" Someone once asked me, "What is God?" and I replied, "God is a social reflex, He's the result of a human compulsion to have an entity which has the ability to dissolve all desire of reason and rationality." They said, "What?" I said, "Exactly." " I am 17 years old and from the north of England. When writing, I go under the pseudonym "Daegal" - meaning 'dweller by the dark stream' in Anglo Saxon. I'm very interested in classical mythology, theology and philosophy and a lot of these characteristics often weave their way into my work in some form or another. I'm mostly influenced by the Romantics, Milton, Virgil, Homer, Ovid, Dante, Poe, Lovecraft, Yeats, Coleridge, Byron... I could go on. When I'm not writing poetry I tend to write and play music for my various projects. I play guitar, bass, drums and keyboards whenever I can - it's a hobby (I listen to lots of stuff, but especially Progressive Metal - Evergrey, Dream Theater, Adagio, Time Requiem, Stride, Kamelot etc). I like to go surfing whenever I can too. I used to be athletic, I was captain of my local basketball team for about 18 months but I was forced to leave after I dislocated my knee a few years ago, I used to do a lot of rock climbing, too but I also had to stop that because of the same injury. Oh well! I tend to write my poems in iambic pentameter - as it's closest to the rhythm of natural speech - and vary the rhyme schemes, from Miltonic free verse to the more complicated Terza Rima and Spenserian Stanza forms. I hope you enjoy my poetry! "Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history." - Plato "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are all of imagination compact." - William Shakespeare "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven." - John Milton "You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club." - Jack London "Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company." - Mark Twain "I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated His ability." - Oscar Wilde "Men would be Angels, Angels would be Gods." - Alexander Pope "Die, verb: To stop sinning suddenly." - Elbert Hubbard "Pain is born from memories of pleasures unparalleled and pure." - Warrel Dane (Nevermore: The Psalm Of Lydia - This Godless Endeavour - Century Media 2005) "You have to live before you can die young." - Mikael Åkerfeldt (Opeth: The Ghost Of Perdition - Ghost Reveries - Roadrunner Records 2005)