Josh Massey : part five

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author? 

There’s a sort of meta-book I return to, filled with staring emptiness, a being that pins me in my sleep, a man who speaks in beautiful nonsense that illuminates parts of our experience rational language never can, the old lady who looks after the bar and who sits at the back of the bar on her couch reading Russian poetry, the crow in human voice, the Han Shan poets, the Language poets, the Romantic Poets, the Dub Poets, the Confessional Poets, the Flarf-bestrewn Conceptual Poets, the many contemporary poets spinning such a tapestry all things Poetry — the new and changing — who send their general messages into this hypothetical book I return to whose pages flip faster than eye can keep up with and which blurs into some single motion of authorship.

Josh Massey : part four

What are you working on?

I dealt in surrealism for a while recently and even more recently grunge aesthetics, where a messiness is embraced. Currently I feel locked out of nature, that I am banned from the five springs where I used to go. I hope that I can make good with nature. I feel like I am moving onto something new that I don’t know yet. It will be fun to attempt something wildly new, something uncustomary, unusual, impulsive. I’ve been reading poems for this local radio show, Kootenay Co-op radio, laying down some heavy poems for the community listeners. 

Josh Massey : part three

How did you first engage with poetry?

A Mother sits with her Son, on the couch, and she has the boy interpret with her help "The Sick Rose". The boy will often recall that poignant realization that the worms were there in the petals, and that there was something else, a deeper layer even to the worms in the words... into a vision...

And the boy listens to the poet singers of the 1960s and feels the feeling of writing in the first journals is the uplifting feeling of looking at all the lights underneath the quilt. That is someone, like me, first engaging with poetry.

Josh Massey : part two

How important is music to your poetry?

The brimming music falling from the sluicing poem burbling on the murmuring lips inscribed. 

Oh poetry! She hollered out while creating blue fireball in her arms, oh poetry they said as they sang into the glittering mic oh poetry as the frogs reintroduced to the urban pond oh poetry as they rub their genitals against the bed oh poetry as the fist breaks through the tv tube oh poetry oh poetry you are the fairest art-form of the bathroom stall.

So music does have a certain centrality, the rhythm, chime, dissonance of everyday or chamber sounds. The incredible practice and rehearsal of musicians I think can inspire us when it comes to preparing for readings.

Josh Massey : part one

Josh Massey is a poet and fiction writer living in Nelson, BC. He’s been publishing and performing for over 20 years, with work appearing in The Capilano Review, Rampike, SurVision, Grain, subTerrain, Event, Filling Station, The Minnesota Review, Thimbleberry, Prairie Fire, and other fine journals. His two published novels are We Will All Be Trees (Conundrum, 2009) and The Plotline Bomber of Innisfree (Book*Hug, 2015).

Photo credit: Bob Hall

How does a poem begin?

A poem begins in the sewer waters with shiny worms or near the brown banana flopped in the snowbank. It comes like a vapour spilling off a mountain stage, appears like the rainbow morsel on the wall, and is heralded by a piece of red thread drift-spiralling through corny living room light.

It begins as a desire to communicate with nobody but the Void Mirror Self.