Quickie Interview #19: Sam Wharton

Samuel Wharton has had poems published in various journals, including, most recently, The Concher, foam:e , Otoliths , & Death Metal Poetry, & his work will appear in Outside Voices 2008 Anthology of Younger Poets. He is the editor of the online poetry journal, Sawbuck. His chapbook, Welcome Home, was released by NeOPepper Press in May, 2007.

Congratulations on your publication by NeO Pepper Press! What made you choose them as a home for your work?

thanks! i think what caught my attention first was that the folks that run NeOPepper, natalija grgorinic & ognjen raden, have very interesting & intelligent ideas about how poetry might be presented & shared, like their portable chapbook exchange. They’re very open & honest about their process & i like their fierce “against all odds” mentality. they also edit an online journal, admit2 which is wholly dedicated to collaborative work & they express a preference for collabs in their call for submissions on the NeOPepper page, so i sent them the manuscript on a whim, without expecting much to happen with it. the poems in welcome home are fairly multivocal, though, so i figured it might be worth the chance; & it was.

In addition to poems, you also write music criticism for the website Urban Pollution—how does your approach to critical writing differ from your approach to poetry?

i don’t think about them all that differently really. superficially, they take different forms & i suppose most people would argue that they have differing goals. to me they’re both just things i do. the process is the same. the main difference is that i have deadline for the criticism, so i can’t tinker with it endlessly.

Also, Dave Hickey says criticism is really just so much air guitar—what, to you, is the use of criticism?

you can tell a whole lot about a band by how their fans play air guitar. thousands of people read & write criticism everyday, so it must fulfill some “function,” right? i don’t think I’m the person to say what that might be.

You live in Chicago now—how, if at all, does living in that city influence your writing?

living in a city in general is essential. i think you can see that in the poems in welcome home -- most of them have a sense of place that is very urban & they take energy from the many competing forces that you only find in such close proximity in an urban setting. there is something very vital to me about masses of people in such concentration. There’s all the “glory” of commerce & capitalism (in the skyline, say) but then at street level there are people begging for change out of alleyways. that kind of tension is everywhere in a city.
there are certain things about chicago specifically that have found their way into my poems, but i can’t say for certain that the poems would have been drastically different had i been living in a different urban environment.

Do you ever have writer’s block, and if so, how do you deal with it?

I’m suffering through a rather protracted case of writer’s block right now, actually. i think part of it is that i have the odds & ends of lots of old projects floating around in my head -- projects that are either finished or that didn't work out -- or scraps of poems that i haven’t been able to find a use for yet & that are kind of growing stale: the slag-heap. i need to let these burn off, i think, before moving on to something fresh.

What made you decide to start sawbuck, and how would you characterize the journal’s aesthetic?

there were lots of reasons to start sawbuck. i had been thinking about doing an online journal for a long time. i didn’t really know anybody in chicago when i first moved here, so the journal was partly a way to make my way into the community. also it’s a great way to keep up with what people are writing. mostly i just wanted to create a space that focused more simply & directly on the actual poems than some of the other journals out there.

i like to think sawbuck is largely aesthetic-free. of course that's not true, but it’s featured a pretty wide array of voices so far, ranging from what people would call experimental to more traditional lyric writing. the people I’ve invited to submit are all people whose poetry i enjoy, & that's the only real editorial benchmark for unsolicited submissions, too -- if a poem compels me to keep reading, then they're good enough for the journal.

First Car?

1994 plymouth voyager: maroon plush seats. i made those tires squeal though.

What was your favorite book and band in high school?

book is hard to say; there were lots. probably heart of darkness. music was equal parts public enemy, uncle tupelo, & lemonheads.

Which crowd did you hang out with in high school?

no crowd really. some orchestra/jazz band geeks. some baseball players. i was closest to the AP english clique i guess.

First job?

bag boy at tom thumb grocery store.

Car now?

nope.

Favorite book now?

please.

What's new on you iPod or CD player?

i've been listening to return to cookie mountain repeatedly.

What's the best DVD you've rented of late?

samurai 7. anime series based on kurosawa's 7 samurai. the departed was pretty good, despite matt damon & leo dicaprio. all of the wire & the shield.

What are you working on these days?

reading submissions.

Anything coming out soon?

just the OV anthology in january 08

What are you reading that's fun?

elisa gabbert's combatives rocked my world the other night. hamlet's mill by giorgio de santillana & hertha von dechend, about the transmission of knowledge through myth.

What's your favorite a) writing exercise, and b) physical exercise?

a) writing is its own exercise

b) biking to the lake

What's your favorite piece of clothing?

my very old ratty red sox cap

What are some of your guilty pleasures?

i read frank herbert’s dune series like once a year. I’m really sorry. really.

Favorite recipe (please be specific, like so we can cook it if we want)?

the moscow mule:

equal parts lime juice & vodka, 3 parts ginger beer, chill, serve in a copper mug

you can make it with ginger ale, but it doesn't have the “kick” that gives it its name

What’s on your desk?

computer, lamp, bills, picture of my niece & nephew at cape cod, one shiner bock

Stones or Beatles?

god i hate the beatles.

Porn name (first pet's name + first street you lived on)?

benson morrow.