Meeting Poet Tianna Clark

          Hello bloggscribers! Fellow Bloggers? I'll figure out something later.😉 Anyways, welcome to my first real blog post. I'll try and keep this short and to the point.

          Today on campus the English Department had a writing workshop with Tianna Clark. She's the author of Equilibrium and I Can't Talk About The Trees Without The Blood. She's won many rewards such as the Pushcart Prize, the 2017 Furious Flower's Gwendolyn Brooks Centennial Poetry Prize (Best award name, EVER), to name a few. If you're curious, and want to know more, check out her website here: www.tianaclark.com 

          Also, below is one of her poems (trigger warnings for sexual assault, read at your own discretion)
www.frontierpoetry.com/2018/02/26/open-winner-tim-tiana-clark/

          So...honest confession, I didn't actually read any of her poetry before hand. (Real smooth, I know). I still really enjoyed the workshop, however. Tianna discussed how poetry is a part of political activism, stating the truth in your work, make people consider serious topics, such as in the poem "A Poem for Pulse" by Jameson Fitzpatrick covering the Orlando Shooting. I will link "A Poem for Pulse" here: www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147304/a-poem-for-pulse

          I felt a little anxious sharing because one of our writing prompts covered a serious issue for me. I have trouble reflecting and being open about stuff that I struggle with. I won't go into that here, (I know, ironic right?) but this workshop helped me feel more comfortable talking about serious topics. 
I've learned that the role of the Artist is to be political, say something, make people think. I also learned about a new poem form called Ghazal, where you have an internal rhyme scheme, then have a repeating phrase at the end, with two line stanzas. 

          Some of these terms may be confusing, if they are, please let me know, and I'll try to explain it as best as I can. I'll share in another post a poem I wrote during the workshop that's a Ghazal called "You Snowflake." I need to do a little tweaking to it before I release it. If at all, I might try and get it published first. I know that publishers are picky about having the exclusive first right to publish something, and fair enough. 

          All right, that's all from me. If you haven't heard of Tianna Clark, you should definitely look her up. She was very nice, and I really enjoyed the workshop. One of my Professors said she's going onto big things and predicted she'll become Poet Laureate. Hope you enjoyed the blog post. See you on the Tramway! 

Welcome to my Blog & About my Blog

Disclaimer: Due to complications with Google Chrome, because I have a blog with another gmail account for a class, I can only work on this blog in Firefox, which I don't use as much. Nothing against Firefox, all my bookmarked tabs are on Google Chrome. I may not check this as much as I should, I apologize for this in advance.
          Welcome to my Blog! My name is Patrick Webb, and I'm a writer from Indiana. I write a variety of things, including but not limited to: Science Fiction, Fantasy, talking trains (this isn't a genre, however, I feel saying "Children's Media" is too vague), and recently I've been exploring horror. I've been contemplating making a blog for a little while now, and I decided now was the best time to do this. Because...why not?
          So, a few things first. Why the name of this blog? Well, I enjoy Tugs and Trams, and thought "Why not?" In actuality, this' a little in joke of mine (so in joke it's just me) of a publishing company I'd like to create someday. The reason for this is to make sure my characters don't get stolen from me, and I can keep control over them. I know that friends (shout to CC) have told me if you self publish you don't get read. That's probably true.
          In the meantime, I'll see where life takes me, and maybe go through with it, if I feel the longing to create a company. I also would like to help other writers get their name out there, because the writing industry is hard to break into. Whether or not I'll actually create Tug & Tram Publishing, we'll have to wait and see. In the meantime, it's the name of this blog, and I think it sounds nice.
          On this blog, I hope to share my thoughts, some stuff I go and see, stuff I learn as a writer (and share with others) and maybe drafts of work I'm doing. I'm not sure about the latter part, because I'm not sure what Google Blogger's copyright policy is. I don't want someone to be able to steal my ideas and try and publish them (no offense potential readers).
          I also want to use this blog to get my article writing out there. I'm currently working on four articles that I hope to get published. These are all train related (you will find out I'm a Train Enthusiast, aka Train Nut) and while there is magazines out there, there's always a chance I won't get published. I don't want these to just sit on my google drive, unread, so I may publish them here. I know that nothing says professional like "I wrote an article on my blog," but that's better than nothing. So expect a few of those occasionally. Also, this blog will be a work in progress for a while, I obviously have to prioritize college over a blog.
          If you want, please follow, and let's see where this goes. I've started a lot of stuff that I later give up on (we'll get to my YouTube channel at a later date), and I hope this will work. Thanks for reading my rambling thoughts and have a good day.