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To play passion and Purpose, where
we invite our guests to showcase their joy

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through their everyday passions. I'm Terry
Fierro, your co host, and we

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have mar Lannie Cruz. Yeah.
Well, welcome, ladies and gentlemen.

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I think we have a very interesting
guest today. Yes, he is all

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about creative thinking, creative aging,
and who doesn't want that? Oh and

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poetry as well well. Doctor Christopher
Parker is a teaching artist focusing on creativity.

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He has been published in poetry journals
and scholarly periodicals. He currently teaches

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creative thinking at Montclair State University,
and it is written at his workshops stimulate

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the mind, create joy, and
help one to engage in social fun.

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Oh I need that for you.
Without further ado, let us welcome doctor

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Christopher Parker. Welcome, doctor Lightful. Yeah, we're very eager to hear

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about your experiences. So tell us
first, I guess about your journey.

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How you got onto this path of
creative thinking, creative fun, poetry.

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Well, I think I started as
a child. I like language, but

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I like narratives and I like stories. Yeah, so as a kid,

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I made the Kodak Movie Awards films. When we had the Kodak Company,

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and I won like a first place. Oh wow, right for a little

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narrative on one of my brothers who's
still an actor of sorts. He works

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for the government. How old were
you then, Oh? I probably was

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in eighth grade, so what would
that be, twelve or thirteen? And

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then I moved on to high school
and made other films that won the first

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place in the New Jersey Public Television
Young People's Film Festival. My brother little

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brother is now a Hollywood director,
moved onto other things, but people say

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I inspired him anyway. But I
was always interested in narrative and story.

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In high school, I picked up
poetry, so I said, I want

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to write this. And then it's
time to graduate, and I wanted to

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go to university, so I said
I wanted to do the Poetry Journal,

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and I did that. Then I
said, I want a good m f

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A program, So I went to
the Columbia MFA program, which takes work

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to get into. Had great teachers
or great inspiration inspiring people. They were

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great teachers. So Derek Walcott,
who was a Nobel Prize winner, wasn't

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at that time. Joseph Brodsky,
one of the great Russian immigrant poets,

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and then and then somebody else entirely
different, like Phil Levine. So these

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were inspiring to me. All the
other poets I worked with are inspiring,

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and some of my colleagues are still
inspiring to me as well. I came

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out, I said, well,
I have to work, so I want

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to be a poet in the schools
is what we called it back in nineteen

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seventy nine or eighty. Now it's
called teaching artist. Okay, okay,

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but um, I got into that
program. Um. And I've been doing

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that for forty three years wow and
off. Even when I'm full time in

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the business world, I was doing
I was still a teaching artist. The

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Dodge Foundation has a big high school
version of it, and they liked that

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I was a working person and an
artist to show that does work. And

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I was inspiring to the teachers,
especially because we were really teaching teachers how

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to teach the art poetry and it
goes on. So I've been doing that

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ever since. And of course creative
thinking. It was offered to me because

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at Montclair State, because I showed
up at meetings and I I had a

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history of working with other artists and
myself so that's very interesting. What kind

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of poetry do you focus on or
do you like in my personal writing?

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Yes, and person well, I
like the great poets from the like Awt

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more contemporary. I like reading Joseph
Brodsky to see what he did in English.

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Although some of his English writing we
don't recommend all the time, No

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we don't. He did great stuff
in translation translated by others. It was

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beautiful and amazing. So that's what
I look at those translations. And Derek

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Walcott was a poet and a playwright. By the way, I'm writing places

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too nice. It's multi passionate.
Love that, Yeah, And I read

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Derek well. And I also read
What's coming Up in the New Yorker and

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in the poetry journals like Poetry Magazine. And what kind of poetry do you

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write well, I think I would
write narratives they have hopefully they have a

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story. I always like that stories. And I like to use a lot

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of metaphor, and that's what I
teach and creative thinking, by the way,

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metaphor as one of the thinking processes
for creative thinking. Okay, and

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I like to play with language.
Earlier on, we were talking about Ai

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Ai writing for us. I don't
use that yet, but who knows,

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we may. But I use other
I use other things. I use tools.

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I use the Dutch Boy paint fan
deck, which has the great names

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of metaphors for colors. By the
way, you're the best one the marketplace.

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You're right. I always wonder who
has that job, you know.

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They they name lipsticks and makeup colors
and paint chips, and that's that's fascinating.

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Yeah, so can you share something
with us? I mean, how

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long are your is your poetry?
You have long poetryes or short pieces?

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I have some short pieces. I'm
not thinking of any, but I have

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one to read. Yeah. Yeah, So this is what I'm doing recently,

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and it's a new m milieu from
me. Okay, I'm moving on

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to religious okay, poetry because there's
a whole movement in that I wasn't before.

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I always mentioned spirituality and okay,
So this one is inspired by a

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painting from a friend of mine Denver, Colorado's name is ron Zito. He

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does paintings. I said, Ron, Yeah, I'm going to write some

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ekphrastic poetry. What does that mean? That means painting based on I mean

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poetry based on pictures or images or
artwork you've heard even in cartoons owed to

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a Grecian urn. Yes, that
might have been one of the early chrastic

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ones. Okay, so here's this
one. It's called August fifteenth, six

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am. It's August fifteenth because that
is the assumption of the Virgin Mary in

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the Christian faith. Okay, the
Catholic faith. Right, I must redeem

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my transfer pass. I take streetcar
twelve to Lafayette Cemetery in New Orleans.

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My incense a cigarette on the driver's
lips, the iron wheels and electric roof

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pole a raspy quintet. Thus the
travel times slips from long to present.

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My bulletin went to press yesterday,
so I stay on track. The street

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car struck a junction to select a
direction. Aft One woman suckles her infant

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draped in blue. It's my station. I pushed the chime at Lafayette.

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Magnolias lose their bloom by June.
A rattle wattlewood shed, formerly painted gold,

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is now gray? Is it abalone? Future fawn or thundercloud? A

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blue tarp furls freyed a kinetic monument
to the eastern wind. The Landscaper's contract

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taped under the arc is a hollowing
sign. Here I pray for Mary's body.

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It's waning twilight quote sailing to dark
her last long sleep. Three bells

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her night, a tryst that lasts
on the course in divine light, to

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be amists her offspring, raining right
her perception, A fluid extension of Gabriel's

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early declaration. Amen. Now our
corridor on the planet is vacant, the

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magnet latent. No need for the
Cajun restaurateur. So I bite my own

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English muffin monstrous size. Thomas's solace
at the repose of Mary is gifted to

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me. One white rose pedal from
yesterday's service close is stuck between the slats.

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The blue remains. Life changes like
clipped hair, Its fibers fall further

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from who rains no transfer trip fare
there? Wow, Wow, indeed you

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know that's indeed. I can understand
the metaphors that you used, and I

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love the combining the past with the
present. And it slows you down as

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a reader, as a as a
listener, because you need to you find

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the association of the words. It's
not like reading a story where you're just

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going along and it's just this takes
a lot more work on the on the

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viewer or on the person that's reading
it. And I'm sure that's the intent.

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Well, I appreciate that you say
it takes a lot more work.

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That's a that's a benefit and a
curse. Okay. You know, I'm

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reading the new journals and I like
what's being read, even some of the

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Catholic journals, and it's not quite
what I do. I want to be

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in the mood and be in the
tone that they use, but do I

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I don't really want to. Okay, I'm I'm of mature enough age where

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I can choose my I think I
want to choose my own form, my

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own style, my own way of
writing. This might take a lot more

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work to publish, it might not. You know this artists throughout the centuries

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who've done great new work but didn't
get recognized until later. And it's it's

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interesting. I'm almost trying to picture
the art with the words. Yea.

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You know, there's a lot of
contrast there, Like one that that stuck

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with me was the part with the
cigarette, and then you you kind of

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contrast that with like the religions,
like there's contrasts, right, that you

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have to kind of think about and
compare. Yeah, that it's just deep.

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It makes you think, I love
it. Would you have been capable

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of writing this in your early twenties
or is this something that you feel as

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you've aged you've become better at it. That's a good question. Yeah.

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As I've aged, I've I've become
more confident even when nobody else likes it

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or has to work on it.
Yes, I'm going through with it anyway.

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Okay, Um, No, these
are tools I've learned over fifty years.

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Okay, So I have the methodology
to write this and the wisdom and

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the experience and the wisdom I hope
so absolutely. As reading it to you,

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I go, okay, I gotta
change that. I gotta change.

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Never satisfied. Right, that's so
interesting. So you talk a lot in

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your programs about creative aging and we're
all aging, So what what do you

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mean by that? What is your
intent with that? Well, as we

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discussed, aging is really living longer. Okay, more opportunities right. I

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Oh, I'm sorry, I said. I like how you put that.

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There's some research from the National Downmo
of the Arts, and then that a

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National Health foundation that said that the
arts are actually good for us on healing

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and in our aging people. You
know, as years go by, you

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get loneliness, you get isolation,
you don't use your minds. Yea.

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My adult older students um say this
is this is when I think, I'm

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so glad you gave us work I
have to think about. Yeah, they

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appreciate the direction. Yeah. I
think also creativity change changes as we age,

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because, as you just expressed,
we become more risk takers. We

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have to because what have we got
to lose? And so I can see

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that, yes, we need to
think more, we need to apply new

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skills and take more risks in that
area. Now my question would be,

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is poetry similar to painting, for
example, that is sometimes left in the

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interpretation of the person that's looking at
it or listening. Well, I think

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I like the way you worded it. Yes, it's left in the interpretation.

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Sure, painting it also tells narratives
sometimes, yeah, also has metaphor

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sometimes. Also my students, we
often bring them to paintings and say,

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I want the smell, I want
the feeling. I want how you what

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does that texture feel like in touch? I want the sound to come out

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of this, So you can do
that with language. Language does make sound,

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doesn't it. I'm giving you noise
really that people understand. I love

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it. You're using five senses,
yes, oh yes, and my head,

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my brain is hurting, just saying
you, well, what is the

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texture of that pain? What is
it smell like? Well? What exactly

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do you mean by that? And
I think I do understand it, but

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I don't know how to express that, right, how do you express it?

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Well, that's a good that's a
good point. So I give tools

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to start to my students, whether
they're ninety or they're eighteen, or they're

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twenty five. And so those tools
are things like, okay, let's look

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at the colors, and I do
bring out the Dutch Boy paint Fan DEXX

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because they have the best metaphors for
colors. You can take the language,

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you could take that feelings. I
use the emotion wheel. Oh yes,

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it's a circle that shows different categories
of emotions. Yeah, I feel really

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bad. Okay, Well that's not
what we do in poetry. Fine,

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never say fine, okay, go
into the details of your emotions. You

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know, get the specific vocabulary.
You probably knew it once when you learn

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it. But you never use them
even as ninety year olds. So we

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get the name for our emotion.
I love it. It's like going to

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a buffet and always eating the same
thing and you see the other foods there,

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but you're not going to experience them. That's an excellent metaphor for that

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way. Yeah, and with sound, I'll use toys and tools to make

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noise. I'm saying now, you
can't say this is a pipe that stretches.

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That's not what this is. We
need a metaphor for the sound,

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and we need the physics of this
sound like, yeah, it sounds like

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coins dropping from a can. Okay, well what kind of can is it?

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A metal? Can't? Is a
plastic? And what's falling onto?

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If it pulls onto carpeting, it's
a different sound that it calls onto porcelain.

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Yeah, what is? And how's
the moisture in the air that changes

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the sound too? Wow? So
we do that? Yeah, you're really

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making your your students think. And
that's what we need because we're you know,

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if you look at blues taxonomy,
we are not synthesizing. We're not

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problem solving, we're not decision making, and this type of of exercise will

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lead to that it's not just basic. Well yeah, that's that felt hard

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and that sounded good, and you
know, we overuse some simple words.

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So I just love that. Now
I wanted to ask you a question because

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there is something called fluid intelligence and
crystallized. Now. I just finished reading

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a book where we have this fluid
intellectualism when we're younger. It's being able

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to recall facts and memorize, and
then it piques about age twenty or as

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crystallized. As we're getting older.
We then pick and choose, We trim

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off what's not really important, and
so we need the young and the old

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because we need the fluid and the
crystallized to come together. So what is

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your understanding of that or how do
you appreciate that? Well, I appreciate

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the description. I think it's all
metaphoric. It is exactly science, but

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it's a good description of how we
perceive. So, yeah, fluid,

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I'm not sure that's actually accurate.
I see a lot of young people too,

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and I have college students come in
and they are not fluid always some

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people of this class is not for
me and not but they leave right because

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this is they're so structured. They
want something that makes sense, that's definable

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and easy, and they're taught by
their paradigms. Don't be creative, just

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do this. That's not what makes
money exactly. Yeah, right, it

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doesn't make money, but it does
create people make money, absolutely, okay,

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Because we always have this idea of
the starving artist, you know.

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Yeah, that's our our mental picture. So you're you're absolutely right. I

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think the more we can distinguish ourselves
and set ourselves apart, the better it

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is for our own profession and for
society. Oh, I think so definitely.

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That's one of my biggest obstacles to
the creative thinking class is that starving

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artists paradigm. Also, some students
are A plus students, and they didn't

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get a plus by doing things outside
the box. They're very good in the

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box. Now the box is good. You should never leave the box.

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Probably absolutely play with it too,
and cut a hole in it. You

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know. As a fellow educator,
I remember my students coming up to me

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every few minutes if I gave him
something creative to do, Miss Ferrill,

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Is this right? Miss Ferrill?
Am I doing this right? Go sit

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down, because you determine what's right
and what's wrong usual? They were afraid

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to use their creativity. They felt
that I was to be pleased. I

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was the one giving the grade,
and so let me just give her what

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she wants, rather than how I
can express myself best. That's exactly right.

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They want to have the exact rule. How do you do this?

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Exactly? Yes? Does that happen
in poetry as well? Where people think

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that is this right or wrong?
Is you know? I'm assuming that poetry

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has that flexibility where you can just
make up this whole new kind of genre

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if you will. Well, there
is that, you can make up a

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whole new genre. But you can
also use the old ancient forms, and

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people do the sonnet, the villainel, the sistina, these old poetry forms.

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You know, I tell us about
it, okay, Well, um,

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like two roads diverge into yellow Wood
or Shakespeare's sonnets. It's a form,

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okay, And the good thing about
it is that actually helps you.

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Right if you follow a form,
Okay, I gotta do this or right,

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I have these words to fit into
that. I could see that like

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a high qu because it gives you
structure, and as a beginner, we

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would need structure exactly as a matter
of fact, yesterday with some with some

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ninety year old students, we wrote
high ku. Most of them had never

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heard of hiku, or they heard
of it. They had no idea what

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it was. Everybody loved doing hiku
and they counted syllables with their fingers as

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I showed them. That's the easiest
way to go, and so yeah,

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so form helps you. A matter
of fact, that's where they they were

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least fearful about the form, although
they did say this takes a lot of

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work. I said, this is
not easy. I said, well,

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do you want easy classes here?
I don't think they really. Do you

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want to be stimulated? Yes,
When I was about eight or nine months

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pregnant, I wrote a very long
poem for my daughter. I would love

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to send that to you so you
can read it. And it took me

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quite some time. It took me
about five hours to write. And how

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I started, I've never taken poetry
classes, I've never written poetry before.

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This was just out of my head. And I started by getting some keywords

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that I wanted her to have for
her lifetime. I started with those keywords,

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and then from those keywords, I
chose words that rhymed with those keywords,

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and then I separated them by little
tiny paragraphs, and that you know,

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That's how I started the poem.
So I've never taken a poetry class.

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What does a poetry class consist of? And what does it teach to

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respond to your poem? First,
you did invent a form. You had

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a complete structure in a form.
You want these words, you want a

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rhyme for these words, and you
want paragraphs. It's sort of like saying

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a stanza or a length. So
what you asked about a poetry workshop or

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a poetry class? Yeah, poetry. What does this consist of? And

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what do people you know learn?
Well? I do them sometimes and back

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frock creative thinking. We do a
lot of poetry, but we don't call

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it that. When I was at
Columbia University, it's basically these big deal

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poets, you know, at a
table, like we're sitting at here,

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and we go and they talk or
she talks, and we go over mostly

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what we wrote and we get feedback
from people. And I remember from Joseph

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Brotzky he said, okay, remember
a poem and a great poetry by Udin

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and write it down like a hundred
times. Now we learned that in like

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second grade, right a lot of
times. Yeah, that's graduate school at

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Columbia University from Nobel proads winning poets. This is what they teach. So

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that's what it's about. It's about
getting feedback from your community. And that's

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also creative aging. Yeah, that's
valuable to my students at in Clifton.

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Now, you know, at one
time, when I first started teaching many

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years ago, I actually had my
students memorized poetry like it, Yes,

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and you know, it's just a
good mind exercise, and then I would

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have them recited for their parents.
I retired a few years ago. We

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stopped that entirely. I mean because
the administration said, well, there's really

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no benefit to that, which I
disagree with. Yes, so it went

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by the wayside like most arts usually
do. But anyway, how can we

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be creative with math and science?
How can we incorporate that into creativity.

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That's a good one, because I'm
not a step back. Some research on

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creativity with math and science, and
I like working with that. First of

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all, you can come up with
mathematics. Now, what is this the

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Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences? I actually
okay, And it shows the amount of

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the number format of trees in a
formation of trees in an orchard, you

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know, Okay, And so if
I want to write about orchards, I'll

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write my poetry with the form that
calls cothers five seven, six, and

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I'll go, do I want five
words five syllables? So I'll follow the

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math for that. That's a great
way to teach you. That's really cool.

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Fact. At Mount Clair State for
a while there, I was the

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poetry advisor to physics and math.
Oh my goodness, student project to come

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over and how can I write poetry
about the science of juggling, which there

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is math too. Yeah, yeah, so that's how I feel about math.

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I think it's important to put into
poetry, all right, And so

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what do you feel like? How
do you feel about limericks or poetry from

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Shell Silverstein, which I you know, as a fourth and fifth grade teacher

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absolutely loved to expose my students too. And it's so playful and so much

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fun when you can rhyme words.
Absolutely was also a songwriter, shel Silvers

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and I love Johnny Cash as a
boy named Sue, which has a lot

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of communication for today in various various
ways and so that's poetry too. I

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love she'el Silverstein. However, I
did one point have a middle school class

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in Middlesex County that I was teaching, and the mother wanted her son to

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be able to write shells silver stain
or what's her name? Doctor SEUs?

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Oh yeah, okay, yeah,
I appreciate that. That's not what we're

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doing. Okay, that's not the
curriculum, I muses. Okay, right,

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so so some people really want that. I don't think anything's wrong with

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that at all. Yeah, And
it's a fun way to learn when you

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can rhyme words. Yes, it
is, yes, especially for younger How

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about humor? Do you use humor
in your poetry or as humor even used?

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Is that a thing? Oh?
I think it's a good question.

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I think I use humor. I
don't even know am using humor, especially

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in classes. People laugh several times
in classic Oh what was that about?

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Okay, I obviously said something funny. Now, just being metaphoric, just

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talking about how you saw something,
how you feel about something, getting a

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tiny story about what happened this morning
on the way in. All of those

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things are humor. And yes,
I think humor is in poetry. I

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put the dramatics sometimes or serious to
me, which you might have to think,

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as you mentioned, to interpret.
Yeah, but I think humor is

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important to add to that too.
You can do do humor with language with

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types of rhyme, and you mentioned
rhyme before. You can also do subtle

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rhymes. You can rhyme half the
word. You can rhyme the end and

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the beginning of these words and put
another word into the next line. That

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way, people don't quite know that
it's yes, right, it's not cat

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and that, but but it hooks
them and it's quite nuanced. But they

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go, it's nuanced. That's a
good word for it, and they go

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that's good. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, yeah, right. I do

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like it. It resonates. I
think it's analogous to when you're selling your

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house. Wow, you clean the
switch plate, You've change the switch plates,

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okay, because this fingerprints all over
them, and the numbers on your

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house they're right first impressions. Okay, very absolutely. Do poets get writer's

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block, Well, that's a good
question. Yes you can, but you

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can also just keep working. I'm
writing. Buck doesn't matter. I've got

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to work. O good. He
made his slim living on poetry. So

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he wrote all the time, he
smoked siggy buds, he drank drinks,

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he ate food, and he wrote
poetry. So you can just make yourself

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do it. So amazing. So
now how would you approach the person is

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I have absolutely no creativity. I
don't know how to write poetry. I

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don't have a creative thought in my
head. Or do you do you think

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everybody is capable of writing a poem? Yes? I think everybody is capable

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of writing a poem because I've done
it with students who say exactly this and

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they in fact do so. Yes, I think everybody is capable of creative

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thinking. And there, as we
mentioned, social paradigms that blocked this.

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Believes that you're not going to make
any money at it. This is a

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waste of your time. So what
you have an idea? We've heard these

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things from people who love us.
Sometimes they the best for us. But

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we even write at Montclair State Theater
reviews for things we've never seen. These

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students have never been to live theater. Okay, now they have to write

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a New York Times style review filled
with the language and the metaphor of that

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and what they can produce is amazing, but I help them do it with

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some toys and tools. So we
listen to the elements of music or the

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elements of dance and write the metaphors
for what you saw, and the writing

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can be amazing. Oh you use
music too, absolutely for sure. That's

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really cool. So how can we
age creatively besides poetry? What else can

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you teach us to age creatively?
Good? Well, you probably should make

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a commitment to yourself to do something
creative every day, and it can be

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something new and creative. You can
invent something, put it on your post

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it note and put on your refrigerator. Make a commitment to doing something.

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I make a commitment. You can
write in your journal, you can take

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workshops. There's probably a lot of
things online you do too. So it's

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all about coming out of your comfort
zone, yes, and saying I don't

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think I can do this for I'm
to try anyway, trying thing. Okay,

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Wow, So this has just been
absolutely fascinating and I want to go

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home and write a poem. I
would love to get your idea on the

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poem I wrote for my daughter.
Yeah, I love that. So,

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Doctor Parker, if our audience wants
to reach out and find out more about

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your work. How could they do
that? Well, they can send me

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an email, okay, okay,
so give us those Christopher Parker eight one

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zero at Gmail. Also, I
have a couple of websites. Heres,

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go ahead, doctor Dr Christopher W. Parker. My wife helped me nickname

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that one dot com. Okay,
Dr christ Christopher W. Parkers. Enough?

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Uh Living poetically? Oh god?
I like that poetic? And do

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you feature some of your own poems
on there that people could read, or

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poems of your students. That's a
good question. I feature access to some

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of that things I will teach or
methodologies I've used, and you can use

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them right there if you want.
All righty, Well, we look forward

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to looking at your work and further
investigating the websites and the programs. I

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would love to know more about the
program so you have that information and when

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the dates on your website, I'll
put that on. Yeah, why not?

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I think you would like that our
audience as well, because we'd like

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to know what you're doing in the
future. So you'll be going back to

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MSU in September and what we'll be
teaching. I'm also at Felician University teaching

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philosophy and I'm at Caldwell teaching writing
classes. Look, i gotta teach you

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how to be ambitious. One campus. Nothing is further than seven miles.

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That's not bad. Okay, well, thank you so much, doctor Parker

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and h yeah it really was.
We need to invite you again. Yes,

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we invite our audience to stay tuned
next week. But in the meantime,

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go home and write of home that
Thanks, ladies and gents. We'll

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see you next time. Bye bye
now