BOOK LORA ZILL , THE BLUE COLLAR ARTIST, AS A SPEAKER FOR YOUR EVENT
Mentorship in Poetry and the Arts
Reflecting on Mentoring and Being Mentored
EDITOR’S ARIA (Published in each issue of Time Of Singing)
To mark TOS’s 50th volume I want to reflect on the relationship I had with former editor Charles A. Waugaman. When I discovered this Conneaut lake pastor was publishing a poetry magazine, I volunteered to help. I wanted to learn more about writing and hanging out with a published author and his journal seemed a good way to do it.
Charles became my mentor, teaching me to read and critique poetry and edit and publish this journal. When he retired he passed it on to me. It seemed a serendipitous circumstance then, this mentorship and inheritance, and seems even more so today.
Many long for mentors in artistic and other fields and so few find them unless it is part of a paid endeavor like teaching, where a veteran is paired with a newbie to act as a sounding board and help them get acclimated to the school culture.
I think mentorship arises from the ground up, from a relationship/friendship with shared interests, where one naturally “takes on” counselling someone who is intuitive enough to receive the knowledge. I paid attention to what Charles tried to teach me, but I don’t know how intuitive I was, not realizing until later the rarity of what I had been blessed with.
My relationship with Charles was a “God thing,” divinely inspired and brought about. To honor him and that relationship, whenever I teach at Christian writing conferences I always end my sessions with reading his best poem, “Revelation.” If you would like to read it, it is on TOS’s website as a sample work.
I hope that we are all open to serendipitous experiences, however they come, and receive them from the hand of God.
Lora Homan Zill, Editor
