For those of you just tuning in, this is an ongoing series where we interview 2 poets a week every week from now until the end of the year! How exciting is that?! In case you missed it, here are: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, and Week 4. Shout out to Amir Safi and Jonathan Brown for having the most shared article of this series in July with 164 shares! Also, for those following along in the poetry world, this week is nationals! You can follow what's going on in Decatur here.
Beginning our second month of the series are Bryan Roessel, self-acclaimed poet/science teacher with "the most attractive beard you've ever seen" and Jason Carney, the Texan Poet-Dad-Coach-Activist rolled into one. This week, we took some time and talked home, sports, cookies, rituals and #1 fans. Here were their responses.
Q: Where do you most often perform? Which venue and microphone do you call home?
Bryan Roessel: I do feature sets once or twice a month in various places, but I don't perform much at my home venue. I'm usually MC, and I feel like I already do too much talking in that role, so I try to make room for other people to share their poetry.
I (co-)run a monthly slam series, a monthly poetry open mic and a weekly workshop/poetry circle, all at different venues. They're all home.
Jason Carney: I generally do more shows speaking at colleges around the country than shows in Dallas. I run a nonprofit called Young DFW Writers. These days I tend to spend my time giving others a mic and a safe space.
Q: What is your favorite sport and why?
Bryan Roessel: I used to play a lot of ultimate Frisbee? Rock climbing is pretty cool, despite the fact that I suck at it. I don't have any easily articulable reasons for liking either.
Jason Carney: Hockey or football. Football is easy, because I am from Texas and it is religion in this state. Hockey is the sport my son plays and because my grandparents took me to hockey games as a kid. I fell in love with the fast space and sound of the skates grinding the ice. Oddly enough, I am learning to ice skate this summer. My son wants me to be able to play with him.
Q: What is your single favorite thing about poetry?
Bryan Roessel: It has ridiculously low barriers to entry. Anyone that is capable of any kind of language production can make poetry. It doesn't require any special tools.
Jason Carney: The way it heals me, gives new definition to understandings I have outgrown. It is my spiritual connection to the universe. I know that is the standard flakey answer, but in my case it is true. MY life took a dramatic turn when I started to use poetry as a means to redefine my world and the world around me.
Q: If you could go back in time and change 1 thing in the past, what would you change? Why?
Bryan Roessel: If I changed anything substantial or meaningful, I probably wouldn't exist as I am, so we'd get stuck in some kind of temporal paradox. Unless if time travel splits you off into a branch universe? What kind of technology are you giving me, anyway? Can I go back five or ten thousand years and tweak human evolution such that we don't develop whatever brain parts responsible for awful in-group/out-group mentality? Maybe make us slightly more like bonobos or something.
Jason Carney: The death of my mother and Aunt Barbra for selfish reasons. I also would go back to when I was eighteen and tell a friend thank you. A friend who changed my life completely or showed me the tools to change my own life. I never had a chance to thank him. I was too young to really comprehend the totality of his impact upon my life.
Q: Do you typically write electronically, on a typewriter, or by hand?
Bryan Roessel: I used to prefer writing strictly by hand because it gave me a sense of physical intimacy and tactility. Lately, I prize keyboards for their incredible speed and ease of edits.
Jason Carney:I write with my keyboard. My research is all done by hand, notes are done the same way. Any pre-writing is usually done by hand.
Q: Who is your #1 biggest fan?
Bryan Roessel: Ha. My mom? Not because she's a particularly big fan of mine, but because my work isn't really out in the world much.
Jason Carney:My family. Oliva, Sophia, Elijah and Lisa are the only fans I really need.
Q: If you were a cookie, what would you be?
Bryan Roessel: Compost cookie.
Jason Carney:Chocolate chip peanut-butter oatmeal raisin sugar thumbprint cookie with pecans.
Q: Do you have any pre-performance rituals? If so, what are they?
Bryan Roessel: In order:
1. Meticulously prepare a set list
2. Complain about how nervous I am
3. Pace
4. Perform all of my poems for some kind of brick or concrete wall outside the venue
5. (Optional) Jameson and ginger ale with a splash of bitters.
6. Shake
7. Stand in front of the audience, bow my head, close my eyes, try not to freak out
8. Decide to throw out my set list and do entirely different poems
Jason Carney:I try to center myself. I see the art of writing as healing to me; the art of performance is healing to someone in the audience. Someone came to that venue to hear something I had to say. If I stay in that mindset then the set is not about me, but about giving away what the universe has freely given to me. Art should be about the healing, which comes from challenging the status quo. No matter what status quo you are addressing.
Q: Anything else you want to add?
Bryan Roessel: Poetry is a fantastic tool for processing our thoughts, feelings and experiences. Sharing poetry provides catharsis and brings people together. Get involved.
Jason Carney: Please use this art form to redefine yourself and the world around you. Please understand that your poem and poetry are protest. When you get up and take part in civic engagement with your art then it becomes activism and you become an activist. Writing a poem does not make you an activist, only a complainer. Stop complaining and get out there and do something about it.
