Introducing Scott Tacke

Scott Allan Tacke, based in Ottawa, is a talented writer, truly encompassing the duality of art. He has self-published two volumes of poetry. Delusions of Reality is a collection that channels the inner child through verses about brave heroes, worthy opponents, dramatic revelations and intriguing secrets. His thought-provoking follow-up collection Measurements of Maturity is just as vibrant with fairytales, with a philosophical edge that gradually breaks apart illusions. Both are available on Lulu and Amazon.

Scott’s writing journey doesn’t end with poetry; he’s also published two fictional murder mystery novels as part of a saga: Zenparaven and its sequel Zenthevenon. Detective Rick Hoelscher is investigating a serial homicide case, and what’s even more exciting is that Scott has been toying with the idea of a prequel/sequel installment of the saga, so there is certainly more on the horizon. He is also working on writing more poetry in addition to his plans for a third Zenparaven novel.

For Scott, poetry germinates from an intense life event and the accompanying emotion. Sometimes, his writing originates from a sudden profound query or epiphany regarding a philosophical or metaphysical question. He tries to avoid being too didactic and finds that weighty subject matter can be eased a bit through the use of personification and storytelling. In fact, he even has a semi-biographical novel, The Lost Children, that he began working on many years ago and hopes to revisit in the coming year. His life as a writer can be traced back to early childhood memories of being read Scuffy The Tugboat by his mother before bedtim0 and participating by making the hooting sound of the owl as she read to him. This involvement in art and literature at such a young age planted the first seeds that would soon blossom into artistic talent and determination, and turn into the fantastic writer we know and admire today.

Later, in a Mother Goose collection Scott would read before naps, he discovered the brilliant illustrations of Walter Crane and the magnificent engravings of both Gustave Dore and Sir John Tenniel. This led to the realization thatpictures and words were somehow intricately intertwined; although he was imbued with a certain artistic talent, he discovered that a far more revealing portrait could be created with words than could ever be traced on canvas or paper. These days,most of Scott’s poetry and prose is composed at a writing desk or even reclining in a comfortable chair. When true inspiration strikes, he finds it impossible to remain seated and chooses to pace up and down, with a pen and paper in hand, preferably in a circle. Writing both energizes and exhausts him; when he is in the grips of the muse, the pace can be frenetic. Once the poem is finished, though, he feels physically spent.

The majority of Scott’s poetry is free verse, so settling on a particular meter and rhyme and then fitting the message within a structure is challenging for him, yet still rewarding. A large part of his daily responsibilities involves technical and procedural writing. However, to stay in a creative mindset, he keeps small pieces of paper in every conceivable location around the office, home and car to scribble ideas on. When it comes to the emotional side of writing, he tries his best to be vulnerable and open himself up to complete exposure, insecurities and all. It is often painful and raw, but in his opinion, it’s the closest to honesty and truth one can get.

Scott has been a voracious reader for his entire life and will often read three books concurrently at any one time, with one being fiction, one historical or philosophical, and the other metaphysical. The last book he read was Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs. His favorite book genres are classical literature and philosophy (you’d never find him in the romance aisle!) and his dream mentor to guide his writing journey would be Leo Tolstoy. His other hobbies are racing mountain bikes, skiing, weightlifting, and playing disc golf. He’s even a bit of a herpetologist, and often hikes in forests in search of reptiles and amphibians. The solitude of the forest opens his heart and mind to writing. Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass have influenced his writing greatly, including poems and songs in these works such as “You Are Old, Father William” and “The Walrus and the Carpenter”, both of which mesmerized him as a child and continue to delight him. The theme of seizing the inner child continues to flow throughout his writing. In fact, his favorite piece of writing among his poetry is a poem he wrote years ago about his young son, entitled “Aloo”. It was a creative story of a heroic child based on his interpretation of Nietzsche’s “Three Metamorphoses” from Thus Spake Zarathustra.His embrace of family, love, philosophy, and connection is at the forefront of his writing. Scott doesn’t measure literary success in dollars earned or book sales but rather gauges his success by the number of people he has moved to emotion with his words. His advice to new writers is to put pen to paper every single day and to avoid writing when the essential urge isn’t there. He believes that downtime from writing helps to provide new experiences, and the opportunity for a wide array of thoughts and topics to bubble to the surface. Scott understands writing to be a natural process, sprung from an internal need to share and express, and not from an external requirement; forcing this natural process into a scheduled interval removes the joy and spontaneity from the creation process. You can contact Scott Tacke via email at tackman2112@yahoo.com or on Instagram as @tackman2112.