Gene Walker was born in Houston, Texas. He studied architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design, where architecture was discussed with enormous poetic emphasis. It was very conceptual. Our critics always spoke about everything in these grandly poetic and metaphorical ways. I used to call it “Rhode Island School of Metaphors and Analogies.” I think that is where I really learned to see and to speak I can see now. I am still trying to capture these moments; that moment in which something becomes familiar to catch it without killing it. He was also awarded First Place for Poetry in the 2011 PEN Prison Writing Program.
