About Franco Esposito

About Franco Esposito

 Franco Esposito was born in Montreal in 1954, the oldest of eventually six siblings. Franco began formal writing in 2010, as a voyage of the heart to which poetry was the most natural fit. Earlier, he had submitted several tag lines and billboard advertisement ideas to Air Canada, his employer at the time. This book is the first publication of any of his writings.

Franco’s style is personal and confessional, immediately visual and mysterious. His themes are universal; unity, loss, love, the sea, the searching spirit, the muse- the soulful other. His structure is tellingly narrative, with a portion of adventure, fantasy and escape thrown in for good measure. He writes about turmoil and emotional angst, usually his own, as quest driven tales with unseen turns and descriptions of new possibilities. Franco is inspired by daydreaming; and by the cracks between the sidewalks, and the thin lines in our own concrete. His influences can be traced back to his childhood. Growing up in the 60’s, he read comic books, collected cards, and listened to early rock and roll and Beatles music. However this time was also filled with diversity and movement. At age five and seven, he made two trans-Atlantic crossings; due to his mother being ill with early arthritis working several years in refrigerated conditions, and needing to return to Italy and home soil for awhile. Franco would be marked by this trip abroad, the past thick around him, and movies of Roman Legions shown in the town cinema; and mesmerized most especially by the sea, from ship, that would find a voice in him, in a series of poems written fifty years later. Back in Canada, Franco would have to restart primary school and re-learn the English language. His experiences growing up in neighborhood to neighborhood and school to school every few years, would both imprint itself on a basically shy and introspective personality, as well as force him out of his shell. Mostly living next to factories and railroad tracks where play and making friends meant jumping over gates and under fences, walking on top of roofs and riding slow moving box carts- all these formative memories and influences would creep back in his writing, and in fact infuse it with a life perspective and child’s enthusiasm he had long forgotten.

 Franco studied Psychology, completing a Bachelor of Arts Diploma from Concordia University. He worked as a replacement teacher for a stint of time, then trained and practiced Acupuncture in Montreal. Later moving to Toronto, and then Ottawa, worked for Air Canada where he also volunteered and trained as an Employee Assistance Coordinator, and Stress Management Facilitator. Franco`s first contact with Ingrid Hall was by way of a poem about friendship he entered in a contest on her website. “Years from Then”, that won him first prize in March of 2014, but more importantly it opened a door to a kindred spirit and a devoted writer, to whom Franco pitched an idea, the genesis of this book. Franco met Valeri Beers one year earlier through Twitter, and together began, www.poetrypasta.wordpress.com, in March of 2013. Both these individuals, and contacts with other writers, have inspired, and built confidence about his writing; and helped cross thresholds he would not have otherwise.

 Franco now works back in Montreal, in business with his brother at a coffee shop. Franco is currently studying and writing screenplays, and preparing a forthcoming book of collected poems,.

 Franco Esposito can be reached at:

 www.poetrypasta.wordpress.com, on Twitter, @Bigcountryheart. and Facebook /poetrymeet.