Dark Friends Series
Andrew K. Clark
“I forgot you was dead.”
That could be a terrific opening line for a novel, but actually, it is the first line from a terrific poem called “Sand Gone Black.”
Andrew K. Clark is a writer from Alexander, NC, outside of Asheville where he now resides. His full-length collection of poetry, Jesus in the Trailer was short-listed for the Able Muse Book Award.
His work has appeared or is forthcoming in UCLA’s Out of Anonymity, Appalachian Review, Rappahannock Review, fall/lines, The Wrath Bearing Tree, and No: 1 Journals. He co-hosts the bi-monthly poetry series Poetry Goes Viral on the Carolina Poets Facebook page and YouTube channel. He is the recipient of the Georgia Southern University Roy F. Powell Award and is an MFA candidate at Converse College.
In short, Andrew Clark is a wordsmith whose work I’d like you to know. Andrew graciously agreed to talk with me about poetry, publishing, and writing in general. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.
The Interview
Most of us who write also have other jobs that actually keep us alive. If that’s true for you, what is your “day job”?
During the day, I work as a consultant for a tobacco company. I worked in finance for a number of years and I teach finance at the college level, proving both sides of the brain can fire in the same person.
Do you have a schedule for writing? Do you write every day?
I think writers are always writing. I am thinking about my poems or fiction when I travel for work, when I mow the yard, when
I’m hiking, always. I am constantly writing notes on my phone or in a notebook. I don’t write new words every day, and typically during the week, I am focused on revising existing pages or fleshing out scenes for fiction. I find it easier to snatch fifteen minutes here or there to sketch out ideas or revise existing pages than to create new pages. I tend to write for long stretches on weekends.
What are the greatest challenges you face about writing?
The biggest challenge writers face is finding long stretches of quiet time to think, daydream, and open ourselves to receive what David Lynch calls “the big idea.” Modern technology is great, but it constantly interrupts this process if you don’t set strict limits.
I have to get outside, away from people to think, and if I’m at my desk working, I have to turn off everything on my laptop except the word processor. I use music (no words), noise-cancelling headphones, whatever it takes to maintain focus when I write.
The other big challenge is that the “business” aspect of writing is a time suck and can drain your energy. While it’s important, writers must remember to keep the main thing, the main thing. If you’re not creating there won’t be anything to submit, nothing to read if you get invited to share your work.
Your first published work is a book of poetry. What sparked your interest in poetry?
I have written poetry in some form or other since middle school. I really developed a passion for it in high school when a close friend gave me The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes. I loved the musicality of Hughes – still do. I also learned from him that a poet can write in their own vernacular. People have the idea that poetic language needs to be elevated or Shakespearean. It does not.
The poems in Jesus in the Trailer are so vivid that at times they seem like photographs to me. Do you see a specific image when you write a poem?
Yes. I often have an image before I have words. Either an image or a feeling I want the reader to gain. I think with all art there is a “call and response” that is taking place between the creator and the consumer. This is even more true of poetry where brevity is a virtue. I create partial images the reader completes. I want to convey as much as I can in as few words as possible, but I need the reader to complete the circle.
Your poems also seem like vignettes from someone’s life. Are some inspired by real events in your life? Are some totally fictional, based on characters you’ve just imagined?
They are almost always fictional with a kernel of truth – something from my experience or the human experience. I have poems that are somewhat biographical, such as Sun Swelter Mississippi and A Ghost Named Alvin.
But often I am twisting the reality of biographical occurrences or creating a new personna altogether. For example, Alvin is partially based on my childhood. When I was five, my mother began dating, which was weird. She’d gone through a divorce
and then she met a man and took me to visit him. Upon our visit we went down a dark hallway at his house, and there was a sick man on oxygen in a back bedroom – her suitor’s father. After some time she married the suitor and I was mortified to learn that the back bedroom was to become mine. While they were dating, the man’s father had died.
In the poem I talk about being haunted by Alvin, my step-grandfather. So there is a kernel of truth or biography in the poem but it has been completely twisted. Other poems have no such biographical roots at all. I am writing with a personna just as one would when writing fiction.
Because of the unique phrasing of poems––their strong use of metaphor and symbolism––do you ever worry about the reader missing your point entirely?
I think you have to focus on the art and think about the reader secondarily. Think about how white-washed and bland a piece of art would be if you thought only about commercial viability for the most readers. I want to write accessible work, but sometimes, if I am led outside of convention I want to plumb those depths and hope my reader will come along for the ride, or perhaps use their own imaginations to get what they want from the experience. I am ok with the reader not “getting” every image or every poem. Poems can also be different from fiction in that the poet wants to convey a feeling rather than a distinct or linear narrative.
Do you have a favorite poem in this collection, one that after you wrote it, you just had to share with someone right away? (You can mention more than one, if you’d like.)
I think “Revival” is the poem that most sums up the vibe of the collection. There is an interesting cross pollination of several ideas in the poem, to include the religion of my childhood, one of camp meetings and weeklong revivals.
There’s also the state of America in the poem, and I wrote it around the time there were white supremacists marching in Charlottesville chanting “Blood and Soil.” Race, the south, and religion weave through the poem, and through the book itself.
Another of my favorites is the poem “Lament.” This poem is a love poem with elements of magical realism and the fantastical. What is love, if not fantastical?
With your poems, what do you strive for the most? To evoke a feeling? To tell a story or a scene from a story? To send a message? To paint a picture with words?
I want to move the reader. I want them to feel something. Sometimes that is by telling a story or giving a series of images. Other times it may be the use of language. If they feel it, I was successful.
You also have a novel on the horizon, The Day Thief, that many of us are very anxious to read. Can you tell us briefly what it is about?
I am not sure what the final title will be but the story is set in 1930s Appalachia. Leo is a fourteen year old boy whose father has gone missing and his mother is slipping into madness, as she struggles to take care of his sick baby sister and two useless brothers.
What’s more, he’s being stalked by the ghost of his dead baby brother, Jacob. When he discovers he can control a giant wulver to do his bidding, he sets out to settle old scores and
find his father. Revenge is sweet at first, but he soon discovers he cannot control what he’s unleashed. It takes Lilyfax, his spitfire best friend, to help him deal with his anger as they set out to rescue trafficked girls rumored to be frozen in the trees by a mysterious Blue Man.
The novel will likely fall in the dark fantasy or horror genre.
What role, if any, does poetry play when you’re writing prose? Do you find one form more challenging than the other? Do you prefer one over the other?
One thing that I find effective for my brain is to read poetry when I am writing fiction. This prevents me from adopting the voice of other fiction writers. Poetry fires something different in one’s brain and for a non-poet I think the sparse word choice, rhythm and overall cadence of poetry can improve a fiction writer’s work.
Some days I think I am a poet who writes fiction. Other days I think I am a fiction writer who writes poetry. They weave in and out of dominance for me. But I write poetry while I write
ficton, if an idea presents itself. If a poem comes to the poet, they can’t think of anything else till they get resolution – completing the poem. At the same time, if I get caught up in a scene for my fiction, that same level of obsession kicks in. Everything else goes to the backburner.
What has the journey of getting published been like for you so far?
The poems in Jesus in the Trailer were collected over a number of years. I submitted individual poems to journals and started to have some selected which encouraged me to consider collecting a manuscript.
It took me about two years to find a publisher once I had the manuscript amassed. All the while I kept editing and polishing the poems. As I wrote new ones I dropped weaker poems. I had a couple of publishers interested and chose Main Street Rag Press because of their reputation for poetry and the physical quality of their books.
The novel I am calling The Day Thief I’ve been working on for over five years. I spent all of 2020 rewriting it line by line, based on feedback I received from a couple of NY literary agents and workshopping it in the MFA program at Converse College where I’m a student. I started querying it in February of this year. I have some full requests out (where the agents have requested the entire book to read).
Querying is a time-sucking experience not for the faint of heart. I continue to submit individual pieces periodically. I had a poem recently accepted for the Appalachian Review for their Spring or Summer edition. I would like to place The Day Thief with a publisher that will take the sequel, which I am working on now. It is tentatively titled Mina and the Wolf.
I am collecting poems for another book of poetry as well. I think it may be called Appalachian Clowns because many of the poems are based on the personae of an unwell clown who likes to scare kids at lover’s lanes. Among other things.
Some of your poems present rather dark images which, being the dark soul that I am, I like. Have you ever written something that you questioned afterward, maybe wondered whether you should include it or not in the collection?
Writers always question themselves, so sure. But I think if the work is honest you have to go into the darkness. You don’t need to seek it, but you have to be honest with the work. My theory is by exploring darkness through art, we can free it from our personal lives. Exorcising demons on the page as it were.
Another way to exorcise the demons or at least cope with them is to have a great partner in life. Your wife is also a very creative person who writes fiction and works in video production. What are the advantages (and/or disadvantages) of living with another artist?
It is an incredible advantage. People who do not create art do not understand the need for things like long stretches of time where you need to be alone or not speak. At all. For someone who’s not a writer, it may seem rude that your partner doesn’t want to speak all day on a Saturday, or for a couple of hours each night. With Casey, I never have that problem. She wants
and needs the same thing. She is either working on her novel or designing a book trailer for someone who’s launching their own book. (Barrel Rider Productions) We enjoy similar non-working activities so we can find our peace and space together, out on a hiking trail with our dogs or in the gym.
What advice do you have for someone who loves the written or spoken word with hopes of having their own work published one day?
Write what you want. Do not write for a market. It won’t work. All the joy and creativity and power will be absent from your work.
Be malleable. Be coachable. I have written work that I thought was amazing, but soon learned it wasn’t when I got honest feedback. You need that. If there are people around you who diminish or don’t support your work, cut them out of your life or minimize their impact if you can’t.
Read and find journals that publish work you enjoy. See what the work looks like in these, and let it inform yours, while finding your own voice. Read widely and in different genres. But when you find something that scratches the itch – in terms of the language, ideas, genre etc., don’t be afraid to dig deep. Keep that cadence in your head, that energy, and it will come out on the page.
This is the most important thing: find your tribe. Get a group of like-minded people with which you can share your work in an honest but sensitive exchange. You don’t need a harsh critic who isn’t helping you improve. Cut those kinds of people from your life right away. Share your work with the group, with people you trust and listen to what they say.
Final thoughts: if you’re a writer, don’t stop writing. Ever. But keep it fun. For most of us, we already have a job. Don’t treat writing like work. Enjoy every minute of it. Work through the parts you dislike (no one likes all of it every day), but keep going. If you’re a creative, the worst thing you can do is to stop creating. The days in my life I’ve been happy I was creating something. The days when I wasn’t happy I can trace to not heeding this call.
HUMMING
where is the word
running from me
that one line
that will do it
the one thick note
from the cello
the hook from
Miles’ trumpet
the poem
the novel
the phrase
the sentence
where is the word
that will bring it
all together
that will altogether
rush over you
bringing its
sweet vibration;
the rattle
the hum
to the
place
you begin.
– Andrew K. Clark
You can purchase a signed copy of Andrew K. Clark’s collection of poems Jesus in the Trailer at his website. Copies are also available at Malaprops in Asheville, NC, and at City Lights in Sylva, NC. View the video trailer for the book made by Barrel Rider Productions. |
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