This is a re-print of an interview Brain Stark had with me over on his Poet Spotlight in August of this year—- Here is the link to Poet Spotlight on Facebook. Poet Spotlight Make sure to drop by. Brian has done interviews with many fine poets—-lots of insightful opinions to be found there.
Brian Starks Poet Spotlight
Dewey—- Before I answer this first question, I’d lake to thank you Brian for the honor of being featured in this Poet Spotlight. I’m very happy to have been asked to do this interview.
Brian Stark—- Why do you love poetry?
Dewey—- First, it is simply a joy in life to write in poetic form and watch your thoughts and emotions take shape on a page. Poetry is an art form that is challenging to create and often results in something very beautiful. They say all writing is it’s own point—a beginning, middle and end all by itself, and after half a lifetime of writing, I think there is a great deal of truth in that idea. The point of creation is to create, and poetry allows you to do that in fairly short order amongst all the other things you have to fit into a day. In that sense, it’s kind of like the club sandwich of creative writing. Substantial but fasssst 😉 There is also something very special and unique about poetic form because it allows you to put emotions onto paper more readily than does prose. I’m a firm believer as well, in the notion that if there are two ways to say something, the shortest way is usually the better, and writing poetry helps any writer learn to say what they really need to say with a true economy of words. You learn pretty quick as a poet that the longer your poem is, the fewer people will actually arrive at the point of what you intend to say.
Brian Stark—- When did you start writing?
Dewey—- I’ve been writing for almost thirty years. When I was in my early twenties a few friends of mine and I would often go to coffee at Perkin’s or Sambo’s. We’d sit around the table deep into the night talking and writing short snippets of thoughts on the place mats at the table. I still have a few of those place mats tucked away in my memorabilia. After doing that for some time, one friend, a fellow named Doug Groberg, decided he would try writing poetry and I followed suit a couple of months later. I started writing in earnest a few years later when I moved to Phoenix Az. and had a lot of time on my hands. I had poetry in publication in a magazine by the time I was twenty-eight and I completed my first book, a piece of non-fiction about computers, by the time I was thirty.
Brian Stark—- What are your goals as a poet?
Dewey—– My goals as a poet are pretty simple. I hope to write only truth as I see it and what is in my heart, and it do it well.
Brian Stark—- Which poets do you enjoy reading the most?
Dewey —– I’m not a big one for well published poets but prefer instead to read poetry by unpublished authors and poetry published by small houses. There is some truly world class work done by people who are just posting up poetry on blogs, Facebook and Myspace. Among well known poets, I enjoy E.E. Cummings and Richard Sutphen. Among many, many very good poets on the facebook poetry society whom I enjoy very much, I like reading work by Jim Cole, Robert Gibbons, Emmi Emma, and Ujjol Kamal.
Brian Stark—- What inspires you to write?
Dewey—- Breathing. It would be much simpler to ask what doesn’t inspire me to write because pretty much everything I do makes me think and emote and pretty much everything I think and emote inspires me to write.
Brian Stark—- What advice do you have for starting out poets?
Dewey—- Learn to reach down into your heart and deepest emotions and write honestly from there. The best very poetry touches the reader with your own emotions and is written straight from your soul. To write well, you gotta be honest with yourself about what you feel right now, this instant and you gotta be able to get that onto paper authentically and directly from your heart to the end of your pen. You write best what you feel most deeply about. I’ve known people who only wrote when they were absolutely despondent out of their brainbox and people who only wrote when they were so passionately in love that a thermonuclear bomb going off next to them wouldn’t even phase them. Personally, I’m next to tears with deep emotion about half the time I get around to writing something down. You also gotta learn that whatever you feel, you can bet your bottom dollar there are about a gazillion other people who have felt similar things and that it’s ok to write down what you feel. No matter who you are, you are not alone. There are other people on this planet that would really benefit from what you have to say.
Brian Stark—- Do you write in other forms besides poetry?
Dewey—- I’ve written both fiction and non-fiction, essays, short stories, and book length manuscripts. I have one book of prose in publication called “The Questioning Way,’ and book of poetry and parables that will be published in a year or so called “Lullabies and Legends.” Although there is much I’ve written yet to be published, I’ve authored ten books over the years.
Brian Stark—- What is your ideal environment to write?
Dewey—- Earth. I also do a lot of writing at my kitchen table, which judging by the way time seems to stop when I sit there is probably not really on this planet 😉 Years ago I did a lot of writing in bars and restaurants which is really a nice place to be when you intend to put ideas down on paper in what is ultimately a social exercise. Someone once said that all the great works to come out of Britain were written in pubs.
Brian Stark—- What does poetry add to the world/what would the world be without poetry?
Dewey—– I think the chance to put their thoughts down on paper has saved more than one person their sanity. By that reasoning, a world without poetry would be considerably more jumbled than it already is.
Brian Stark—- Ask yourself a question….
Dewey—- One of the questions I ask myself often is what the future might hold for poetry here in the early 21st century. I think that with the rise of new media and social networking poetry might very well take a special place. As poets it is now much easier than ever before in history for our work to be seen by many thousands of people. In a world where people have become very used to getting their ideas and information in snippets of text that they can read in a minute or two, poetry, because of it’s huge potential for strong emotional impact, is uniquely positioned to be at the vanguard of social awareness, change and progress. Writers and especially poets tend to be more adept than average at getting their ideas across in short lines of text. For this reason, we all are at an advantage to everyone else at the chances of being able to speak in a text intensive public forum like facebook with the passion and strength of word it takes get our ideas across to the general population. I also think video poetry provides an excellent vehicle for poets provided they have the wherewithal to produce work people will be interested in listening to.
The Questioning Way 