Mercedes Dugger
Mercedes Dugger is a California native and lifelong resident of the San Francisco Bay Area. As a student at a parochial school during her formative years, Mercedes excelled in academic subjects and art. Her love of literature and art persisted throughout her childhood and adolescence, and after graduating early from high school Mercedes decided to pursue a commercial art degree at a local college. It was there that she met her future husband, to whom she remained married for nearly three decades. Following his untimely death, Mercedes spent another decade living the quiet life of a widow. Having had enough of the solitary life, she ventured out to see if she could find love again. Mercedes did indeed find love again, in the person of the poet with whom Morning Tanka was written.
The awakening began in a small grove of black oak trees on Collins Street in Fort Worth Texas. Then the road wound around a few stops in other towns and cities of Texas, Zapata, Del Rio, and finally ending with radio days in Space City. Under summer fog, the strong lure of Berkeley Dane Ince came west to study fine art and acting and to write ever so occasionally. Personal tragedy and the pandemic focused the artist’s mind and hundreds of poems have resulted along with special online programing events on Facebook. “Outrage Against Racism” which was produced on the author’s birthday and happens to land on Holocaust Remembrance Day followed by St. Valentine’s Day Mascara an inclusive international and grown-up version of the celebration, Juneteenth was produced on the inaugural national holiday for the celebration of freed slaves in America, an international Day of the Dead event, and most recently, an event being a poetic gathering of writers from around the world in support of Ukraine. Dane Ince is an internationally published poet, named Beat Poet Laureate for California, and hosts a weekly open mic – Time to Arrive, and founder of EYEPUBLISHEWE.