My interview with NY literary guru
For my first post of the New Year, I’m going to be a little self-indulgent and bring you this interview done with me a couple of years ago by Parrot Literary Corner, based in New York. I think I’ve earned it, having published 69 articles on Substack during the past two years, covering current events, exposing the Covid fraud, and offering relief for the oppressed spirit through articles like “Beatles to the Rescue,” “Morrison’s Book for the Hours of Prayer,” plus essays on literature and poetry. I cast my net wide! As George Bernard Shaw said, “Without art the crudeness of reality would be unbearable.” My model for Sean’s Newsletter was the heyday of print journalism, with pithy, in-depth articles in print-heavy journals like Harper’s and The Atlantic, now sadly succumbed to the lure of big cash to spout the official government narrative (psyop). If I’d been smart, I’d have switched to documentary filmmaking or video-based journalism, but I’m too much of a print traditionalist for that. For me the printed word is the greatest invention of humanity ever.
I have to hand it to Dustin Pickering, Mutiu Olawuyi and the team at Parrot Literary Corner for producing interviews of substance with poets and writers. I’m sure they don’t have a lot of resources to create these programs so they deserve our support. One of the things I appreciate about their work is that they bring an international focus to poetry, with author interviews from Africa, India, the US and Canada.
In this interview, like me, interviewer Dustin casts a wide net over my writing career, asking me questions about my 2020 poetry collection Dead Crow & the Spirit Engine, my 2014 history Laying the Children’s Ghosts to Rest, and my 2018 novel Mountain Blues. Of course since then, I’ve published three more books: Diary of a Pandemic Year (poetry 2021), Words from the Dead: Relevant Readings in the Covid Age (essays 2022), and Blue Communion (poetry, 2023). I have two more books completed and ready for publication and one more collection of essays in process.
In my interview with Dustin, we cover a wide-ranging territory that includes themes of Jungian archetypes, the role of propaganda in power politics, the essential role of performance in poetry, how my journalism career has influenced my writing, the importance of music in inspiring my own writing, and environmental issues that have informed my poetry, although my views of climate change have changed somewhat in just two years. Hey—we’re living in a time of revelations—so many secrets and lies coming to light that have been hidden for years.
Ultimately, as Shaw said, our greatest source of healing comes from art, which is another form of spirituality in my view.
Enjoy! For more interviews about my work, visit my author website’s media page: https://www.seanarthurjoyce.ca/media
Link to the Parrot Literary Corner interview here: