12 or 20 (second series) questions with Kevin Gallagher
Kevin Gallagher is apoet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston. His most recent book is And Yet it Moves(MadHat, 2023) and recent books are The Wild Goose, and Loom. Hispoems and reviews have appeared in the Partisan Review, Harvard Review,ArtsFuse, Green Mountains Review, and beyond. Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston area annualof poetry and poetics. He works as apolitical economist at Boston University.
1 - How did your firstbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous?How does it feel different?
I started identifying as a poet when Iwas twenty, but didn’t publish a book until I was forty. I had publishedpoems in the Partisan Review and the Harvard Review a decade earlier but inthose earlier days I spent more time focusing on publishing the work of othersthrough the magazine compost Ico-published. When I turned forty I published two chapbooks, Isolate Flecks withGloria Mindock’s Cervena Barva press and Looking for Lake Texcoco withMark Lamoureux’s Cy Gist. When I held those collections in my hands theypropelled me with affirmation and inspiration. Now And Yet it Moves,published by Marc Vincenz’ MadHat Press, is my eighth book—my fourth fulllength book.
And Yet it Movesis quite different than my last book, The Wild Goose publishedby Paul Marion. The Wild Goose was (largely) written when I was a poet inresidence at the Heinrich Boll cottage in Achill, Ireland for two summers. I’ma quarter Irish if my last name didn’t give it away and my father had recently passed. That book is an exploration of Ireland, my life with my father andbeyond.
And Yet it Movesis a pandemic book. I was shaken by the denial of science and reason inthe United States but like Seamus Heaney during ‘The Troubles’ I saved mydescriptive rage for the kitchen table but wanted to engage differently as anartist. As I say in my introduction, this was not the first time we livedin such an era. I delve into the Medici era in this book, a poeticjourney of the rebirth of wonder followed by its denial manifest by Galileo’simprisonment. The book is a series of poetic monologues of that time,telling that story.
2 - How did you come topoetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Our mother took us to the libraryevery weekend and we had to get books. I read mostly fiction and wastaken by Orwell, Thomas Wolfe, Mark Twain. I read poetry in school butwould never pick it up on my own—until I heard Bob Dylan and it was all over. Wow did he fuse the ‘raw and the cooked’ into one inside and out with anew post-modern sensibility but a meter that sang on its own. From DylanI worked backwards being most struck by Williams, Levertov, Rexroth, Patchen,PAZ, Seamus Heaney, O’Hara, Walcott, John Brooks Wheelwright, Muriel Rukeyserand Charles Olson and others before I hit a wall in the early 20th Century. Then I time machined to Homer, Virgil, and Catullus.
ThroughRexroth I entered the world of Tu Fu, Li Bai and Japanese poets too. Non-fiction is another story. I’ve written nine books on the globaleconomy. Let’s save that for another day.
3 - How long does it take to start any particularwriting project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slowprocess? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or doesyour work come out of copious notes?
There are two kinds of poems I write. The first are those that just hit me, I’ve referred to those as‘lightning bolt’ poems. Something happens or I see something or reflectand then comes what David Hinton calls ‘contact’ and boom I start writing andyeah perhaps 80 percent of what happens when the lightning hits my tree stayson the page in the end.
The other kind of poetry I write aremore ‘projects’ as you say. My first book like that was LOOM,also published by MadHat. That book, in method, is the most similar toAnd Yet it Moves because it is an exploration and conversation with a historyto make sense of the present—an ‘archaeology of mourning.’ The older andbusier I get—rhyming ain’t the day job—the more important these projects arebecause they are always there for me. At this point in my life I’mdodging a lot of lightning bolts.
4 - Where does a poemusually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combininginto a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the verybeginning?
To finish where I left on the lastquestion I guess, for the lighting bolts I end up collecting those in loosebooks. The ‘projects’ are seen as books. My book Radio Plays publishedby Dos Madres is somewhere in the middle. It is a collection of shorterset pieces many of which were lightning bolts—or short storms!
5 - Are public readingspart of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoysdoing readings?
A poem doesn’t work for me until I’veread it looking into a pond of eyes and seeing if I can connect. Readings are essential for me. I don’t think I’ve published anything Ihaven’t read in public or at least walking around my house beforehand.
6 - Do you have anytheoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
I think we are all asking who are we,where are we, what are we doing, what are we being. Like Duncan and OlsonI see poetry as an open field for these questions.
7 – What do you see thecurrent role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? Whatdo you think the role of the writer should be?
The poet is the point of contact witha reality revealed in the creation of the poem and shared.
8 - Do you find theprocess of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Most publishers and editors I haveencountered either don’t like the book and won’t publish it or like the bookand largely publish it as is. Actually, And Yet it Moves is an exception. The poems were originally all fairly straight sonnets but Vincenz helpedme hone them a bit more to true projective verse and they are now more likethose of Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer. Since they evoke the ruins ofthe Roman Empire in Renaissance Italy I am calling them ‘ruined sonnets!’
9 - What is the best pieceof advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Don’t try to be someone else. Sing your own songs and most importantly in your own voice. Everyone’s is unique and each person is equally incredible.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep,or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I work full time. For the pastfive years I have had the privilege to be a poet in residence each summer for afew weeks but I use that to take things to the finish line. In my case Iturn off the work laptop at around half time of the Celtics game with the soundoff and start working on my poems. If the game is close I stop the poemsand bleed green. If not I can go on very late sometimes or hit a wall andgo to bed.
11 - When your writinggets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word)inspiration?
As I said earlier, the longer run‘projects’ are what I move to. I also write reviews, most recently forthe Arts Fuse and Harvard Review… That can help.
12 - What fragrancereminds you of home?
The robust smell of my GermanShepherd, REXROTH!
13 - David W. McFaddenonce said that books come from books, but are there any other forms thatinfluence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
And Yet it Movesis all of the above—triggered by science, but there are poems in there aboutMichelangelo, Vasari, Botticelli. In the background the New York paintersof the 1950s and slapping away on a big canvas above me when I write. Onmany levels I am engaging with climate change in this book, so nature is there. In The Wild Goose I evoke Dr. John playing his piano and Desolation Rowis always playing in the background.
14 - What other writers orwritings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
I listed a bunch earlier in ourconversation. I go back to those the most but am always on a new quest tolearn something new. Homero Aridjis is the poet I have been diving intothe most lately, as well as Cid Corman. I’ve been reading plays a bitmore than poetry though, particularly Brian Friel and August Wilson.
15 - What would you liketo do that you haven't yet done?
Play for the Boston Celtics!
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt,what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended updoing had you not been a writer?
NBA Basketball Baby! But that’sa joke, I’m five foot nine. That said one of my best friends’ grandma wasthe Red Auerbach’s secretary and I majored in Physical Therapy for a fewsemesters thinking I’d be the trainer for the Celtics. Poetry brokethrough.
I should say that part of themotivation for all this is a social justice. The poetry can go in oneway, action in the other. In my day job I work as a political economisttrying to get the institutions of global economic governance to align with thegoals of financial stability, human wellbeing, and environmentalsustainability.
17 - What made you write,as opposed to doing something else?
I played instruments when I wasyounger. My mother had us in art classes all the time too.
18 - What was the lastgreat book you read? What was the last great film?
That’s new? I just read RonPadgett’s DOT, Bernadette Mayer’s Milkweed Smithereens, and thenew selected poems of Larry Eigner edited by Jennifer Bartlett. Best bookthough I’d say has been Homero Aridjis’ new Self Portrait in a Zone ofSilence. Wakefield Press has just come out with an incredible crop of Max Jacob in translation that I recently reviewed for Harvard Review. Great film?! My son and I had a blast yesterday watching The Instigators. Was great to know every neighborhood it was shot in!
19 - What are youcurrently working on?
I am almost finished with anotherarchaeology of morning, perhaps in some way it is a prequel to the book LOOM Idiscussed earlier in our conversation. This book deals with the Tempestof the settlement of Massachusetts, the translation of its land and people tothe West, and to the final battle that confirmed colonization. A truththat lies in the names of so many roads, rivers, and streams here, but is neverdiscussed.
