Charles Becker

Oyster River Pages: How is your art or writing informed by current social and/or political issues?

Charles Becker: Yes, I do tend to write about social issues, especially those affecting the LGBT-Q community, seniors, and the disabled. I write about coming out, fitting in, finding acceptance, and celebrating community.

ORP: How has the COVID-19 pandemic changed your relationship to art and writing, either in the creation of it or the consumption of it?

CB: I have found myself writing more than ever during this pandemic and quarantine. Staying at home has helped me create a schedule and a routine, and I find myself getting more ideas for poems while I re-read older poems. I also am spending more time talking to friends and family on the telephone and these conversations encourage lines for poems, too.

ORP: If you could choose one writer or artist, living or dead, as a best friend or mentor, who would it be? Why?

CB: My favorite writer is Mary Oliver. She is my mentor and secret friend. Her poems encourage me to observe natural beauty, write about nature, and seek hope.

ORP: Do you believe that hope is a luxury, a responsibility, a danger, or something else? Why?

CB: Hope, for me, is generated by compassion and charity. Mary Oliver expresses hope by being astonished by the simplicity of nature and the beauty of living things. Hope can be shared by sharing these observations and also by making others away of compassion and charity.

ORP: What do you hope readers or viewers of your piece take from it?

CB: I do hope readers will experience some feeling of hope while reading my poem and afterwards. In the poem I am talking to someone who is vulnerable and in need of care during these difficult times. I hope the feeling of compassion and charity will be sensed during the reading of my poem, too.

Charlie Becker is a retired speech and language specialist who studies and writes poetry with the Community Literature Initiative in Los Angeles. His poems seek to sensitize about issues facing the LGBT-Q community and disabled seniors. Some of Charlie's poems have been published by Passager, Rush Magazine (Mount St. Mary's University), Linden Avenue Literary, and the Dandelion Review. He lives in West Hollywood, California. Listen to Charles read his poem “While We Stay at Home” here.