backspace familiar: Poetry Collection (2016-2017)

backspace familiar is the first collection poetry from Andres Rodriguez, written between 2016 and 2017. Rooted in themes of existentialism, Andres’ poetry can sometimes be surreal and other times focus on the uniqueness of something found in the ordinary of everything.Andres Rodriguez is an award-losing poet and a significantly more successful practitioner of privacy and information security. He currently resides in Tampa, Florida, with his wife, son, daughter, and blue-tick hound lab mix. He is an adjunct instructor for the University of Illinois at Chicago’s graduate health informatics program. He is also the founder of The League of Existential Poets, a rather small (at the time of this writing and most likely at the time of your reading) online group of poets.Born in a rural town in Texas, he is the son of an electrician and nurse. Having lived in various towns such as Eagle Lake, Columbus, Victoria, and McAllen, his family settled down in the Pasadena / South Houston area. He has lived in Nashville, Tennessee, and Maysville, Kentucky, working in healthcare technology management.Andres was born and raised in a religious organization with exclusive beliefs, rooted in the prediction and waiting for end-time events. He recalls childhood stories and sermons of nuclear war, widespread famine, and disfiguring diseases. Growing up, he became fond of post-apocalyptic and surreal imagery, which influences his work today. The world having not ended, he decided to set some goals and obtained a Bachelor of Psychology and eventually a Master of Health Informatics.As an incidental poet, existential Hispanic, recovering poetaster, part-time surrealist, and armchair explorer, Andres explores the meaning of life with surreal landscapes and undiluted imagery framed by words. His primary influences include David Lynch, Ron Padgett, and Salvador Dali, but the structure and a unique fingerprint left on his poems are solely his own. He has had poems published in The Bees Are Dead, The Digital Culturalist, and The Radium Piano Band Magazine.