"My father was in the Navy during the Vietnam War. My parents met when he was in the service and stationed in San Jose CA. Throughout my life I remember seeing pictures of him in uniform. Even though he did not talk much about his experience I had created stories based on these photographs. His brother, my uncle, fought on the ground in Vietnam. I only knew him after his experience there. According to the stories, I heard from family, he was affected deeply and had many problems with PTSD.
I was in the Army for six years starting in 1991 until 1997. I was a Medical Laboratory Specialist and spent most of my time working for MEDDAC. The Army trained me to run military blood banks in Fort Ord California and I was prepared to deploy to Iraq during “Desert Storm.” I never made it to Iraq and I found myself either working in Military Hospitals in the field or on base." From the Introduction to "Six Years of Service." hubpages.com/literature/My-First-Self-Published-Collection-Six-Years-of-Service www.creativeexiles.com/2018/01/six-years-service-collection-poems-jamie-lee-hamann/ |
Politics! Why politics? Most of the poems I write and collect are usually life affirming rhymes about family and familial love. But every once and a while I would add a poem about homelessness, drug abuse, and poverty.
Soon I had a number of poems that expressed the frustration I felt towards American politics. Today it is almost an impossibility to not be filled with some type of strong political opinion and I had written quite a few poems with politics in mind. One challenge is trying to make a collection like this work. My first book seemed to come together easily. Trying something new led to a decent collection in the end. hubpages.com/literature/The-Process-of-Self-Publishing-A-Rhyme-of-the-Ancient-Middle-Class www.creativeexiles.com/2018/01/rhyme-ancient-middle-class/ |