An Interview with Alan Catlin
I think like most serious poets, I have to write. It’s what you do. It’s your life. I find inspiration in books, movies, newspaper reports, from my job, getting to my job on a bus was great material, from crazy neighbors and neighborhoods I lived in. Just about anything is a potential subject.
An Interview with Alan Catlin
In conversation with Karunesh Kumar Agrawal, Managing Editor, Pegasus Literary, Alan Catlin tells us about his success as an international poet.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: Tell us about you and your background.
Alan Catlin: I grew up on Long Island just outside of New York City. I couldn't wait to leave but ended up in Utica, NY. After living in the shadows of the cultural center of everything, Utica was like walking into your own personal Twilight Zone as it was literally frozen in time around 1957 and had no intention of changing. Utica in the late 60's could be confused with Arctic waste only with a great deal of substandard housing, Elm Trees and record cold and snowfall all five winters I was there. Our first son was born there in 1970 then I moved to Albany, NY for grad school. Our second son was born a year later.
Albany was much less hostile environment (though still frozen and snowbound) though the campus was like a marble mausoleum that was Dantesque and downright dangerous in Winter. I disliked it though I loved the Irish bars in town. A friend of mine owned a restaurant near the campus and I got my first job in the bar business checking proof. Two years later I was running the place and an ill-begotten career began and continued for 34 years.
That said I received a good education from terrific teachers at both colleges.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: What inspires you to write poetry?
Alan Catlin: I think like most serious poets, I have to write. It’s what you do. It’s your life. I find inspiration in books, movies, newspaper reports, from my job, getting to my job on a bus was great material, from crazy neighbors and neighborhoods I lived in. Just about anything is a potential subject.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: When did you start writing poetry?
Alan Catlin: Officially, in high school though I fancied myself a prose writer first and poet second until I was about 30.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: What is the measure of success as a poet?
Alan Catlin: I like to think that one of my specialities is finding beauty in subjects/objects where there isn't any.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: Fiction or non-fiction? Which is easier?
Alan Catlin: Neither are easy. The two are inseparable as far as I am concerned. I would say non-fiction is more difficult though I am not sure there is anything that is truly non-fictional. Point of view is everything and once you create one, even as an honest broker (or involve another person or persons) you are choosing a way to see things that is biased and thereby subject to inaccuracies.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: Your poems are based on your personal experience or other things such as facts?
Alan Catlin: Both. Depends upon the subject. For many years I wrote nothing but poems based on actual experiences then for years I wrote about nothing but subjects like Art, Literature and Movies without any deliberate personal involvement at all.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: I see you have received Slipstream Chapbook Award for the chapbook, Blue Velvet in 2017. Please share your feelings on winning and few words about this award.
Alan Catlin: I was thrilled to win that award. Slipstream is one of the last truly independent magazines and press left. I must have entered the contest previously 25 plus times and while I had been close before, I had never won. Thank you again guys for choosing me.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: What is your greatest fear?
Alan Catlin: Falling.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: I liked your poem 1970. When it was written and for whom.
Alan Catlin: I have more than one poem with that title but I think you are referencing the one where the narrator, ostensibly my persona as a bartender, is talking to the young men he works with at the bar. Many of these guys were not even born in the 60's/70's and have this romantic idea that this was an enchanted time when it was quite the opposite. If I may be so bold, to me the 60's, sucked. I was there, I lived through them, and I was nearly terminally depressed through the last half of it (60's didn't end until roughly 1974 when the Vietnam War ended) I was draft eligible after graduation in 1970 and it is impossible for these kids, any kids born after this time to realize just how the draft shaped your life: your government could seize you, send you to boot camp and ship you off to a war you didn't believe in and get you killed in a matter of months. It happened to a friend of mine from freshman year. Consequently, if you were draft eligible, you couldn't get a job and the only way you could avoid being drafted was to remain in school which was easy enough to do when you were good at school the way I was. Having a family, no job prospects, and the draft hanging over you plus a predisposition to depression and a menial job in a profession where drinking to excess was normal, is not a recipe for positive thinking. The politics were truly awful and the cultural divisions were as pronounced then as they are now. The sports and the rock and roll were great. So the poem is all about remembering those things in a personal level and giving the kids a summation without telling them the whole truth as I lived it. The short story is easier on the audience than the long one.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: What inspired you to write the poem The Open Boat.
Alan Catlin: Stephen Crane's short story of the same name, his best. It's based on an actual event he witnessed as a reporter in a time where there is a big gap in what is known of his real life. He was a great war reporter also.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: What is your motivation for writing more?
Alan Catlin: It's what I do.
Karunesh Kumar Agarwal: Thank you very much.
Alan Catlin: You’re welcome and thank you for the opportunity to do this interview.
Alan Catlin has been publishing since the 70's. Among his more than 60 chapbooks and full-length books are: Effects of Sunlight on Fog (Bright Hill Press), Self-Portrait as the Artist Afraid of His Self-Portrait (March Street Press), Last Man Standing (Lummox Press) and Walking Among Tombstones in the Fog from Presa Press. His chapbook, Blue Velvet, won the 2017 Slipstream Chapbook Award.