Tell us about yourself and what inspired you to start writing.
I always had fun in the writing classes in school. I’m sure my writing was all derivative and not very good, but I enjoyed the process. At college, I studied French Lit and the Dada folk blew me away, especially Tzara. This placed literature squarely within the realm of art and art practice. I’ve never looked at poetry the same way since. You can have serious fun with it. This seemed an invite to get really in to it. So I did.
Describe your writing process? Is there anything unique about it?
I’m a project writer. Each project has it’s own parameters. This project might only be written on the manual Hermes Baby Featherweight typewriter sculptor Matt Lusk gave me, this one with a Sharpie in a sketchbook bought from a shop across the street from the Art Museum, etc. . . . Often the materials used determine the scope of the project. It’s good to have constraints. It helps with the planning.
Have you published any books or do you have a desire to do so?
I’ve got three chaps and a full-length: Pete Hoffman Days (Pinball), BeiHai (Nanjing Poetry), Salt & Iron (In Parentheses), and Maze Poems (Arteidolia).
Pete Hoffman Days uses appropriation all over the place in the Modernist way without mimicking their style. It uses source material as foundational bricks to be worked with and around. If a reader knows “it’s something of a war” is a Ty Cobb quote, good for them. If they don’t, hopefully they can appreciate the poem equally well without that knowledge.
BeiHai’s first draft was actually written over the course of a few days while sitting on a bench at a public beach used by locals in Beihai, Guangxi province in China. I wrote it in a couple of bluebooks that universities used to use for essay exams. I had a Bible with me for some reason (not sure why) and a book of terrible criticism of TS Eliot (also not sure why). Both of these make their presence known in the text.
Salt & Iron was written as a project. I sent a few poems to Phillipe Martin Chatelain to consider and he asked me if I had more. When I told him about the project, he asked if I’d consider a staggered release of the whole project with recordings: a serial chapbook. I was all in. I recorded everything during covid times under less than optimal conditions. The recordings aren’t great, and we could easily redo them now, but I like them as a record of what creatives were doing to overcome the circumstances at the time.
Maze Poems came much later. I’d been playing with the maze as a form in letters to friends before this. One day I bought two big blue notebooks from across the Art Museum and decided I would explore the maze form. I dedicated one of the sketchbooks to mazes: poems, essays, whatever. One page, one poem, one attempt. It became a regular practice. My apartment was overcrowded and dinky for the purpose. This sketchbook became pivotal to my creative output. Over the course of a couple of years I completed the sketchbook. This book is a selection of the best ones.
Do you have any favorite poets or authors?
I dig Carl Sandburg. Of course, I like a lot of other poets.
Do you have a favorite book of poetry or poems?
I re-read John Berryman’s Dream Songs fairly often, but I’m not sure why.
I read a lot of work in translation. The poetry world is bigger than the US/UK, and a lot of it is interesting.
What are you reading now?
I’m re-reading Beckett’s Molloy & Andres Cerpa’s Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (Alice James, 2019）。
What do you like to do when you’re not writing? Full-time job, pets, hobbies?
When I can, I like to go to a well-staged Beijing opera. You really can’t get the same quality anywhere else.
Are you working on a current project?
I have notebooks full of project ideas.
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