“This is just brilliant. The whole interview is amazing … I’m … I really appreciate some good advice from a fellow writer.” Mark Howell, lead writer, Solares Hill
Harry Calhoun’s image could appear alongside the dictionary definition for “official.” Living proof that not all writers have to be famous or stick to one type of writing to be successful, Calhoun has found frequent editorial favors as a poet since 1980 and was a freelance writer of articles and literary essays widely published in the 1980s and 90. In addition, he has edited a poetry magazine and a trade magazine for the housing industry, and has published poetry and fiction pieces in magazines such as Thunder Sandwich and The Islander. He has been an award-winning marketing writer for multinational companies like GE and IBM for the past twenty years.
Trina Allen is a freelance writer and editor who has read and enjoyed much of Calhoun’s work.
Trina Allen: Your poetry has given you the highest recognition in publications. What do you attribute your success to?
Harry Calhoun: Absolutely no doubt, three words, three words, little attention span! So I like my job now. Marketing writing is a lot like poetry. It is often very short. You are trying to express something in the fewest words and say it with the kind of twist that sticks to the person who is reading it. It’s certainly not poetry, but it’s the same mindset, just trying to say things quickly and clearly. People think that poetry is a flowery language or something that goes on and on, but in general it is just the opposite, it is succinct and fast … trying to express it in as few words as possible.
Allen: Is there a poem that you consider your most successful piece?
Calhoun: Yes, there is a poem, ironically, very short, called “Leaving”. I always see it as a success because I feel like it captured the feeling and the moment concisely and in compact language.
Allen: I understand that a critic once surprised you with his version of your poem, “The Day After Christmas.” Can you tell me about that?
Calhoun: Oh yeah. It was a really fun time. I had the poem published in a small magazine, Taurus, where I was published quite frequently when it started. The poem was called “The Day After Christmas,” and I wrote it to compare the feeling of being disappointed after Christmas with the loss of a love relationship: We had something great, like Christmas, and now you’re gone. and everything becomes worldly again. The reviewer said he liked the poem, which was great, but said it was a scathing accusation of Christmas season commercialism. Apparently she didn’t have the idea that she was trying to link him in a love relationship. And it surprised me, but it also showed me that poems and fiction are open to interpretation. Just because you wrote it doesn’t mean you can’t interpret it the way you want. His interpretation is as valid as mine.
Allen: He has more than 500 magazine publications, including Writer & # 39; s Digest, Private Clubs, Gargoyle, Mississippi Arts & Letters and The National Enquirer, and has won awards for its promotional materials, including an Addy award for best direct mail. What are your feelings about your success?
Calhoun: It’s like looking at your resume and saying, “Gee, I did all that.” You realize that at some point you did, but it almost doesn’t seem real. I feel a little remorseful for not having done more, particularly in fiction and poetry, but I also feel that it was a good and fulfilling career and that I am basically at peace with it.
Allen: Would you expand your greatest success?
Calhoun: Yes, I’ve actually rebounded enough to have had some successes in different areas. I can’t really point to any great success. The things that immediately came to mind were in my most fertile poetic period, which was in the late 1980s when I had some books of my poetry published by small publishers. That was really gratifying for me. I also had many of my poems published in magazines at that time and even after that, and I organized a poetry and music reading series with my friend Mark Howell in Key West. That was a really cool time in my life … but so is it now, being a marketing writer, who is obviously totally out of the realm of publishing. I still find a lot of happiness doing that because it’s nice to be at this stage of my career where I feel like I’m pretty good at what I do.
Allen: What advice would you give to novice writers about a writing career?
Calhoun: The first prerequisite is to have talent. You have no control over that. But beyond that, there are several things under your control. Here is my list of the top five writers, in reverse order in the style of David Letterman:
CALHOUN’S FIVE SIMPLE RULES FOR WRITING SUCCESS
5. Read voraciously, especially in the genres that interest you most. One thing that surprised me as a poetry editor is that people who didn’t read poetry sent me poems. It is like trying to walk before the legs develop. Reading gives styles to copy, styles that will help to form your own personal style.
4. Remember that everything is writing. Whether you’re writing a novel or an email or a poem, it’s all writing and everything helps. Also, if you like me and many writers I’ve met, the act of writing itself feels good, no matter what type of writing it is. Writing this answer to your interview question feels good, for example!
3. Work, work, work. Don’t let anything get in the way of your writing. Make it your job, even if you’re already working another job to support yourself.
2. Have goals, but don’t be afraid to change them. Not everyone’s career is like mine, and some people start out wanting to write fiction and end up doing exactly that. But if you find other genres you’re good at, don’t be afraid to change your goals. The corollary to this is: Don’t have preconceived notions about where your writing will take you. I started out trying to write fiction, turned to poetry and then magazine publishing, and ended up as a marketing writer. My goal was always to be a successful writer, but the way success took changed several times during my career.
1. And my number one rule for writers: want it more than you want anything else in the world. Passion is everything. I would recommend Zen and the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury for advice on how to write for love instead of money. I honestly believe that any success I’ve had is because I wanted to earn the title of writer, I wanted to earn a living, more than anything. She loved him more passionately than anyone else she knew.
You will notice that I omitted two of the usual tips for writers: keep a journal and set a daily time or page limit for your writing. That’s because neither of them was particularly effective for me. I think if I had stuck to fiction, I would find a more useful journal, but as a nonfiction writer and poet, it got in the way of my “real” writing … it was more efficient to do my job than to do it. bother with a journal.
When it comes to setting a goal to write for an hour a day or a page a day, I find that having a task is more motivating than an artificially set limit. Don’t have independent assignments? Make up! In my heyday of poetry, I often had the task of completing x number of poems in order to send them to a certain magazine. There is no daily time limit, just the “homework” to get the presentation ready in a week or two.
Allen: Would you like to share any additional ideas on the subject of writing?
Calhoun: Writing is writing … (It’s a tactical thing … it requires passion. Some lucky people start writing fiction and can do it; for them, the linear path is the best. Personally, my career has been organic, what which is a good way of saying I’ve been all over the place. I certainly didn’t start to think I’d be writing a marketing copy and no one could have told me I’d enjoy it as much as I did. I got my first marketing position because I’d written so many freelance articles. and turned them into marketing. I wanted to find a job in a more metropolitan area and the owner of a small advertising agency in Pittsburgh was very impressed with some of my freelance writing and hired me as a marketing writer. I’ve always been making sense of it.
I’ve had to change a lot of gear. I have had to say, what are my goals now? Do I want to earn some money? How can I earn some money? Do I want to be published? How can I do that? As emotional as writing is, it is also tactical. I found opportunities to combine one type of writing into another or the next step in my career.
I can’t subscribe to the idea that you’re exhausted if you don’t write fiction or poetry … Writing is just writing. If you make it and you’re good enough to get paid, then there’s some satisfaction with that, even if it’s a nine to five job like my marketing copywriting. He’s less bohemian than I thought it would have been, having long lived in a classic third-floor “writer’s floor” penthouse. But whatever I do, if I’m not passionate, I don’t think I want to.
Allen: Some of your activities have included poetry readings, book reviews, newspaper and magazine articles, and marketing poetry, fiction, writing. Which one gave you the most satisfaction? The least?
Calhoun: I can see myself as an officer or say I’ve had an incredibly varied life, however you see it. I have obtained satisfaction from the different phases of my writing. I am considered one of the best writers for the main technology company where I work now. I’m excited to see my work on the Internet for audiences around the world. That is exciting and I really enjoy it. I enjoyed seeing my poetry published and I loved doing the poetry readings, even dabbling in performance poetry. That was fun.
There have been many high points. I still remember posting my first article and of course it was a great thrill. It was in the days when you still wrote on a typewriter and cut and pasted your stuff until you were happy with it and then wrote it on a good piece of paper to publish it. Good memories.
Allen: Seeming to see your writing in print was one of the most exciting things for you as a writer.
Calhoun: Definitely, those early posts were just great. The first thing I published was a poem, followed by book reviews and my first article. It was nice to see my name out there.
Allen: What was the least satisfying or frustrating for you early in your writing career?
Calhoun: I’m glad I made the decision to move away from fiction. I started in the mid 70s writing it. I read tons of fiction, of course, but fiction was difficult for me and continues to be difficult for me to this day. I guess my biggest regret is that I never had a great work of fiction published. I had some short stories published, but it is not my strong point. That is what I regret most and least like about my career. I have to give myself credit for making the decision to drop this and do other things.
Allen: Was there a writer or poet you admired and hoped to emulate in your early writing career?
Calhoun: Actually, there were several. When he asked the question, I immediately thought of three or four writers: Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, and WS Merwin, an American poet he really admired. I was definitely influenced in my poetry by both of them. I also thought of Ernest Hemingway because I really like the conciseness and sharpness of his writing; I definitely tried to emulate it for a while.
And finally I realized that there was a writer who influenced my style more than anyone else: Harlan Ellison, better known as a science fiction and fantasy writer. In addition to writing entertaining stories, he would make these introductions really interesting to his stories, and they were always written conversationally, this really appealed to them. Many times today, even as a marketing writer, people say my style is light-hearted and conversational, and I think I owe a lot to Harlan Ellison because he was deliberately trying to copy it. I liked the way it sounded and what it was doing.
And Charles Bukowski, the German poet and fiction writer who adopted Los Angeles as his home, definitely influenced me. I started reading it in the 70s and quickly became a fan of its gritty, meaningless style, humor, and accessibility. In the 1980s, I received his contact information from a fellow fan and began a correspondence with him that lasted from 1983 until just before his death in 1994. I published his work in Pig in a Poke, a small poetry magazine that I edited for most of the 80s and even pulled out a little booklet from his work. It was an inspiration because he was a well-known writer who still kept in touch with his small press roots.
Allen: You started a critically acclaimed magazine in the 1980s called Pig in a Poke, which you published from 1982 to 1989. What gave you the idea for the magazine and why did you stop production?
Calhoun: It is interesting. I still see online references sometimes to Pig in a Poke and other magazines from that time. Some of them, like Thunder Sandwich and Black Bear Review, are still available right now. What gave me the idea? At that time he had only been published as a poet for a couple of years. I was working as a book critic, and when I say work, I mean that I get paid in copies of the books I reviewed. He was not making money. I was working on another job and trying to find my success as a writer.
There were many small press poetry magazines at the time. I really liked the way their editors did business. They were generally very quick to respond. They gave advice. They were more conversational in their letters. It was a kind approach and I really liked it because, as all writers know, such rejections can be impersonal and quite difficult to handle. I thought I’d be good at editing a magazine and I also thought I’d expose myself to a lot more poetry, which he did, most of them really bad poetry. I definitely met many poets on the scene.
I published Pig in a Poke out of my own pocket for several years, which is why I basically stopped production because it was too draining for my finances. But also his time had passed with me. I started working in marketing and getting jobs in the real world. I didn’t have as much time as before. It makes me think that I could possibly revive it on the Internet because that is more an immediate means than printing it myself on paper.
Over the course of the years 1982-1988, I did a series of Pig in a Poke poetry readings in Hemingway & # 39; s in Pittsburgh every year. They were successful and a lot of fun.
Allen: Do you think such magazines and textbooks are a good way to publish the work today?
Calhoun: If your goal is to make money, they are a terrible idea. But my goal was not to make money. It was to get my poetry show, for people to read my stuff and respond and tell me how to improve and connect in some emotional way. In that sense, small magazines are good because it is a little easier to publish in them than conventional magazines. However, some of them are surprisingly high quality. Generally, what you get from them are editors who respond quickly and respond with much more empathy; in fact, they will give you advice or tell you what they like or don’t like about your poetry. And that’s really valuable, especially for a young writer or someone who hasn’t done it in so long. Also, because they are quick to respond and cheap to produce, there was the thrill of seeing their work fairly quickly. It is not as immediate as the Internet is today, but you could get an accepted poem and within a few months you could see it in print. And you have to share your thoughts with others. It was fun.
Excerpt from the interview in Thunder Sandwich # 25, January 1, 2005.
To read the entire interview, visit http://www.thundersandwich.com/ts25/index.html.
Leaving
By Harry Calhoun
It is like closing a door.
I want it to be smooth, silent,
Japanese. Reopen it and apologize
to the wood if it crashes.
But the humidity increases
beyond what it should be
and the screech and push
to close it sounds
as if begging
be let in again.
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