Poet and author Sam Silva resides in Fayetteville, North Carolina, USA. His views on religion, politics and humanity have made him an internationally recognized poet.

Sam is an intense craftsman, often drafting three, four or more works a day.

As fellow poet and Pulitzer nominee Ron Bayes has said; "Sometimes when I read Silva, which I have for well over two decades, certain insights of Blake and Coleridge flash to mind – as well as penetrations into character of E.A. Robinson and the bombastic and enthusiastic Vachel Lindsay."

Sam Silva was born in Washington DC in 1954. His father's government work took his family to Okinawa, UK, and Puerto Rico. Sam lived in England when the Beatles came out (between 1962 and 1965), and lived in DC for both the election of Kennedy and during the late sixties (three times in all) Sam learned an undying love for Latin America during the five years he spent in Puerto Rico.

When Sam returned to the States his parents had retired to Greenville N.C. and he became severely mentally ill the following year. It was partly do to his illness that he decided to write. "Poetry, was, for me, a vehicle in the journey of self discovery and a way to map out this epoch which became so frightening especially during the eighties beginning with Reagan's election." Sam relates.

He sees his works as both an internal memoir and also a comment on the age in which he has lived.

Photograph © Mickey Hager, 2003 "Smoking Blue Poet"