AUTHOR PROFILE
Wade Martin is editor of the Austin Poetry Society’s Museletter, co-editor of the Texas Poetry Calendar, and a 2014 Pushcart nominee. He has been honored to teach a workshop at the Austin Feminist Poetry Festival and appear as a featured reader at the BookWoman and Kin City Reading Series. His work can be found in Front Porch Review, Illya’s Honey, and Haibun Today.
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Why do you write?
I write for fun.
I write to explore the technical and ethereal world.
I write because I express myself best in poetry.
I write to shake off the blues.
I write to exercise my memory of myself, and thereby remember.
I write because I don't know how to paint clouds in a way that fully expresses their beauty.
I write because I've tried being a philosopher, a novelist, a short story writer, an essayist, and found that poetry is my language.
I write because it gives meaning to my life.
I write to explore the technical and ethereal world.
I write because I express myself best in poetry.
I write to shake off the blues.
I write to exercise my memory of myself, and thereby remember.
I write because I don't know how to paint clouds in a way that fully expresses their beauty.
I write because I've tried being a philosopher, a novelist, a short story writer, an essayist, and found that poetry is my language.
I write because it gives meaning to my life.
What other creative activities are you involved in?
I dance East Coast Swing, Lindy Hop, Balboa, Shag, Charleston, Blues, Soul/Funk, Cha Cha, Tango, Bachata, Waltz, Two-Step, Line Dancing, Salsa, Samba, Belly dancing and Crazy, and was President of the Denton Swing Dance Organization for 5 years. I play the trumpet once a week (tonight I figured out how to play a rudimentary version of Chim Chim Cher-ee). I attend occasional classes in origami, mandala-making and woodcarving.
Who is your favorite author and why?
C.S. Lewis. No one makes me laugh, think, awe, sigh, engage in conversation with others, skew my view of the world, believe in what mankind is capable of, reach for what is good in what I want and then strive for it, instruct me about friendship and love and loss, see the glory in the mundane and parochial, quite the way he does. We don't agree on certain points, and like me, he can be a bit heavy-handed with the metaphor sometimes, but for as long as I've known him, he's been one of the three people in history I'd invite to dinner, and year after year, I find myself reading and re-reading his books, always with the same amount of pleasure and joy. The Great Divorce is my all-time favorite book.
Tell us about the mechanics of how you write.
My mind is constantly synthesizing and processing information. Then something in the world (a piece of text, a song, an emotion, a memory, a sensation) will seize that process, and the information halts momentarily and converges on a mental plane. At that moment, I take out my pocket-size notebook and a pencil, and begin to dictate from that place within, a sensation akin to pulling the plug off the end of a siphon to release its contents. The poem sprawls out on the page like a cascade of water down the chute of the paper. I make some minor edits as they occur to me during this process, or shortly after, trying to listen to the words tell me how they want to be (stanzas, line-breaks, punctuation, line length). Then, the real work begins: I put the poem away for a week or so, sometimes longer, sometimes much longer, to gain an objectivity I think a stranger might feel, and begin analyzing and editing and re-working and re-wording and finding better ways. To date, none of my poems has ever been finished.
Finally, what do you think about Carp, the fish, not our website?
A lark.
A fisherman's heart.
A thumping plump thing.
A doctor's scales and a herring wing.
A widow's silent screams.
A fishy afternoon by a stream.
A bobby hunkering behind a bush.
A flickering spangle of scale and heat.
A sweetmeat thrown to Fate.
A fated star-crossed shimmering.
A pebble and a boulder out on a date.
The kind of fish you can bring home to mother.
A fanciful ring with rungs for lungs.
A dancer's envy on a sunlit stage.
A friend who waves then says goodbye.
A final applause on frustrated waves.
Scales that weigh image and memory.
A fisherman's heart.
A thumping plump thing.
A doctor's scales and a herring wing.
A widow's silent screams.
A fishy afternoon by a stream.
A bobby hunkering behind a bush.
A flickering spangle of scale and heat.
A sweetmeat thrown to Fate.
A fated star-crossed shimmering.
A pebble and a boulder out on a date.
The kind of fish you can bring home to mother.
A fanciful ring with rungs for lungs.
A dancer's envy on a sunlit stage.
A friend who waves then says goodbye.
A final applause on frustrated waves.
Scales that weigh image and memory.