“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

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going along a street in Berlin, you know. Because it isn't the subject matter that matters, it's the perspective. And I would say, I'm working on those now, I'm writing, for example Gaia, you know Gaia? Yeah. And he's talking about Gaia, and he's using that term that of course got James Lovelock into such trouble, you wouldn't say Warden's an eco-poet or Warden's part of some particular group, it's the poet's house, since the middle of the eighteen century poets have engaged with different ways about the natural world and with learning from the natural world principles. And I would include Pope in that, for example. Pope, who's understand was that we measure our art, milieu, by human standards, but there's something else. And we think that well, the Romantics rebelled and turned against those predecessors, of Pope's world, and that's not true at all. They modified the vision in a certain way. And we are modifying the vision of romantics and of romantic writers. But we're, I don't think it matters. I read some dire poems about roses, and trees, and bees, and birds. Well, bees is a good one because I've been working with Amy Shelton on some things to do with bees, and on research and writing on bees, for years now, before there was any talk of colony collapse disorder. And I wrote about bees for nature magazine, about the way that poets and other artists are responding to the dangers of colony collapse, but that's, that shouldn't be the only reason that people are writing about bees, and of course that wasn't the reason why poets and musicians throughout the centuries have responded to bees for example, it's because you learn something from bees. That's the interesting thing of course, that we learn from bees what it suits us to learn. So bees are little hives of industry, and all this sort of stuff. And that leads us to then think that, oh, well we can just rob them of their honey day and night and feed them corn syrup and they'll be fine, as little machines, as Newtonian clockwork machines. Whereas of course that's not how it works. You know, again it's the perspective of the matter not the subject matter. OV: yeah, and socially. In Russia, Pisarev wrote his entire critique of Tsarist society based on his allusion to bees because he couldn't write about actual society, to project social stratifications and hierarchy onto bees, to slip under the censor - JB: yeah! And the lucky thing as well is that censors, or the people who chose to be 15
censors, are usually dumb you know, don't get that. Oh, it's about bees it can't be that interesting. OV: we skirted around it a little bit, but it may be a bit of a dumb question itself, but about politics. Can poetry be political, should poets be politically active? JB: it's not so much a question of can poetry be political, or should it, because everything we do is political. Any public act, and a lot of private ones too, to write a poem may not be political but to publish it is a political act. And it's saying, it's a statement of alignment with one or another view of the world. You know, if I write a poem that says you know, from an eighteenth century poet who writes a poem about how wonderful the king is, and it says that the king is at the top of the tree and everyone else should be below, and supports divine rule on earth, all that stuff, then that's a political poem, sure. But, anything which supports a hierarchical vision of human society, or anything that aligns the natural world with something like that, is also a political statement, so if I write a poem now that says that there is some natural hierarchical structure, in things, I'll be making a certain kind of political statement. If I make a statement that makes it clear you feel that the only, the only way in which people should be rewarded is based on merit and their contribution to society, in all kinds of ways, that's also a political poem. Usually a poem isn't overtly political, because it makes it all black and white. It's usually an implication about something political. So any poem I write is political. So I write a love poem that the conventional idea of love doesn't work – not for me, anyway -, that romance is another trick by which capitalist society – you know I wouldn't say that overtly, that capitalists are making me fall in love -, but, if I'm critical of the idea of romantic love in a poem that's a political act. And that's political, and its directly anti-capitalist. The conventional image we have of romance in institutions like marriage, etc, serve the capitalist model. So if you say something against that – even tiny, tiny things -, it's not a huge gesture, it doesn't change the world. Poems aren't supposed to change the world. But they can drip-feed. Yeah, all poems are political statements, whether intended or not, there still something political. OV: so when you talk about capitalist institution of marriage, and you mentioned Marx earlier, do you affiliate more with – I don't mean in a historical materialist, Marxian way 16
Page 2 and 3: A LITERARY MAGAZINE OF POETRY, INTE
Page 4 and 5: CONTENTS Editorial - p. 4 HARKview
Page 6 and 7: “when I say that poetry makes not
Page 8 and 9: language and kind of professional a
Page 10 and 11: OV: and in actually writing your po
Page 12 and 13: they came from, patent shreds of Ba
Page 14 and 15: do you see the role of those, of th
Page 18 and 19: - do you find that's where your pol
Page 20 and 21: If you can get someone like that to
Page 22 and 23: different from that solitary experi
Page 24 and 25: go, and the guy will always say, ra
Page 26 and 27: and something like a fox scouting f
Page 28 and 29: And I don't care what anybody says,
Page 30 and 31: things, pursuing sex, pleasure all
Page 32 and 33: sudoku, can be done in seconds”,
Page 34 and 35: alloon, and it -it's a boy actually
Page 36 and 37: pool, as “a moon affected by the
Page 38 and 39: All Kinds of Old Feeling John Burns
Page 40 and 41: Exile Nels Hanson My farming life i
Page 42 and 43: Island Ryan Van Winkle when the wat
Page 44 and 45: Catcher Hugh McMillan (In his log,
Page 46 and 47: Inherent Vice Constantin Preda When
Page 48 and 49: Mother Roux Katarina Boudreaux Five
Page 50 and 51: Encore Bacchus descends from the st
Page 52 and 53: Minnows’ Ladder James Reidel Minn
Page 54 and 55: Not that I saw Him arrive or leave,
Page 56 and 57: factory, lights a cigarette. “I'm
Page 58 and 59: at 1406 today. Northwest gale 8 to
Page 60 and 61: The Organ Recital Simon Ward They d
Page 62 and 63: church's décor. Between the organ
Page 64 and 65: “Michelle,” he whispers, ”did
Page 66 and 67:
Contributors KATARINA BOUDREAUX is
Page 68:
RYAN VAN WINKLE is a poet, live art
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“The Death Issue” December 2015 1

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