Local poet donates poems to Gonzales library

Poems comes in all different shapes and sizes and one local Gonzales poet is getting the chance to put his work on display at the Gonzales library for people to read.

Ken Jones, aka PoetKen Jones, donated anthologies with his work in them to the Robert Lee Brothers Jr. Library.

Jones has been writing poetry since he was a child, having begun reading when he was three to four years old.

“I started writing when I was five or six, so I pretty much went through every imaginable permutation of writing. And I got my undergraduate and graduate degrees in poetry creative writing from the University of Texas,” Jones said.

Jones added he received a master’s degree in Creative Writing and worked on his master’s thesis.

Jones showed off six anthology books that contain his work throughout his writing career; they are titled: “The Way Life Goes: PoetKen Jones Song Lyrics 1980s,” “Improbable Worlds: An Anthology of Texas and Louisiana Poets,” “Anniversary DiVerseCity: An Anthology Celebrating Ten Years of the Austin International Poetry Festival,” “Descant: 2007, Volume 46,” “The Harbinger Asylum: Issue #3” and “The Beatest State in the Union: An Anthology of Beat Texas Writings.”

Jones went over each book and the number of works that were included in the anthologies, and went over the Beat poet style.

Beat poems originated in the 1940s and 1950s, addressing controversial topics, and those beat writers included Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

“I've always wanted to be a poet since I was a little kid … being a poet is unique and special. And there's not a lot of us out there who are serious in our craft. And so when you hang out with these people, you realize they're just people that are like you,” Jones said.

Several of the anthologies have many poets he has come across and Jones knows that they take their writing and books serious and want to do good work, he said.

“I found that most people, you check your ego at the door, if you want to be good at something. And so it's cool, it's good to have beers with your heroes,” Jones said.

Jones’s work can be found in the library’s database, showing the exact page where his poems are located in these books.

“I'm very interested in helping the library fundraise and spread the message of reading, because the key to that first message is education. And so if you aren’t educated, and you cannot understand why we're doing what we're doing as a society, you're gonna be very confused.”