There is something to be said for having hobbies which you love, like gardening or writing poetry. Anything which you can put your passion into. All the better if you have more than one! Ron Wiseman is an English Professor who retired to tend his garden, but found his love for poetry so strong it caused him to form a group on the poetry website AllPoetry called the Winklings. They would publish anthologies of the best poems they could find on that website. Ron was the editor and funded most of the production. More recently, he founded the International Poetry Fellowship to produce such books well beyond the scope of his skills and lifetime. Not until now has he ever been convinced to publish anything exclusively of his own work.
About the Author: Ron Wiseman lives with his wife in the hill country of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. As farmer's son, he grew up in the Maroochy district of Queensland, and knew little of poetry except from school readers. A varied career meant that sooner or later he would bump into poetry. It was later. Even then it was strictly in an academic sense. On retirement, aged fifty-seven years, for health reasons, He joined one or two writing groups. It was then he began to write short stories but soon woke up to the fact that poems were quicker and acceptable while he enjoyed the company of skilled writers. Moreover, poems could be altered with less chaos! His favorite group at the moment is the Pente Poets. Samuel Taylor Coleridge has become one of his 'turn-to' sources in his consideration of poetry. Samuel Taylor has said words to the effect that good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul of each poem. These qualities form all into one graceful and intelligent whole. How wonderful to fall back on such wisdom as that immediately above! It has a sense of perfection one could never hope to emulate. He is a well-published poet and respected editor who has been responsible for a multitude of poetry anthologies, including the On Viewless Wings series, the These Human Shores series, and a quarterly magazine called Prisms. Ron Wiseman is known for his imagery in free verse and passion for poetry.