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Poetry by Rowan Evans

Tag: writing identity

  • The Answer Is (Yes) | A Poem About Creativity, Identity, and Refusing One Lane

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    People ask me what kind of writer I am fairly often.

    Usually they’re looking for a category.

    Poet. Romantic. Confessional writer. Storyteller. Surrealist. Humorist.

    Something simple.

    The problem is that none of those answers feel complete.

    I’ve spent more than two decades writing, and one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that creativity rarely thrives inside a single box. Some days I want to write something tender. Some days I want to write something absurd. Some days I want to write mythology, philosophy, romance, comedy, or pure nonsense about raccoons riding llamas through space.

    The older I get, the less interested I become in choosing one lane.

    This poem emerged from that realization.

    It’s a self-portrait, but not in the traditional sense. Instead of describing who I am through facts, it describes me through the roles my writing occupies. Mythmaker. Confessor. Comedian. Romantic. Storyteller. Dream-architect. All of them are true. None of them are complete on their own.

    The final line is intentionally simple because sometimes the simplest answer is the most honest one.

    If you ask what kind of writer I am, the answer depends entirely on which poem you’ve just read.

    And if you’ve read enough of them?

    The answer is probably:

    Yes.

    — Rowan Evans

    A poet stands in a cosmic library surrounded by floating books, stars, mythological symbols, hearts, and pages representing many forms of creativity and storytelling.
    Mythmaker. Confessor. Comedian. Romantic. Storyteller. Some writers choose one lane. I chose all of them.

    The Answer Is (Yes)
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    There are times
    when people ask
    what kind of writer I am—
    what I’m like,
    what I write.

    But there isn’t
    one answer.
    There never has been.

    I am a mythmaker,
    confessor comedian—
    I turn truth into story
    and story into survival.

    A philosopher,
    dream‑architect,
    pop‑culture alchemist—
    I stitch the sacred
    to the absurd
    and call it a heartbeat.

    I am not one lane,
    not one voice,
    not one version of myself.

    I write worlds
    into existence.

    A cosmic storyteller,
    meta‑narrator—
    I pull back the curtain
    and show the mechanism.

    I’m a surrealist.
    A romantic.
    A diss‑poet.

    I am every version
    of the truth
    my pen has ever touched.

    So if you ask
    what kind of writer I am—

    the answer is:

    yes.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Copy of a Copy]
    A sharp, self-aware poem about originality, imitation, and the search for an authentic creative voice. What begins as a diss gradually reveals itself as a meditation on authorship, influence, and the things that can never truly be copied.

    [Lone Wolf Theology]
    A philosophical pop-culture poem exploring freedom, identity, and self-authorship through the lens of superheroes, antiheroes, mythic archetypes, and personal rebellion. A declaration of autonomy in a world determined to write your story for you.

    [L Words & Heart]
    A playful, self-aware poem about love, longing, loyalty, and the quiet ways another person can reshape our inner world. What begins as humor slowly reveals a heartfelt confession about affection, imagination, and the faces that linger in our dreams.

    [Just Beyond Waking]
    A street that feels familiar. A life that hasn’t happened yet. Just Beyond Waking explores the fragile space between dreams, memory, longing, and the quiet feeling that some futures are already waiting for us.

    [Twin Suns, Sister Moons]
    A poem about distance, longing, and the quiet pull of someone who lives beneath a different sky. Between twin suns and sister moons, the heart keeps reaching for home.

    [I’ll Be There to See Your Sunrise]
    Love has never come easily to me. This poem explores the fear, vulnerability, and quiet courage required to stay emotionally present when connection begins to matter deeply. “I’ll Be There to See Your Sunrise” is about choosing love despite the risk of heartbreak—and promising to remain long enough to witness someone fully.

    [Before We Created the Labels]
    Ancient gods return to a fractured world shaped by borders, identities, and separation. “Before We Created the Labels” explores humanity’s divisions through mythic imagery, sacred ritual, and symbolic collapse—asking what remains when we learn to see one another beyond labels.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]

  • Escaped to the Page | A Confessional Poem About Writing & Identity

    Rowan Evans

    Author’s Note

    This piece was written while listening to “Role Model” by Eminem, and you can probably feel that influence in the posture of it.

    There’s swagger here. Sharpness. A little confrontation.

    But beneath that, this piece is really about the difference between shared labels and shared experience.

    Two people can both call themselves poets and still arrive at the page from completely different places emotionally, stylistically, philosophically, and spiritually. The label itself doesn’t erase individuality. If anything, art becomes meaningful because of the differences in how we carry our histories into it.

    That’s what this poem is wrestling with.

    Not superiority. Specificity.

    The truth is, I’ve spent more than two decades building my relationship with language. Not just learning how to write, but learning how to survive through writing. A lot of the imagery in this piece—cathedrals, altars, confession, Gothic romanticism—comes from the emotional architecture I’ve spent years constructing around my work.

    Those images aren’t aesthetic decoration for me. They’re autobiographical.

    When I say my environment “felt more like a cage,” I mean that literally in the emotional sense. Writing became escape, translation, preservation, and eventually identity. The page became the place where I could expand beyond the limits of the environments I grew up inside.

    So while the voice in this poem is intentionally bold, the core of it is actually vulnerable:
    the fear of becoming interchangeable, the need to protect individuality, and the understanding that art is shaped as much by lived experience as talent itself.

    Because someone can imitate style. They can imitate rhythm. They can imitate aesthetic.

    But nobody else has lived your exact life.

    And eventually, that truth always bleeds through the writing.

    — Rowan Evans

    A poet writing alone in a dark cathedral-like room filled with books, candles, and scattered pages.
    Some people write because they want to. Some write because the page became the only place they could fully exist.

    Escaped to the Page
    Poetry by Rowan Evans

    You could be just like me,
    you could write like me—
    be full of empathy like me,
    definition of compassion just like me.

    You could be just like me—
    but still you’d never be me.

    You could build worlds
    with words, just like me—
    cathedrals and altars,
    reverence and devotion, just like me—

    You could imitate the shape—
    but you’d never be the source.
    Don’t even try, just stop.

    You think we’re the same
    because the labels we wear?
    I’m a poet, you’re a poet too—
    but that doesn’t make us a matching pair.

    Twenty-three years,
    I’ve been doing this—
    metaphors like weapons,
    meta-poetry, meta-lessons—
    look at everything I’ve written.

    Confessions penned
    in Gothic lace,
    Romanticized darkness
    because that’s the only place
    I feel at home.

    My environment
    felt more like a cage,
    so I escaped to the page.
    I wrote lines of longing,
    looking for belonging—

    because I’ve been knowing,
    this isn’t the place I’d finish growing.

    Journey into the Hexverse…

    [Ink as a Second Mouth]
    “Ink as a Second Mouth” explores the distance between thought and speech, and the ways writing can become a form of survival, continuity, and self-translation. Through confessional imagery and reflections on growth, identity, and articulation, the poem examines what it means to keep becoming through language.

    If you’re interested in more poetry, you can find it here → [The Library of Ashes]