BYP Profile: Drew Calvert
The next profile in our series is that of Drew Calvert, another quite interesting contributor to the 2006 June Poets group. He was caught to do this interview via e-mail in December 2006 in the midst of saying his last good-byes to Lewisburg and packing up to move on to Hong Kong where he will be looking for a job, perhaps in journalism.
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BIO: Drew Calvert grew up in
EH: How did you end up in the June Seminar? Did anyone in particular help to get you there?
DC: I heard about the Seminar from Paula Closson Buck. I took one of her poetry classes in my final year at Bucknell, and near the end of the semester she encouraged me to apply. Paula had always been supportive of my work, and she was really enthusiastic about the kinds of students who arrived each June, so I knew it would be a great opportunity.
EH: Are you writing or working on anything presently?
DC: I keep rewriting the same long poem about my time in
EH: What does your particular writing process look like?
DC: Most of the time, my poems begin in response to something I’ve read or heard. Eventually, something of my own might arise, and I use that as a point of origin. I try to locate the moment in which I’ve genuinely surprised myself, and begin the poem there. Usually better things happen once I’m revising, but it seems to take quite a long time.
EH: What types of things often inspire your work?
DC: Memories usually inspire me – memories of places, or people, or moments from the past that seem unreal or out of place. Language inspires me, of course. Music inspires me, too, although I don’t know much about it technically. But I think people inspire me most of all, along with my own inability to thank them or share with them certain feelings I may have.
EH: Who are your main literary influences?
DC: Pablo Neruda has been a major influence on me – I still catch myself trying to imitate those especially wild metaphors. Tomas Tranströmer is another poet whose metaphors and attentiveness I admire (even though I can only read both of them in translation). And for a long time I tried to write spare poems like many of James Wright’s. More recently, though, Larry Levis has been quite an influence. I have no idea what he’s doing most of the time, or how I might imitate or respond to him – maybe that’s part of the appeal. So I guess he’s more of an inspiration.
EH: Just about six months have passed since you participated in the Seminar -- can you share any reflections you have about the experience?
DC: I feel lucky to have met everyone. I wrote a few poems I’ve kept, but otherwise I think I was more interested in learning from others – in terms of what they wanted from poetry, how they thought of themselves as writers, and what kept them excited. I think a lot of us had some of the same reservations about what exactly we were doing, but then every once in a while one of us would be able to articulate something we thought was lost or inexpressible, and we – or at least I – would be sold all over again.
EH: Thanks, Drew, for sharing both a glimpse of your story and the poems below that come out of work you did in the June Seminar.
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Freelance Metaphor
I am the charm that keeps the watchman
awake, the imperceptible smile of wind patterns
over sand. I am the folded
socks of an afterlife and the engineer of softness.
I am the touch apology wants to be. I am minor
Lightning, coos of thunder, each reassuring
Element of storm. I am never the laughter that flares
Up the stairwell in hotels where grieving men
Empty their pockets. I am the light that crouches
On the porch. I am the dancer's pause. I chaperone
For lovers in paintings. I am too young
For advice. I am a mattress for battered
Proverbs and swift as a blessing. I am the moment's
Blushed skin. I belong to the experiment of dawn.
I am the historian of gifts. I am the dragon
Asleep in the mist you always
Mistake for a coastline.
The prettier girls in high school always
Got tattoos and dyed their hair
The color of bourbon. At the mall
Mostly known for its Chinese dentists and Japanese
Comics, there's a parlor called
Johnny Two-Thumbs.
The day I was invited, as I stood watching
Vanessa's lower back
Bleed in Chinese, I wondered
About the difference between tattoos and novels,
How much ink a civilization needs
To ward off spells of aging,
How much ink a girl needs
To brand herself
For the sake of the world's distances.
Billboards loomed overhead
As we rode the escalator down
Carrying bags of gauze and medicinal cream.
The models wore jeans like a drug from the underworld,
bodies dipped into alpine stillness.
All I know about history is that my
name is more or less a joke. I've studied
hesitations; I've listened to poets who nickname centuries
And quote from the Book of Questions.
Now I'm in this coffee shop, and let's say I'm
Lowering of the flame, the bird who coasts
Between wire perches above low
Boils of mall traffic, an essay between
Earthquakes. Last week, at the gate in O'Hara,
I watched the newscasters speaking
My language stare into the dark
Eye of oblivion. All around me
Airport voices caught
Between clockwork and thunder.
And now, sitting across from me,
There's a girl with bleached bangs,
A paperback, and a serpent
Around her wrist. She's hiding
A history in her collarbone.
We are neighbors of fire: the photographer's
material, the secret to romance, shadows
warm against the cave, whatever it is that
lights the human eye.
*italicized line by Anne Carson in The Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, published by Alfred A. Knopf in
[interview by Emily Hurd; photo of Drew Calvert also by Emily Hurd]
posted by emelelia at
1/20/2007 10:33:00 AM
