Field Reoordings welcomes Jeremiah Walton to the internet wilds. Walton (above--performing on the Beantown streets) is hard at work, promoting poetry, poets, and working on his own craft. Links to his blog, his projects, his free work, and his video performances are included throughout.
Name: Jeremiah Walton
Pen Name: Jeremiah Walton
Most recent title published:Smile W/ Sparks (of a shotgun shot) from W.I.S.H. Publishing
Where do you write?
I write pretty much anywhere. Most of my poems stem from conversation with others, or conversations others are having. I do a lot of people watching.
I also like writing under bridges, and on other public property walls.
I post poems and travelogues to Gatsby’s Abandoned Children.
What are your rituals with regards to writing (ex: Must have tea, a cat on the lap, etc)
I don’t have a particular ritual besides obsession. I’m almost constantly working on a publishing project, writing, organizing manuscripts, and all that wonderful jazz that comes with poetry.
Tell us about your new book. What themes are you exploring?
Smile W/ Sparks (of a shotgun shot) focuses on my experiences with friends, getting drunk on the tracks, chasing trains, going to shows, and all the weird adventures we would go on.
It’s a testimony to my home, I realized recently, as my friends have all started moving off with their lives, and diverging from where we grew up.
It can be read free online from the publisher.
What were some of the challenges gathering the collection?
I’m haphazard with my collections. I usually look over my writing from the past couple months, decided what fits together and what doesn’t, begin organizing it into a (relatively) themed book, and go from there.
Describe your writing process:
It happens. I don’t have any control over when an idea hits me. I have something to record ideas on me at all times. Rarely do I sit down and force myself to write anymore. I look for poetry in everything around me.
What do you do when you begin to revise? What's the first thing you do during that process?
I read it out loud to myself, and make edits as I go where I don’t feel it flows well, or conveys what I’m trying to say. My favorite thing to do when revising poems is take a rough draft to a slam or open mic. It makes me more conscious of what I’m saying when I have an audience. I usually get off stage, and immediately begin re-writing.
When revising, how many drafts do you go through before you feel comfortable with the final product?
I have no idea. None of my poems are ever done. I just tweak and edit when I feel it’s appropriate.
When arranging lines for your poems, what do you consider at the micro level-- about the line? (For example...I never end a line on the word “and” etc.)
I don’t know, I usually just write as it comes to me, transitioning from line to line. I guess it would be punctuation. I use periods and commas in most of my poems to pace it.
As a poet, whose music, or voice, sometimes do you hear as you write or revise?
I don’t particular hear any voices when re-vising. I do find myself writing homage to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg sometimes though. I really dig their work, especially Lawrence’s. I love how he went beyond just writing poetry, and was an activist for creativity.
How would you classify your poetry? Are you a lyric poet? A Romantic? A Surrealist?
I write for Gatsby’s Abandoned Children (which means something, I believe). Other than that, I use imagery like I’m addicted and humping paper in great spurts of orgasmic foaming-of-the-mouth poems that provoke me into writing more poems.
What poets are you currently reading? What is the state of American poetry, in your opinion?
The poetic community is a Chinese finger trap with two middle fingers trying to break boundaries, and failing miserably. The middle fingers are slam and academic.
Steven Roggenbuck is succeeding where thousands are failing. He’s innovating poetry for the 21st century, writing for this time.
I’ve found myself reading less and less due to my time being devoured and digested by the projects I have going on. I’ve bitten off more than I can fit in my mouth, but I’ll cram it in there one way or another.
For the most part, I read submission to UndergroundBooks, W.I.S.H. Publishing, The Traveling Poet, and Nostrovia! Poetry, which has put me in contact with some damn amazing writers.
What poets/poems do you strongly recommend a reader to discover?
Steven Roggenbuck, Felino A. Soriano, James Browning Kepple, James Chang, Matthew Moseman, The Plastic Clown, Kim Göransson, and a good chunk of the Beats.
The contemporary American poetic tradition is elegy, do you discover elegiac qualities among your own writing as a whole? Are you a poet of loss?
I’m a poet of people, and sometimes people are saddening.
Where does your inspiration come from (music, film, other books)?
People watching and creeping along sidewalks of city streets, listening to the conversations of others, observing the lethargy and rush, conversations in movies, the prose and poetry of the Beats, drugs, the internet, strange occurrences, Reddit, love, my frustrating love for humans.
It all comes to people peopling, and I want to trap the voice of humanity on the page.
I keep a quote book of odd and humorous things my friends and people I know say. I record the quote in a notebook, titled Context Not Included. I’ve dug up some great ideas from re-reading the quotes from the past year.
Explain how your local and regional environment influences your writing, your process, and your product (in other words, how does your reality intersect with the worlds that you create?):
Manchester, N.H., you influenced my poems for 18 years, and the road and traveling followed your trickles of musings, and now Erie, P.A., is kicking me in the balls, and I am kicking right back, aiming for the entire community, hoping to kindle a storm of creative arts that will take to the streets and drag painters and poets and playwrights and all artists out their doors and away from the televisions and time-filling devices that cradle us safe.
You have to invite three authors to dinner, who are they? Why?
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac.
Because we’ll leave dinner to walk around town and talk about living and go live and live a poem, and then write that poem.
Though I fear Jack may be a dick. I’m not sure though.
Favorite title (you wish you had come up with):
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Line(s) you wish you wrote:
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn burnburn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."
Book you did not read in high school but now have read and have an appreciation for: And why:
Just exited high school. I guess I haven’t experienced this yet.
Favorite words:
“I” (sadly)
Least favorite words:
“Surrender”
Advice you would like to pass on to other writers:
“Write
write
write
do not burn out!”
What you would discuss with your pet if your pet could talk:
“Stop staring at me when I eat.”
“No.”
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