We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chris Bodor. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chris below.
Chris, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
I get my resilience from childhood trauma. From a very early age, and throughout my adult life, people have told me that I could not do something or achieve something. I move forward, as if I don’t care what they think, and I proved them wrong. Even my mentor in high school, my English teacher, told me that I did not have a shot at entering a local Young Playwright competition. I entered with my one act play. I won first place. I received a stipend and my written words were turned into a production. This was a very high achievement for a high school senior. The next year, in my first year of film school, I picked up an award in a competition that weighed professionals and amateurs on an even playing field. My five minute video that I made with my father’s VHS video camera ended winning a special distinction award.
Over the years I have developed a very warped, yer highly successful career path of doing things what people have discouraged me from doing.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am the sum total of some of the actions of those who have come before me. My mentors, My readers. My children. My parents.
My father left his home in Kisvárda, Hungary one evening in October of 1956 without saying goodbye to his mother and father. It was during a period of time known as the Hungarian Revolution. Unrelated to my father’s situation, my mother travelled from England to Connecticut in the early Sixties, where she met my father. The two married, bought a house, and raised me and my two brothers during an amazing time known as the Eighties.
I became interested in storytelling, as a young boy, while watching a daily television program called “The Uncle Floyd Show”, The program was a low budget comedy variety show produced in a television studio in Newark, New Jersey, which inspired me to make a studio in my parent’s Connecticut basement. In the studio, I made comedy movies starring my two younger brothers.
When I was in my late teens and working on my film, video, and television degree at college in New Haven, I saw the movie “Barfly”. At that moment, I knew that I had to learn more about the poet who wrote the screenplay: Charles Bukowski. That is how I got interested in telling my story through poetry.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
When I graduated from film school, I learned on my first professional job: a television commercial for Jerkins hand lotion. The advice that I was given was to always carry a notebook in your pocket. Write down the name of every piece of equipment that you touch for the first time and also write down the name of every person that you meet on a job.
Ironically, I almost did not make it to that job. I had to arrive at the location in New York City at six o’clock that morning. I was driving from my parent’s house in Connecticut, and I had no idea which street was which. I was running late and I rolled through a stop sign right in front of a New York City cop. He pulled me over and said “Don’t they have stop signs in Connecticut?”
The police officer wrote me out a ticket for $125. I was getting paid $100 that day to work on location as a production assistant. If my math is correct, I paid the universe $25 to work that day, however I am grateful that I did, so that I could work with the old timer who gave me the great advice about learning the names of the equipment that I touch and the people that I work with.
This is one of my favorite quotes about poetry:
“Poetry is for the beggar and the king. It’s for everyone. It’s morning breath. It’s grabbing slices of the mundane and making them immortal. Capturing the subtle sound of a fleeting feeling. It’s manifestos of perseverance. It’s a proclamation of momentary existence. It’s anything and everything.” ~ Damian Rucci, the New Jersey Poetry Renaissance
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I have been named the Florida Beat Poet Laureate, and as such, I would like to conduct a specific project during the length of my two year term. I will award a twenty minute feature to a Florida poet each month at our last Sunday of the month open mic. We are also looking into the possibility of documenting the year of readings as a documentary or at least a monthly livestream on YouTube.
Separate from my work throughout Florida as the Beat Poet Laureate, I am assembling a slate of a dozen poets to lend their original spoken words to a local musician who will add additional lyrics and music, resulting in twelve distinct and unique songs. The album will hit the airwaves this winter. We will gather the local creative community together to have a listening part at an indie folk club or a music hall.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.floridastatepoetsassociation.org/?page_id=47
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancientcitypoets
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ancientcitypoets
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisbodor/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@ancientcitypoets
- Other: NATIONAL BEAT POETRY FOUNDATION https://nationalbeatpoetryfoundation.org/
Image Credits
Per Hans Romnes
