Short Sharp Interview: U V RayQ1) You've recently released a chapbook - road trip and other poems- what writing period do the poems cover?
They take over from where my last book finished and represent a collection of my work featured in magazines like 3:AM, The Beat, Dogmatika, Open Wide, Underground Voices, Kill Author, Aesthetica Arts and a whole swathe of others from the period 2005 up until the start of 2011. I've never believed poetry should be ethereal or spiritual. I always believed poetry should be where the rubber meets the road. If I go to a bar and some cunt stabs me with a screwdriver, why would I come home and write something like: 'the essence of life is in the aroma of the garden of the gods' or some other bullshit platitude? My life is in my writing.
Q2) Poetry clearly isn't a proper job. Which proper jobs have you had?
I am an inventor. The self-stirring saucepan was my first brainwave. I was a child prodigy and came up with that when I was only 8 years old. Someone beat me to it though and before I'd perfected my design the bastard had one out on the market. To my delight they failed to catch on though, so no great loss there. I'm afraid I'm not at liberty to discuss my current doings. Though I can tell you I quite fancy a move into politics. I think I've got the patter. Diplomacy has always been one of my best qualities.
Q3) Is it true that you are friends with Charles Manson?
I've corresponded with him. Interesting man. Never killed a soul, you know. His trial was a matter of politics. Shows what happens when you make an enemy of the government. He wasn't even present at the time and place of the murders and his conviction rested on the evidence given by those that carried out the killings. He was possibly guilty of incitement to murder – but they wanted to send him to the gas chamber. Of course, it was reduced to a life sentence. Harshest punishment I've ever seen for incitement. It's strange how to this day he's always described as a serial killer. It's like that old truism that the victors write history. He said something once that is true for all of us. He said: "if I said I wanted to take a shit in a bucket the next day a law would be written: 'no shitting in buckets.'"
But yeah, Charlie Manson likes my work. He says it's his point of view. He missed his vocation though. His music is great. I've got two CDs of his. Look At Your Game Girl is one of my favourite songs.
Q4) Birmingham has a statue of Tony Hancock in the city centre, so it's obviously a weird place. Has it been a strong influence on your writing?
Yes, very. The novella Spiral Out is set in Birmingham in the late 80's. And much of my poetry is heavily influence by the rather nefarious life I was living in the city through my late teens, right up until I was 30 odd. My life in that period – a good 15 years of it – was lived in a perpetual LSD and amphetamine induced blur. Plus other stuff I fucked myself up on. It was fantastic. Drugs were the best thing that ever happened to me and I wish I could do it all again. I miss those days. There was really nothing left of me, mentally or physically, at some points. But, you know, the body was young and regenerative. I was like fucking Superman. At times I was so strung out, so far gone I didn't know where or who I was. But I was truly invincible in those days. So young and good-looking I could have gotten away with anything.
Q5) What's the SP on your Pulp Press book?
Yeah, Spiral Out. The novella. It's coming soon enough. That's all I know. And it's going to piss all over anything else that's out there on the indie scene at the moment. The rest of those cock-sucking, incestuous little literary cliques can watch out. I'll do more than call them on their bullshit – I'll smash their fingers with a hammer. Despite attempts at presenting themselves as rebels it's actually all very safe and sanitised. They're politically correct why can't we all just love each other and get along morons who'd be better off fighting for some cause, save the snails or something, than pretending to be outsider writers. Those little cliques make me sick. It's just friends publishing friends, bumming each other up. It's incestuous, it's nasty. They're not just scratching each other's backs; they're enthusiastically licking each other's genitals. Whilst through it all, most of the writing itself is a pile of shit. There are about 2% of these writers who I think will go on to write something worth reading - when they've completed their potty training, that is.
Anyway, yeah. Spiral Out. It's out soon. And I'm pleased to say it is on Pulp Press.
Q6) You're on the crest of a wave at the moment but you've been writing for donkeys. Have you ever felt like ditching it?
Yeah, a great big wave in a sea of shit. If I could give up writing I would have done so years ago. It's a terminal disease. We're also at this point when hitting the best seller list would to me feel like a dose of syphilis. It's disgusting. I'm not a creation. Well, nothing other than what I have created myself. You might conclude then that I have created a monster. You might think what I espouse is nothing but a misguided invective. But ask yourself, do I look like the kind of man who gives a fuck? I've been on the underground lit-scene for two decades. I cut my teeth the hard way. There was no internet when I started posting my work out. I'm not here to say something palatable or popular. I don't have a burning message for the world. Writing isn't some kind of indulgence. It is a compulsion. I wish I could give it up. It's a worse affliction than any heroin addiction. But unlike the heroin addict I have no hope of curing myself. It's a degenerative mental sickness one is born with.
Q7) What's on the cards for U V Ray?
I imagine the sheer horror of waking up one morning and looking in the bathroom mirror to discover I am John Cooper Clarke. I'd stick my head in the oven and gas myself. To differentiate myself I must keep writing. I'll continue writing. That's all there is for me.I have two more novellas finished. But this is a homogenised, consumer driven world. u.v.ray is just a brand. It's all meaningless, like cheap knock-off supermarket cola.
Bio: u.v.ray. Writer, drinker, womaniser extra-ordinaire,swindler par-excellence, liar, cheat & all round filthy rotten miscreant.
www.uvray.moonfruit.com
road-trip-and-other-poems
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