Black Dot Diary

I’m Kerry Slavens, author of Black Dot Diary. By day, I’m a prin­ci­pal at award-​winning Artemis PR & Design in Vic­to­ria, British Colum­bia where I work with amaz­ing graphic design­ers, web design­ers and writ­ers to cre­ate cam­paigns for clients. I’m a con­tribut­ing colum­nist to Helijet’s InFlight Review mag­a­zine as well as editor-​in-​chief of Life as a Human, an excit­ing new con­cept in blogzines launch­ing this February.

By night, I paint, study the eso­teric arts, and write poetry, my first lit­er­ary love. My poems have been pub­lished in lit­er­ary reviews through­out Canada, includ­ing The Mala­hat Review, and per­formed by Sud­denly Dance The­atre in “Angel Bones.” I’ve just fin­ished two books and need to get off my pro­cras­ti­nat­ing ass and send them to a pub­lisher. I’m also the co-​author of Grav­ity and Light with Mar­garet Black­wood and Anne M. Kelly, two poets who inspire and guide me.

Black Dot Diary is just part of my quirky quest to com­plete myself on a planet of almost 7 bil­lion peo­ple. Some­times I feel con­nected to all of those peo­ple; some­times I feel totally alone.

Pianist Glenn Gould once said the goal of art and cre­ativ­ity was “the grad­ual life-​long con­struc­tion of a state of won­der and seren­ity.” I get that — and I live by that.

Why is this blog called Black Dot Diary?

I’m a writer. I’ve never been any­thing else. I am con­tin­u­ally immersed in ques­tion marks, peri­ods, excla­ma­tion points and other punc­tu­a­tion. I love the way punc­tu­a­tion brings clar­ity to a piece of writ­ing. So Black Dot Diary is really about the metaphor­i­cal punc­tu­a­tion dots in my life. I was born…(ellipsis)/Is this really my life? (ques­tion mark)/Holy shit! (excla­ma­tion point). I think you get the idea.