Jenny Lynn interviews Andrea Coates

Jenny Lynn interviews Andrea Coates for UVic Course on Contemporary American Poetry

Would you consider yourself to be a Canadian, Victorian, or "local' poet? What's the significance of place in contemporary poetry?

I consider my Self Canadian. I was born in a Small Town in Northern British Columbia and spent Most of my Childhood and Adolescence there. That Place had a Profound Effect on me. I have lived in Victoria Longer than Any Other Place since my Childhood. It features Heavily in my Work, but it is a Place I am visiting. Really, I am an InterNet Poet. I think Physical Geographical Location - Place - is Very Important to Poetry, how Ever, Even to InterNet Poetry. Without Place, you have noThing, you have no Grounding. Your Work is inSubstansial. That is what is Wrong with so Much Alt Lit Poetry : on the InterNet, these Kids are trying to write Some Thing Placeless, Some Thing Universal. But Really, what they end up saying is : I am Part of the Demographic that has More Access to the InterNet than Any Other, ie : I am an American Middle Class SubUrbanite. Place writes its Self in. You cannot escape it. It's Better to own it. That is how you create Diversity and the Unique. The Best Writers, the Best Artists, are the Ones with the Clearest Sense of Place. Noah Cicero is One of my Favorite Alt Lit Writers because he is Very Much “from” Youngstown, Ohio. Tao Lin likes to pretend he is a Diffuse Consciousness living on the Internet. He lives too Much in his Head.

What town in Northern BC are you from?

A Town called Smithers. It is Heavily featured in my Novel, and you get a Very Good Idea from the Novel of what it's like to grow up in Northern BC : the Snow, the Trees, the Loneliness, the Drinking, the HighWays, the Adventure, the Harshness, the Sublime Beauty of Nature.

A lot of poets destroy or never let people seriously read their juvenilia, but you published a book of poems called "Andrea Coates' Troublesome Youth Poems." Why did you choose to do this?

To show that Teenagers can be Good Poets! I believe, as a Society, we underestimate Teenagers, and this is Detrimental to them and to Society. My Own Teenage Years were so … Troublesome … I was left with a Life Long Desire to right the Wrongs I felt I had suffered : so Much of what happened to me as a Teenager happened because I did not have Sufficient Control over my Life : that Authority went to my School. I felt trapped, and I compensated for this by going out of Control as Much as Possible outSide of School : I used Drugs and had a Lot of Sx, and this is the Subject Matter of Many of the Poems in the Collection. To publish Poems written by a Teenager about the Xperiences of a Teenager is to validate those Xperiences as they are, as opposed to how Adults would like them. I want, from the Collection, for People to see that Teenagers think about their Selves and their Actions in a Critical and Intelligent Manner and learn from their Mistakes, and that thinking they do Any Less is More Harmful to them than Any amount of Drugs or Sx. I want Society to trust Teenagers : the Need for Control is noThing but the Lack of Trust, and so, in my Collection, I show a Girl Willfully engaging with Difficult Realities, and living with the Results of that, Good and Bad, and moving on, in Order to say, Teens, too, are Conscious Agents : treat them as Such.

What can you say about the line in your poem "ToDay is a Day for the Offering of the More Beautiful Things": "The United States has crawled into my Ear and laid Eggs on my Brain. My Words have become Weighty, despite my Previous Disgust with Any Thing of Religious Significance."?

I wrote that Poem Years ago, when I was 20, and just starting to write Poetry. I think it is Indicative of where my Mind was at. I was moving out of my Nihilistic Teenage Phase and into the MystoReligous Phase I am in now. I was living in New York at the Time, and I think being in a Place that assumes its Self to be Important was having an Effect on me. Northern BC does not assume its Self to be Important on a Global Cultural Scale, but I alWays had that Suspicion of my Self and of my Home through me. This Line is me coming to my Poetic Voice through learning to take the Awesomeness of that Voice for Granted. That Awesomeness, of Course, is the Result of the Land I came from, but Some Times it takes uprooting your Self to see how Great your Home is. 

You allude to the myth of Persephone / Demeter / Hades and the Pomegranate in your poems several times. What's your relationship with that story? Why does it have such poetic resonance?

I discovered that Every One of us has an Archetypal God, and that our Lives will echo the Myths of our Gods. Mine is Persephone, a Goddess born in the Fertile Land of the Living stolen by a Dark God, Hades, into an UnderGround World and when she eats a Magickal Seed of his out of Curiosity, she has to stay there and be his Wife. This, in Essence, is the Story of my Youth. But, Persephone's Mother Demeter does not want Persephone to live in the UnderWorld, and so Persephone spends Half the Year – Spring and Summer – above Ground and Half the Year – Fall and Winter – below Ground, in Hell, the Seasons reflecting Crop Goddess Demeter's Feelings. Persephone straddles the Two Worlds : Good and Evil. In my Life, I go back and Forth between the “Upper” World of Social Status Quos and the “Under” World were None of these Matter. I am an Artist who is Both Establishment and OutSider.

What ranges of political engagement and modes of resistance does writing/reading poetry offer you?

Allen Ginsberg said Some Thing to the Effect of : “Poetry is the Forum to say in Public what is known in Private.” This is the Reason I write Poetry. In the Poetic Form, I am able to say All the Things I think, but cannot say in Casual Conversation for Reasons of Politeness / Prejudice. In taking the Time to make my Thoughts Beautiful, to make them Poetic, I am making them Palatable. In Poetry, I can say Every Thing I feel about the Way my Society is run and in reading it, transcribed Beautifully, as in the Poem 'Hip Gathering' from NORTHWEST REPRESENTS, a Poem about Middle Class Complacency, those Feelings are transmitted to the Reader, thereby causing them, Perhaps, to change. My Poetry is Beautiful Propaganda, like Flowers.

How does writing poetry about other forms of art or drawing inspiration from non-literary acts of creation allow for new opportunities? What/Why?

I write Poetry from my Life and from my Dreams, which are Poetic Interpretations of my Life. In my Mind, Poetry needs to be inDistinguishable from these Things : Life and Dreams. When a Poem is concerned with being a Poem, it is a Bad Poem. This is why, as a Poet, I had to leave School. In School, and Most Notably in the Arts as they are taught in Schools, we are encouraged to make Art about making Art, Poems that take after Poems, etc, which makes for Good Academic Work – Work that is a Reflection of or Comment on Other Work, but not for Good Creative Work - Work that just is and is New. For that, we must divorce ourSelves from the Medium we are creating – by taking Inspiration from Other Mediums, for Xample. I write Novels that are like unFolding Paintings and Poems that are like Waking Dreams.

What is added to your poems when [you and jody] make a video out of them for example with "Poète Maudite and Glass House"or "Fucking Telepathy MotherFucker"? What about when you address multimedia/videos indirectly in a poem like "Music Video"? Does it make the poems more Dream/Life-like?

The Motivation for making Poemmovies and posting them on YouTube is to bring Poetry to the InterNet Age, the Age of Image Proliferation : to make Literature Cool, as Cool as Music, in this New Medium. I have alWays alternated between Visual Art and Writing : I Really enjoy adding Visuals to my Literary Work : that's why I like Blogging. Plus, the Poems sound Better read aLoud. When I write them I am screaming them in my Mind, but you don't Necessarily get that from reading the Words on a Page. It's Good to perform them. Also, I am Physically Attractive : I am a Shameless User of my Physical Appearance to promote my Literary Work – More People will listen to Some Thing if it is accompanied by Video of a Hot Chick : this is what our New Media teaches us. But, this is Only effective in complimenting my Literary Work because my Literary Work is alReady Good on it's Own. If it wasn't I would be just anOther Floosy hamming it up on the InterNet. So, I alWays had this Desire to use Imargy in Conjunction with my Writing, Imagery of my Self and Imagery of my Environment, to up its Cool Factor, so the Fact I hooked up with a FilmMaker was One of those Divine Coincidiences. And then – again - I write from my Life : I watch Videos, I make Videos, I write about Videos. 

How does your poetry rely on or reject tradition? Does contemporary poetry insist on self-conscious novelty? Is post-modernism a sham and we are still in a modern age?

My Poems are Poems : I have alWays been a Writer in the Classical Sense. But, I worry Less about Form than Content. Form follows Content; isn't that One of those Things they say? I have Thoughts, I write them down. Line Breaks are Breaths, etc. I center Poems because it makes them look like Hookahs. I capitalize Nouns and Adjectives because it reflects the Cadence of my Speech. Because I am not worried about whether or not my Work fits with or rejects Tradition, because I am just writing to reflect my Xperience, my Work has Qualities of Both, like All our Lives are Combinations of New Things and Old Things. Only Bad Poets rely on Novelty, and they tend to be Less so Poets than Artists in a More General Sense, Word Artists, like Tao Lin. Tao Lin is an Acceptable Poet, but he is a Better Performance Artist and Marketer. Post Modernism is not a Sham in so Far as it has an Effect on how we live toDay, but it is a Sham in that its Tenets do not hold up to Reality as I xperience it : Post Modernism is a Solipsistic Philosophy, a Nihilistic Philosophy, a Philosophy for Young Educated Middle Class People who have Never been in Love, and, therefore, a Dangerous Philosophy, in its Selfish Psychic Blindness. As I said in my Essay, “Throw the Tao Lin” : “I am not a Post Modernist. I am a Pagan.” One denies we are Connected, the Other honors the Connection between All Things.

I was going to ask why you centre your poems! So the unconventional spelling/capitalizations/line breaks in your writing have more to do with your natural speech rhythms, and what you want to emphasize in the content of the poem, rather than creating new meanings formally? I've only ever seen noun capitalization like yours in Dafoe novels or German. Were you influenced by either of those?

Definitely the Capitalizations have More to do with Natural Speech Rhythms and Content Emphasis. It took me a Lot of going over the Things I'd written in the Conventional Manner, capitalizing this and that, before I settled on Nouns and Adjectives. That felt Right. If I was inspired by Any Thing Other than a Desire to add Xtra Punch to my Words, it was German. My Mother's Side of the Family is German.