Welcome to the fourth installment in Oakland Word's series of writer profiles. At 72-years-young, James Eilers is the eldest participant in Oakland Word's free creative writing workshops. He attended the Poetry and Spoken Word workshop with instructor Bisola Marignay in February. In the following poetic vignettes, he skillfully paints impressions of two different moments in his life.

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Childhood Memory: The Jungle Gym

Monkey quick, skittering sideways,

up and down in that iron maze,

I flee the bully boys below.

Climbing into the sky, I lie full

length, my spine along a pipe;

then fall back joyously, swinging

by my legs. In my pocket of air,

invisible, tumbling in the empty hub

of the world, yet I feel the web

of the runaway in search of a place,

free of fear, where I may live in peace.

Above shouts of laughter and of rage,

I turn the wheel in my iron cage.

Chinese New Year: Arrival of the Tiger

Stage thunder, blocks away – someone

is rattling a sheet of metal – then I know

it is firecrackers, and remember it is

New Year’s Eve for the Year of the Tiger.

Hearing that ratta-tat-tatter, how can I stay away?

Soon I am walking in Chinatown

on sidewalks covered with rose petals.

Closer now, the fireworks are more intense –

iron bolts shot hard against a metal roof.

The rose petals, dark in the twilight,

are blown by wind and passing feet

into little drifts by the storefronts,

all the more beautiful as I see these

fallen blossoms are the paper skins left

by the firecrackers’ fretful, staccato chatter.

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OW: Why do you write? Who do you write for?

JE: If I had to, I could live without writing, but only if I suppressed the most important impulse I feel. It is parallel to political involvement being prompted by something they call a "moral imperative." I wrote for many years for a "muse," a woman friend who was a great reader; by the time of her death, I hope I had come to write the way a tree has no choice but to go on making leaves.

OW: How/why did you choose Oakland Word?

JE: A friend let me know about the website, Oakland Local, where I learned about Oakland Word (the two seem to have in common an enthusiasm about Oakland that I love to see). Writing groups keep me writing, and a writer needs the feedback of others when writing and revising. As I am retired, on limited income, I seek out and am lucky if I can find a writing group sustained by a charity or the government.

OW: Who are your 3 favorite writers and why?

JE: I am leaving out too many authors when I arbitrarily choose William Faulkner (as my first inspiration); more recently, William Trevor (Reading Turgenev) and Bruce Chatwin (On the Black Hill). So I have to leave out Whitman and Dickinson?

OW: Did you learn anything surprising about yourself from taking the Oakland Word workshop?

JE: Looking forward to ongoing learning at Oakland Word, there was the unexpected delight of being in the company of a wide range of Oakland citizens unified by their interest in writing -- especially satisfying to come in contact with spirited, talented, and intelligent young Oaklanders that I would not be apt to meet in my usual, daily life.

OW: Will you be writing more? What kind of support do you need to write more?

JE: If there is an end to the writing workshops, where I am inspired by the leader (Besola Marignay) to write in new ways, I will continue to write, and if I cannot attend every round of these workshops, I hope they will be there, ongoing, or recurring periodically, as I find them very rewarding. I think they also nourish the good health and sanity of the city.

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In the Bay Area for over 48 years, when James Eilers moved to Oakland he missed a writing group he had attended for years in San Francisco. He attended an Oakland Word poetry workshop at the Main Library. Having scribbled most of his life, he has had about a dozen poems published over the years. Yet he is happy to remain a Beginner, as nothing awakens like learning. And what a pleasure it was to be in a group that included earnest, talented, intelligent young Oaklanders.

Learn more about Oakland Word here. See the other pieces in the series here.