Poetry in commotion: alumnus self-publishes book

Matthew Taylor graduated in December 2004 in Materials Science and Engineering. Though he has applied to a couple of graduate schools, he's taking a little break.

"I'm not a total bum," he said. "I've got a job as a tutor; that pays the bills." Oh yeah, and he just published his first book.

It's called Tendrali, a collection of 50 poems he wrote between 1997, when he was still in high school, and 2004. And no, you won't find the word "tendrali" in any dictionary.

"[It's] a word I made up," Taylor said. "It has a number of different tonal and meaningful roots kind of smashed together. So you can draw anything out of it...essentially it's just an idea."

So how did a Tech grad come to publish a book of poetry? "My father's an engineer, my mother's an artist, so I have a different perspective on life, I guess you could say," Taylor said. "I've always wanted to be an artist, but engineering was supposed to pay the bills."

According to Taylor, he's a bit of a

"visual poet"-his poetry is frequently characterized by an interesting use of font, color, size and justification.

"There's two different modes I write in: one is by computer and one is by hand, and whenever I'm writing by computer, I can type as fast as I can think...When I'm writing by hand, you have to slow it down, the ideas become more mature before they get on the paper."

The recurring theme throughout his work is hope, although "admittedly a lot of it is dark; it's about irony, I guess," Taylor said. "It's about the irony that God has carefully woven into our universe-exploring that idea."

Although some of his ideas come from experience, he gets many of them from movies, books, the news and people he passes on the street.

He published Tendrali through lulu.com, a free self-publishing website. Online companies like lulu have made publishing much easier for authors who just want to get their work out there.

"In the past, you had to get a publishing deal with a major publisher, and if you decided to self-publish it was far too expensive," Taylor said.

Lulu prints on demand, and it does not cost the writers anything, which makes publishing financially feasible. The trade off is that the cover price of one copy is high.

There are other perks with online publishing, however. For instance, "Lulu is sort of a writer's cooperative," Taylor said. "Most of the people that are on there are writers, so they check out each other's books and critique them." As most writers who use Lulu do not have an official editor to look over their work, this is a valuable opportunity.

Taylor's finished product is a dream come true. "When I actually had the book in my hands after if got printed, it was probably one of the most elevating experiences in my entire life," he said. "Up until this point, it had been essentially a digital abstraction on my computer screen, a bunch of ideas-certainly written down, recorded, carefully arranged, but in the end it was still that digital media. When I finally had it in my hands, it was like it was real."

The finished product did bring one fear to light, however. Friends and family would be reading it, probably for the first time, and the poetry is personal. "The scariest part [is] the idea that people will analyze what you've written and try to draw conclusions out of that, about who you are and what you do," Taylor said. "In reality, I am who I am, and I do what I do."

And Taylor does much more than writing poetry. He is currently working on a novel, tentatively called University, which he plans to finish in a year. He's also started a children's book in the style of Chris van Allsburg.

Still, "I didn't do this overnight. I've got eight years of stuff; I've probably been writing for 10 or 11. In some ways [Tendrali] was a test run for [my] novel, to see if it was a viable medium," he said. "I'm fairly pleased with how the book came out."

Taylor also recently started a media company called Recktified Media-"reck" as in Rambling Reck. "Right now its sole purpose is the sale and promotion of my book." He hopes to open it to other artists to market their products. "It's a media corporation, so it's not just print media, it's also promotion of bands, making T-shirts, audio production and distribution," Taylor said.

Marketing his own book will be good practice. During April, which is National Poetry Month, Taylor plans to set up a card table with copies of his book at events and readings.

So poet, novelist, musician (did we mention he's in a band?), tutor, businessman or engineer? Who knows? "I'd be pretty happy as an engineer, honestly, especially considering I spent five years preparing for that," Taylor said. "As it is, I think I could be the happiest writing. You know, Mark Twain said it best: 'I became a writer and I haven't worked another day in my entire life.'"

For more information about Tendrali and Recktified Media, visit www.recktified.com. To purchase Tendrali, visit www.lulu.com/mlt.