ALAN HARRIS

Born on June 20, 1943, Alan Harris was raised in Earlville, Illinois, a small farming community of about 1,400. His father Keith (1919-1980) was a World War II B-17 pilot who for the rest of his life farmed the family acreage east of Earlville while also taking time out on weekdays to drive a school bus. Alan’s mother Margie (1920-2005) served as a diligent housewife and mother of four children, and for many years was Head Librarian of the Earlville Public Library.

Although he studied plenty of poems (often half­heartedly) in the local elementary and high school system, it wasn’t until he majored in English at Illinois State Uni­versity (minoring in trumpet and piano) that Alan began experiencing strange inner stirrings that resulted in some serious poems. His college poems seemed to spring from a new unknown place and they struck him as rather odd, yet were satisfying to write. Several of these poems were published in annual issues (1964-1966) of ISU’s literary magazine, The Triangle.

Alan and his wife Linda were married in 1966, and all through the next 40 years, new poems have continued to emerge and find readers. Every year or two, between 1980 and 1995, he would assemble that interval’s crop of poems and self-publish a volume to give to family and friends.

In October of 1995, having acquired some HTML skills, Alan published on the World Wide Web all of his poetry books as Collected Poems. Within a year he added four more site sections: Thinker’s Daily Ponderable (original aphorisms), Stories and Essays, Christmas Reflections, and Garden of Grasses. The latter section, originally co-edited with Lucille Younger and now co-edited with Mary Lambert, is an on-line literary anthology for screened work contributed by other authors.

In 1998 Alan’s literary collection took on its current Web address of www.alharris.com and in 2000 became An Everywhere Oasis. After buying a digital camera and taking it to the forest, Alan published several photographic essays and poems which are now available in the site’s Gallery. Also offered are 76 audio poetry readings, with 20 poems being read by actor and friend Paul Meier and the others being read by Alan. New “Web-only” poetry books posted since 1995 are Writing All Over the World’s Wall, Heart clips, Knocking on the Sky, Flies on the Ceiling, Just Below Now, Carpet Flights, and Fireflies Don’t Bite. Launched in December 1999 with co-editor Mary Lambert, a new anthology entitled Heart place began accepting and publishing work from contributing authors. In 1998 Alan’s son Brian composed and per­formed Bunga Rucka (a recording of which is offered on the Web site), which is based upon Alan’s chant poem of the same title. Alan has earned his living in a variety of occupations—high school English teacher, junior high band director, piano tuner—all of these before settling into a long career of computer-related work. He retired in 1998 after 22 years’ service at Commonwealth Edison in Chicago, having worked initially as a computer programmer, then a systems analyst, and later a computer training coordinator. For his final three years at ComEd he developed Web sites for its corporate Intranet and the Internet. Linda retired in 1999 after working for 20 years at an insurance company, but she rejoined the work force in 2000 as a transcriptionist in a large medical clinic. Since retiring, Alan has been doing freelance Web design for individuals, non-profit organizations, and other non-commercial interests, as well as continuing his cre­ative writing.