About
Chris Basher (a.w.a. P. D. Kline)
Paul Donald Kline was born in Syracuse, New York, USA. His name changed to G. Christopher Basher at the time of his adoption. He has studied and composed poetry for much of his life. He credits a fascination with the way the writing process sometimes unfolds. In his own words, "Nothing in human experience truly mirrors the way a woman nurtures and brings forth life, though there are a few small similarities in the writing process. Having been impregnated by a thought or imagination, experience or observation, word or feeling, a poem or story can take on a birthing process all its own. The writer, like a surrogate mother, feels the life form within, carries the child full term, labors through countless contractions, which may be intense, then feels the joy and pride in beholding his or her very heart and soul."
Current Published Works
Despite writing poetry throughout my adult life, it wasn’t until 2017 that I compiled and published Straining to Catch Every Leaf. Unlike subsequent volumes (Spirit of the Adirondacks, 2022; Pea Soup, 2024), it featured an array of poetry forms, from sonnets to free verse, lyric to narrative, et cetera. That was not so much intentional as it was a natural result of having spent many years exploring various forms of poetry from different literary periods.
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What has emerged as a common thread in each of these first three volumes is the subject matter – the human experience in all of its wonderful simplicities and exhausting complexities; how they all intertwine and interact to form patterns, much like words of a poem – patterns of hope, fear, joy, and anguish; of consequence and inconsequence, exhilaration and depression, good and evil; of birth, rebirth, time, and death; how all of this is held together and driven forward by love; and how the patterns play out in childhood, adulthood, marriage, parenthood, and a myriad of familial and non-familial relationships. For me, the three books represent a journey of transcendence in search of what’s so much greater and far more important than the maddening uncertainties of this life.
​It is curious that it took until 2023 to write and publish a children’s book. After all, my entire professional life has been given to youth development services. Essentially, it was the healing love of a grandchild and the joy of watching her very active imagination at play that nudged me from poetry to prose. More specifically, it was her way of spontaneously bringing her favorite stuffed animal friends to life in acting out life as she had experienced, observed, or imagined.
As a gift to her, I sought to capture that childhood imagination along with her favorite stuffed animal friends, in a children’s chapter book, Finding Chloe. My gift to her became her gift to me, for on the way to bringing her joy, I found a new joy in what was for me a different kind of writing. Suffice it to say, a second children’s book, Finding Friends, is in the works and nearing completion. In the meantime, I continue to compose poetry and experience the joy of both worlds.