How’s the erotic poetry business?
Funny you should ask. JUNKIE WIFE, my erotic chapbook chronicling my first, dysfunctional, drug-fueled marriage, has just been published by Moon Tide Press, with a foreword by the great Bill Mohr. I’m reading all over town. (Details on my website.)
Tell me more:
JUNKIE WIFE reads more like a story than a random collection of poems. If you like menage a trois, hard narcotics, brutal truths, and cannoli, you’ll love JUNKIE WIFE.
You write a lot about sex. It’s harder than it looks. Any advice?
Write the space around it. Much as Julia Cameron, in The Artist’s Way, teaches drawing by telling students to “draw the space around their subject”. I think the great mistake people make when trying to write erotica is being overly explicit at the expense of story.
What’s on your nightstand right now?
Jenn Givhan’s Landscape with Headless Mama, Lynn Marie Houston’s The Mauled Keeper, Beate Sigriddaughter’s Xanthippe and Her Friends, Ace Boggess’s The Prisoners, and D.A. Powell’s Repast: Tea Lunch Cocktails. I recently featured with him at the Marin Cultural Center in Northern California. It was a great thrill. He is one of my poetry heroes!
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I take a lot of photographs, both in my studio and on the street. I read voraciously. I like long walks on the beach. I’m a fool for daily sex. And movies.
Who are you listening to these days?
I’m hopelessly mired in mid-century jazz. Chet Baker, Miles, Ella, Sarah, Coltrane, Dolphy, Mingus, Dexter Gordon, and most of all, Thelonious Monk. His music mirrors my mind.
Secret pleasure?
Crossword puzzles. Chocolate. Crime Watch Daily (from which I have drawn copious material.)
What’s coming in 2018/19?
The Dead Kid Poems, a chapbook written post-State of Grace: The Joshua Elegies, (2015). It contains poems about life after the death of my son, as well as poems about my meth-addicted niece, “Anna.” To be published by KYSO Flash Press in early 2019. My next full-length collection, Sex, With a Side of Sorrow, is ready to be edited. And a noir, graphic novella, My Criminal Boyfriend, is on track for a completed first draft by the end of 2018.
What’s the best part about being a poet?
When people tell me/write me that my fearlessness has made them fearless, too.
You’re doing it to me again Alexis… “it” being motivating me ! Thank you dearly.
Great interview.
Peace,
Suzanne C.
Victor’s friend in MA
Thanks, SuZanne. This was a fun interview to do. So pleased you found it motivating, and that you are writing! xoxo Alexis.