May 9, 2008

The Evans Poetry Collection (TEPC)

In the proud tradition of such renowned poets as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, James Weldon Johnson, Countee Cullen, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, and Sterling Brown, we have emerging poet, author, educator, and national award winner John D. Evans.

The poetry of John D. Evans inspires readers of all ages with messages about life, liberty, and pursuits of happiness. With something different on each page, the journey that he chronicles is personal, yet profoundly universal. Although he was born in obscurity and overcame insecurity, he has an epic story to tell.

In his senior year at Chicago's Lane Technical High School, Evans won first place in the local NAACP ACT-SO competition and captured second place in the national competition held in Nashville, Tennessee with his poem, "Life in a Dungeon." He would later feature the award-winning poem in his first book of published poetry.

Evans is a graduate of Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia (B.S., Marketing), Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois (M.A., Special Education), Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais, Illinois (M.A., School Improvement and Leadership), and Argosy University in Chicago, Illinois (Ed.D. Candidate, Educational Leadership).

Evans sets the tone for his poetic pilgrimage in his first book of poetry, Acres of Green and Oceans of Blue: Diary of a Runaway (2000). He chronicles his quest for self-discovery in More Than a Club Kid: Man Versus Self (2002). He tells the world that "(he) can not stop and will not stop" in Things That Make My World Go 'Round: A Poetic Memoir (2003, 2007). Evans shares his own lessons and confessions in his fourth book of poetry, How Deep I Can Be: Lessons and Confessions (2005). In his fifth book, Diary of a Renaissance Man (2007), Evans pays a poetic tribute to the Harlem Renaissance writers with classically inspired poetry.

John D. Evans is a member of the Kappa Delta Pi Honor Society of Education, Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia Fraternity of America, Inc., the Poetry Society of America, and The Academy of American Poets.

Featured Products

Acres of Green and Oceans of Blue: Diary of a Runaway

As found in Excerpts

Excerpt from Book One of The Evans Poetry Collection, "Acres of Green and Oceans of Blue: Diary of a Runaway”:

Homage to Words

Words
They excite me
Rejuvenate me
Compel me to rise up from my bed
And write
Words
As they laugh so loudly, leap
Into my head
They orchestrate my thoughts
With harmonic symphonies
As they unite
Each newly formed subject and predicate
Dance a waltz before me
Words
They speak to me
Call out my name
And tell me what to do
They are the Paper-mate and Mead of my mind
That dictate everything that I must jot down
In and out of the corridors of my mind
They play hide-and-go-seek
Like darling forget-me-nots

Words
They creep and crawl
Into the deep crevices that they find
Becoming more and more intricate as they move along
Locating the adverbs and adjectives
Which fall into the arms of the preposition
And his many phrases
Words
They scurry about and
Run freely into the fortress of my ear
Each laugh echoes a thousand times
In the facets of my hollowness
I move to their rhythm
I dance to their beat
Words
They belong to me
And I belong to
Words

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