About Kees Kapteyn*
*(pronounced 'Kase Kaptine')

Kees Kapteyn has a published chapbook entitled 'Temperance Ave.' through Grey Borders Books as well as having been published in such magazines as Blank Spaces, Wordbusker, Writing Raw, In My Bed, blue skies, ditch and various other publications. Most recently, his short fiction “Geosmin” was accepted into the Just Words 4 anthology published by Alanna Rusnak Publishing. Kees was raised in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada and now lives in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada where he works as an educational assistant.

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"I didn’t know it at the time, growing up around horses, falling asleep to the nightly calls of peacock and waking to the rusty-hinge cackle of guinea hens, but my upbringing might have actually been pretty unique . One might think I’d come of age surrounded by an exotic Oriental menagerie, but no. I’d only grown up on a small fruit farm in Niagara-on-the-Lake that had an eccentric neighbour living within earshot. As I got older, I was always at odds with being the son of a farmer. I didn’t seem suited for it. But living in that sensory environment, surrounded by geography- rivers, lakes and hills, with all manner of flora and fauna nearby under a roof of sky  full of either stars or clouds- it did something else for me. It didn’t make me a farmer, but it gave me a sense of wonder.

 

My Tante Jo had even said to my older sister that I would probably be a writer, knowing long before I even had an inkling, but I was always interested in words and creating stories. In the Seventies, before storylines were readily fed to us with video games and social media, it took imagination to get any entertainment out of the world, but I seemed to do pretty well with getting by, creating action-packed dramas with my kung-fu grip G.I. Joes with little else but some bricks, scrap wood and twine. Making stories was my play, so I’m guessing that’s where it all developed.

 

In middle school, a talent for words started to show. Leo Benevento used my name in a sentence using the word ‘prosaic’ (what was that word doing in the Grade Eight spelling curriculum?) after I’d read my funny “What I Did For Summer Vacation” story earlier that day. But I didn’t know. I was too wrapped up in dinosaurs and Star Wars and my clumsily concealed crush on Leo’s pretty cousin Josephine. Nothing told me I had anything to offer.

 

I didn’t start feeling it until high school. In Grade Ten English, Mr. Palma asked me to read my work in a short story assignment. It was about a young girl who’d just discovered she was pregnant and was agonizing over how she would tell her parents. I read it nervously, having to be told to speak louder a couple times, but when I finished it, I looked up and some of the girls in the room were wiping tears from their eyes. I didn’t know what I’d done, but I’d touched on a truth and moved people. None of my classmates said anything about it to me afterwards, but Mr. Palma told me I had talent, and I should develop it.

 

After that, it became an obsession. My father had to continually retrieve me from my desk because I was spending my work breaks writing and wouldn’t come out when break was over. I wrote everything, from song lyrics to science fiction to teen romances. I started reading everything from Margaret Atwood to Charles Bukowski, Robertson Davies to Sharon Olds, Hugh Maclennan to bpNichol. When I discovered the Beats I found a voice that was common but eloquent. When I found Paul Quarrington, I found a sense of humour and when I found Mark Anthony Jarman, I found the perfect blend of poetry and prose. I tried to adopt them all in my own style and started trying to submit to magazines hoping to be published.

 

Through the nineties, I founded a small arts zine named Rhododendron that had some marginal success. It garnered me some free access to some rock and roll gigs, found me some friends with some local and provincial bands. It even got my name in the credits of Knockout Pill’s ‘Can I Open The Big Present First?’ cd. Stories and poetry have since found homes in literary magazines such as In My Bed, Ditch and Blank Spaces as well as with honourable mentions in different local CAA literary contests.

 

Now, on the other side of raising a family, I’ve had a chapbook of flash fiction, ‘Temperance Ave.’ published through my good friends at Grey Borders Books and I’ve completed a short story collection called ‘Virtus’ which is now looking for a publisher. In the works right now is a novel called ‘LEFtTurn’ which has just had its first rough draft complete. Short stories and articles wait to be developed and projects are in queue to be started. 

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Now, writing is a feeling that I want to inhabit, a sphere of dopamine in which I want to remain. My free time is writer's work, adding to the novel, editing. It's promoting the short story collection, sending queries and submitting, and then working on networking through social media and this website. It's almost to the detriment of the rest of my life. It's all I want to do. Sometimes it's exhausting and I need breaks, but I always return, eager and brimming with ideas.

 

The obsession never tires."

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