Poet | Filmmaker | Visual Artist | Educator
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Ronald L. Sturgess is a poet, filmmaker, visual artist, and educator whose work bridges cinematic storytelling and literary craft to explore identity, memory, and social justice within the African diaspora.
Currently serving as a College Professor of Film at Governors State University, Sturgess holds an M.F.A. in Independent Film and Digital Imaging. His multidisciplinary practice treats poetry and filmmaking as complementary languages—both capable of freezing time, excavating history, and reimagining futures.
His poetry draws deeply from his background in visual storytelling, employing ekphrastic techniques to examine how images shape our understanding of race, representation, and resistance. Works like "Starborn Reflection"—inspired by EC Comics' revolutionary 1956 anti-segregation story "Judgment Day"—demonstrate his commitment to revealing how visual culture can challenge systemic injustice.
Sturgess's collection Love is Memory explores the cyclical nature of love and remembering, using formal poetic structures (sonnets, pantoums, villanelles) to suggest that repetition itself is an act of devotion. The work argues that to remember is to love, and to love is to refuse erasure—a philosophy that extends from personal relationships to cultural preservation.
As an educator, Sturgess brings his artistic philosophy into the classroom, teaching students that storytelling—whether through film or poetry—is not merely entertainment but essential technology for human understanding and social transformation.
"I believe in poetry as visual ritual, filmmaking as sacred act, and storytelling as the technology that unites generations. My work asks: How do we see ourselves when history keeps changing the mirror? And how do we create new mirrors that reflect us truly?"
My creative practice is rooted in what I call Afroparallaxian storytelling—a framework that treats time, ancestry, and consciousness as fluid, where stories function as living rituals merging the ancestral past with the speculative future.
Every story must humanize its characters and their emotional truths. Whether writing poetry about love and loss or creating films about historical trauma, the work must center the lived experience of Black people in all our complexity—not as symbols or statistics, but as fully realized human beings navigating systems designed to deny our humanity.
Every tale contributes to a grand mythology linking the African diaspora. My work seeks to create threads of connection—between past and present, between the continent and the diaspora, between personal memory and collective history. Poems like those in Love is Memory argue that individual acts of remembering are also acts of cultural preservation.
Stories must imagine futures where justice and unity prevail. Even when examining historical trauma or contemporary injustice, my work refuses to accept the current state as inevitable. Like the 1956 comic book that imagined a Black astronaut when Black people still fought for the right to vote, my poetry and films ask: What worlds are we brave enough to imagine into being?
Narratives must be well-structured, cinematic, and emotionally coherent. I believe in the power of form—in sonnets and villanelles, in montage and mise-en-scène—not as constraint but as container. Form holds meaning. Structure creates emphasis. Whether I'm writing a pantoum or editing a film sequence, I'm seeking the architecture that best serves the story's truth.
Each work must connect personal transformation to collective liberation. The poems I write about my grandmother's quilt aren't just about my family—they're about how Black women have always taken the torn and made it whole, how survival itself is an art form, how love practiced daily becomes revolutionary. The personal is always political; the intimate is always historical.
"Storytelling is sacred technology. In the hands of the oppressed, it becomes not just art but weapon, shield, and blueprint. We tell stories to survive, to resist, to imagine ourselves free. And in telling them—in poetry, in film, in any form that refuses to let us be forgotten—we practice the most radical act: we insist we matter. We insist we're here."
An ambitious transmedia project building an Afrocentric universe through novels, animation, and games. As Creative Director and Story Architect, I'm developing the Atlantis Squared universe—a cosmos where time travel, technology, and spirituality converge, where civilization is cyclical not linear, and where power is as moral as it is material.
Worldbuilding
Multimedia
A comprehensive story development system designed to help writers craft powerful, culturally resonant narratives that humanize, educate, and inspire. This framework serves as both philosophical compass and practical engine for creating stories that honor the African diaspora while imagining speculative futures.
Pedagogy
Diaspora Focus
A full-length collection exploring love as ancestral practice and memory as devotion. 24 interconnected poems cycling through formal structures to argue that to remember is to love, and to love is to refuse erasure. Currently seeking publication with university and independent presses.
Poetry Collection
Memory & Identity
An ongoing series of hybrid visual-poetic works that use cinematic techniques (montage, exposure, framing) as poetic devices. These pieces interrogate how Black people are seen, how we see ourselves, and how we might create new ways of seeing entirely.
Visual Poetry
Hybrid Form
I am currently seeking literary homes for individual poems and manuscript collections. My work is particularly well-suited for publications that value:
I'm especially interested in connecting with editors who appreciate the intersection of cinema and poetry, who value craft alongside innovation, and who believe—as I do—that storytelling is both art and resistance.
I am a dedicated family man striving to create content for future generations that offers historical perspective and a roadmap for unifying humanity and fostering compassion.
My work—whether poetry, film, or visual art—seeks to:
Every poem is a brick in the house I'm building for my children and yours. Every story is a map back home—to Africa, to ourselves, to the futures we deserve.
This is not just art. This is architecture. This is ancestor work. This is how we survive.