Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
GK Callender focusing on his poetry during MLS shutdown
With Inter Miami CF’s inaugural Major League Soccer season on hold due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, goalkeeper Drake Callender has used the time to further explore his off-the-field interests.
Over the past few weeks, Callender has posted Instagram videos of himself reciting poems he’s written. His interest in poetry started during his sophomore year at the University of California, Berkeley. What began as a personal mode of expression became an artistic outlet in which he was able to better understand himself.
When an emotion triggered his thought process, he’d take note of it and save it to write later. What Callender discovered while writing was that the feelings he’d start with and what he ended with was completely different.
“That fascinated me a lot because I started learning I could change my emotional state based on what I was writing,” he said. “I could go from sad and write my way into feeling better or dealing with that emotionally better. I kind of opened Pandora’s box with this.”
His passion for poetry evolved from writing it to performing too. He recalled the first time he shared his poems with a public audience happening last fall during a poetry slam his friend brought him to that paid tribute to Toni Morrison.
Callender, who was used to sharing his poems with a handful of people at a time, could feel himself catching a bout of the jitters as he prepared to perform in front of a crowd of up to 70 people.
“I was super nervous,” he recalled. “I never performed a piece of poetry in front of more than two to three people. I was getting a similar feeling that I get when I’m lining up for a game.”
Callender said the positive reaction the crowd gave him about his performance and the poem he shared gave him the confidence to continue to share his work.
Callender has written around 150 poems over the past 2 years, writing each one with the same pencil. The poems he posted on Instagram in April, which both focused on a connection with nature, were his second and third poems he’s shared on a public forum.
“When I first started, there wasn’t much form with my writing,” he said. “Once I started learning more about stanzas and syllable count, I started getting more interested in the different kinds of poetry I can write in different styles.
“It’s been a fun journey so far. It’s still a hobby, but now I’m starting to look at it as, ‘I can actually start to create projects and get more creative with my writing.’ ”
Poetry isn’t the only art in which Callender has taken interest. He’s also interested in drawing and making designs, even creating a tattoo for himself on his left forearm.
Callender sees similarities between his two passions of soccer and creating art.
“There is the first whistle and the last whistle,” he said. “There’s a process in between, both in soccer and poetry writing. You go through processes in both styles of expression.”
When Inter Miami’s season resumes, Callender expects to share a poem with his teammates and wants to continue to further develop his writing.
“I already perform on the soccer field,” Callender said. “That’s something I love doing and have a passion for. I also want to resonate with people outside of that too and show them there’s more to this goalkeeper that plays for Inter Miami.”