A Cremation Pendant, Edmund Skellings Florida's Poet Laureate. Part 1

This may sound a bit strange to some but I have recently been asked to design and make another cremation pendant and I am really looking forward to it.

The customer, a good friend for many years of 

Edmund Skellings, Florida's Poet Laureate.

I have not received the cremains as yet but he will be with me soon, I'm sure. 

So this is probably blog post 1 of 2 post I will be doing.  The second post will be a much fuller story of the making and creation of a unique cremation pendant.

Here I have tried to condense his life into a few lines. Because if I list all in detail I might be writing for quite a few weeks.

Edmund Skellings

born March 12th 1932 in Ludlow, Massachusetts.

http://research.fit.edu/edmundskellings/

Listen to the voice and watch the graphics, rather beautiful I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-cUIsF98Uk

Edmund recorded his first book in 1962 (the year I was born) called Duels and Duets and by the late 60's he had come up with his own way of poetry. 

An Electronic Poet.

By the late 70's he had bought his first computer and and had patents for many computer programs.

Computers became a very large part of his life, this ran side by side with his poetry. Spoken word supporting electronic word and Visa verse.

In 1980, he was given a lifetime  Honor of  

Poet Laureate for Florida against a competition of 400 other poets.

I think at this point I am just going to list his major achievements. As any life story, no matter how condensed is very complicated with lots of date and happenings.

Poetry.

1962 The Comma Cat

1962 Duels and Duets

1963 The marriage Fire

1965 Heart Attacks

1977 Face Value

1978 Showing my Age

1987 Living Proof

1998 Collection Poems

Recordings.

1961 Duels and Duets

1963 The Marriage Fire

1973 Ultra-Red

1977 Nearly the Millennium

1997 Selected Poems

2002 Words Songs

I would love to expand on all these recordings and poems, write more about his life but this is just a short post to give you an idea of what Edmund accomplished in his life.

Look out for part two of this story of Edmund's Cremation Pendant.

RIP Edmund Skellings August 19th 2012

Thanks you reading

Steve