Some Dreams do come true.
The first book of poetry that destroyed my whole world was Living At The Movies by Jim Carroll. I found the book in a box of used 10¢ books. I already loved poetry I’d been exposed to. The usual White Male Literary Canon, I vigorously read my assigned work and into the canon. I wrote my first poem on Young Authors Day at school, it was a diamante poem about my Dad. I didn’t connect to a lot of the teaching about poetry even as I got older but, I knew there was more.
I started writing poetry when I was about 12 and read work by Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes and other Black poets, I saw proof that we existed and I loved them like Aunties and Uncles I knew but never saw. Even at that early age, I was prone to darkness and drama. I wrote a lot of poems where I tried to emulate the cadence of my favorite rappers, I tried on being a beauty poet. It was not great, but I was writing.
In high school my reading went far outside the curriculum. I fell in love with Dante, the less pretty William Blake work, then I fell into The Beats and went wild. I spent hours alone in my room writing poems to emulate the Beats. I found ‘Howl’ on a crappy tape at the library and memorized the whole thing. Like many youngsters with a dark heart and literary jones, I started reading Bukowski, Burroughs, I found other poetry by angry white men that resonated with me.
I wrote so many terrible teenage angst poems. I wrestled with trying to find what kind of poems I could write. I was starting to learn about double consciousness, I was learning about how to deal with my genders and I was learning to write. In 1994, I sent a carefully typed poem on a piece of very expensive paper on a typewriter at school. I wrote a cover letter and lied about my age and submitted.
That is my background.
Over the years, poetry has become something so sacred to me I often am unable to get it into words that don’t sound overly woowoo to me. The realness about is that through poetry, I found a path to touch the most sacred, most divine thing in this stupid world we live in. I yearn for this connection. I crave that feeling and I’ve always found it in poetry.
In the last decade or so, I have not published a lot of poetry. My poetry isn’t generally the sort that gets picked up by big lit mags. On a personal level, a lot of those submissions have been loved by editors but are 99% of the time, “not right for us”. I’ve learned that what does well in front of an audience doesn’t necessarily reflect what the lit world wants from me and that’s okay.
A couple of years ago, I got a message from Elizabeth Treadwell offering me publication space if I did a book. I was so flattered and thought, okay nah. Writing and having a book of my work published by someone other than me was a dream I felt I had no real right to because obviously I am not a good enough artist or poet to even think about treading in that stratosphere.
I realized after the offer that I wanted it. I wanted to create a little witchery in the form of pomes made on my phone. I wrote Gasoline Heart the way I wrote poetry before I thought I could be a poet. Standing under sodium vapor lights late at night waiting for buses, when I felt suicidal and alone. I bounced my ass and listened to trap music while I wrote about myself for real this time.
When I sent the manuscript to Elizabeth at Lark, I was so terrified I sat on the toilet and cried while I had the panic shits. I wrote a weird little essay about the artists and poets I was listening to who helped me along the way. I wrote a weird The Nervous Breakdown inspired self-interview I was too terrified to try and get published. I did a lot of stuff ass backwards and fueled by sheer terror.
Elizabeth Treadwell treated me so gently and sweetly, I could not have asked for a better first book experience. I asked silly questions, did not understand how to format correctly. I knew (know) nothing about how it is supposed to work. I was so I’d fucked it all up, I held my breath over the months of design and fiddling, waiting to hear that she was done with me and my bullshit. My experiences with publishing have often been of the sort that reinforce my worst anxieties.
Then we made the cover. The beautiful, brightly colored little cover and she didn’t laugh at me when I chose a macro of sequins. She didn’t poopoo my want to have a pocket-sized book that a body could carry around easily. When I was a little potato, I had a few little volumes of poetry that I carried around until they disintegrated and they saved my life. Maybe, some other little Queerdo in the universe will feel that way about my little book.
I was terrified when I embarked on making a little book of pomes. I cried and anxiety pooped and sweated and jittered my way through the process and even though I disappointed myself because I didn’t know what I was doing, it was everything. Having a book of poetry out was one of those literary fever dreams I had no real belief I could do. I did it.
Lark is closing at the end of the year and if you want a copy or one of the other amazing books available see here. To read my experimental essay about how Gasoline Heart was born, read here. This is the friend link behind the paywall.
Thank you Elizabeth and Lark. Thank you to my pressmates for writing beautiful books. Thank you to everyone who read it. Thank you. Thank you.
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