Dee Allen.
Writing has always been Dee Allen’s creative outlet.Before walking on his present path as a writer, Allen wanted to be a comic book artist. Along with his drawings, backstories for his own characters and short stories were written. It wasn’t until his early 20s that Allen took creative writing seriously. At 20, his ambitions changed. He wanted to become a Heavy Metal singer and worked with several bands singing & writing song-lyrics. None of them made it past the garage, due to “creative differences”. The McCook Brothers—his three friends—noticed that he wrote song-lyrics from time to time and asked him to write love poems to impress their girlfriends. Those earliest poems were vague—not to mention terrible. Dee Allen had a better handle on poetry after reading books containing the real thing. From Hughes to Ginsberg, Allen learned the poetry-writing craft. By mid-1992, his work had gotten better. One night in December 1992, Allen gave his first live performance of a 3-page poem at a friend’s birthday house party. Two musician friends talked him into it. The year 2000 was the start of 7 years of writer’s block, brought on by throwing 6 notebooks in the trash, in a moment of rage. Brought on by one abortive poem with an amazing starting line. In November 2002, Allen left Atlanta by Greyhound bus and disembarked in San Francisco—America’s #1 artist-friendly city. There, he experienced homelessness, squatting, evictions, activist work, subway fare evasions, arrests, college. At street marches, he’d formulate/roar original protest chants—but he still couldn’t write. After reading King’s Letter From Birmingham Jail for English homework, Allen wrote the required book report. Behind it, he wrote a new poem. Writer’s block was finally broken and he felt creative again. Since that cold red letter day—February 21, 2007—hardcover notebooks were filled in with Allen’s spilt ink creations. Those led to works being dispersed between numerous anthologies and his own poetry books, 8 to date. Dee Allen also performed on the mic again. At live venues and later, in cyberspace, as open mic participant and feature.
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.