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Embrace the Mud: A Veteran Poet on Discipline and Craft
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#StoriesAndStanza #BetweenTheLines #PeterGunn #EpicPoetry #CreativeDiscipline
"Embrace the suck. Embrace the mud." Peter Gunn learned that lesson crawling under barbed wire in Air Force boot camp, and he's been living by it ever since.
In this episode of Between the Lines, I sit down with Peter, a 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran, bodybuilder, guitarist and poet, who is on a mission to bring epic poetry back from the dead. We talk about how he went from being a morbidly obese 12-year-old to building a life around small, daily discipline, why 15 minutes a day is enough to write a book, and what it takes to get back up when life pushes you into the mud.
In this conversation:
- How bodybuilding taught Peter to approach writing and music one small step at a time
- Falling in love with poetry through eighties rock lyrics, and why rhyme sticks in the mind
- A reading from the prologue of The Amazons, and why he wrote the heroine epic poetry never gave his daughter
- Why perfection is flawed, and why the people who keep getting back up deserve our admiration
- Writer's block, meditation and the "downloads" that arrive when you're not looking for them
- How a soundtrack project turned into a band, The AngellicS
- The Sigma Squad, and graphic novels as "sparks of knowledge"
- Will AI end poetry? Peter's answer: it's the spark within us
- His advice for anyone staring at the mountain: don't look at it, just write the next page
About Peter Gunn:
Peter Gunn is a 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran turned bodybuilder, guitarist and myth-maker, blending ancient philosophy with modern media to challenge how people see the world. After overcoming morbid childhood obesity at 12, discipline and transformation became a defining force in everything he does. When his daughter was born in 2010, he noticed the feminine perspective was missing from the hero's journey, and he created The Amazons series and a new writing form called Linked-Lyrical Poetry (LLP), a modern evolution of epic poetry designed to resonate with Gen Z and Gen Alpha. In 2020 he launched The Sigma Squad, a graphic novel series inspired by ancient Gnostic texts. He is also the guitarist for The AngellicS, an international band formed with German musicians. Their second album, Elysium Feels, is available on 23 platforms.
Connect with Peter:
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