Meia Geddes Interviews me for Poetose Journal

     In their Creators on Creating Series, my friend Meia Geddes, who I ran into at AWP in Baltimore, a great place to run into people who live 30 minutes from you, talked about interviewing me and it's an honor to be interviewed for her journal. When I get questions e-mailed to me, I like to answer off the top of my head....read the question and then, basically free write. 

GO TO THEIR SITE AND READ IT! 

As we know, sometimes sites go down, so I'm pasting the interview below, here in my News, so it'll never disappear. 

Also, the side scroll below will be of great help. 

Creators on Creating: Timothy Gager   Poetry feels like one of the few places where people are authentic these days.  Do you feel that way? I do. Besides, words, meaning, craft is important and authentic as well. Sometimes  it can be faux-authentic depending on how it plays on the page.  As poets we are good actors, the challenge is the projection of the work representing  thoughts and feelings. I try not to dwell on the mundane, unless I’m being playful  with the day-to-day.  ​ You write: “Can you hear me at this distance / saying, I don’t need people /  I can stay in my room. / But I don’t have to be that person anymore.”  So much of writing is solitary and language can keep oneself company so well.   How has the process of letting the world in more unfolded for you? I think that it is more of a metaphor for isolation, and the wondering if you are important  or just a tree in the forest, so to speak. My isolation now is more to re-energize than  anything else, not because I’m depressed. I appreciate my alone time, certainly stay  busy, but this alone time is also for my spirituality and to stay “in tune.” I so appreciate the vulnerability in your poems. How do you decide how vulnerable  to be? Or is anything a go? No decision to go or not go into vulnerability, but emotional vulnerable is one thing for my  writing that is an open book. I may not wish to share innermost secrets but rather innermost  thoughts. We are all vulnerable, whether we like it or not, but how that plays out, and how  much you want to show is the key. As they say, “you MUST go there.” I think I must be  vulnerable to be honest and take that leap because otherwise the extreme opposite can just  be objects sitting on a shelf, which of course there is an art in that too. How do you decide whether something belongs in a prose piece or poem? Most likely, I decide before I even start what genre I’d like to produce, but maybe after the  first two lines or sentences I can go the other way immediately if I see something in there.  If it’s not that immediate then it’s going to be where it is at that moment, poetry or fiction,  or recycle bin. You write in the Introduction to Best of Timothy Gager about having an ego for many  years and then learning some humility. Could you talk a bit about this phenomenon  of writers and ego? Well, we are all pretty much self-centered sons of bitches, aren’t we? It’s just a matter of  reeling it in. Self-centeredness, mind you, is just thinking about yourself, which our mind  tends to do whether we like it to or not. I learned humility in my recovery, and I feel the  best when after fifteen years, when someone else in the rooms tells me, “I didn’t know  you wrote.” There is a time and place for everything to be done or said. Relatedly, and conversely, do you think art reduces ego? That is one of the reasons  I think that art is of tangible value to the world, because the act of creating seems  to reduce individual ego. Today less so than ever. Social media is just ego, and one must promote, to some extent there.  Who is the person always having a good time or succeeding is all you see there.  We, as humans, seek and yearn for endorphins much more than acts of philanthropy. You’ve been sober for 15 years. How have your writing and life changed in this time? I mean I hope I would have naturally gotten better in fifteen years organically, I know my  focus is better, and how I move through narratives or how themes change and stay aligned. How has having children changed you and your writing? Other than having time to write when they were younger?  It gives me more to write about, but also, they are now grown adults, so I feel that it is  their story to write. Are you always looking at the world through a poet’s lens? Or do you have multiple  brain states? I know you work full time as a social worker which requires a different  set of skills. I have lenses to look through that’s for sure, and also wear many hats. Social work,  podcasting, host of a literary series, performing solo as singer-songwriting artist,  full-time meetings of recovery…so for writing. It’s like I’m driving and a red car rolls  by, and I think, “Look, there’s a red car.” For me, something strikes me and I can say,  “Look, there’s a poem, or a flash, or a novel.” I don’t go looking for it, but it will always find me. Could you talk about the Dire Literary Series and your more recent adventure  into podcasting? Eighteen years live, and now six as a virtual series, which someone got me to start up  again in 2020. I try to be of service to other writers, but I get so much out of it. It’s amazing  talking to writers, sort of geek-tacular in many ways. Now the podcast I started with a college friend because we were talking about dating and disasters which happen, so I do that too,  every week. Disasters in dating are hilarious, and as my therapist says, “now you have an   outlet for your type of sense of humor.” Writer Jackie Dawes is now my co-host and the  podcast is called Dean and Dawes: Dating, Dread and Disasters. It might be self-explanatory, but could you elaborate on what you mean by “live 24/7,”  which you write in your book’s Introduction and when signing books? ​ One Day At a Time. 24 hours a day for 7 days a week, then, for me life is better.  I try to do that. Live for life to be better. It already is about a million times over.

Meia Geddes is a writer, artist, and librarian. She has written a collection of lyrical missives addressed to the world, LOVE LETTERS TO THE WORLD, and a novella, THE LITTLE QUEEN. Meia was born in Hefei, China, raised in Sacramento, California, and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. She holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University and master's degree from Simmons University's School of Library and Information Science, and has been the recipient of a Fulbright grant to South Africa.