I don’t think I’ve ever known a poet before. How did you get into poetry?

Your statement infers that I’m in fact a poet, which is still a weird thing to say, a fine line and such. But thanks. I guess it’s true; I write, publish, and readreadread poems.

At the beginning of high school, I “changed” as my parents said, stopped playing sports, watched a lot of TV, and hung out with my angry girlfriend. At the end of high school, they called it “a shift,” which I guess is better, where I lost the 65 pounds I’d gained during the previous four years, became interested in other human beings besides that girl again, and took an English course that had us read some Dylan lyrics–”Tangled Up In Blue” and “The Times They Are A-Changin’” I remember most. All of a sudden I cared about how life affected both myself and those around me, and more importantly, it became clear that some individuals, Mr. Dylan of course, but others, had the ability to write words that both did that and expressed such intense moments of feeling.

My real latching onto poetry came during my freshman year at Ball State University. I joined the Writers Community, where during weekly meetings other students and some professors would come and bring their writing and writing they really dug to share. During this first year, I discovered poets like Dean Young and Tony Hoagland, now among my favorites, that really got me stoked.

Is poetry a hard industry to make a name for yourself in?

It depends on what you mean by make a name for yourself. If we’re looking at me as the example, I would bet that my name is recognizable in a small small crowd. Certainly, the central Indiana literary community is on the list, or at least I hope, and some online literary circles might know me because of my publications and blogging. I’m still on the bottom, for sure though, even there.

But poetry is a weird thing, because it’s still very much non-mainstream and its own subculture. So while someone might be big in the poetry community, they are still rather obscure in society or even the art/literary community. Maurice Manning, who happens to teach at IU, was a Pulitzer Prize Finalist last year, one of the biggest awards in the arts, but his is still a name out of the mainstream.

Even in the “poetry industry,” it’s an odd struggle. Poetry has long been in academia, but now is very big in the online world, a more DIY, independent sort of writing/publishing sphere. Either, and especially both, takes a strong mix of talent, hardwork, and connections to “make a name for oneself,” something I’m no doubt nowhere close to having accomplished.

Really though, I think it’s like any profession/serious activity, there are camps and clubs and circles and non-c words that group people and within those are pecking orders as well as in the profession/serious activity as a whole.

You are involved in a number of presses and literary groups. Tell me a little bit about what those are and what you do.

As Cesare Pavese said, “I have a terrible thirst for friendship and community.” This is definitely something that resonates with me, so I have worked to align myself with a good set of organizations that support me, themselves, and the larger literary community as a whole.

Writers Community at Ball State: I was a member of the Writers Community all four years of my undergraduate study and the president my last two years. The purpose, as mentioned previously, was to give students a place to share their work outside of the classroom in order to get feedback and grow within a community, as well as to share writing they’ve read and loved. Also, the community sponsors several events each year, such as faculty and visiting writer readings and student reading contests. From the beginning, the students and faculty involved with this group have been the biggest influences and supporters of my writing, and for that, I’m constantly grateful.

The Collagist: This month actually marked my last month, after a year and a half, as poetry blog editor for The Collagist. The Collagist is a monthly online literary magazine, supported by Dzanc Books. After meeting lead editor Matt Bell at a literary event at Ball State two springs ago, I started interviewing each month’s poets about their work, which were then posted on the blog. After realizing I was getting too much on my plate, I sadly decided to step down, so someone with a little more time could devote the deserved attention to the great work this journal publishes.

Vouched Books: A little over a year ago, Christopher Newgent started Vouched Books as a portable small press bookstore, which he takes to First Fridays in Indy every month along with craft and literary fairs throughout the Midwest. He created an online presence as well, called Vouched Online, which offers reviews, links to online journals/pieces, and general small press cheerleading. I blog for that and also write a Vouched Satellite monthly column at Smalldoggies Magazine. Recently, I’ve been driving down to Indy to help sell books with Christopher at First Fridays and at his Vouched Presents… readings. Christopher has a wonderful vision for getting people to interact and fall in love with small press books. I get drunk just thinking about it.

Stoked Press: Last fall, I had an itching to publish someone else’s work, and one of my fellow BSU students, Jeremy Bauer, had some poems that I thought needed to dance in public. After releasing The Jackalope Wars, I put out a few other small print run chapbooks. I’m really bad with design stuff, so in the spring, Layne Ransom agreed to use her talents to do that part of the projects, along with helping me edit some stuff. Last May, we released our first issue of our online magazine, Stoked Journal, as part of a final for a class.  We’ve since released two issues with plans to release another in December. Also, a few chapbooks, better designed this time, are in the works.

What do you enjoy about the poetry world?

As is evident now, it’s the community. For the first time in my life, I’ve felt a sincere balance between people being excited about what they’re doing and what others are doing. Things like Vouched are a good example of that, I guess speaking here of the literary community as a whole, where people sell and promote writing strictly by other people with little compensation, monetarily or otherwise. That sort of excited selflessness is what keeps me chugging along.

Is poetry something you’d like to do full-time? Is that even possible?

It’s not really possible to clock-in as a poet and get a full-time wage anywhere. Often times, a poet has to work another job, whether it’s for a big publishing house, as an educator, or in some other line of work. But as far as focus goes, I’d say that poetry is very much near the top, something I do everyday for at least a few hours, whether it’s writing, reading, blogging, or editing, and I don’t want that to ever change.

I have to ask: How do you pay the bills?

Totally. After spending the last several years as a student and working part-time as a writing tutor, I had a decision to make. With a recently finalized divorce putting me in both a financial and emotional bind, I decided to move in with my parents to save money and reenergize before grad school (MFA in Poetry, hopefully next Fall, applying now). I was lucky enough to get a job at my local elementary school as a full-time instructional aide. So with my bills being minimal and having a full-time job, I’m one of the lucky ones, able to put a good deal of time, energy, and money into my work.

In the future, I hope that some university will be silly enough to pay me to teach writing (preferably creative writing, preferable of the poetic type, but definitely WORDS).

What are some publications you’ve been in?

Here are the ones I’m most stoked about:

“Way Back Into Love” in Forklift, Ohio (forthcoming): Forklift is one of my favorite print journals, made from recycled materials and full of vibrant energetic work. I think this is one of my “best” poems, but it took longer than usual to find a good home. Excited to see what the house looks like.

“Portrait of a Dead Mother” in PANK Online: PANK, both its online and print components, is top-notch on most people’s list and the first acceptance letter I remember making me go WOOO.

My poetry suite at Smalldoggies Magazine: I’d been writing these On poems, and still am, for awhile and had gotten a good inbox full of rejections for them. To have a colossal magazine like Smalldoggies pick them up was both a sigh of relief and a mondo-feel-good moment.

Anything ever that’s been through HOUSEFIRE: A unique journal surviving solely off of solicited prompts (read more here), I’ve been more than honored every time I find a prompt in my inbox and even more so when they dig what I write. Out of the stuff I’ve done for them, the interview was the most fun. And of course, having a piece in their first book release, NOUNS OF ASSEMBLAGE, was a major arm-swinging thing.

I have two chapbooks, Tell Me You Have Good News (H_NGM_N Chapbooks) and Stale Champagne (Artistically Declined Ebook Series), coming out later this year/early next year. The first one is a collection I worked on with my mentor Todd McKinney as an independent study course at BSU my last semester there, many poems from which are in journals around the web and elsewhere. It’ll be released as a small print run and an ebook. The latter is a poetry series I wrote while listening to Stale Champagne by State Champion on repeat, which combines my reactions to my recent divorce and the feelings from that album. Both those presses do HELLYEAH work, so hopefully I don’t look like too much of a chump.

Is writing a poem hard? What do you channel when writing?

Oh yes. It’s not hard like chopping down a tree or doing taxes. It’s more hard like planning that conversation where you have to break up with someone or have to explain to someone that you wrecked into their car. It’s difficult in that you know what you want to say but how in the world are you not gonna get punched in the face.

Writing for me comes out of lines, either found or ones that pop into my head. Like with the Stale Champagne series, I often incorporate lines or at least versions of lines of a song, other pieces of writing, or spoken dialogue as part of a poem and construct around that. Also, I carry a small journal in my pocket and often fill up a page or two per day with lines that pop into my head.

So to answer the question more clearly, I channel experience, how words collide into me and the energy it takes to push them away.

What new things are you working on?

I’m really into poetry series.

Still chugging along on the “On” poems, which are basically short prose blocks that ramble a little too much for linebreaks or cool titles, so I just use a theme as the title and leave them chunky. Ha.

Also, I started a series about the Foxconn suicides awhile back after reading this article to force myself to be less MEMEME in my writing and flex my empathy and narrative skills. I got through the series as far as writing the first few drafts of each but was so tired from them that I haven’t touched any of the poems since mid-summer.

A project that I’ve hardly spoken about is what I’m calling Additions. Where an erasure, which is quite popular in poetry, is a writer taking text, usually prose, and crossing out/blacking out words with the remaining ones making the poem, these additions are where I take short poems that have zing, usually a single compelling image or statement, and add to them, leaving that little bit in tact and using the other words as part of other lines, but twisting it enough to make it original and fit into the series, which is about THE WIFE and THE CALCULATOR, though I’m not quite sure what that means yet. Ha.

As far as editing goes, we’re still reading for Volume III of Stoked and putting together a chapbook by Travis Macdonald, from his erasure project of The 9/11 Commission Report. Along with doing it as an ebook, we’re releasing that chapbook as a limited print run, which is gonna be hand assembled and will play on the classified document theme.

And since reading, as a young writer, is a major component of my writing process, I feel compelled to talk more about my current reads.

Recently read:  Work’s Tiring by Cesare Pavese from his collected poems (awesome Italian narrative poems, really unlike much I’ve read in English poetry), Please Don’t Leave Me Scarlett Johansson by Thomas Patrick Levy (an amazing chapbook of prose poems that redefine ecstatic writing for me; I’m trying to write a review of this, but talking about something this powerful is hard), and the newest issue of American Poetry Review (which has some new poems by my favorite poet, Dean Young, a cool feature on Robert Bly, and a Chicano/Latina section). Today during my lunch break, I started Thank You and Other Poems by Kenneth Koch from his collected poems, which is already sweet.

You can follow Tyler on Twitter or peep his website, www.tylergobble.com