By · October 10, 2012 · , , , · Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , I recently caught up with former MMA Fighter, author and activist Cameron Conaway, who is taking on his toughest opponent yet. Please share this. Rannoch - You truly are a maverick. MMA, poetry, human rights advocate. I have been following your posts on the Good Men Project and they highlight an incredible diversity, but I have to ask, how did you become involved in the fight to stop Human Trafficking? Cameron - Thanks for the compliments, Rannoch. I believe I’m just a guy who cares like a poet and is driven like an athlete. Sometimes these extremes push me too far but they also help me achieve some things now and again. From 2003-2007 I studied criminal justice in college and, although it made me realize I didn’t want to work in law enforcement, it showed me just how complex and hidden crime could be. I always felt pulled by crimes that targeted society’s most vulnerable. Upon finishing my poetry master’s degree in 2009 Iwatched a documentary on slavery in the cocoa industry. From that point on I knew had to bring to this fight the skills I’d developed. Rannoch – You have trained under Renzo Gracie, Eddie Bravo and Mac Danzig and you hold a 2 and 1 record in MMA. You talk in detail about this in your book “Caged – Memoirs of a Fighter Poet”. Are you still training and if so how does that discipline relate to the work you now do? Cameron - I trained in muay Thai significantly here in Thailand, but my schedule has shifted more towards my writing career. Much of the training I do now is solo – yoga at home, running the apartment stairs, sprinting at the park, etc. The repetition of training, the feeling of going over the edge and the control to stop just short of collapse – it all helps me hear the music of words and maintain my work ethic. We see commercials of athletes working so hard they puke in buckets and I believe that writers, in their own way, can work just as hard. Rannoch – I was talkingrecently with Coach Cj Swaby about the transformative power ofpoetry, of getting words on the page. You have a new book of Poetry coming out in 2013, tell me a little about that. Cameron – “Until You Make the Shore” was actually the book I finished as my thesis in 2009. It’s based on my experience teaching poetry in an all-female juvenile detention center in Tucson, Arizona. The girls I taught transformed me through their stories and my goal in this book was to let that transformation filter through me emotionally and bleed back onto the page for others to experience. Rannoch – Can you tell me a little about the Good Men Project and your involvement? Cameron - The Good Men Project’s mission is to spark a worldwide conversation on the changing nature of men and on what it means to be a “good man.” Thereare no tidy answers, but we believe there’s much to learn through the process of conversation and idea exploration. We’re always looking for new writers and new perspectives. Here is an