Professor Philip Daughtry isn’t your average English teacher. Nor is he your average cowboy, scriptwriter, handyman or poet. Santa Monica College’s own resident beatnik has just released his first book of collected poems strung together by life experiences and enhanced by myth and foreign destinations that are nowhere near fictional.
Daughtry’s life story reads like the accomplishments of more than a dozen people. He has lived and worked on nearly every stretch of at least five continents. “I’ve been a bit of a gypsy all my life,” he reflected.
A direct descendant of American outlaws Frank and Jesse James, Daughtry, 66, was destined to roam the west in search of wild horses in the title chapter of his new book, “The Centaur’s Son.”
Daughtry’s travels began at a young age. After living in a German prisoner camp in northern England for much of his childhood, he moved to Canada, then on to New York, Colorado and hitchhiked to Southern California, where his first tale begins on his way back to Colorado. “In the ‘60s, you put on a backpack and you head out,” he said, before hopping over the Atlantic.
Daughtry began his career as a teacher in 1971 and took a brief hiatus to do what he does best – wander the globe.
“I did the poverty tour,” he said, referring to his decade-long sojourn through Europe, Asia and Central and South America, working odd jobs to sustain himself and his growing family. “You could have $500 and travel for months. You could go for days without spending any money. You met someone, they took you in, fed you and gave you a place to stay.”
But before jetting off, Daughtry was introduced to his wife, art restorer Rita George, by SMC Psychology Department Head David Phillips, whom he repays by buying him lunch for the rest of his life. “Retrospectively,” Daughtry proclaimed, “I would buy him three meals a day.”
In 1984, Daughtry chose to settle down in Topanga, opting to curtail his hippie lifestyle for a regular paycheck.
“When you tell someone you’re a poet, the first thing they ask you is what do you do for a living,” he said. “I had two kids to raise and I’d been cutting firewood in the Sierra [Mountains] for a living. I was writing poetry but there was no money it.”
He picked up teaching once again and joined the SMC staff and has been instrumental in teaching English 21A and English 2 to over 8,000 students. “It’s been the best 24 years,” he said.
Daughtry’s latest publication is a selection of rambling, structureless first person tales (ala Kerouac) of times long past when a person could just hitch a ride into the sunset and live a life of simple, natural pleasures.
“I’m as equally seduced by travel as I am with writing,” he said. “I find that the travel feeds the writing.”
The selected tales were published in magazines over the years until he entertained the idea of his fourth book with an independent publisher at a conference in San Francisco. “I don’t think people appreciate how hard it is for new writers to get published,” Daughtry said.
“The Centaur’s Son,” which was released in October last year, has seen modest growth, boasting five-star reviews on Internet bookseller Amazon.com and is currently being translated into Spanish for foreign markets. Daughtry will present the book at Equator Books in Venice on May 30 and at the Book Expo at the Los Angeles Convention Center on May 31.
But for Daughtry, what stands most presently on his mind is his impending retirement, though he admits it won’t be a time of rest.
He and his wife plan on traveling to East Africa and the Cook Islands, and he plans on building a greenhouse with his retirement fund. And above all, his love affair with words will never cease. “I only write because I like to write,” he said.
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