The PoArtMo Anthology Series: Interview with D.R. James

Hello everyone!

Welcome to our PoArtMo Anthology Series, which celebrates the artists whose work appears in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

Today’s guest is D.R. James, who contributed the poems titled “Tracing Your Two Lines” & “Now” to our anthology.

Auroras & Blossoms: Hello D.R. Congratulations for being a featured artist in our anthology! How does a poem begin for you? Does it start with an image, a form, or a particular theme?

D.R. James: I’ve just published a new book (Mobius Trip, Dos Madres Press) in which all the poems are ten lines of ten syllables, so form definitely played a role in those, but they’re overall unusual for me. Usually, I start with a line prompted from something I’m seeing, so image often kicks things off. Early on I’d try to ‘say’ something and start with that in mind but then allow myself to wander off and discover what the poem was really ‘about.’ Now I rarely do that and will just start with that line and then maybe give myself some specific word constraints and discover what comes of that. In all, surprising myself leads me on, often driven by sound serendipity rather than sense inevitability.

A&B: Tell us all about the inspiration behind “Tracing Your Two Lines” & “Now”, the pieces that appear in The Auroras & Blossoms PoArtMo Anthology: 2021 Edition.

D.R. James: When I wrote those two poems I was going through a mopey phase and writing to pull myself out of it—almost forcing a reluctant optimism. I can’t exactly recall where the premise for “Tracing Your Two lines” came from, but that second person your/you was mainly I, not the reader out there. “Now” was actually inspired by watching a bird landing and feeling like I could see through or into her translucent tail feathers. And again, the ‘you’ is mainly I, object of my own self-bucking up. “D. R., trace your two lines!” “D. R., be present!” If readers read either as ‘to’ or ‘for’ or ‘about’ or relevant to them, all the better.

A&B: What is your relationship with your speaking voice and your written voice?

D.R. James: I’d say my poems reflect a poeticized version of my actual voice, some more so than others. Many of the poems in the new book work with such sonic word play that they stretch the relationship. But I think those who know me would still recognize my sensibility in them and not find them foreign to me and my voice. I certainly speak my poems as I write them to make sure I can—and I just plain enjoy hearing them—and if something is clumsy, it gets edited.

A&B: Have you considered getting other people to read your poetry or is it important for you to be the one to perform your poetry to an audience?

D.R. James: No one else reads my poems in public, though I’d enjoy it if they did. I actually hate the sound of my voice when listening to it on a recording (it sounds fine in my head when I’m speaking!), as many do, I suppose, and envy those with beautifully rich voices. We have a friend from New Zealand who once read a couple at the dinner table, and his accent and timbre reciting my words was fascinating and sounded so much better than when I read them. Sometimes I like to read my poems—out loud but to myself—with my version of an Irish accent, and I like how that peps them up. I imagine I’m Seamus Heaney.

A&B: How important is accessibility of the meaning of your poems? Should we have to work hard to “solve” the poems and discover their deeper meanings?

D.R. James: Not all my poems are readily accessible, but I don’t mean for them to be difficult or for something to solve. I’d rather people didn’t try to solve them. Just let them be. I’ve taught literature for 40 years and hate the “figure this poem out” approach like so many of my colleagues practice, the professional lit critics. A tough poem for them is article material! It doesn’t matter to them if the ‘exegesis’ (critical explanation) kills the art. To me, a reading poem is an experience, whether you see a meaning in it or not. Much of the pleasure in my poems, for example, comes from the amuse-bouche–ness of them, how they sound, how they feel in the mouth, whether a vivid “meaning” comes through or not. A poem doesn’t mean, even if someone says it does. It just is.

A&B: Has your own opinion or idea of what poetry is changed since you first started writing poetry?

D.R. James: Yes, I’d say so. I came late to writing poems, almost fifty, and was using journal and poem writing to deal with a long stretch of depression. My journal entries and early attempts at poems were expressing and trying to process my troubles, very self-centered and self-serving. Which was fine, of course. They served that purpose. But then I turned a corner somewhere along the line and realized I was enjoying the writing for its own sake as well as the evolving and finished pieces themselves, apart from their therapeutic utility. I was freed to write actual poems that moved the self-absorption gradually into the universal and the creation of things out of language, language things-in-themselves. I envy musicians and non-representational artists who can just create a thing to experience without it having to mean a thing.

A&B: Tell us the most positive and uplifting advice you have been given while working on your poetry.

D.R. James: William Stafford: Lower your standards. Jack Ridl: Don’t write good poems. Marvin Bell: Learn the rules, break the rules, make new rules, break those rules, so your low-down obsessions can truly surface.

Bio:

D.R. James lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, U.S. He has released nine collections, including Flip Requiem (Dos Madres, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres, 2017). His micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is available for free at Origami Poems Project.

D.R., thank you for answering our questions and supporting Auroras & Blossoms! We know that people will love your poems as much as we do!

Cendrine & David