Dean Gordon
Poet from Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
Poetry about people and what they carry — pain and trauma, social realities, hope, resilience, and lived experience.
Their story
I write under the name Dean Gordon. The name was born from memory and loss, and it carries with it someone who left this world far too early. I learned about loss long before I learned how to write about it. As a child, I had to leave the place I called home. While I was still young, I experienced an unusual amount of sudden and sometimes violent loss among people close to me.
Many of those memories still live somewhere inside me. Some have already found their way onto paper. Others remain hidden, waiting for words. Writing became a way for me to give those experiences a voice. At the centre of my writing are people — what we carry, what hurts us, what breaks us, what remains, and what somehow makes us keep going.
I write about loss and trauma, but also about dignity, hope, resilience, love, humour, joy and the small pieces of light that survive. For many years, much of my poetry remained in notebooks. Black Box Poesis is my decision to finally open that box and let some of those words out. Some poems come from experiences that have stayed with me for decades; others are being written today.
I write in different languages because I have lived between languages, and because not every memory, thought or emotion finds its truest voice in the same one. Whatever language I use, people remain at the centre of my poetry. I try to understand suffering by looking at what it leaves behind. I let the shadows keep their shape, neither shortening nor lengthening them.
Then I look for the light — sometimes it is hidden somewhere within the scene, sometimes it waits beyond its frame. I try to see both, give each its name and place, and let the whole scene speak for itself.
Works by Dean Gordon
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