Today we’d like to introduce you to Clifford Brooks.
Hi Clifford, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Life brought me into it to tell stories. Along the road to gain the right words, God instilled in me a passion for teaching. I worked for the Department of Juvenile Justice as a probation officer and then with the Department of Family and Children Services with foster care.
Through that, I wrote, and when I stepped out of State work, my first book, The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics came to fruition. For three years I wrote, worked in landscaping (loving it), and existed as an urban hermit.
The book catapulted me out of the shadows and into true self-realization. To share that joy with other creative professionals I built the Southern Collective Experience. In 2013 to prove artists from all over can play well together, I put together a company brick by brick. Today it stands as my family – real and flesh and blood and bone.
From the Southern Collective Experience comes an NPR show, Dante’s Old South Radio Show and a podcast, This Business of Music and Poetry. Our journal of culture called the Blue Mountain Review is now read by over a million people. All these products are created, in part, to guide folks on how to make a real-world living in the business of art. (And, yes, it is a business.)
I sacrificed without hesitation the wife and children to build the Southern Collective Experience – to focus every day on something bigger than myself. The whole of it proves without grandstanding that diversity and inclusion are natural when the organization runs solely on kindness, genius, and humility. It works, I promise.
I am autistic and I make it a dead-bang center of my business to ensure my ilk know they aren’t victims. Likewise, I won’t allow creative writers to perish because they lack real-world knowledge.
For the first time in my adult life, I am balanced.
Today I teach in the UCLA Extension’s Writer’s Program, gifted students in a private Montessori school, and run a lecture series on Teachable.
My goal, above all, is to uplift others and stay humble. (And not date for a long, long time.)
We all face challenges but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
I am a businessman. I am autistic. I am a poet. I am a Southern storyteller, restless and hardheaded. I have one hand in the gospel while every angel’s aware my eyes wander. My road has been havoc, but that’s on me. I’ve lived a gorgeous existence, don’t get me wrong. Yeah, the road to success for anyone will take sacrifice. That’s not to scare anyone off. It’s work. However, much of my hurt has been self-inflicted.
All of life, good and bad, make it into my books. I’m starkly honest about bad loves, worse habits, and face-to-face with demons. I show my scars and triumphs that make them worth it. No melodrama or self-pity. Above all else my work is accessible and honest. My journey is your journey.
I took hold of my purpose, and my addictions eased. It’s the work for family, my company, and all for the grace of God. I do good because being good’s too hard.
You can’t let bad people and dumpster-fire decisions define you. My biggest struggle was fear. Now the fear feeds my resolve to be a better man.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
My books:
The Draw of Broken Eyes & Whirling Metaphysics
Athena Departs: Gospel of a Man Apart
Exiles of Eden
The new one: Old Gods
My epic poem/fiction hybrid, The Salvation of Cowboy Blue Crawford
My books are my kids.
My new poetry – it’s different. I remember how music, words, and solitude give me a quiet my autism aches to enjoy. Work reminds me that “alone” isn’t lonely.
What’s next?
My new book, Old Gods, publishes fall of 2023 through Mercer University Press.
The new Blue Mountain Review comes out the end of December 2022.
My novel, The Salvation of Cowboy Blue Crawford, has five presses courting the finished product.
The Southern Collective Experience opened a SCE last year and will expand it into a within a new nonprofit called, The Blue Chimera.
I want to think less about my prestige, and work more to make sure people don’t feel lost. I work to be less selfish and see to it my Mom and Dad know their eldest won’t be homeless under a bridge eating pork and beans out of a can with my fingers.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.southerncollectiveexperience.com www.cliffbrooks.com
- Personal Website: www.cliffbrooks.com
- Instagram: CliffBrooks3
- Twitter: @cliffbrooks3
- Teachable (The Working Writer): brooks-sessions.teachable.com/p/the-working-writer
- Teachable (Adulting with Autism): brooks-sessions.teachable.com/p/adulting-with-autism
- NPR Show: https://open.spotify.com/show/4h1p4etl3kGVKS0BxuHyfD?si=8c497ce2ca594ba5
- The Business of Music & Poetry: https://open.spotify.com/show/3VjfYwGqrSAIxN6GlJx0Yl?si=0e4557c85d934917
- The Blue Mountain Review: https://issuu.com/collectivemedia
