Greetings. I'm
Steven
Owen Shields, an emerging poet. I compose a form of poetry known
as alieniloquy--poems that are sustained allegories. I compose mostly in traditional forms,
but I like to experiment with rhyme and metrics too.
I was born and raised in Marion, Indiana, a rust-belt city of about 30,000 people in north-central Indiana. My middle name was given for Owen County, Indiana, home of some of my father's family members.
People sometimes ask me how I began writing poetry. My interest was sparked by a high-school English teacher, Sue Keefer, who assigned our class to write some sonnets modeled after the Romantic poets we were studying. Later, I contributed a poem (a pretty bleak one, about the aftermath of a nuclear cataclysm) to my high school literary publication, The Excalibur. Probably what "qualified" me to begin writing poems in those days was that I was a lonely, nerdy teen with very few outlets to make myself heard and understood.
When I became interested in poetry, I began to read it, which I think is very helpful if you plan to write it. I spent many hours at the Marion Public Library, and so was eventually attracted to the works of Theodore Roethke and John Ciardi, among others. I was especially drawn to the idealism of the Romantic poets. Many nights I would fall asleep reading Byron and Shelley. Today I read very widely, and with much more appreciation of the contemporary.
I continued to compose a lot of mopey late-adolescent "poor little me" crap after I began attending Ball State University, where I earned both a B.A. in Radio-TV-Film (with a minor in English) and later an M.A. in Journalism with a creative writing emphasis.
But I also became interested in radio announcing during my first year in college and was soon working full-time announcing jobs for my hometown radio stations WBAT-AM and WGOM-AM/WMRI-FM. Migrating to Indianapolis, I worked for many years for WNAP-FM, then one of the preeminent FM rock stations of the Midwest. My interest in poetry resurfaced while working the all-night shift (I had to do something while "Tubular Bells" was playing...), so I began writing imitative poems modeled after Louise Glück, Richard Brautigan, Diane Wakoski, and Charles Bukowski. Only one, Your Cats Look Like Taxi-cabs To Me, ever was published in the now-defunct New Infinity Review. I concluded after that that I was no poet.
While working for WNAP (also affectionately known as "The Buzzard"--the original one), I met my wife Janet and eventually began working for KISS-99 (today, WZPL, Indianapolis). Searching for a "real job" led me to the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. There, I became faculty director of radio station WSUW-FM and taught broadcasting courses while pursuing my doctorate in Mass Communication at nearby UW-Madison. The doctorate completed in the late 80's, I taught research methods and advanced communication courses until I left UW-W after a 20-year career. By that time, I had become a tenured full professor in charge of the department's graduate program in communication.
My career as a scholar was a productive one. I authored a multitude of research articles and conference papers on the social impact of radio programming. With four others, I was a founding editor of the Journal of Radio Studies. I was honored by being named Andrew T. Weaver Outstanding College Educator by the Wisconsin Communication Association, and received other honors for my research and service. My interest in poetry was nonexistent, though. During the 20 years I taught at UW-Whitewater I authored no poems at all.
A move to the Atlanta area in the late 90s allowed me an opportunity (thanks to Janet) to consider poetry again after a failed attempt at novel-writing. This time, I began a serious study of the craft of poetry and soon began placing poems in literary publications such as Time of Singing, The Raintown Review, Candelabrum, Poetry Church, freefall, frisson, and many others. This culminated in the letterpress publication in 2005 of a debut chapbook, Daimonion Sonata, by Birch Brook Press (see the other links for more information).
At the moment, I live with my family near Atlanta, Georgia. From 2004 - 2006 I served as President of the Georgia Poetry Society. I continue to compose, revise, mope about rejections, and celebrate small successes as they occur. As we say in the South, "it's all good."