Here is the apocryphal tale of how I came to create my list of goals and dreams. In 1986 I read an article about Chuck Yeager, the famous pilot. As a kid he had made a list 74[?] things he wished to accomplish. He completed the list at the age of 74. Unfortunately, in...
Over the last few months in my role as an author and a Windward High School teacher, I have been getting out into communities, near and far, to talk about reading, writing, and reaching kids. Near the end of last year, the Mount Vernon Library Young Adult Writer’s...
Pablo Neruda is poet not-so-well known in the U.S. as he is in the rest of the world. Here's a link to some info and some translated poems. I wrote this after An Afternoon with Pablo Neruda Spent I this day lost in a dream of words, of rivers and laughter. Lost I my...
On Shakespeare's Birthdeathday These two sonnets, even more so than the previous eight that I wrote, where inspired by Shakespeare. In a way they were also inspired by Robert A. Heinlein who, writing the character of Lazarus Long, said, "A human being should be able...
Here is another poem inspired by Mindy McGinnis, this time it's her second book, IN A HANDFUL OF DUST, a young adult dystopian that feels very real! The Road meets Little House on the Prairie. Across the Country Robert L. Slater Across the country, All we are in a...
April is National Poetry Month: Inspired by Writers-Part II Sherman Alexie's Ode to Coffee inspired this, my only ode. Robert L. Slater Ode to Water (with a nod to Sherman Alexie) In the river bank, the long haired native kid Watches the salmon flow by...
Robert L. Slater, author of the young adult, apocalyptic science fiction series Deserted Lands, has worked as a teacher in the beautiful Pacific Northwest for 20 years. Like some of his characters, he has a propensity for speaking in lines from 80s movies, drinking Mountain Dew and eating pizza.