Odds and Ends Essays, Blogs, Internet Discussions, Interviews and Miscellany

Paul Brookes: What is your work ethic?
Jeffrey Side: I don’t really have one. I just write whenever the mood takes me.
Paul Brookes: How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?
Jeffrey Side: There have been many poetry influences on me since I started writing poetry. Primary influences are:
Bob Dylan, T. S. Eliot and William Blake. Secondary influences are: Leonard Cohen, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac.
It’s difficult for me to specify how these writers influenced me; apart from saying that without their influence my
poetry would have been different-if that makes any sense.
Paul Brookes: Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?
Jeffrey Side: I admire Bob Dylan the most, if only because out of all the celebrated poets around today, none have
enriched my imagination and emotions as much as he has. I know that sounds like an unschooled response but I have
to be honest.
Paul Brookes: Why do you write?
Jeffrey Side: As in a previous answer, to hopefully connect with people, so they can hopefully find personal
significance and relatability to experiences in their lives through my poems, as I do through Bob Dylan’s songs.
Paul Brookes: What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”
Jeffrey Side: I’d tell them to read some books on how to be a writer, and to go to a creative writing workshop. It is
probably easier to be a writer now than at any other time in history, what with the enormous information resource
that is the Internet, and a myriad of online writers’ forums, blogs and publishing outlets etc.
Paul Brookes: Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.
Jeffrey Side: I’m currently working on a collaborative project with Jake Berry, that involves writing aphorisms with
the use of a dice. Apart from that, I’m not writing. I tend to be occupied most times with publishing poetry ebooks for
other poets, and adding new content to The Argotist Online.
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