Now on Amazon!

An Accidental Diary

A sonnet a week for a year

An Accidental Diary has just been published. I am both surprised and extremely proud of my unusual book.

In writing a sonnet a week for a year, I discovered — almost 20 years later — that I'd created a wild subconscious diary in a year of transition.

It was whatever was on my mind Sunday night while working to meet my deadline.

It was what I had kept hidden from myself back then and what years later would happen: fond recollections and musings on loss, lust, love of family, my fear of dying alone, a sad divorce and, back then, even efforts to quit smoking.

I hope you’ll give it a read.

Get the book on Amazon

Get the book on Amazon

“The Naked House Painting Society”

“Easily the festival’s best. Riveting drama with genuine humor and intense relationships. Mystical in nature, the play turns on incisive philosophical dialogue.” — Winifred Walsh, The Baltimore Sun

“Slavery,” a play in one act

Ownership is the issue as two associates draft a patent at a huge law firm in Robert Bowie, Jr’s one‑act play “Slavery.”

“Crash & Burn PA”

“It’s pretty damned refreshing. Tightly woven, with comic prowess and a nicely fast pace. If you want a carefree night of fun and laughs, this is your ticket.” — Pandora Locks

“Witchcraft,” a play in one act

“‘Witchcraft’ offers the suspenseful flavor of Alfred Hitchcock show. The drama unfolds with many unanticipated twists and turns…” — Janet Stidman Evleth

Poet Laureate - Harvard Alumni Association

Robert is also an accomplished poet and HAA Poet Laureate. You can read some of his poems here.

Plays by Robert Bowie, Jr…

Sold-Out Shows, Rave Reviews!

Our FringeNYC premiere could not have gone better…

ONAJE sold out all five shows, the performances were riveting, and both audiences and critics were exceedingly positive. Check out these great reviews from onstageblog.com and Theatre is Easy (theasy.com) .

Thanks again to our incredible cast, crew, and creative team — and to everyone whose generous support helped bring ONAJE to life!

Recent Posts

Yes, There May Be Life After the Practice of Law! Now Help Me Prove It

Yes, There May Be Life After the Practice of Law! Now Help Me Prove It

I started this blog several years ago in an effort to explore if there could a professional life in the arts after a full and satisfying first career.

Yesterday, I was notified that I had been chosen as a runner up for the Robert Frost Poetry Award for 2022 for my sonnet, “Summer Thunderstorms.” and last month, my sonnet, “City Snow,” was chosen to be included in the upcoming Belt City Anthology: A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology.

Both entries are from my book, An Accidental Diary: A Sonnet a Week for a Year.

Help me celebrate and prove that there is the second life, after all!

Please buy a copy of these books and give them away, and ask that they be re-gifted by order of the author.

Here is the Robert Frost Foundation entry:

Summer Thunderstorms

As with the generations long since dead
The fire and brimstone of the status quo
Wakes him up from the safety of his bed
And lightening frames him in the window

And photographs him in its afterglow.
Tonight he feels his present and its past
As the summer storm also comes and goes.
Conclusions are foolish in a world so vast.

For at the edges of his world and heart
Far past the farthest boundary of his grasp
Where ideas cause worlds to come apart
He lives in this place that will not last.

He loves his life more than he can explain
And leaves the window open to hear the rain.

“Week 35” from An Accidental Diary
(Available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.)

Just Out of Reach

Last week I posted a piece about my mother and how my grandmother would whistle her chickens home long ago on a farm on the eastern shore of Maryland and how my mother, not quite so long ago, used the same whistle to call her children. My grandmother was the only...

Calling the Chickens Home

My mother was a quiet country girl. Even in the suburbs, she used the exact same whistle that her mother used to call the chickens when she wanted us home for dinner. She married a strict but loving patriarch and had two sons. The three males all believed they were...

The Question I Was Afraid to Answer

This can’t be real but it’s happening anyway…? Last week I missed my Tuesday @ 3 posting. A friend told me, “As you go into the operating room, don’t look at the ceiling because it’s like you’re underneath a giant spider. The legs come down when they do robotic...

Here is the sonnet that became a runner-up to Robe

Here is the sonnet that became a runner-up to Robert Frost Foundation entry:

Summer Thunderstorms

As with the generations long since dead
The fire and brimstone of the status quo
Wakes him up from the safety of his bed
And lightening frames him in the window

And photographs him in its afterglow.
Tonight he feels his present and its past
As the summer storm also comes and goes.
Conclusions are foolish in a world so vast.

For at the edges of his world and heart
Far past the farthest boundary of his grasp
Where ideas cause worlds to come apart
He lives in this place that will not last.

He loves his life more than he can explain
And leaves the window open to hear the rain.

“Week 35” from An Accidental Diary
(Available now on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. Link in bio.)
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#writersofig #writerscommunity #poetryisnotdead #poetrygram #instapoem #poetrysociety #writersofinstagram #creativewriting #writingcommunity #writing #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #writers #poems #poetry #poetryofinstagram #poetrycommunityofinstagram #poetrylovers #poemsofinstagram #igpoets #inspiration #10kstoriesofrbb

Yesterday, I was notified that I had been chosen a

Yesterday, I was notified that I had been chosen as a runner up for the Robert Frost Poetry Award @RobertFrostFoundation for 2022 for my sonnet, “Summer Thunderstorms.” and last month, my sonnet, “City Snow,” was chosen to be included in the upcoming @beltmag Anthology: A Lovely Place, A Fighting Place, A Charmer: The Baltimore Anthology.

Both entries are from my book, An Accidental Diary: A Sonnet a Week for a Year.

Help me celebrate and prove that there is the second life, after all!

Please buy a copy of these books and give them away, and ask that they be re-gifted by order of the author.

Link to all in the bio!
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#writersofig #writerscommunity #poetryisnotdead #poetrygram #instapoem #poetrysociety #writersofinstagram #creativewriting #writingcommunity #writing #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #writers #poems #poetry #poetryofinstagram #poetrycommunityofinstagram #poetrylovers #poemsofinstagram #igpoets #inspiration #10kstoriesofrbb

This #MothersDay, I'm thinking about my mother and

This #MothersDay, I'm thinking about my mother and my grandmother.

Long ago, my grandmother would whistle her chickens home on a farm on the eastern shore of Maryland. Not quite as long ago, my mother used the same whistle to call her children.

I was lucky to know them.

Read my reflections on my mom and "Grammy" in my last two blogs. Link in the bio.

In 4th grade, I had part of my lung removed, putti

In 4th grade, I had part of my lung removed, putting me further behind in a new school, compounded by my preexisting learning disabilities. I had given up on school when I was sent to my grandmother's for the very first time...

"At breakfast she planned our day. We would be walking into town to do her errands and I would buy a simple fishing pole, some hooks, a tin pail to hold a small pocket knife, extra lines, some worms, and a red bobber that would flip over and pop up if I got a bite from one of the catfish that the old men routinely pulled out of the Chester River from off the bridge.

Granny had this uncanny ability to create an adventure and treat it like the business of life."

#amwriting #amblogging #grandparents #grandparentslove #10kstoriesofrbb

My grandmother was the only grandparent I would kn

My grandmother was the only grandparent I would know. She lost her husband and the farm when my mother was still in high school.

Even though we always lived far apart I remember as a small child feeling our inexplicable mutual affection when I would wish her happy birthday or Merry Christmas each year over the telephone.

Both my grandmother and my mother had a kindness that children almost intuitively recognized as safe.

While the schools taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and how to compete in the modern world, my mother and grandmother’s universe was quite the opposite. It was more gentle. They focused on the wellbeing of those they loved. Their world was often damage control.

I was lucky to have known them.

More at the #linkinbio👆

There is a poet I love named Philip Larkin (1922-1

There is a poet I love named Philip Larkin (1922-1985). He wrote a quiet poem that stopped me in my tracks when I first read him in college.

There are times when it takes so long to understand the depth of one’s love you almost lose the chance to say thank you. If I shut my eyes, I can hear my grandmother and my mother calling the chickens home.

(Read the full poem and the story of my mother at the link in my bio)
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#writersofig #writerscommunity #poetryisnotdead #poetrygram #instapoem #poetrysociety #writersofinstagram #creativewriting #writingcommunity #writing #poetrycommunity #poetsofinstagram #writers #poems #poetry #poetryofinstagram #poetrycommunityofinstagram #poetrylovers #poemsofinstagram #igpoets #inspiration #10kstoriesofrbb

The year my mother died, she gave me a large steam

The year my mother died, she gave me a large steamer trunk, which she told me she had filled with the flotsam and jetsam of my very “learning disabled” childhood. She told me she had saved everything, beginning with kindergarten through when I passed the bar exam and she pronounced I was on my own, “because finally you will never have to take another test again.”

It had been our war, which we fought side by side, against a world eager to write me off, forget me, marginalize me and perhaps us. Because I did not wish to return to that nightmare, I was never ready to open that box.

My mother had no fear of time. She had endless patience.

As I recuperated from surgery over the last few weeks, I kept looking at that box. Last Sunday, I opened it....

The operating room doors opened and they pushed my

The operating room doors opened and they pushed my bed to the center of the room. Several nurses were setting up under very bright lights but they had their backs to me. The second hand took baby steps on a wall clock until the minute hand hit exactly 6:45 am.

I didn’t look at the ceiling.

My thoughts turned to my eighth-grade hockey team’s first victory. We were joyously riding back in a school bus in full celebration. The coach was in a separate car and the bus driver had lost all authority on the bus.

There was a ruckus in the back. I turned to see one of the boys secretively drop his pants and moon the late afternoon traffic. I realized that his audience was not the following traffic. It was the boys on the bus.

I was unprepared. I had no question to work on as the anesthesia dripped through tubes into my arm.

#amblogging #memories #surgery #10kstoriesofrbb

Moments later, I blinked into consciousness and I

Moments later, I blinked into consciousness and I saw my doctor, not the surgeon, saying to me, “you probably won’t remember this, but I came by to let you know they got all of it and it hadn’t spread.”

As I fell back to sleep, l focused on the jukebox in the basement bar I worked in during college. One night, I discovered that from behind the bar I could control the volume of the music and the dimmer for the lights. And that if I made strong drinks, turned down the lights and turned up the music, all that was missing was a high wire act.

Around 2 o’clock the following morning, I woke up and tried to roll over but I was unable to move. I was lost in a tangle of catheters and drainage systems with little bags hanging from a carriage on wheels. I could not move. I had become claustrophobic.

The night nurse reassured me that she also suffers from claustrophobia. She told me it would be good if she helped me out of bed, and I walked up and down the well-lit hall, slowly pushing the carriage holding the dripping bags that flowed into me...
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#amwriting #amblogging #surgery #hospital #hospitallife #10kstoriesofrbb

This can’t be real but it’s happening anyway…?

Last week I missed my Tuesday @ 3 posting.

A friend told me, “As you go into the operating room, don’t look at the ceiling because it’s like you’re underneath a giant spider. The legs come down when they do robotic surgery. The doctor isn’t even in the same room.”

More at the #linkinbio.

#amwriting #amblogging #10kstoriesofrbb

This can’t be real but it’s happening anyway?

The Apocalypse begins this week! April 13th is ope

The Apocalypse begins this week! April 13th is opening night for my friend @christiandegrecardenas' ACEDIA: An Apocalypse Trilogy. It runs through April 30th, so don't miss it!

These three plays can be seen in any order, or all together in one night.

Get tickets from @bricktheater (link is in my bio)

Photos by @ze_castle_photography
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#theatre #playwright #playwrights #writer #offbroadway #newyorkcity #playwrightsofinstagram #playbill #performanceready #newyork #playwrighting #brooklynlife #theatrelife #stage #nyc #newyorkcity #performingarts #theater #theatre #brooklynevents #theaterlife #brooklyn #newyork #actors

This week, I’m featuring an upcoming NYC product

This week, I’m featuring an upcoming NYC production I’m excited about, which was written, composed, and produced by my dear friend @christiandegrecardenas of @mindtheartentertainment and co-produced and directed by @freeland.

The Apocalypse starts in less than a week! Get tickets now! @bricktheater

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About Robert Bowie, Jr.

Playwright and Poet Robert Bowie, Jr. of Baltimore, Maryland has had ten plays produced, including “Onaje,” which was selected for professional production at FringeNYC in October 2018. Its five sold-out FringeNYC performances received rave reviews. Other plays include “There Ain’t No Wyoming” and “Naked House Painting Society,” which were produced through The Baltimore Playwrights Festival. Bowie’s political farce “Crash & Burn P.A.” was the only submission selected by the 2016 Festival Committee for a full production at Theatrical Mining Company, Baltimore.

Currently, Bowie is working on a operetta in partnership with Mind The Art Entertainment. Entitled “Vox Populi,” it is a comical, interactive tale about the deadly sin of pride.

Bowie’s plays are focused on social justice and span a broad spectrum between drama and comedy. His subject matter ranges from plays about racial prejudice and civil rights to political farce.

Bowie is a graduate of Harvard University and is the Poet Laureate of The Harvard Alumni Association (HAA).

“Without the arts, we are a rudderless boat.”
— Robert Bowie, Jr.