, peace and love. And to have that impact, I have to get my writing, read.
What is Peace in your own words?
I believe we are all spiritually connected, with each other and with the universe around us. We’re all a part of “one”; it’s just for this limited period of time that we’re temporarily, physically separated into our corporeal beings, like how a drop thrown from a breaking wave is separate from, yet still a part of, the ocean it sprang from and will return to.
All of the negatives we feel in life: fear, deprivation, loneliness - are of a part of this separation; as are their manifestations in anger and violence, oppression and greed. When we strip away these negatives we are left with one thing - love - which I think is the absolute essence of our spiritual being.
And so “peace” to me is the absence of, the rejection of, those negative elements, to embrace that which is our fundamental being: love. For if we can lay down our fear and anger, greed and oppression, hate and violence - what are we then left with, but love and peace?
Much of this can be found in two simple concepts that are repeated over and over in religious and philosophical beliefs: treat others as you wish to be treated, and love one another. If we would only live by these two precepts, would we not know “peace?”
Do you think poetry or music is a powerful means to promote peace?
Yes. I believe both poetry and song speak to us on very fundamental emotional levels, connecting us in our common human experience. We all have fears we wish allayed; we all have hopes and dreams for ourselves and for our loved ones. It is our human intellect that enables us, not merely to react to our needs, but to affirmatively act towards a greater good. Poetry and music serve not only to unite us in our common humanity, but also to inspire us to act for the greater good of all in a community of understanding, togetherness and love.
Conducted by Irma Kurti
IRMA KURTI is an Albanian poet, writer, lyricist, journalist, and translator and has been writing since she was a child. She is a naturalized Italian and lives in Bergamo, Italy. She graduated from the English Department of the University of Tirana in 1988, and has since worked as a teacher of English and journalist for various newspapers. All her books are dedicated to the memory of her beloved parents, Hasan Kurti and Sherife Mezini, who have supported and encouraged every step of her literary path.
Kurti has also won numerous literary prizes and awards in Italy and Italian Switzerland. She was awarded the Universum Donna International Prize IX Edition 2013 for Literature and received a lifetime nomination as an Ambassador of Peace by the University of Peace, Italian Switzerland.
In 2020, she became the honorary president of WikiPoesia, the encyclopedia of poetry.
In 2021, she was awarded the title of Liria (Freedom) by the Italian-Albanian community in Italy. In 2023 she was awarded a Career Award from the Universum Academy Switzerland. She also won the prestigious 2023 Naji Naaman's literary prize for complete work.
Irma Kurti has published 30 books in Albanian, 25 in Italian, 16 in English, and two in French. She has also translated 21 books by different authors, and all of her own books into Italian and English. Her books have been translated and published in 17 countries.
Comments