WNP to feature poet, songwriter
Poet and songwriter Sketer Michaels, of Alexander, will be this week’s feature for Wednesday Night Poetry at Kollective Coffee+Tea, 110 Central Ave.
The regular open mic session for all poets begins at 6:30 p.m. and Michaels will perform at 7 p.m., followed by a second open mic. Admission is free and open to all ages.
His given name is David Michael Cox, but his grandmother started calling him Sketer when he was first born. According to a news release, when she first saw him, she said, “Isn’t he the cutest little Sketer?” and the name stuck, hence the pen name Sketer Michaels.
Michaels began writing poems and songs while attending New Boston High School in east Texas. “Like a lot of kids that age, many of my early poems were about unrequited love,” he said. “I had a crush on a girl who paid no attention to me.” But the first poem he remembers writing was after the space shuttle Challenger blew up in 1986. “A teacher told us to write how we felt about it, and mine came out as a poem.” Michaels can still remember some of the lines from that poem.
In 2001, Michaels destroyed all of his writings. “I took five or six notebooks, a novel I was working on and all of the recordings of my songs and threw them in a burn barrel. At the time I was going through a spiritual transformation, and I saw myself idolizing what I had written. And that wasn’t who I was anymore.”
It would be another 10 years before Michaels got back into writing. “Some friends encouraged me to write a religious book based on Genesis 38 from the Old Testament of the Bible,” he said. “It basically was about how the church these days is not in keeping with scripture. I titled it ‘More Righteous Than I.’ It never got published, but I feel like writing it helped me deal with my own personal issues.”
Most of Michaels’ poems and songs are about his personal life. “I want to share what’s going on in my heart. My hope is to communicate who I am so I can better connect with other people,” he said. He rarely writes about social issues. “I know lots of poets do, but I find that only serves to divide us as a society. I’m more interested in bringing people together by sharing our personal development.”
Michaels’ wife, Amalia, is from Torreon, Mexico, and they have two children. “The Spanish language has come to influence my writing and home life. I often write about my family,” he added.
Some of Michaels’ writings can be found online at http://www.writers-network.com. The title of his page is “My Quiver Of Arrows.”
Email budonfoot@yahoo.com for more information about Wednesday Night Poetry.