What drew you to submit your work to RED SKIES?
What drew me to submit my work to Red Skies was simply a need to put my own work out into the world, which would include an anthology created/published outside the continental United States.
How has your life changed this year? Is there anything you miss particularly from before the lockdowns?
Unlike the years before the Coronavirus Pandemic, I'm working on less days. I no longer go to the library, the bookstore, the movie theatres, go on holidays away from home or to green areas [ national parks and botanical/community gardens ] as I once did. Those are ways my life has changed in the wake of Coronavirus.
What drew you originally to performance poetry? Your work has an incredibly rich tone. Are there any other performance poets that you look up to?
Before my creative writing transitioned toward poetry, I wrote primarily song-lyrics, starting in 1988, when the Thrash thing was big. I was involved in several Heavy Metal bands that never made it past the garage. The reason: For each band, the musicians I worked with had different visions on the musical approach. They were influenced by major record label/commercial Heavy Metal, whereas I was more into harder underground Heavy Metal. Then the McCook Brothers [ my friends at the time ] noticed that I wrote song-lyrics and talked me into writing poetry for their girlfriends. Thankfully, I didn't save my first attempts at poetry because I truly didn't know how to express myself through that form of writing. By mid-1992, my ability to write poetry had gotten better with practise. During that year, I was living out my "Punk Rock Dude" phase and it was the Spoken Word albums of Henry Rollins [ from Black Flag ] and Jello Biafra [ from the Dead Kennedys ] that first drew me into performance poetry. I failed as a Heavy Metal singer, but found success as a performance poet, at house-parties, taverns, nightclubs opening up for bands, etc.
If you could only have a single book during quarantine, what would it be?
The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.
What themes do you like exploring in your writing? How has your work changed from the beginning of your writing career to now?
Racism, poverty and the environment.
Back in the 1990s, I wrote mostly in free verse and lyrical verse, with some experiments with Japanese-derived poetic forms [ haiku and tanka ]. Since then, my work has grown to include experiments with more traditional forms [ from the Italian terzanelle to the Iranian ghazal ], to show the more academic-minded writers and publications that I can write exactly like they can. It's still growing. Occasionally, though, I still write song-lyrics, if the music's in my head.
Are you engaged in any projects right now?
*I'm writing material for a book manuscript. I plan to spend the year 2021 finishing the manuscript and submitting it to any publisher willing to give my social justice-focused work a chance. In addition, there's a second manuscript that needs one last piece before I can call it a finished product.