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You also wrote a book titled Love Letters to the World, and that is how we know of each other’s existence! How did this lovely book of “textual comradeship” come about? How do you think we can all contribute more love to the world? Like most of my work, it began as a collection of poems accrued over time. At some point, however, I started thinking thematically about desire, which presented itself as a node whereby the world we make and inhabit, and just about anything else one can imagine, could be explored. Thinking this way, I focused on desire not only as an affective phenomenon, which it undoubtedly is, but also something that might be broadly characterized in terms of the artifacts and tools we fashion to satisfy our needs, wants, wishes and intents. So, a hammer, for instance, is desire objectified for its open-ended satisfaction in various projected transmogrifications, such as, the creation of shelter, furniture, other tools for other satisfactions and projects etc. And this brings us to the expression of desire through its principal tool, which is inextricably bound up with it and underpins all others – language. Language is constituted by the need to be understood in one’s extension of self-to-other. It similarly demands the necessary reception of that other as a custodian of meaning and is in that sense a condition for reciprocal satisfaction. It is the primary means of inter-subjectively achieving our multifarious ends, which is to say, it, and the meaning it makes possible, is the expression of desire not as solipsistic affectivity or irrational instinct, but something inescapably purposive that concretely, and communally, shapes our world. This interplay between desire as impetus and language as primordial tool is clearly visible in the relationship of an infant to its mother. The first uttered manifestation of language is a call for nourishment that only another can provide. That is nothing less than an expression of desire as bodily lack. The call takes many forms and may intend a desire for security, the need to be released from the painful irritation of soiled nappies – urine burns – or the sheer, pleasurable, comforting proximity of another’s presence. As language develops, this fundamental substructure doesn’t ever disappear, it merely takes new forms whose complexity overlay and obscure it. As to how we might contribute more love to the world, I think being at peace with oneself, and one’s limitations, is a good place to start. When one discovers something beautiful that one feels to be meaningful or uplifting, or when one has done something personally fulfilling – it could be a poem one has written and is pleased with – one feels full, complete. What happens then is that one becomes generous because when one is satisfied with oneself there is an excess positivity that cannot be contained and must flow out to others. So, the short answer is, I suppose, be creative, do that thing that gives you joy and includes others. Reading your writing, one gets the sense that you have a lot of fun with language – the sounds of it, in narrative poems and stories, through repetition... How would you describe your relationship with language? Do you ever experience difficulty writing? Like other writers, my relationship with language is deeply personal. It’s a matter of little to no compromise. So, like life, it’s a serious business but that doesn’t preclude the equally serious business of having fun with it like one should with life. I am dissatisfied with work I feel is missing the mark and, often, I don’t necessarily know what that is until I’m well into it. The phrase or idea that kicked it off might very well be discarded in the writing process, and frequently is, but then something magical happens. A vista opens and the poem takes me somewhere it wants to go. I don’t like obscurity for its own sake and try to be as clear as possible, despite the strategic use of ambiguity, punning, etc. Obscurity is only valid if the subject concerned demands it – there are ineffable things in life language can only approximate – but I do not like it if it becomes recourse to laziness or wallpapering a shallow idea. So, there must be a serious attempt at sincerity to the vision one is asking a reader to consider. Having said that, I must admit I do fall short of this ideal at times. In a work with which I'm generally satisfied, there might be something I know is problematic or inadequate and requires amendment, but for which I currently lack the exact formulation needed. I could, for the sake of unconditional integrity, hold off publishing till I achieve what is lacking, or do what I've often done, tell myself it's a provisional rendering that can be replaced in the future, knowing full well I probably won't get the chance, while hoping readers will not notice this inadequacy, blemish or downright mistake I've tried my best to mitigate or disguise. I inevitably lie to myself and others, but that is not so unforgivable so long as one does so artfully. Yes, writing is difficult at times. In any case, there seems to be definite periods where I can do nothing but wait. I think of it metaphorically as a seasonal thing. Just like the earth on its yearly cycle, there are times of necessary dormancy and there’s little gain trying to grow something out of season. In those times, I read other writers I admire and whose greatness so frightens me to death that the desire to write something worthwhile remains with me, quietly incubating. Did you always know you wanted to write? Yes, but not in any defined, creative sense. I remember in early childhood I was fascinated by this magical art by which someone produced signs that others could understand and which I could make no sense of. It really bothered me that I was somehow excluded from this game. I did the things kids usually do and made scribbles on a page and presented it to my mother for her inspection. I asked her if she could read what I wrote and she said she could and it was very good. That was comforting but I knew there was something wrong because I could make no sense of my scribbles. I suspect I did have some intention of what I was hoping to say when I made my random squiggles but which I could no way recount looking at the page after the fact. Later, at about age eleven, we were asked to write a poem about war. For one of the rare instances in my school days, I was inspired by the given task. It seemed I had very definite ideas about what a poem is. It consisted of short, pithy lines that had to be rhythmic and with rhyme. As an act of rebellion and freedom – for poetry allows you that, doesn’t it – I even incorporated a pun on the word “bloody,” which was considered a punishable swear word in our Catholic school. But that was also motivated by the need to reflect that the subject we were tasked to write about struck me then, as now, as obscene. I remember looking up and seeing many of my peers apparently struggling and I was puzzled. For the first time I could remember, we were asked to express what we thought about something, so what was so hard about that? The teacher liked my poem, read it out and asked if she could keep it. What satisfaction I got hearing our model of correctness saying the obscenely intended “bloody” and getting away with it! Well, maybe I wasn’t the total loss as a student my school days had hitherto conditioned me to believe. After that I started writing poetry. Who are some of the writers or books you hold most dear? Where does one begin? There are so many. Okay, I hate to start with what has become a banality because anyone who pretends to know anything about literature feels expected to mention him, but here we go again – Shakespeare. As a young boy, I watched teleplays of his work and though I couldn’t understand a word of them, I was arrested by their sound. The sheer sonic quality of the language, its rhythm, intonation and hypnotic power, had a weight and authority that seduced me into the unfolding drama long before I could comprehend what the narrative, themes, characters etc. were about. The words floated like palpable puffs of air, aural baubles or brilliant twirling ribbons. Looking back, the more I understand these things now, the less I can feel the raw revelation of that music bedimmed by semantics or, perhaps, my jaded senses. Edgar Allan Poe has been a big influence. Again, he is very much a sound-based poet. Some of the effects of his poetry are gorgeous and hyper-articulated syllabically, reinforced with insistent, even monotonous, repetition till the meter pounds like a beating heart in the throes of an existential crisis, or the throbbing temple of someone about to be driven mad. His poetic subjects are narrow, emotionally as much as thematically, and not for everyone. His great short stories open other poetic vistas. As much as being a pioneer of science fiction (Jules Verne admired his work) and the father of the detective story (Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by him) and something akin to poetic non-fiction (his final story, "Eureka: A Prose Poem"), he was, I believe, a significant influence on the development of the symbolist prose poem. Read in a particular way, something like "The Pit and the Pendulum" is substantially a prose poem about human existence. The central metaphor of finding oneself inexplicably entrapped in a dungeon with the ever-present threat of death in one’s midst is an extended metaphor for our worldly embodiment. Add to that the rhythmic quality of the sentences, use of repetition, and extensive symbolism and one sees how these elements act to heighten the poetic tenor of the prose. I have little doubt that Baudelaire, who translated Poe into French, homed in on these qualities and went on to become recognized as the first major exponent of this symbolist form. Which brings me to this great poet I admire and can only read in English. He’s one reason why it would be worth learning French. Dylan Thomas is another favorite. He is extraordinarily colorful in his refraction of syntax and is a master of drawing what seems a beautiful blend of bardic and modernist musicality in his use of slant rhyme, assonance and inventive alliteration, often cast in original forms, such as in the sublime, "Poem in October." Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment, and his works leading up to it, had a big effect on me, probably not surprising considering I was a relatively sensitive adolescent overwhelmed by life at the time. (These days I’m only shocked by it.) That work made me want to become a novelist and I thought of poetry as a kind of apprenticeship leading up to that. Then I could do some real writing! Boy, how wrong you can be! Give me poetry any day. Here’s a quick list of some others that come to mind. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I was sitting on some steps at school before class. From behind me I heard the voice of my English teacher, who said, “Here’s something I’ve been reading I think you’ll like, you can keep it.” Before I knew it, I had a Penguin Classic in my hand, Lady with Lapdog and Other Stories by Anton Chekov. She was dead right – I loved it and still have it on my bookshelf. A discovery I made for myself is Guy De Maupausson, whom I love as much as Chekov as a short story writer, if not more. Nietzsche, whose Thus Spoke Zarathustra is as much a work of poetry as groundbreaking philosophy. I set aside his sexism which is problematic and goes to show how much an intellectual giant can so little understand women; D.H Lawrence, a versatile creator and thinker of enormous depth, and one must mention T.S. Eliot who, at his best, is an enigmatic balance between discreet conservatism and revolutionary brilliance. For me, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" is, among other things, a potent poem of spiritual yearning that evokes a sense of transcendent absence haunting each utterance, never explicitly stated, while, at the same time, being a bold declaration of modernist aesthetics through precisely what it does state and the way it states it. As to the relevance of this poet today, who can doubt we live in a time when the world is run by hollow men? I would also add, funny as it may seem, The Beatles. My fascination with their lyrics and the need to understand them certainly didn’t hurt my nascent analytical skills. Songs like "Nowhere Man" and "Yesterday" are inherently poetic and provoke serious reflection. As for "Strawberry Fields Forever" – what more need one say? I could go on forever... How do you know when a poem is ready to send out into the world? There is a point when you just have to let go and move on to something else, but I don’t think a poem is ever finished or ready anyway. I don’t mean that in Auden’s sense of “A poem is never finished, only abandoned.” There may be a truth to that but, for me, a poem is a sonic thing, so, firstly, it can never be ready for the world unless and until it is vocally performed in some way – recited – alone or before others, ideally the latter. In tandem with this, I’d add that a poem is a spatiotemporal phenomenon; it necessarily unfolds in time and when it is recited, it also shapes the space around it. Then its space becomes resonant to greater or lesser degrees, and that inscription of the moment is the closest thing to its readiness. So, inasmuch as each moment in time is new and unrepeatable, a poem will only be provisionally complete for the duration of its perusal or vocalization, but it can never be finished, which is a good thing because that safeguards it as a portal to infinite variation and insight as long as people care enough for poetry. How have your many book projects come to be? Well, my first one with Ginninderra Press, Time Steals Softer, was a kind of happy accident. An acquaintance of mine mentioned they were then taking submissions. I had decided not long before it was about time I started submitting to journals. Being the naïve sort of person I am I didn’t distinguish between a press and journal, nor did I think to research what I was submitting to. So, I sent away five poems. When the publisher came back and said he’d like to publish me, asking if I could supply, maybe, another 75 poems, my jaw dropped. “Oh,” I thought, “so that’s the difference between a press and a journal...” I didn’t even know if I could scrape up that many, despite my years of writing. After that manuscript, I submitted another five works to that press, one of which is a collection of short stories. With each publication, I felt myself easing more completely into my voice and I’m grateful to the publisher, Stephen Matthews, for allowing me the scope to do that. Last year Poetose released a chapbook, Sky, which I’m particularly fond of because it showcases a poetic prose side to my writing unlike anything I have had published anywhere else. That project came about because of a coincidence, or synchronicity, if you like. You published a book with the exact title I used, Love Letters to the World, within a month of my publication in 2016 – you got in first! When my wife looked online to see if there were any comments about the launch I had done one weekend, she came across this other book with the same title. That blew me away. After contacting you, I told you of this amusing coincidence, and we struck up some correspondence. We exchanged our books via snail mail and enjoyed each other’s work. Given the title of our books, we were also amused that, in a metaphorical way, our books had really acted like a love letter to the world because a literarily affectionate and warm exchange with another living person had ensued, a “textual comradeship” that eventually led to Sky. I have also worked with musicians as a lyricist. A song cycle based on my Time Steals Softer was written in collaboration with Australian composer, Laurence Whiffin, along with "Wild-flower Love" and "The Inadmissible Visions and Revelations of Captain Null," all of which were performed in disparate settings. Interestingly, this collaboration happened through serendipity. I met him doing German classes. He enquired about what I liked doing and when I responded he was immediately interested in seeing my poetry. He liked it and we went to work. I have also been involved in 3 CD’s of musically based works and one of original poetry with Mario Genovese, a wonderful composer and musician. How has living in Melbourne, Australia influenced you and your writing? This is a question whose answer must in many ways remain hypothetical because I cannot compare it with an alternative life or setting. But I can say Melbourne has a vibrant literary community, with lots of venues where one can see good poets and take part in open readings and has been so for decades. It also had some very fine bookshops which, unfortunately, have depleted with online shopping. For instance, we had till a few years ago Collected Works Bookshop, a specialist bookshop run by veteran poet Kris Hemensley and his partner Retta Hemensley. It was a Mecca for Australian and international poets who made a point of visiting there, or doing readings, when in town, and where even the likes of Seamus Heaney opined he had not seen anything comparable in the Southern Hemisphere. So, I was lucky and one only realizes this when beautiful things vanish or one looks in the mirror to notice how old one is suddenly looking. Do you have favorite writing habits or rituals? First and foremost, procrastination! Once I get over that – it may take weeks or more – I sit down and before I know it, I’m off. In fact, I never cease being surprised why I worry something may not happen. Something almost always does, even if I don’t like or use it. Unconsciously, I’m still working it out. I just have to allow it to happen by sitting down and working. Years ago, I used to try to write every day, no matter what. I’d brainstorm and see what would happen. Sometimes things did, other times half-baked ideas had me paint myself in a corner. I prefer the procrastination-method these days. If there is an idea I like, I often let it sit and prefer to spend time thinking about it before putting pen to paper. I might make notes of stray associations for mnemonic purposes. I go over it as I drift off to sleep at night and let the unconscious do its work. If the raw idea sticks with me, I know there’s something there loitering to be taken up. When I do finally get going, I have been known to tickle my muse with a beer or several, some wine or whisky, but that behavior seems to be taking an inexplicably respectable abeyance lately. During the process of writing procrastination might set in again, especially if I seriously like what I’ve done because I start to fear I might spoil it. That is unsustainable because unfinished work is more dissatisfying than an imperfect one and so, eventually, I continue until I come to an impasse that literally feels like a knot in my brain, and which leaves me staring at the page wondering what to do next. The instinct is to stay doggedly set, fighting with myself and the page, to force my way through to the next stage, but I’ve learnt there is a better way, and this is certainly part of a ritual I use as required. When I get into that state, I get up and walk away, setting my mind to another task unrelated to writing, usually something domestic like washing dishes or sweeping the floor. It’s amazing how often the idea I’m after, or a useful one, soon crops up when I do that. That knot in the brain is a valuable clue. It feels like all my directed energy is blocked at that moment and needs to be loosened, so when I let go and walk away, the shift in focus frees that energy to redistribute itself. The mind is still trying to solve the problem one set oneself, in the same way that an afterimage lingers when one has stared at an object for some time, but then, suddenly, it has this released energy to redirect into new channels and meaningful connections that other layers of the mind had been deprived of. Another benefit of this ritual is that I also manage to get a lot of housework done along with my literary endeavors! What do you hope readers will take away from your writing? Do you have an overarching aesthetic, artist statement, or ethos? I find it difficult talking about my writing in any depth. I mean a poem takes the form it does because there’s no better way to put it, right? So much is going on when I’m writing, which I later forget, that I’m wary of saying too much because an interlocutor might latch onto a conditional description unrepresentative of the total work as if that pinned it down like a dead butterfly in their insect storage box. I much prefer to let readers come to their own conclusions rather than determine their responses. I’m more interested in what they have to teach me about my writing. However, I hope people will have fun or gain pleasure and insight, intellectual, emotional or otherwise from things I write. I don’t approach writing with anything aesthetically or philosophically formalized as such, just an attitude that strives for quality with as broad a spectrum of forms and emotional tonality, from serious to humorous or even preposterous, as I can muster. What are you currently working on? I have at least one book of poetry done and a book of short stories nearly ready. Normally, I would touch base with Ginninderra Press to run them by the publisher but since he recently passed, I’ve let that slide. I do have a long and intricate work titled Notes on Desire. It is an odd work in the form of an essay by a writer who is attempting to make his ideas on desire demonstrable to himself via pitching them to an imaginary audience. In it, our writer tries to examine how desire shapes our world and, to do that, he must look at its relation to time and space as the garments in which it is attired and manifested. It is a blend of fact inasmuch it takes actual dreams from various sources and interprets them in the light of Freudian and Jungian theory; and fiction, in that it is not really an essay in any formal sense but uses that pretense as a vehicle for personal exploration. It does significantly supplement the notion of desire touched on in Love Letters to the World that the poetic, episodic manner of that work took and attempts to render it in a way only prose can do in discursive detail, while blending the mock essay format that Sky utilizes. It is still a sprawling unresolved labyrinth with one or two dead-ends, and not poetic in the usual sense, if at all, but there’s something that compels me to remain engaged with this lumbering hobby horse. If it ever gets finished, the epigraph that will head the first page will be a sentence from Edgar Allan Poe’s, "William Wilson," “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” Do you have any advice for young writers? If you’re meant to be a writer, you’ll stick with it because you really have no choice. Once you realize that, realize too you are unique – there is no perspective equivalent to yours, so, essentially, there is no one else who can see what you see, say what you have to say or write like you. As much as you may admire other writers and learn from them, well and good, we all need teachers, but remember, one Shakespeare, Dickens, or Dickinson is sufficient, another would be superfluous. You, on the other hand, are equally unrepeatable, so get on with it! Do you have any life advice in general? As an attitude that can be extended to whatever you do in life, I can think of nothing pithier than the advice Dylan Thomas gave the cast rehearsing for the premier of Under Milkwood in New York, 1953, which is a play for voices that is fabulously unconventional and rich in eccentric syntax designed to heighten poetic cadence. To aid them as they struggled in rendering the rhythmic and emotional complexity demanded after one of them admitted, with some desperation, she had no idea how to recite it, he simply said, “Love the words, love the words.” That’s it, have the courage to love! What jobs have you taken to support your creative endeavors? Have they been in alignment with a life of writing? I have done jobs that paid the bills but left me free to go home without weighing me down with responsibilities extraneous to my main goal, which is to daydream and create. I have never thought of any of my jobs as a career. I have done cleaning, been a civilian store-person on an army base, a clerk for Social Security, a gardener and landscaper in Germany while I lived with my prospective wife in an anthroposophical community, a mail clerk with a private company and now a mailroom manager in the public service. I was even a deli worker for a day – a ham-handed one at that! When I met my German wife-to-be, I was a part-time cleaner. As I intended to sponsor her on a prospective marriage visa, I had a sudden attack of conscientiousness when I realized I needed a full-time job to support us. That’s when I became a mail clerk. The upshot of that was interesting because I felt so much of my writing time had suddenly evaporated that it forced me to ensure I utilized the little gaps between workdays effectively, and I wrote most nights and weekends. It was during that period I did the brainstorming I mentioned earlier just to feel like I was writing something, anything, and not wasting all my time on things I had little enthusiasm for. In a way, working against that sort of restriction probably helped increase my output. I should add that even though my jobs have not been aligned with my writing, they have nonetheless been helpful because I’ve been forced to engage with all kinds of people. One inevitably observes people in a particular setting and picks up things that become useful for one’s craft, which is ultimately a good thing. No experience in life is ever wasted. Art is everywhere. Poetose has published your chapbook, Sky, and prose poem, "Cages." What led you to feel Poetose would be a good home for these works? What do you hope readers will take from them? Well, the name of the imprint made me curious. After a little reflection, I got the sense it was a portmanteau word combining poetry and prose. So, I thought of the press as something that dealt with poetic prose. That was why I submitted "Cages" to the Journal. At that stage I didn't realize that many of the other submissions to the Journal would be in verse. It took me a while longer to connect the logo with a toe, and thus that the name was also a pun on toes. It took me even more time and reflection to realize that toes are connected to feet and that feet can refer to metrical measures, which again brings us back to poetry! Ah, there was the connection to verse proper I had overlooked when submitting "Cages" and Sky! With that realization, I came to appreciate the further connotations of setting forth, directed movement and progress in this richly compacted name. To me, walking and poetry go well together and I guess poetic feet are probably named after the rhythmic quality essential to walking, which is analogous to iambs or trochees, or perhaps spondees, depending on how one’s gait might fall, and which is an activity many poets, famous and unknown, have gleefully practiced. (Now that I think about it, I could have said above that walking is one of those rituals I employ when writing!) Also, I enjoyed the two books I had read by the publisher, their originality, emotional range and warmth. I could see the books published by Poetose were lovingly produced, with attention to font and layout, fine quality paper and wonderful illustrations by Sara Zieve Miller. The manner of craft brought to bear on its productions very much signaled that for this publisher the material body of a book is in no sense indifferent to its content, but is itself intended to be a beautiful object, which I found to be the case in the attention afforded Sky. Considering the publisher’s artistic care and commitment to excellence and birthing beauty into the world, I was well pleased to entrust my work to Poetose. As for what readers may take from my two works with Poetose, I should say an openness that questions our propensity to bind ourselves and others with ideologically- and emotionally-based barbed wire. When we do this, we limit ourselves and others to our mutual detriment. Put as simply as I can, I wish readers will take away a sense of reverential wonder for existence and the freedom of a child at play.
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