Why Shop Poems?

For my first few years as a woodworker, I used to say that writing felt like a past life. I tried to find time for it, of course, but it seemed that all of my energy was spent in the woodshop, building and learning, lifting and moving, trying my hardest to let the running of the saws become second nature.

Besides, woodshops can sometimes be a little macho—not great places to express a deep desire to make art, which is a little ironic when you consider how much creating we do. So I worked, and I focused on improving the skill of my hands, and that other world, the writing one, felt more and more removed from my life with the machines.

Still, I did keep writing, and during the pandemic I properly took up carving. I started submitting written pieces again, here and there. At some point I began to design my own projects and take commissions.

And the more I fell into the rhythm of building things, the more I was compelled to write. And the more I wrote, the more I wanted to take that creative energy back to the machines, until one evening I was turning over a small box in my hands, just looking at it, feeling the finish, and I thought hey, it’s like a little poem.

Shop Poems is my way of connecting the two creative strands of my life, a place for poems written not on paper but with the saw and the chisel. Thank you for visiting. I hope you like what you see here.