INTERVIEWS

INTERVIEWS

ROBERT MINHINNICK, RENOWNED WELSH POET AND WRITER
AND
LAURA WAINWRIGHT, WELSH POET AND ARTIST

CHARLES VAN EMAN, AMERICAN ACTOR, WRITER, AND DIRECTOR
(previously published in The Seventh Quarry magazine)

MARIA MAZZIOTTI GILLAN, RENOWNED AMERICAN POET AND WRITER,
FOUNDER AND THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE POETRY CENTER AT PASSAIC COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE IN PATERSON, NEW JERSEY, USA
(previously published in The Seventh Quarry magazine)

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Robert Minhinnick and Laura Wainwright © 20 24 Peter Morgan

Interview with poet and writer Robert Minhinnick and poet and artist Laura Wainwright

Note: Their book ‘Thrall’ is forthcoming from www.seventhquarrypress.com

Peter Thabit Jones: Firstly, how did you meet each other and when did you start collaborating as a poet/writer and a poet/artist?

Robert Minhinnick: Laura approached me on Twitter and talked about ‘Diary of the Last Man’ (Carcanet). She also asked me for poems for Black Bough / Cangen Ddu, as she was an editor there. But with my ‘Sustainable Wales’ hat on I was searching for a ‘journal’ writer to reflect industrial Wales. Laura agreed to begin a ‘Newport Journal’. Then I invited her to a lecture I was giving in Cardiff University about ‘Diary of the Last Man.’ Also, our charity was beginning a project named ‘Our Square Mile / Ein Milltir Sgwar’. This became ‘Gorwelion/Shared Horizons’, with writers from Wales, Scotland and India, addressing climate change. This is ongoing. Laura is one of the Welsh writers. She also began to come to our monthly literary events at the Green Room in Porthcawl. Extra to ‘Newport Journal’ and ‘Ein Milltir Sgwar’ which became ‘Gorwelion/Shared Horizons’ is the ‘Writers of Wales’ series, especially my proposed book on Duncan Bush, which originates in a telephone call to myself in 2017 from Annette Weaver, Duncan’s widow. From this has come Laura’s WoW ongoing book on myself. I think it all an excellent example of how academic and ‘creative’ writing depend upon each other.

‘Thrall’ is my title but comes from from the first words in the book, by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, which introduce Laura’s poem ‘Sertraline’: ‘fruit, which, tasted once, must thrall me here’. For me, ‘Thrall’ does not mean ‘enthralment’ but something ‘obsessive’, like a form of addiction. This means various things, including my stammer, a strange incubus. (Thus the poems here, ‘The Third Murderer’ and ‘Aztec Soup’.) ‘Thrall’ refers to my mother’s historic medication, but also ‘alcohol’ and ‘television’. But, truthfully, I am also ‘enthralled’ by historic places, such as Merthyr Mawr and Babylon. Thus ‘thrall’ can be usefully ambiguous.

Laura Wainwright: I think I first became aware of Robert when I was a postgraduate student at Cardiff University in the early 2000s. I attended the Association of Welsh Writing in English conference at Gregynog Hall one year, when Robert was reading, and came home with a copy of To Babel and Back. I was aware of his stature as a Welsh writer and editor. But it wasn’t until I began experimenting with writing my own poetry in circa 2019, turning one day to a copy of Diary of the Last Man for inspiration, that I realised his brilliance as a poet. I was so struck by this collection that, probably emboldened by several drinks, I felt compelled to send a message to Robert and tell him. I also hoped that he might have a poem for inclusion in Black Bough Poetry’s Deep Time anthologies, which I was then helping to guest edit. I didn’t expect him to reply - but he did. He also kindly offered to read some of my poems, many of which later appeared in my first pamphlet, Air and Armour, published by Green Bottle Press in 2021. Thrall is the fruit of the creative and collaborative friendship that began that day.

PTJ: When did you come up with the idea for Thrall and what was your approach to choosing your individual poems and Laura’s artworks?

RM: I wanted to publish some of the poems I have written about my mother, Decima Minhinnick. It was Laura who proposed a joint volume, and I felt those poems fitted our developing concept of ‘thrall’.

LW: The title for Thrall originates from a quotation from Dante Gabriel Rossetti that I use as an epigraph to my poem, ‘Sertraline’. ‘Sertraline’ is, in part, a meditation on drug dependence and drug-induced depersonalisation. So, in one respect, ‘thrall’ is about power, powerlessness and vulnerability. But the word has many meanings and connotations, and I would prefer the reader to find them in or tease them from the book. Most of the paintings and drawings in the book are extensions of my poems – part of the same artistic process.

PTJ: What do you think Thrall offers a reader and what would you say is the aim or aims of your book?

RM: For me it is an exceedingly humane and honest book, almost painfully so. Careful readers might understand the situations – indeed, predicaments – certain poems portray. I hope they might identify with those situations.

LW: I would like to think that it is a collection for those in thrall to the distinctiveness of place and locality, to language and its music, to creativity in all its forms…

PTJ: Robert, you have been involved in environmental issues for a very long time with Sustainable Wales. Can you say something about the relationship between your literary works and your environmental work.

RM: Four things stand out. Locally, 1983-4, I was engaged in the campaign to save Merthyr Mawr sand dunes from golf-course development. Then internationally, helping drive aid to Albania around 1989. Then, after visiting the USA about 1990 on a poetry reading tour and encountering tropical storm Josephine in The Bronx, which subsequently has been the source of much of my climate change writings. Then, the ‘depleted uranium’ campaign that took Sustainable Wales/Cymru Gynaliadwy to Barry, Birmingham, the south-western United States, Baghdad and Babylon. My response is always literary as well as environmental. Maybe these have been clumsy attempts to seek ‘justice’. I’ve written works like ‘Letters from Illyria’, ‘Josephine’s Rain’ , ‘To Babel and Back’ and ‘Delirium’ about these issues. Absolutely, they are not polemics. And I continue with poems in ‘Thrall’, concerning the Gwent Levels and Merthyr Mawr.

In ‘Thrall’, my poem ‘Aztec Soup’ is based on an essay I published in Planet about 1990. It’s a true story, but I’ve conflated two different walks up and down Broadway in Manhattan. One was a march in support of the American Green Party, the other, down the avenue’s opposite side, searching for cheap vodka before a reading: thus doubly ‘in thrall’ – to that incubus and the ‘remedy’ for it. The story about the love poem for the janitor is totally true. ‘Regulars 2’, set in the Maltsters’ Arms, Pontypridd, follows on from ‘Regulars’ set in The Old Arcade, Cardiff, in ‘After the Hurricane’ (Carcanet, 2002.)

PTJ: Laura, you are a writer, poet, artist and singer-songwriter. What are the main issues and themes that power your creativity?

LW: I feel I have only rediscovered my creativity in the last five or so years. I have only been sketching, painting and playing the guitar again, for instance, for the last two. Before this, in my 20s and 30s, I lacked self-belief and confidence and thought of myself only as a prematurely ‘retired’ academic writer who had missed the boat. This feeling of lost time and yet possibility powers a lot of my creativity now. In truth, working with Robert has been an inspiration and helped me to become more authentically myself. I will always be grateful to him for this.

PTJ: Finally, do you plan any other collaborations in the future?

RM: I would love further collaborations with Laura as I feel our work a fine blend. This could involve writing, art, and live music. Laura and I are different translations of the same poem.

LW: Though not a collaboration, I am currently writing a Writers of Wales volume on Robert, to be published by University of Wales Press. As I’ve written before, I hope he and I will continue to collaborate artistically ‘for our forever’.

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Charles Van Eman is an actor, writer, and director. His television and film acting credits include Sea of Trees, Chasing Life, Reckless, Drop Dead Diva, 96 Minutes, Vampire Diaries, Prison Break, Ghost Whisperer, CSI Miami, and The Colbys. Appearances on stage include, 15 Men in a Smoke-Filled Room, The Contract, The Goat or Who is Sylvia, The Christina Experiment, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, The Laramie Project, and Beyond Therapy. He wrote and performed two solo shows, Jack’s Hat and Beginner’s Mind. For the stage he directed, The Contract, The Other Place, Grandfather Speaks, and Spice. For television and the web, he wrote, directed, and co-produced all 20 episodes of the award-winning Atlanta based series, High Rise. He is the author of two novels, On The Way To Pomona and The Weight of Loss. Early in his career he adapted for Random House seven Louis L’Amour short stories into internationally broadcast radio dramas. He and his wife live in the woods north of Boston.

Visit his website: charlesvaneman.com

Peter Thabit Jones: When did you start writing and who were the writers who most influenced you?

Charles Van Eman: I was a voracious reader as a child. I would check out stacks of books first from the Book Mobile that would miraculously appear in the local shopping center parking lot and then later at the newly built Northland Library. I remember writing stories and reading them in front of my 6th grade class. Standing there, pencil-scrawled pages in hand, my classmates skeptical eyes on me, my teacher’s kind nods of encouragement, it was for me both a thrill and a terror to be reading my stories. Maria, a talented writer in my class also shared her stories. Closing my eyes and listening to her confident voice lead us through her prose is something I fondly remember to this day. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until I graduated from college that I got serious about writing. Poetry was my first focus. Rimbaud, Jim Carroll, Raymond Carver, Philip Levine, Charles Bukowski, Wendel Berry, Gary Snyder, Robert Creeley, and Allen Ginsburg, these were the writers stirring my imagination. The high velocity prose of Beat writers Jack Kerouac, William Burrows, Neal Cassidy, and John Clellon Holmes captured me early on along with the work of Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Hunter S. Thompson, and John Steinbeck. Then came Thomas McGuane, Jim Harrison, T.C. Boyle, Tom Robbins, Ethan Canin, Michael Chabon, Richard Ford, Barbara Kingsolver, and Cormac McCarthy.

PTJ: Can you tell us how your acting career started.

CVE: The summer after my third year of college I was working a hospitality internship in Florida. One day while scuba diving in the Keys the proverbial light bulb clicked on startling me in the realization that rather than being a business type like all the other men in my family, I was instead a creative person. That’s when I decided to pursue an acting career. I returned to college and along with finishing my business degree, I took several acting classes and did local theater. Upon graduation, with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, I rolled the dice and moved to Los Angeles. With remarkable good luck, the generous support of teachers and my fellow struggling actors, I began to get work in the television and film industry.

PTJ: What are your thoughts about contemporary American drama for the theatre?

CVE: I recently was sent a link to an article in The Guardian informing me that the most popular playwright in America this season is Lauren Gunderson. She will have 27 productions of her work go up in the 2017-2018 season. (The survey excluded Shakespeare who will have 108 productions. Who can compete with The Bard, right?) In this rousing time of strong women’s voices, I am thrilled to see this brilliant 35-year-old playwright knocking it out of the park. Upon reading the article I went to my office bookshelf and browsed through my collections of plays. There were so few women playwrights represented that I felt a little silly. What have I been missing out on? So, to answer your question, I am looking forward to reading and going to the theater to see plays written by women.

PTJ: What is your initial approach to writing a novel once you have the basic idea/ideas?

CVE: I do not plot out my stories ahead of time. For me, it is a day to day discovery of where the story wants to go. At some point, as the story gains momentum, I’ll get clues as to how aspects of it connect and I’ll jot those down. But even then, I still try and stay open to see if something different wants to happen. Much like acting, forcing an idea into a scene rather than staying present and going with what is actually happening, most often ends up coming across false and clunky. Other than that, it’s about getting myself in front of my computer, connecting with the characters, and grinding it out every day.

PTJ: What are you working on at the moment?

CVE: Years ago, I wrote a screenplay that I thought at the time was pretty good. In 2017 I decided to adapt it into a novel. After years away, I was able to see it with fresh eyes and in doing so have been forced to accept that this personal favorite of my early screenplay writing life is in fact a bit of a malcontent. Lumpy, bumpy, but still confident of its bright spots it has been challenging me in new and ever more intriguing ways. A political/environmental thriller, it is becoming a much more grounded, fully realized story. That said, I still have a ton of work to do.

THE KEYS

South Florida rays hum
against my flesh.
Fresh lobster boiling
in the pot.

Warm water gently lapping
against my legs
the gulf stream pulls
my spirit out to sea.

I was cast adrift
in that campsite for 8 days
rum, rum, rum, rum, rum

Scuba diving
every day for meals --
fish, lobster, and
rum, rum, rum.

I let go of the lines
that secured me
I let the winds blow, the sail
lift me past the lights of a predetermined
destination.
I became a pirate.

Reveling in the tropical
breezes blowing
through the tent flap,
my thoughts listed out
over the reef into a
Jolly Roger galleon skimming
to port laden with booty.
Trusting the wind and currents
while the fiddler
played a jig, I danced
across the bow, draped in
gold chains, emeralds
and rubies in my pockets.
I roared and spit,
hollering for another mug
of rum.

Charles Van Eman

RACING THE TRACK

It’s been seven years.
So much passes.
My boyhood toys are going
out the door.
Flying to cities beyond.

Hands I’ve never touched,
children I’ve never met will
imagine them soaring and roaring.
My father dead for seven years.
My toys on eBay.
His hands held the cars and
put the track together.
A Christmas morning
I have never forgotten.
Now someone else
will play with them.
Another father, I hope, and
his son.
Racing the track,
looping the loop.
Grins and tender hearts.

Charles Van Eman

IT FEELS LIKE YOU
(for Sara)

In my spirit
there is space
that has been waiting to dance.
Quiet and still for so long,
patience and vigilance its oath.
Waiting for feeling, rhythm,
of thought and heart.
Peering into the hectic daze
of everyday existence,
this precious space watches for
a flicker, a vibration, a familiar tone.
A unifying force.
It feels like you.

Charles Van Eman

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Maria Mazziotti Gillan (c) 2017 the Poetry Center,
Passaic County Community College

Maria Mazziotti Gillan is the Director of the Creative Writing Program / The Binghamton Center for Writers, and a Professor of Poetry at Binghamton University-State University of New York. She is the Founder and the Executive Director of the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College in Paterson, NJ.

She has published eleven books of poetry, including The Weather of Old Seasons (Cross-Cultural Communications), Where I Come From, Things My Mother Told Me, Italian Women in Black Dresses and her latest book, All That Lies Between Us, (all by Guernica Editions).

She is co-editor with her daughter Jennifer of four anthologies: Unsettling America, Identity Lessons, and Growing Up Ethnic in America(Penguin/Putnam) and Italian-American Writers on New Jersey (Rutgers). She is the editor of the Paterson Literary Review. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, New Letters, The New York Times, Poetry Ireland, Connecticut Review, The Los Angeles Review, The Christian Science Monitor, LIPS, and Rattle, as well as numerous other journals and anthologies.

Maria’s book All The Lies Between Uswon the American Book Award in 2008. She has also won the 2008 Chancellor’s Award for Scholarship and Creative Endeavor from Binghamton University, the 2008 Sheila Motton Award, Primo Nazionale Belmoro, the First Annual John Fante and Pietro di Donato Award, the Aniello Lauri Award, the May Sarton Award, the Fearing Houghton Award, New Jersey State Council on the Arts Fellowships in Poetry, and the American Literary Translators Association Award through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. She received the New Jersey Governor’s Award for Literary Outreach and The Dare to Imagine Award from Very Special Arts.

Her poems have been read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac. She has been interviewed and read her poems on National Public Radio’s (NPR) “All Things Considered”, “The Brian Lehrer Show”, “The Poet and the Poem”, “the Leonard Lopate Show”, as well as “in honor of National Poetry Month”, “The Charles Osgood Show” on CBS-Radio, also on Pacifica Radio, and Voice of America. She has also been featured on several PBS-TV (Public Broadcasting System) programs. Her books have been chosen as Editor’s Choice by Booklist, New York Public library Book List, and one of the American Library Association’s Outstanding Books for Lifelong Learners.

Her poems are included on state and national tests in North Carolina, Tennessee, Minnesota, Texas, and Italy.

She has read her poems numerous times at universities, festivals, and poetry centers throughout the USA and in Italy, France, Yugoslavia, Finland, Wales, and Ireland. The Maria Mazziotti Gillan Collection of her papers is housed at the Binghamton University Libraries.

Visit her website: www.mariagillan.com

Peter Thabit Jones: It is several years since I last interviewed you for The Seventh Quarry, what have you been doing as a poet during that period?

Maria Mazziotti Gillan: I have a new book out called What Blooms inWinter(NYQ Press). I’ve been doing a lot of readings for it and of course, I am still Executive Director of the Poetry Center in Paterson, NJ, editor of the Paterson Literary Review, and Director of the Binghamton Center for Writers and the Creative Writing Program at Binghamton University-SUNY where I am a professor of poetry.

PTJ: You have written the popular book, Writing poetry to save your life, about writing poetry. What were your main intentions in putting together this instructive book?

MMG: I wanted to give people the courage to believe that the stories they need to tell in their writing are important and need to be told. The book is partly a memoir of how I found my own courage and a pep talk for other writers. I’ve included a large section of prompts designed to jump start other people’s writing.

PTJ: Kevin Carey, whom I met at the 2016 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, kindly gave me a copy of the DVD of his and Mark Hillringhouse’s wonderful film about you, All that lies between us. How did it feel to watch a film about your life?

MMG: For me, it was very exciting and also very moving. It brought my connection to my Italian background and to Paterson into focus for me. I loved the film. They did a wonderful job on it.

PTJ: Please tell us something about the teacher who taught you and Allen Ginsberg. What did you gain from the experience?

MMG: Her name was Fraces Durban and in high school I was terribly shy. Ms. Durban would call on me each day to read poems aloud to the class. She knew I loved poetry as much as she did and I felt validated when she singled me out in a classroom full of very intelligent and privileged upper middle class students. I was poor and lived on the wrong side of the tracks, but I loved that she chose me.

PTJ: What is your approach to teaching poetry in the classroom?

MMG: In my classes, I try to what I do in my book. I try to make the room a safe place for my students, a place where they can tell the truth about their lives. I want them to write the poems that come from a very deep place inside themselves.