About the Author
Not much to tell, really. Born in January, 1982 and raised an only child in the city of Charlotte, NC. My parents divorced when I was very young. My weekends were split between my parents but I lived mainly with my mother who being a massive bookworm always had shelves of old books for me to comb through.
A bit of an introvert and a little withdrawn being an only child, I had a lot of time on my hands which helped me to find a passion for drawing. Starting at the age of five I began to develop my skills with ink and pencil, recreating comic book story boards, though, with my own characters, sketching the images from books and vinyl album covers and conjuring up monsters from imagination helped by an infatuation of horror and science fiction films.
I spent my middle school years disrupting class by stippling and cross hatching instead of listening and learning. Drawing pictures for friends and classmates and doodling "future tattoos" for bullies to keep them docile. High school was, well, "a blur" as I stayed in too much trouble most of the time to care about academics. ("And that's all I have to say about that." -my best Forrest Gump voice)
I became a father at the age of 17 (my oldest daughter) and again at 20 (my son, born with a developmental disability called Williams Syndrome, I know, I was just as puzzled as you are right now.)
[Insert drama here]
A single parent for the next 12 years, slowly, I began to find myself once again between the monotonous struggle to pay rent and power bills, working full time and juggling dad stuff. There were quiet moments between the chaos where I could feed my insatiable appetite for oil painting and then, somewhere in those moments, quite by accident, began writing poetry.
Where my passion for painting began to wane as years went by, creative writing and poetry were there to take up the torch, lighting my way down that long, dark tunnel known as the future...
At this time I have no trophies or plaques or ribbons to speak of, but I did finally meet a wonderful woman who loves and challenges me and gained another daughter making three children who keep me permanently perplexed.
That's it, as previously stated, not much to tell.
On the Author's Works
Brandon Hildreth is a poet, author and visual artist. His debut book of poetry Scrap Paper (PublishAmerica 2007, Lulu.com 2014) contains poems of love, heartache, whimsical childhood fantasies, life lessons and more. Reviewer Bettie Corbin Tucker described Scrap Paper as "philosophical and challenging" and then went on to say; "however, not once did I feel I was "working" too hard as I read the skillfully written words."
Brandon's follow up work The Sad Lover Boy, the Vampire & the Lime King (PublishAmerica 2009, Lulu.com 2014), as reviewer Wendy Paulson expressed: "treats the reader to an equally powerful array of inspired pieces rife with moving visual imagery and heartfelt sentiment." also "In The Sad Lover Boy, The Vampire & The Lime King, Brandon Hildreth successfully expands the poetic territory over which he is quickly becoming a skilled master."
In his third book Folk (Lulu.com 2013) Hildreth incorporates playful illustrations along with love poems, silly lullabies, riddles and folk tales. To quote reviewer Norman T. Cooper: "Pulling double duty, writing and illustrating, his words are whimsical and his art is reminiscent of Shel Silverstein's work. Brandon Hildreth is a poet that writes from his heart and it seems that he was in a very happy place when he created Folk."
In Hildreth's fourth effort These Bones; Long & Short (Lulu.com 2015), he has put together a compilation of poems, haikus and other writings which had been previously published online, scattered throughout blogs and buried within social media networks. These works, along with a handful of new pieces, have been brought back into the light, revised and arranged for this personal and touching collection. For the full book review CLICK HERE.
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Prompted Pieces, the latest offering from Hildreth's library is a book of prompted micropoetry (short poems) which he amassed by participating in numerous hashtag poetry challenges on Twitter. These poems were gathered, sorted, washed, dried and folded into this new and interesting collection.