PROVOCATIVE LITERARY AGITATION – Moonwashed Weekly Prompt #125

For this week’s Moonwashed Weekly Prompt, Eugi has encouraged us to compose a piece of poetry using the word: PROVOCATIVE. Below lies my contribution! 👇👇👇Hope that ye enjoy the read! 🙏🤞😁📖

PROVOCATIVE LITERARY AGITATION

Prod; poke and agitate
With questioning vocabulary & uncomfortable truths
Provoke thought & self-reflection
With daring words; honest insight & provocative language.
Challenge the status quo
By writing & composing things
No one else would even dare
Or dream of
You’re a literary provocateur
Operating on the outskirts
Of penned self-expression
A vernacular raconteur
Using the broad expanses of the written word
To counteract his verbal repression
So he keeps it positive;
Makes it evocative
Teases with the provocative
That’s my linguistic perogative.

If you wish to participate in the prompt then you can access it through the following link: 👇👇👇

https://amanpan.blog/2023/01/10/moonwashed-weekly-prompt-125-1-10-23-provocative/

BRILLIANT BLOGGER POET PROFILE: BOGDAN DRAGOS

Hey folks! Welcome back to my Brilliant Blogger Poet initiative. 😁Thank you so much for your patience, sorry for the long interval between this and the previous post! 🙏

Every once in a while, in this vastly overpopulated & overcrowded metropolis of blogging, you’ll find yourself stumbling upon a blog that makes you sit up and notice; that grabs you by the throat and shakes you out of your creative comfort zone & makes you think about things in a way you never imagined. Bogdan Dragos, who works in a casino by night, from Romania is one such writer/poet.

With his Daydreaming as a Profession blog over on WordPress Bogdan has managed to carve out a rather provocative & unique literary niche for himself with his daring; dark & sometimes disturbing mix of poetry; musings & short stories. His writings, I find, often blur the lines between what we view as right or wrong; moral & immoral; good & bad, regularly pushing or even crossing the boundaries we have set for ourselves into the realm of the taboo asking us questions we wouldn’t venture to ask ourselves.

In a way he is a philosopher, albeit one with a fairly fertile imagination & blackly comic sense of humour. However, I don’t believe he wants to does any of it just for the sake of it. He seeks, through his writing, to shock us out of our apathy; to make us question the state of the world we live in and even the state of our own hearts.

He broaches themes that some of us might find uncomfortable such as death; sex; God; the devil; the life of a poet & everything else in between with a lyrical freedom and a self-deprecating directness that is refreshing and challenging at the same time. However, in the long run, I believe it will aid the reader/fellow scribe to be braver; better; more honest writer without fear of venturing outside of his/her comfort zone. It’s something we all could & should (day) dream and aspire to both in our writing & our everyday life.

If you would like to read more of his excellent material then why don’t you pop over to his site at this link:
https://bogdandragos.com/blog/

Please tune in next week for my interview with Bogdan where I’ll be asking him about his writing influences; where he got his dark sense of humour and what inspired him to set up the Daydreaming as a Profession blog.

BRILLIANT BLOGGER POET: MOUSE AKA MICHAEL MURDOCH FROM THE TWISTING TAIL – INTERVIEW

1.Mouse or Michael, thank you very much for taking the time to participate in this interview and answer my questions. Before we go anywhere else, where did you come up with the nickname/pseudonym: Mouse? It has always fascinated me! 😁

Thanks for the opportunity. I’ve never been asked to do anything like this before. So be gentle, it’s my first time.
The name was a natural progression. I was a tiny child, the smallest in my class every year. Michael became Mickey, and it led on from there.
I’m happy to report I grew to the height of an average adult male. (By worldwide statistics)
2.I see you’ve a wide ranging and well informed selection of material in your blog. It features verything from poetry to Japanese forms of it to flash fiction; short stories along with some fun heretofore unknown facts. What inspired you to start this blog off in the first place?

I never intended to start a blog. Initially, I wanted to write a rhyme book for my children. For some reason my wandering mind kept coming up with inappropriate material. (Eg. Fluffy little bunnies, twitching in the snow. Wait, it’s not winter, that’s Colombian blow.)
All this material was put into a folder and sat there. I started thinking it was a waste because some was entertaining and bam! I released my nonsense into the world.
3.And do you have a favourite genre or style of writing, out of the aforementioned ones in the previous question, that you are particularly drawn to or keep coming back to?
It’s changed over the last few years. When I started it was micro fiction with a twist ending, then I wanted to experiment and learn do I ran through hundreds of forms, anything I could find. (I still do this regularly.)
Now I write what comes as it comes and form it into what feels right.

4.What part of the world do you hail from, if you don’t mind me asking?! Your names and nicknames suggest Australia yet everytime you read my blog you come up as being from Finland? Sorry, its the journalist side of me! You can tell me to mind my own business if you want? ! 😛😂

I think this is common knowledge for most who know me on WordPress. I’m a born and raised Aussie. I grew up in half a dozen inner and outer suburbs of Melbourne and the countryside of Victoria.
I met my Finnish wife in Croatia while travelling the world. We’ve hopped back and forth between both countries but we are currently settled here in Finland while raising the children.
5.Following on from that, how does where you live and or are from inspire or influence your material?

I can’t say for sure since I only started writing again in the last few years. But I guess the Aussie in me doesn’t take anything too seriously. If you can’t make something into a joke you aren’t trying hard enough. And Finn’s are known for their dark, dry humor. (And heavy metal) Given the unforgiving terrain it’s understandable. I’d like to say it’s leached into me since arriving but I’ve always been a little twisted. I can definitely say I wouldn’t be writing about snow so much if I was still sweating my ass off in Oz.
6.Your sense of humour and the absurd set your blog apart. Has humour or the twisted side of things always been a draw for you?
As long as I remember. I was always looking for things that didn’t conform. Things that make you think twice, things that assault and distort our perception of the world. The more twisted the better. I still remember the shock of novels by Palahniuk or reading American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis for the first time, or the film, In the Mouth of Madness, all twisted in their special way.

7.Have you always enjoyed expressing yourself as a writer/blogger and been interested in facts & learning new things?

In my youth, I wrote books and books of poetry and stories. Then all of a sudden I stopped around the age of 17. I didn’t really write anything again for 17 years until I started the twisting tail blog. I’ve enjoyed the getting the words down and out since then.
The facts and trivia are something I’ve always loved. The little things that build and bind the bigger picture of the world.

8.So, what’s next for The Twisting Tail?

I’ve cut back but I’ll keep posting every week. I’m trying to find the time to learn about ebooks and self publishing.
I’d also like to get into different forms of media but I think thats a little further off.

What a thoroughly enjoyable; interesting & informative interview with a deeply intelligent & creative man who’s travelled the world; found love and family in the process; dares to think outside the box; revels in the provocative and rediscovered his passion for writing through his children & starting The Twisting Tail.

Please tune in next Wednesday for my next BRILLIANT BLOGGER POET Profile. Just who that’ll be will be revealed next Monday in my Blog Goals for the Week Ahead. Mind yourselves; stay creative and take care. 🙏😁 And if you want to check out more of Mouse’s material then you can access it through the following link: https://murdochmouse.wordpress.com/