SHANE ALLISON: I REMEMBER TOO

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When did you first start writing poetry? Why did it spark something in you? 

I was 16 when I really started taking poetry seriously. Like a lot of things, it just happened. I wasn’t fully aware that I could write until I was about 15 or 16. When you’re that age, you just start to feel your way through life, trying to figure out what kind of person you are and who you want to be. I was your typical, quiet, shy kid in school. I didn’t have any friends, just people that I kind of new but really was not solid with. It was all an uphill battle after grade school. And high school was like four years of boot camp hell. I don’t know why parents put their kids through such an agonizing process. I would rather send my kid to Paris or something for four years. Poetry and writing in general got me through a lot of bad shit. It was not easy being a gay teenager living in a small town. Poetry was a mom, a dad, a home away from home, and a good friend to me. Poetry will always be my first love. When I figured out that writing was this art form I could really be good at, I started to nurture it and let it do the same for me. I knew a lot of kids at the time with amazing talent but didn’t take it seriously, so the gift in them starved. They took it as a fly by night thing and put it down when they started getting older and growing up, getting practical I guess. I saw writing for me as having a kind of super power above everything else. I knew that if I kept at it, it would feed me. 

Your new volume of poetry, I Remember, was inspired by the wonderful Joe Brainard poem of the same title----a seminal work in the gay poetic canon. When did you first read this poem, and how did it affect you? 

I didn’t know Joe Brainard had even existed in the world until I was introduced to him in a poetry workshop I signed up for that was taught by David Trinidad back when I was a grad student at the New School. Brainard’s book was one of required reading.  He, in my opinion pretty much turned the genre of memoir on its ass. He broke the mold for me. I couldn’t put the book down and thought what he had done with the two genres was astronomical. I spent the last year in grad school, reading about him, and later found out that he was an artist whose work consisted mostly of collages, which at the time, was something I, too was playing around with, pasting things here and there in notebooks, but not taking it seriously. I saw it as just a thing I would do if I were bored. 

Brainard is the kind of artist who makes me feel like I can do anything. And a writer needs that when doubt starts to creep in.  I ended up writing my thesis on “I Remember” and his artwork. The great thing about his book is that he’s not just telling his history but the histories we all share. You find yourself saying, “Oh, I remember that too,” and the passages you read that are before your time, you can appreciate. Like him, I wanted to capture those wonderful moments of nostalgia that Brainard was a genius at doing. When I started my own version, I wasn’t interested in copying him or trying to be like him, but there was a lot I wanted to get out for the sake of my sanity. I started writing my book in 2002 and it was all just flooding out of me. Good memories and memories that was not so great. By the time I finished my studies at the New School, I had about 60 pages of material and I never stopped. I couldn’t and still can’t. Joe Brainard is instrumental in setting me on this path I have been on for ten years now. 

You’ve taken his basic structure, and yet your poem becomes an extended memoir piece that is very different in its story. When did you first start writing the work, and how long did it take you to finish? 

I will just say that what is published is only the beginning. I don’t think the work will ever be completely finished. I just take breaks, but always find myself coming back to it. 

In a poetic form such as this--a list--which might just continue ad infinitum and contain any number of memory statements, you have managed to carve a work that shows your life from childhood to manhood. It is not just a rote series of flashbacks, but rather a real map of who you are. 

Yes. That is the idea I had in mind when I started my own version of I Remember. In David Trinidad’s poetry workshop, as a class exercise, he wanted us to write a page of our own I Remembers. I knew that I wanted to start with my childhood memories first because there’s always more there. I literally categorized them in my head as I wrote: Childhood, my teens, family, growing up in the south, being gay, sexual memories, and pop culture. And in these, I found myself coming back to each one just when I thought I had exhausted the memories. Something would always creep to the forefront. A certain object, person, or day would just trigger entire blocks of memory and suddenly I can remember the season, the smells, the places and people.  I can see a car and think about the time I had sex with a guy in his van. That’s what’s so great about this form is that it allowed me to tap into memories I thought I had long forgotten. 

The poem also brings together cultural symbols, celebrities, commercial brands, cartoons, television shows, all of the arts, politics, love, sex, sex and sex. It’s like a retrospective of the past 30 years, through your person

I was a child of the 80’s and 90’s. TV and movies were a huge part of my life. I remember sitting on my parent’s bedroom floor watching Dynasty, Falcon Crest, Knots Landing, and Dallas. The clothes, the hair, the shoulder pads. And who could forget the makeup? It was all about red, red lipstick and blush that brought the cheekbones to unreachable heights. I lived for Linda Gray, Joan Collins, Michele Lee, Joan Van Ark. I lived in magazines like Details and Movieline. I wanted to be the people that I read about. I wanted a life that was far different from the one I was living.  I’m still working on making that happen. Part of life is being able to be interchangeable. 

I believe starting to be very open and sexual in my work came when I discovered sex at that typical age of 12 and 13. I was six when I first kissed a boy and twelve when I had my first “oral” sex experience. The thing about growing up gay and being young is that you’re not on that standard path that heterosexuals set themselves on at a very young age. For me it wasn’t about boy kissing girl, boy falls in love with girl, they get married, have 2.5 kids, buy a house, go on summer vacations and so on. If I were interested in a boy it wasn’t like I could go to his house, and ask his parents if I could take him to the prom, which is great that we are making strides in that department. (LOL) From 14 to 17 I spent a lot of time coming into myself sexually, looking for companionship and intimacy in all the wrong places with all the wrong men. And I mean men, not boys. I will just say that I spent my teens in parks and bathrooms if I wasn’t in school. So I started writing about my experiences, which were mostly sexual ones.  There’s a lot of sadness between the lines of dick sucking and glory holes.  I have never set out to shock, but just to tell my truth without all the sugar-coating. That’s the only way I know how to be. If people out here read my work and come to the only conclusion that I’m out to make them gasp with oh my god, I can’t-believe-he-said-that-moments, I can’t do anything about that. What they see as shocking, I see some of it as gratuitous humor. The mistake has been made that sex is all I write about. And let’s face it. Sex is a topic that never goes out of style, but I always want to be the kind of writer who switches it up, you know? 

I Remember is always a beautiful tribute to New York City. As a native, I was very touched by the images that I knew and experienced again in your work. Why was New York City so important to you? 

I’ve always wanted to go to New York since I was 16. It just made sense to me. I had this idea that it was the exact way it was portrayed on TV, yet when I moved there in 2001, I got a rude awakening. That grittiness that I wanted to see and experience was gone. Giuliani had done away with it all. Don’t get me wrong, New York still has great street cred, but I didn’t see any of what was portrayed in TV and movies about the city. I was disappointed for about two minutes and found that living there was the best two years of my life. I used to cry about wondering if I would ever get out of Tallahassee. It was hard at first, but I cut on quickly. One misconception that people have about New Yorkers is that they’re all assholes, but people were very nice to me. They’re no ruder than anyone else. I have encountered nastier people right here in the south than the two years I spent in New York. It’s like anywhere. If you’re nice to a New Yorker, they will be nice back. It doesn’t hurt to just be fucking nice every now and then. I don’t just love New York. I adore her. It’s like in Miguel Pinero’s poem where he talks about spreading his ashes thru the lower east side. That’s how I feel about New York. Spread my ashes all over that beautiful island. I hope to find myself back there someday. Okay, let me stop before I start crying. 

The book has a great deal of humor in it also---sometimes bittersweet---and I found myself gleefully laughing at certain times. 

I remember getting bubble gum ice cream and ending up with a mouthful of bubble gum. 

I remember hiding in the closet wearing a Halloween mask. I would jump out and scare my sister.

I remember putting a balled up piece of candy wrapper on her neck and telling her that it was a dead  cockroach.

I remember when my aunt insisted on trying pop rocks after she had major dental work. The reaction in her mouth startled her and she spat them out. I fell over with laughter.

I remember being too fat to fit in my Batman costume.

I remember the “Where’s the Beef” lady.

I remember hearing my sister say “fucker” on the phone.

You received your M.F.A. from The New School. What were some of the best experiences during that time of your study? 

Well, when I was an undergrad, I went in believing that getting an M.F.A. was “the” degree to get if you were serious about studying any kind of art, especially poetry. I just remember reading bios of all these gay poets from gay poetry anthologies and most of them either held M.F.A. degrees or were on their way to getting one, so I thought that was the thing to do. The New School appealed to me because it was in New York and I knew it would get me out of my hometown finally, and like I said before, David Trinidad was teaching there and I wanted to work with him. I wanted him to be my thesis advisor but he left to go teach at Columbia College in Chicago before I started my last semester at the New School. Sapphire was also teaching there at the time. I read her book Push and loved it and I have her books of poetry. She was holding fiction workshops. I sent her emails saying that I wanted to work with her and she wanted me to sign up for her class, but I hadn’t written fiction in eight years at the time and didn’t think that I was that great of a fiction writer. The thought of writing fiction scared the hell out of me for a long time. Unlike poetry, there were rules you have to follow, you know? Anyway, I was introduced to Sapphire at the final graduate reading for second years, and I remember her saying that she thought I was white. I never got the chance to work with her. Maybe I will someday. She’s fucking amazing.  I didn’t do a great deal of stuff dealing with the New School. I hung out a lot at the Nuyorican Poets Café, The Bowery and cruising NYU for hot guys. The city was more a classroom and an education for me that the New School ever was. I did get a chance to work with great poets like David Lehman and David Trinidad who if it wasn’t for him introducing me to Joe Brainard, I wouldn’t be sitting here talking about my own book. Thank you, David. 

Does your family read your poems? How do they react to your honesty and openness, and your complete shamelessness in writing about sex? 

Well, a few years ago, my aunt who lives in Detroit found me and much of my work on the Internet. The news of that spread like wildfire. My aunt in New York, the very cool aunt, I might add, read my work and found much of my books and poems. She keeps bugging me to send her copies of my stuff, but having any family member knowing how many guys I have slept with and what I have done with them in no-holds barred, salacious detail, makes my palms sweat. Yet at the same time, I knew what I was getting into. I can’t be balls out with some and tip toe back in the closet with others when it suits me, so I will be sending her copies of my books soon. Now I have a cousin who is again, very cool, who loves my work and wants all my books. I think she thinks they’re novels. She has said on many occasions that she’s proud of me. I’ve never even gotten that from my parents, who know that I’m a writer but they have never read any of my work. Being that my mama once told me that she would rather be dead than for me to be gay, I don’t think she would be into the sexual stuff verses the poems about family and growing up. I can say, though that I don’t think she would be able to put “I Remember” down. It’s quite the tell-all. 

Why is your sexuality your main theme? 

Writing about sex has always come so easily for me because of life experience. It’s like breathing for me. I don’t see it as this taboo issue that should only be talked about in the bedroom. Not for me anyway. I have never seen it as unusual. It’s a part of us all as species on this sucking and fucking planet. 

You’ve written openly in all your works, about life as a black man enjoying the pride of being gay, finding love, losing love, and still moving forward. Who most inspires your poetry? 

These days intimacy is extremely important to me. I tell people that sex is the easy part. Anyone can go out and have sex, but true intimacy is something you have to work at and look like hell for. Many times I just want to feel lips pressing against mine, hands on bodies, just lying there. I have been in situations like this and it feels new every time like I don’t know what to do so I just wing it. I feel like that 6 year old boy again being kissed by another six year old boy for the first time ever.

These days it’s more about what inspires me verses who. There’s nothing that I can’t look at without wondering how I can turn it into something. Langston Hughes was a big influence on me back when I started reading poetry. His selected works was the first book of poems I bought and Ginsberg came later because of his courage, but I was inspired by an assortment of poets whose work I read from anthologies like Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time, Assoto Saint edited books like Here to Dare and The Road Before Us. And anthologies like Brother to Brother, In the Life and later Gavin Dillard’s A Day for a Lay and Gents, Badboys and Barbarians helped to shape and mold me. Poets like Walta Bukowski, Antler, Vytautas Pliura, David Trinidad, Essex Hemphill, Assoto Saint and many others were my mentors. Jesus, I can go on and on about how badly I needed these men in my life.  Okay, crying now. I carry them close to my heart every day. 

What do you think about the current gay poetry being written today? About the audience for it?

There is definitely a new surge coursing through. With the movement of new presses like Bryan Borland’s Sibling Rivalry Press, and Sven Davison’s Rebel Satori, coming out with new work, it’s all very exciting and I feel damn good to be a part of the fresh blood that has been ushered in.  It seems like these guys just came out of nowhere. They are giving new and upcoming voices a chance to get their work out to the masses and at the end of the day that’s all that matters. Getting the work out the best way you can. Sell it out of the trunk of your car if you have to, pass poems out like flyers. Just get it out there. It’s about telling our stories, telling our truth. As long as lovers of the written word live and breathe, there will always be an audience for it. 

There is an ever-increasing presence of excellent poetry being written by black, gay writers. But do you think it’s relevant or important to attach race and sexual orientation to your work? If so, why? 

Well, as writers, I think it’s sort of a slippery slope. We don’t set out to write one type of way. Writing is about always moving, never standing in one place for too long. It’s about flipping the script. Hell, I might come out with a collection of limericks next year. That’s one of the great things about being a writer, having the ability to flip it around. I don’t think it’s capable to write in a box. You just write what comes to you. You can’t deny your muse when the moment strikes. If you are moved to address issues of being gay, or black and gay or being southern, black and gay or white and gay or being short, tall and gay, let the pen move you. Be in the moment of that as long as it takes. Whether it’s in the form of a poem, a story, a novel, let it happen, get it out, say it. And if it moves you, it will move others. I have never set out to write specifically about being black and gay. It doesn’t work like that for me.  They are about as a part of me as my legs, my arms, my feet. I’m not detachable. 

The success of much of this writing is due in large part to the explosion of new small presses, and online blogs and websites. The best of these promote work in our community better than the larger mainstream presses could. How have these publishing opportunities helped you?

Well, when I first started feeling confident enough to send my work out for publishing consideration, I got rejected left and right, but that comes with the territory. In this business you have to have a tough skin. I have gotten more rejection letters than those who have accepted me. I used to collect them, but found it depressing, so that didn’t last very long. I still get rejected and it gets easier the more persistent I am. I always say that one editor’s no is another editor’s yes. Let me just say this: persistence is what it’s all about here. Keep knocking on those doors until someone says yes. You will be surprised how far you get as long as you keep moving.

Unlike today, there were maybe a handful of presses putting collections of work out. Being that most of my writing deals with sexuality, it was a hard road to travel in trying to find a press that would take a chance on me. Axe Factory Press did just that, and my first collection Ceiling of Mirrors was born.  And then there was Kevin Sampsell of Future Tense Books. I checked him out and dug him immediately.  I sent Kevin some poems for a possible new chapbook. He wasn’t taking on new work at the time, and told me to keep in touch. I never forgot about him and sent him more poems a few years later. Before long Black Fag, my second chapbook of poetry was born. I wasn’t keen on the title at first but I thought about it and grew to like it.  One of the interesting things about Black Fag is the design. Kevin put a shitload of work into it like everything he does. Blogs and websites at the time I think we’re still working on training wheels. There was no such thing as e-books and e-publishing. People were making chapbooks and zines out of basements and garages. Some of it was quite innovative. I got work published in some of the weirdest, but most fun places. I used to be jealous of a poet friend of mine, Jarret Keene who used to get published in all of these pretty, glossy lit mags out of college English departments while I always got published in off the wall zines and online lit joints. But I am so grateful for those guys and girls that took a chance on my work when no one else would. I owe a few pints of blood to them for sure. They got me out there, people like Kevin believed in what I was putting down. Presses like Future Tense and Bryan Borland’s Sibling Rivalry are producing amazing work. Bryan is this powerhouse who just exploded onto the scene of gay presses. You can tell that he loves poets and loves poetry. The fact that he is a poet in his own right helps. He is definitely at the forefront of the new gay renaissance.  I cannot stress enough how important it is to support small presses. Buy some books, get the word out, write reviews, do readings, tell a friend, tell your mail man, tell your therapist. Promote, promote, promote. 

What are the challenges of self-publishing and publicity? 

I don’t know if I’m the one to answer that question only because I don’t think I’m a self-publisher, not by my definition anyway. These guys put in hours, days, weeks and months of hard work to make a book a success. I feel like I am on the other side of the glass looking in to see how the candy is made. As for publicity, it’s really all about putting yourself out there. Letting people know who you are. 

What is the poetry scene where you are living now? Do you have a group of poets that you work with as friends and writers? 

Locally, I don’t know anymore. I have been out of the poetry scene in Tallahassee for a long while. There are scenes peppered throughout where I live, but nowhere as big as say the scene in New York. Everything is small potatoes in a small town, which can work as a plus if you want to get some writing done, that novel finished without distractions. I have gotten more done here than I think I ever could if I were still living in New York. One of the things that I wish I had have gotten when I was at the New School was a sense of closeness and camaraderie. Because of the way things were set up, we were in and out. I didn’t make any real connections. I know more people in New York now than I did when I was living there. I know a lot of people from Facebook, but you know how that goes. It’s like having a bunch of pen-pals. 

Future Tense Books did a great job with your work. The cover is simple yet powerful---a real draw for any new work. Yet I feel that this is not par for the course in many small presses---cover designs especially often get short shrift for the sake of sales decisions. Do you design your own covers? 

Let me start off by saying that what’s on the outside of the book is just as important as what is on the inside. I can’t stand ugly cover design, some work that tend to come off as cheap where not a great deal was put into it. And it’s not a small press thing. I spend a lot of time in bookstores and there are books that are riddled with unsavory covers and design.  And these are from large presses. If you know that the cover is the first thing the reader is going to see, why wouldn’t you want the book to stand out? Sure you can say you don’t care about how the book looks, that what you have to write about is more important, but if you give the impression, no one is going to take the time to see what’s inside. I’m not saying you should stick a picture of a dick on the cover to sell books or get someone’s attention. I mean, you can if you want, but the design should reflect your work as well as you.

For the cover of my poetry collection Slut Machine, I wanted just that, something salacious, but tasteful, something that wouldn’t give away all the secrets in the book. Andrew Shuta, this designer in Arizona did the cover art. For I Remember I didn’t have a clue as to what I wanted. The stories I was telling helped me to come up with an idea for the cover. I instantly thought of this picture of me when I was about 5 years old where I had this huge afro, but that picture got ruined so I couldn’t use it, yet I still wanted to use something that reflected what I was writing about. I was 7 in the picture here. As an adult, I don’t like taking pictures. I can’t stand looking at myself in a photo. If you go through my stuff, you will only find kid pics of me, nothing recent. Bryan Coffelt designed the cover for I Remember. I love it. It came out the exact way I pictured it in my head. 

As for designing my own covers, no. In two chapbooks of mine, I Want to Eat Chinese Food Off Your Ass (Propaganda Press), and Remembered Men (Bent Boy Books), the collage art is my own, but as far as being a designer, I have never given it much thought. I can’t draw so I just paste things together. Drawing is a talent I wish I had for sure though. 

You have a new anthology planned, called “People Are Starting to Talk About You.” What will we get to read in that? 

Well, the last gay poetry anthology I purchased was Gavin Dillard’s A Day for A Lay: A Century of Gay Poetry. I asked myself one question when I decided to take on the project. Who are the new writers coming out? So I set myself on a path. When I put the call for submissions out, I got a lot of support from people who were saying how important it was that I was doing the anthology. The book is made up of mostly new gay poets on the scene like Bryan Borland, Stephen Mills, Matthew Hittinger, Jeremy Halinen, and Ocean Vuong to name a few from the plethora of talent that make up the book. I also have seasoned writers like Antler, Ed Madden, Gregg Shapiro, Kevin Killian, Jeff Mann and Jeffery Beam as well as those who have been sort of obscure whose work deserves to be read like Daniel W.K. Lee and Carl Miller Daniels.  I think readers will love the anthology. It’s long overdue. From gay marriage to love lost and gained, it’s all there. Its poets telling their history, telling their own truth, acting up.