There are many songs that have special meaning to me. Any number of Bob Dylan's songs immediately come to mind. Songs like �The Times They Are A Changing� and �Masters of War�. However, it was Woody Guthrie's �This Land Is My Land, This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is Yours And My Land.� It was a song that helped make me the poet I am today. The message is obvious - we the people built this land and it belongs to us, not the government or corporate America. But it's not just the song, but the man behind the song.

Woody wrote words that people could understand because he knew and identified with the people he wrote about. He performed early on in skid-row bars and later in the fields as well as at Union Halls and on stage. His anger against social injustice that prevailed then (and still does today) poured into his songs. Woody was always Woody, not a pretentious cell in his body. He defied being labelled. He was neither right nor left, he was simply a man who wrote some of the best social protest songs of his day; a singer and song writer who was mentor to Bob Dylan and many other great folk singers of our time. I'd compare him to a musical Will Rogers.

I remember when I was a kid, my father (a loyal Union man) would tell me about Woody and that the Democrats were for the people and the Republicans were for big business. It seems that they still are. In the evening my father would put on a record by Woody. I think the label was Victor records. One of the songs on the record was �The Ballad of Tom Joad�. I must have listened to that record a hundred time So Woody and his songs (not just one) definitely influenced me. He was also a poet and prose writer (read Bound For Glory) and a decent cartoonist. So I'm back to Dylan, who himself was influenced by Guthrie, as were so many other musicians, and at least this one native San Francisco poet.

A.D. Winans was born, raised and lives in San Francisco. He graduated from S.F. State College (now a university). A.D. returned home from Panama in 1958 and discovered the North Beach beat scene, and later was a fringe participant in the Hipper Era. He was privileged to know Jack Micheline, Bob Kaufman, Charles Bukowski, and many other Beat and post-beat poets and writers. He edited and published Second Coming Magazine and Press for l7 years. Some of the many highlights of his life include having a poem of his set to music and performed at Tully Hall (NYC), meeting and having a drink with John Lee Hooker, shooting pool with Janis Joplin, and meeting the late Robert Kennedy, one of his early heroes. Author of over 40 books and chapbooks of poetry and prose. Work has appeared internationally. Presa Press will be publishing a book of his Selected Poems in January 2007. Becoming more active in photography and loves dogs, all kinds of chocolates, and three year old children before they become corrupted by adults. To read a selection of A.D.�s poetry on the showcase section of this site, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.