H_NGM_N

Nathan Kemp is the author of the recent chapbook Animals of the New World (and also an important part of the H_NGM_N team!). Read and download his chapbook here.

What is poetry? Part 2: why do you write it?

Poetry is a series of questions that points me in the direction of what-it-is-to-be-human. I think really good poetry can bridge the gap between question and answer, but the goal for me isn’t the answer.

I like the puzzling elements of a poem, the way they rearrange the human brain. While I think evasiveness in poetry can have a damning effect, the seeking quality it inspires gets to the point for me—poetry is about discovery and sharing the wonder of discovery. There’s something powerful in that, especially if the end result is the light shining on someone or something that didn’t have it before.

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I write poetry because it’s fun, but I think it’s a choice for me. At the same time, I’ve never found another activity that gives me the feeling of satisfaction that I get when I finish a new poem or find a new obsession. To me, that kind of human response is important to measure. While I have no desire to give up poetry, I do wonder if I could find that feeling elsewhere.

As a natural extension of my writing life, I love reading poetry books by my friends who live everywhere-but-here. When I read their words I don’t miss them as much. I’m skeptical of friendships with no poetry in the same way that I’m skeptical about finding something else that makes me feel like I do after reading a good poem.

What makes this a chapbook & not just a pile of poems?

I wrote all of these poems during the last two years I lived in Akron, Ohio. Akron, an affordable Rust Belt city with charm beyond its rent prices, is a great place to live as a writer. The city and its small literary circle—specifically the Big Big Mess reading series—nurtured these poems into existence.

As for the poems themselves, there is an intended progression between the more pastoral poems toward the beginning of the chapbook and the darker, new-world poems toward the end. That intention is a theme!

There are a lot of poems that haven’t been included in this chapbook—I think the separation between the poems in ANW and those that didn’t make the cut demonstrate a found confidence, at least when it comes to viewing my work from a more objective point of view.

Are there any particular pronounced influences / guiding lights for the poems in this chapbook, or is it just the usual jumble & tangle (also, if so: what IS your usual jumble & tangle)?

The first poem of the chapbook, “An Accidental Horse-Sighting,” is guided by Alexis Pope’s and Katie Mertz’s light on a dark night in Bowling Green, Ohio.

I always like book recommendations in interviews, so here are some highly recommended books I read during the time in which most of these poems were composed that surely affected and/or guided my work:

The Man Suit by Zachary Schomburg (Black Ocean)

Say So by Dora Malech (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields by Ashley Capps (University of Akron Press)

You Are Not Dead by Wendy Xu (Cleveland State University Poetry Center)

Money for Sunsets by Elizabeth J. Colen (Steel Toe Books)