LatinosUSA

*Do you think poetry is back in fashion?

A poem is a morsel with the power to transform lives. Given that we live in the age of tweets and clicks, grabs and bites, ticks and tocks, the poem is well placed to take the hand of a reader in a fleeting moment and guide them into a oasis of entertainment or insight. If it’s a fashion contest for the attention of a teenager, a poem has a better chance of success today than Roberto Bolano’s 2666.     

*Is your poetry created daily, or do you wait to be inspired to write it?

I show up for work 24/7. If I’m not shaping something new, I’m improving a poem in the pipeline. My Apple is more about recording snippets of poetic material than about phone calls. Writing for me is a creed and way of life.

*What is your next publishing project? Could you tell us how it came about?

My Year of Writing Dangerously is coming to fruition now. The work had its inception in a diary project that began in 2022 as an exercise in discipline and an exploration of what it means – really means – to be one human being of many on a fraught, overheating globe beset by conflict and conundrum.

By December, 2022, I had before me a distilled fifty-thousand-words, a curio of sorts, a compilation of feelings and responses filtered through the mindset of one poet steeped in many roles: diarist, lover, writer’s writer, rogue adventurer and Houdini figure.

Working fulltime on drafts of the project, I realised there was poetry at play in many of the entries and it was emerging organically out of the material, so I decided to tap this vein for riches.

One concern I had with the collection that emerged was its time sensitivity. This concern, however, has melted away with the realisation that one year in the human scheme stands in for many in the poetic sense, given that history tends to repeat – every year features human behaviour at its best and worst.  

Long story short, I have before me a collection of poetry set for publication: a work that creatively captures 2022 in a dance between self and the world at large, heroes and villains writ large. Sad to say, the people of two countries play major roles in the narrative. Those two countries are Ukraine and Russia.

*What city do you live in, and can you describe your favorite bar or café?

I live in Washington DC. My favourite cafés are located in art galleries. Nothing like a macchiato to recharge the neurons before plunging back into art. Dolcezza at the Hirschhorn has gelato to go with your macchiato.  

«New Norms» by James Gering

Nature losing its cool:
oceans swelling
waves slam-dunking
fire blackening
disease mutating
species vanishing.

Leaders flaccid
against the perils
yet canny in bluster
and the uses of weaponry.

People buoyant
bamboozled
bombed and blasted,
hope stillborn.

Now burying
their dead.

Houdini huddles
with writers
who spur him on:
Bolano and Duras,
Enright, Laux,
Kaminsky, Saunders.

Also Gillian Mears—
the novelist who rode
bareback through
her truncated
but impactful life.

There’s worse
things to be
Houdini concludes
than an escapist
more untethered

each month,
a top free of pull,
spinning of
its own accord.

Biography

James Gering is a poet, diarist and short story writer based in Washington DC. His first collection of poetry, Staying Whole While Falling Apart, was released by Interactive Publications in July 2021. His second collection, Tickets to the Fall of Icarus, came out with the same publisher in December 2023. Publication credits in the United States include Rattle, San Pedro River Review, and Star 82 Review. James welcomes visitors at jamesgering.com.

Interview

An Interview with James Gering

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