edenbray - poet name of Steve Eede, born/raised in London suburbs in 50’s/60's, he worked for 55 years as draughtsman, artist’s agent, warehouseman, hospital porter & later owned 3 art stores - at 15 he started writing beat-poetry & now publishes his work this page is something of a magazine dedicated to the poetry of edenbray (which is my chosen my poet's name) .. . I have written poetry for near
ly 60 years and on this page you will find autobiographical notes, thoughts, related and unrelated observations, recollections and poetic insight, quotes plus LINKS to my poems and my available published works .. .
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‘ I’ve always enjoyed writing and that is all I want to do .. . an edenbray BIO .. . ‘I began writing poetry in 1966 at fifteen
years of age .. . ‘
‘Write what you know so that you will know what you write’ is an oft quoted maxim accredited to Ernest Hemingway and of course it is a good rule of thumb for any writer to live by. For nearly 60 years edenbray has written and recorded his thoughts about life and the human experience through poetry, essays and short stories. He has sought creatively to stay true to that meme. edenbray is the chosen pen name of Stephen Eede who lives nearlBoston in Lincolnshire.
‘I have channelled my thoughts and chronicled my life experience, opinion and observations through my writing from the first time I picked up a pencil and attempted to write a piece of personal and creative writing. I wrote my first serious poetic piece in 1966 at the age of 15 years and entitled it - 'The day I redrew myself in mine own eyes’. I remember the tone and gist of that first write clearly. It was full of youthful introspection and teenage angst. The frustrations of an adolescent male living in sixties Britain who had begun to wrestle with the ugliness of the world as well as those personal dilemmas and life choices. I recall my earliest work was refreshingly and candidly honest, possibly shocking, yet for all its youthful petulance and anger I believe it struck a chord of truthful, humanity. Those early poems I scribbled with a pencil in an old school exercise book may well have contained some of my most dynamic writing.’
Poetry provides so much more than plain historical data or philosophical opinion. The poetic form contributes to language with something broader and deeper than mere recorded facts however historically accurate or educational they might be. Poetic verse adds sentience and feeling to autobiographical notes and memoirs, introducing colour and significance to otherwise grey tone, single dimension recollections as coloured tints do to black and white photographs or film. Poetry is the ultimate ‘voice’ of the imagination. The author developed his free-style form of poetry over the years, borrowing from both traditional and contemporary writers to create a style of his own, he has tagged professionally as progressive or ‘prog-prose’. At times he will write in the style of poets who have influenced and impressed him. The list is varied and endless from John Keats, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, Alfred Tennyson, Christina Rossetti, William Shakespeare to Jack London. It includes Norse, Gaelic, British and Greek mythology; great black writers such as Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Claude McKay and rapper Tupac Shakar. Also Biblical writers like King David, Isaiah and the prophets; modern poets, Seamus Heaney through to the fifties Beat poets he so much admires - Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac alongside Charlie Bukowski, Benjamin Zephaniah and many others not so well known of his contemporaries and numerous writing friends. edenbray consistently focuses on his love of words, their vowel sounds and natural rhyming and will often introduce regional dialects and cultural linguistics into his work, such as in his Americana or Gaelic pieces. After writing privately for over 50 years, through a popular Blog and to a limited audience of fellow poets, family and friends the author decided during the CV-19 pandemic of 2020 to begin the lengthy process of compiling, updating and editing an extensive back catalogue of more than 1,000 poems he has written with a view to publishing them in pamphlets of verse that are now currently available. edenbray edits - represents the culmination of 3 years of work and 57 years of writing to complete the author’s first bound anthology of verse solely dedicated to his own poetry. In a sense it represents his ‘coming out’ as regards his love of writing poetry and it includes snippets of life experience alongside observations on life themes as diverse as personal freedom, creativity, mind health, nature, racism, art, sexuality, cityscapes, war, faith and human tragedy.
‘During the covid pandemic I felt a cultural shift, as many did, toward a more compassionate and caring society. Statistics show that a huge number of people began to find solace in writing poetry, something from which I have always derived great benefit and mind health. I was pleased to hear that people from all cultures and age groups were discovering poetry for themselves. I am not certain that impulse is as strong now that society and world-order has returned to its more historic patterns. Therefore I think now is a good time to publish this book of poems.’
edenbraytoday 16.04.2023
YOU CAN FIND AND FOLLOW edenbray ONLINE at the following sites :-
edenbray ~ A BEAT POET ~ https://edenbray8.com/
edenbray @ ALL POETRY ~ https://allpoetry.com/edenbray
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I am a writer .. . a ‘beat’ poet, who began writing poetry back in 1966 …
‘edenbray is born ugly, wet, covered in blood, mucous and bodily functions, the effluence of my short life’
During the 1950s and 60s, the Beat poets helped spearhead a cultural vanguard that reacted against institutionalised, petit-bourgeois values, materialism, and conformity. Thank you for reading these notes and for your interest!
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“edenbray writes poems that are light, heavy, bright, dark, full of rhyme, but real fee verse. His poems have soul”
Benjamin Zephaniah
~ September, 2021
