Under the Radar

Ladies and gentlemen, we are fortunate to have Kirby Wright with us tonight, a past Megaera contributor who has released a collection of poems and prose poems entitled "Before the City."

Megaera: Tell us a little about yourself and your writing habits.

Kirby Wright: Habits?! Ha. I wish I had more of them, at least the good ones. I’m a totally sporadic and basically lazy writer. My Moloka'i grandmother used to call me “Moelepo,” which is Hawaiian for “good for nothing.” But I didn’t mind so much because she called my big brother that too. One day I’ll crank out what I consider 4 quality poems and then only make one or two journal entries for two months. But poetry and the poetic voice has always saved me from stagnation because I like observation and can rely on it about 90% of the time to get active. I just wrote my first pantoum yesterday. Want it for Megaera? (joke) I have projects now that are taking my time away from poetry, such as putting the finishing touches on a first novel manuscript. That novel has taken me a decade to write, I kid you not. It’s coming of age set in Hawaii. I also have a treatment for an animated series being looked at in Hollywood as I write this, but I’m not holding my breath.

M: Alot of the poems in the beginning of the book seem preoccupied with death while later poems seem more optimistic. Was this intentional? Did you put the poems in any particular order?

KW: Well, I wanted all the poems set in Hawaii to come at the end and the ones set in California to come before them, mainly because most of the island poems were the ones most recently created. So, maybe you are reading a less pessimistic poet as he grows older? I sense a more vulnerable narrator as the book progresses, although that gringo in “Messages from La Frontera” takes some self-effacing blows.

M: Tell us about Lemon Shark Press.

KW: I met an artist in a graduate class at SFSU by the name of “Kristof Thibaud.” We got to talking and he read some of my poems and he always said that if he started a press he’d publish my first book. I lost touch with him in the late ‘90s but he found me on the internet last year and said he’d give me a case of books (BEFORE THE CITY) as payment for publishing my first collection. This happened the day after I came in second in a national chapbook contest. Kristof thinks publishing me is going to pay off for him eventually and I think he enjoyed putting his art on the cover. You know, an autographed copy might really be worth something when I sell my novel manuscript. Quick, BUY IT NOW ON AMAZON!

M: I notice you mention tanning alot. Makes sense with the poems taking place in Hawaii and California. There were also at least five poems that mentioned the Dutch Elm. What is its significance?

KW: Tanning intrigues me because it’s so easy to do and it changes us so fast and makes us feel healthy and attractive without too much bother. It’s a much quicker fix than dieting or trying to make your muscles grow by working out with weights.

There was this Dutch Elm outside the bedroom window of the house my girlfriend and I rented in Palo Alto. I used to watch it go through the seasons growing and losing leaves and then surviving two years of drought conditions. We weren’t even supposed to water our front lawns, the water rationing got that bad. Well, after the third straight year of drought, the Dutch Elm died. I like to think I’m honoring that tree’s memory by including it in my poetry. I think of trees and bushes and even stones as having the power to change or alter our lives. There are stones in Hawaii, magical stones, that give birth to smaller stones by morning. And I believe our most cherished landscapes follow us into the next life IF we’ve earned it spiritually.

M: Why did you choose La Danse de Nu by Kristof for the cover?

KW: He was the publisher and insisted on it. I think of the poem “The Architects” whenever I see it, I don’t know why. Maybe it has something to do with all those young trophy wives the Ancient Architects are acquiring while constructing their various Towers of Babel.

M: Many of the poems are rooted in a specific place, i.e. Hawaii, California. Some are even specific to a particular neighborhood. How does location influence your poetry?

KW: Location is everything for me, especially when I’ve never been to a place and can see it fresh and new. Now I was born and raised in Hawaii but was away for quite a while—when I returned, everything was new again because of all the time between visits. The same thing happened in San Diego—I got used to it, quit writing about it, then returned a decade later to find it full of new and powerful images. I’m not saying that a city or place has to change for me to write about it, but time away restores its freshness and allows me to see it with new eyes.

M: There are many memorable lines such as "How much of construction begins with destroy" and "Her clothes are Flesh in my closet." Also, "You can't move something without risking history." How do you come up with such great lines? Do you have a favorite line or poem that you've written?

KW: Again, thanks. I’d have to say I like “Now is history as fast as the mind remembers” and “Foraging for things I don’t understand, things that won’t resist my claws.” Single lines just pop into my head like that, usually when I’m constructing a poem. So, it is in the editing mode that the line typically strikes. Sometimes the line will come to me when I wake up very early in the morning, say around 3 a.m. I have this little dream journal by my bed and scraps of paper and I make sure to jot it down. I think the unconscious mind can really help a poet work out killer lines, you just can’t force it sometimes in the conscious mind because we tend to censor so much good writing.

M: Your poetry reminds me of William Carlos Williams and the poetry of Anne Porter with its observations and descriptions of daily life. Who would you say is your biggest literary influence?

KW: Wow. I’m flattered. I’d have to say T.S. Eliot and Sylvia Plath were big influences. Also Rimbaud and Baudelaire. There are copies of Eliot’s and Plath’s collected poems on my nightstand. Sometimes I can hear Eliot speaking through Sylvia Plath’s work and I suspect she was a big Eliot fan too. I have to also say that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a big influence because of his poetic voice.

M: You also include prose pieces with the poetry. What makes you decide to write in prose vs. poetry? What do you like/dislike about each medium?

KW: I don’t like being typecast as just a poet. I was told by the late poet William Dickey to learn “how to cut away some of the underbrush” from my poetry, but I think the underbrush can be interesting too. I wanted to experiment with things like narration, dialogue, and surrealism in a single piece and the prose poetic form worked well. Remember those poetic pieces in-between the stories in Hemingway’s IN OUR TIME? Well, I suppose it was him who gave me permission to write sudden poetic fictions like “Love From a Distance,” “Retirement and the Home Boy,” and “Shiatsu.” Also, you can cheat a bit with prose poetry by laying it out so that certain words show up at the ends and beginnings of lines. I got GREAT encouragement from the poet Jerome Rothenberg to continue writing prose poetry after he read something I’d written about Galileo going blind from staring at the moon too much through his telescope while naming and charting the various Seas.

M: I notice you mention brand names in alot of your poems. Was this intentional or not?

KW: I love brand names because it gives me something to hook the poem onto, something “real” in the sense that someone created that name and linked it to a product. I think part of it too is making fun of the names the manufacturer’s marketing force come up with—things like “Sunpak” for that heater in “At Il Fornaio, San Francisco.”

M: You use different narrators in your poems. One is from the point of view of an elderly man and another is from a woman's point of view, for example. How do you get into the mindsets of these different people?

KW: I see a lot of people near bodies of water and try to crawl into their heads. This started in Palo Alto during triple digit days when I would sneak with my girlfriend Darcy over to the Hyatt Pool to cool off. I got into a habit of bringing a journal and nothing to read and I’d write about all the women and men sprawled out on lounge chairs. A professor of mine at SFSU said writing about tourists sitting around a pool wasn’t very interesting, but I disagreed. You see, there’s a certain vulnerability about people when they’re among strangers and are revealing their bodies. I graduated from pools and now get material from people along the oceanfront, as you can see in “The Longest Day of the Year.”

M: Your poetry is non-judgemental, quiet, and unassuming, and deals with everyday subjects such as getting a smog check, road construction, observing nature, driving on the freeway, people watching and so forth. Do you think poetry is a part of everyday life?

KW: Poetry makes our ordinary lives extraordinary by illuminating our secret inner lives. It is the workings of the interior world that interests me most because that is where things like motivation and desire spring from, along with the primal urges. My coming of age novel is loaded with the interior thoughts and struggles of the boy narrator. Writing poetry helped me write prose because it helped me develop a voice to penetrate the barriers I usually put up when writing in the first person. For example, I employed a minimalist approach when I began the book but that denied access to the inner workings of the boy.

M: Do you struggle with insomnia?

KW: Absolutely. There was a period where I couldn’t sleep for weeks but was able to use it as fuel for writing. I mean, you’re lying there with nothing to do and your lover’s dreaming so why not write? I think what’s neat about writing is that you can still be productive by including things like insomnia in your work. People want to know why I can’t sleep so I try and tell them in poems like “Insomnia Birthday.” I must say I struggle with the blues and that keeps me up. I get lethargic and unproductive when I get the blues but I write about the blues to take advantage of that lethargy and unproductivity, does that make sense? My father always said don’t sleep late because that will cause lethargy, but I believe sleeping late and writing out of a fog is good because it gives you a new perspective on your life and where you’re heading.

M: Are you a surfer?

KW: Yes, although I injured my knee recently and I have been forced to boogie board instead. My most vivid memory is surfing at a place called “Tabletops” in Cardiff, California and looking down and seeing all the sharks skittering through the reef. I also remember jumping 20 feet off solid lava with my board at Rock Point on Moloka’i, landing in deep blue, and paddling a half-mile out to a break zone with 15-foot waves. There were tiger shark sightings that morning. My younger and foolish days!

M: I was really confused by a poem titled Fishman. Would you mind explaining it to me?

KW: Well, that is difficult to explain because it was a dream. About 25% of everything I’ve published has roots in dreams and that surreal edge helps move the piece forward. I see FISHMAN as a struggle between good and evil where the “good” forces for the narrator are surprised/blindsided in a Daliesque landscape and the evil ones such as Fishman move in for the kill. When evil wins, love is replaced by lust and good memories melt away, like that statue of Jesus. I would equate having this type of dream to some temptation I was experiencing or witnessing someone else being tempted. In the end of FISHMAN we have loss, so, it seems I am giving in to the inevitable, that is, losing the “woman in my dream.”

M: Have you had any interesting jobs over the years?

KW: Well, here’s a short list: Coral raker, stone wall builder at a fishpond, painter, gardener, Waikiki construction worker, writer for the Center for Auto Safety, editor for Ralph Nader’s speeches, creative writing instructor, writing advisor, freelance online writer, content writer for Santa.com, development director for Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Oh, and I had a brief stint at UCSD getting paid to pick up writers/poets at the airport and drive them to their lodgings and later to campus—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Ginsberg, Jerome Rothenberg, etc. Vonnegut treated me to lunch at La Valencia Hotel in La Jolla. He said I reminded him of John Irving, and he wrote the following in my copy of BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS: “To Kirby Wright, who will make it as a writer. I know these things.”

M: What is your favorite color and/or number?

KW: Color: Yellow
Number: 3

M: Okay, thanks for your time and good luck with the book.

The book is entitled, "Before the City." It is 101 pages long, and is available to purchase at www.amazon.com