Stefan Raffl

What was your favorite book as a child?

Before I could read, I listened to Grimm’s fairy tales. As a young child, I spent most of my time outside; the natural world was my library. That world widened in fourth grade, when our landlord shared stories of his time in Canada. I became fascinated by distant places, the cadence of the language, English, and the books that carried them.

That curiosity never left me. Nature and discovery still help me see human experience. They anchor my writing and also shaped The Natural Strategist, where each chapter begins in the quiet intelligence of a garden before turning to deliberate leadership action.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

Writing lets me discover what I think by paying close attention. I am drawn to the moment when language stops describing and begins creating. A shift in rhythm, a line break, the absence of a single word — small choices that change how a reader enters a moment.

I did not begin because I had stories that needed to be told. I began because I was fascinated by what language itself could do. That curiosity remains. Every poem is an invitation to notice something I hadn't fully seen before.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

I have never been drawn to loud, adrenaline pumping activities. For me, intensity gathers at thresholds. The moment before a decision is made or a step is taken, when we notice an opening or begin to uncover something hidden. The change of light. The instant when tension gives way.

That suspension, like standing at the edge of a cliff or an abandoned quarry, where nothing has yet resolved and everything seems possible.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing? Why/why not?

I don't listen to music while reading or writing. I need to hear the movement of a sentence without interference. But music finds its way into my work anyway.

A piece by Reinhold Glière compelled me to write a broken pantoum. A jazz concert became the hidden architecture of a longer poem, its set list and song titles shaping the piece. Another time, a helicopter interrupting a classical concert in an open-air venue became a poem about fragility and human attention. I don’t write to music, I write to its reverberations.