Alan Corkish interviews William Taylor Jnr
Alan: Firstly; welcome to erbacce… secondly; I’ve read loads of your stuff online and feel I know you but I’m not sure what to call you? William? Bill? Junior? Mr Taylor???
Bill: Generally I go by Bill, though a fair amount of people that have met me through my writing call me William. And when I DJ I go by William as well, so either one is fine.
Alan: DJ? As in music? Good starting point; are poets partially frustrated song-writers? Or more specifically is there a rhythm to quality poetry that allows it to be sung?
Bill: Yeah, I spin records two or three times a month at a neighborhood bar. Mostly punk, post-punk and indie stuff. I have a great time doing it, and it’s a great excuse to add new items to my record collection. Music has always played a big part in my life and art, whether it be visual or literary.
I can’t speak for other poets, but I myself am indeed a bit of a frustrated songwriter. I think of some of my poems as songs, which is partially the inspiration behind the title of my new collection, Words for Songs Never Written. I don’t have the discipline or dexterity to play an instrument, and I’m not all that great at collaborating with others when it comes to creation, so for now my words remain poems, which is fine. Though these days poets are far below rock stars on the cool o’meter, but such is our fate.
Poetry and song lyrics are very different crafts in a number of ways. In poetry, the words have to stand on their own on the page, without music or inflection through singing to get across their meaning. Rhythm is quite an important part of my own poetry. It wouldn’t hold together well without it.
Alan: I guess I tend towards Ward Abel’s ‘poetry and music are one’, that’s how I read your poetry Bill, some of it is clearly singing its meaning. I’m thinking now of Tiny Moments of Useless Beauty which ends with; ‘…I don’t know what to do/ with the heavy sadness/ and the hungry void// I only know that/ sometimes it is nice/ to be here// and I imagine/ I will miss us// terribly/ when we are gone’… one of my favourites… and I find myself ‘singing’ it softly…
Bill: Thanks. It makes me happy when the rhythm, or music, of my work does what it is meant to do. It’s something I work hard at in my poetry and I will read a piece to myself out loud again and again until it sounds right. Until it “sings”, if you will. It’s often a very subtle thing, but very important to my writing. Thanks for noticing.
Alan: The poetry scene in my home-City of Liverpool is pretty lively but very mixed. In the past few days we have had ‘serious’ readings by highbrow poets at high-brow venues and numerous ‘open-mike’ sessions which are the platforms for some real-talent but which mainly feature trite, tripe-rhymers spouting various combinations of political bigotry. I’ve given up attending most open-mikes now; what’s the scene like your end?
Bill: I’ve always considered the open mic scene somewhat of a double-edged sword. If you’re a writer, a performer, or whatever, and don’t have a publisher or manager to set up readings or shows for you, you’re left with promoting yourself any way you can, and that generally involves the open mic. On the plus side, it gives you an audience, and the chance to make some people aware of you and your art. It lets you try out your work and see if it has the effect you hoped it would.
I’m not a “spoken word” performer, and for me, primarily the most important thing is for the poem to work on the page, and for it to be effective whether someone is reading it silently or out loud. That being said, I do enjoy reading my work to an audience and it can prove invaluable in finding out if your poem is doing what it was meant to do. It’s great when I read a poem and people laugh at the right places, or are quiet at the right places, or whatever. If you listen to the sounds an audience makes (a good audience, anyway,) as you read it can tell you a lot about the effectiveness of what you are reading. And ideally, an open mic will introduce you to other talented artists you would not have discovered otherwise.
On the downside of course, attending an open mic often means sitting through a lot of cringe inducing stuff. I mean, here in San Francisco I imagine we might have a better scene than a lot of places, as it’s a fairly big city and home to a lot of people drawn here by the literary history, but man, there’s a lot of stuff that’s hard to sit through. And saying that might sound self important or something, but there it is. I did a reading in Santa Cruz last week, and there was an open mic, and among others, there was an old cowboy with a guitar who sang a song he wrote about unicorns, and a large pumpkin-like woman reciting a nursery rhyme she made up about the moon being a pumpkin. Or something.
To sum it up, if you want to promote yourself and your work open mics can be an effective way to go about it. Though I do recommend hitting the ones at venues that serve alcohol, or at the very least sneaking your own in. It helps.
Alan: I agree with all that you say Bill, especially the advice about venues which don’t serve alcohol; always remember the hip flask. That brings me nicely to bars with jukeboxes and alcohol which seem to figure frequently in your work; you paint melancholy images, almost as though the places you inhabit, though warm and filled with the liquid drug of your choice, hold an underlying sadness at the core. You speak of ‘hiding from the world in quiet bars’ and ‘the only decision to be made// is between caffeine/ and alcohol’ and also; ‘I smile weakly and buy her a beer/ glad to have found/ a new place to hide.’ Is this you acknowledging life, just as it is, or is alcohol useful to your muse? Or is it neither? Is alcohol just another place to ‘hide’?
Bill: Bars tend to find their way into my writing because they’re very often where I end up when I need to get out of the house and get some writing done. Many of my ideas and drafts for poems are written at neighbourhood bars around San Francisco. I tend to gravitate towards bars rather than coffee houses and the like because I prefer the atmosphere. Most coffee houses and cafés tend to be full of students and business people with their cellphones and laptops drinking overpriced coffee drinks. There’s usually not too much going on to inspire the muse. I like neighbourhood bars on weekday afternoons because there is a sort of feeling of timelessness in such places that appeals to me. Time moves slow and people are content with their cigarettes and drink rather than being stressed out because they’re running late for somewhere they don’t want to be in the first place. I find it a good place to hide from the world for a while, and feel a kind of kinship with the others who are hiding as well. And generally there are better stories to be found in bars. And yes, there is a kind of ever present sadness at the core of it all, but perhaps a gentle and honest one.
Alcohol, is of course its own pace to hide, and a fairly big and complicated subject to touch upon, but what the hell. Much has been said and written on the subject of alcohol and artists, and there are many differing opinions on the matter. Generally, I find that artists tend to have a kind of over sensitivity to experience, if you will, which is at least partially what drives them to create. They tend to feel and think about the meaning of everyday and mundane events more than the average person. Creating, I believe helps them deal with this, and many turn to alcohol and other drugs as a means of temporary escape from the world and its stimuli. To escape for at least a little while every now and then is sometimes necessary to continue. Few people can live life “straight on”, without something to distract them from the fact of their eventual death and general lack of meaning in their existence. Most use god or some form of religion, and of course television and other forms of entertainment, and obviously drugs and alcohol. I don’t have much in the way of belief in God, and don’t much care for television so I tend to rely on art in its various forms and a drink now and again to help get me through the days.
Alan: Bars as places to stimulate the muse… I like that too ha ha ha, gives me an excuse maybe.
OK; I think this may be my last question and it’s about something that is absent from your poetry; politics. Many modern poets have a specific political stance which is echoed either deliberately or overtly in their work. Try as I might I don’t see politics in your work… I don’t mean Politics (capital ‘P’) I just mean a leaning to left or right… Are you politically neutral or just more interested in other things?
Bill: I suppose I tend to avoid overtly political poems because I’m not very good at writing them. They tend to come out heavy handed and obvious. I find it hard to write about politics and be poetic at the same time. Some people can pull it off. John Sweet writes very good poems that combine the personal and the political. I write a few here and there that I think are okay.
For the record, my political views end up pretty firmly in the leftist category. I’m steadfast in my opposition to the death penalty, and am in favor of strict gun control. I think both the war on drugs and the war in Iraq are horrible and costly mistakes on a grand scale.
I think George Bush is quite possibly the worst president ever in America’s History and has done great damage to our country in many ways. I get profoundly depressed when I think on the fact that we have somehow allowed such a man to be the leader of the free world. He has such a small mind, and lacks wisdom, compassion and intelligence, among many other traits that are necessary in those who would be true leaders of anything.
I vote, but am far from an activist. I don’t have much faith in our leaders, the people who vote for them, or the political process in general. It all fills me with a feeling of general despair and disgust. Our leaders do not have the best interests of the people at heart. They pretend to, but only to a point. If the American people ever really got angry and out of hand, I’m sure the government would put us in our place rather quickly, and we’d see situations similar to those currently in Burma and Pakistan. All in the name of our safety and freedom, of course.
I believe I touch on a lot of this in my poetry in roundabout ways. I write about the America I wake up to every morning and the people that live and suffer in it. I suppose that’s about as political as anything.
Alan: That’s as political an answer as I’ve ever heard Bill; thanks for being so open and frank. I enjoyed this interview but have to end here as there is so much of your work I want to include; the next 14 pages are dedicated to your original and very perceptive poetry... Oh and by the way; if you ever come to UK stop by and I’ll buy you a beer or six...
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