5 Questions with an Indie Author
We’d like to extend a shoutout and huge congratulations to coalitionist Andrew Buckner (CW5) on the release of his latest collections, Home to Me and A Red, Human Feeling!
HOME TO ME is a deeply introspective collection of memories, identity, and culture. The work is a conceptual chapbook. It tells many autobiographical stories from Buckner’s life through the lens of “the uncertain director, The Mind” crafting a screenplay for his upcoming film about author Buckner. Using this idea, Buckner titles each poem in the book as a SCENE, which gives the impression to the audience that they are reading the script The Mind penned for the previously mentioned motion picture about Buckner’s existence. Imaginative, honest, intimate, and filled with Buckner’s incredible storytelling, this is a wonderfully unfiltered lens into the psyche of the author.
A RED, HUMAN FEELING is a collection of twenty-five deeply introspective poems. Honest, inventive, warm-hearted, emotional, and occasionally light but always eye-opening, the full-length collection of verse incorporates a variety of poetry styles such as free verse, pantoum, narrative, and haiku to create a fully realized portrait of Buckner’s life and inner workings.
‘Home to Me’ is now available on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/Home-Me-Memory-Culture-Identity-ebook/dp/B0CJVNLHXQ
‘A Red, Human Feeling’ is now available on Amazon!
https://www.amazon.com/RED-HUMAN-FEELING-POEMS-ebook/dp/B0CLS1N4XB
One of your latest collections, Home to Me (2023), is a conceptual chapbook, what do you mean by that?
Thank you for the opportunity to discuss my work!
I use the term “conceptual chapbook” to describe Home to Me, which is available with my other recent volume of verse, A Red, Human Feeling (2023), as a Kindle eBook at Amazon.com, because the undertaking is propelled by its central idea. It is one which imagines its lead character, The Mind, who is frequently described throughout the exercise as “the uncertain director”, creating a script titled Recollection. It is a feature-length screenplay he is set to turn into a movie. Said script is based on autobiographical incidents that flesh out my own life story. Hence, the title. Coincidentally, it is one that also mirrors the personal experiences of The Mind.
Besides this narrative design, there is also another attribute to the tale told in Home to Me which makes it a “conceptual chapbook”. This is that every one of the twenty-eight poems in the volume, all of which are penned in the nonet style, are written like scenes in the imagined script for Recollection. They are even titled in such a manner. For example, the first poem is called “Fade-in/Scene 1” and the following poem is named “Scene 2”. It does this with each progressive piece.
Were you working on the two collections, Home to Me and A Red, Human Feeling, at the same time? What distinguishes them from one another and do they share elements at all, thematic or otherwise?
Yes, Home to Me and A Red, Human Feeling were written at the same time, but they were put together in different ways.
A Red, Human Feeling was put together in a more conventional way. This is with already written poems being placed together in a way where they seem to extend the thoughts of the prior poem and/or play off each other in one manner or another.
The poems in Home to Me were written like chapters in a book. This is with the first poem in the volume being the first poem I actually penned for that collection and with each corresponding poem written immediately afterward turning up in the placement of the book exactly in the order they were written. This was done to make sure everything flows as smoothly as a good story should. Given the concept of the piece, I thought this was the most authentic way to tackle that particular work.
As for the shared elements, Home to Me and A Red, Human Feeling are both deeply introspective offerings. So, there are a lot of poems in both of these books which discuss related subjects. For instance, there are a lot of poems in both volumes that discuss my childhood, fatherhood, and changes I’ve noted both within and in the world around me with the inevitable passage of time.
What were your greatest writing challenges as you assembled these two collections?
The greatest challenges I faced while writing both books were probably challenges all writers face when crafting a project. For example, trying to remember ideas, lines, and/or potential titles for the pieces I was penning at the time for the volumes when there wasn’t an immediate way to jot them down.
With A Red, Human Feeling, I struggled a bit with the placement of certain poems when trying to figure out which verses would play off one another in the best possible way.
How does your background in filmmaking influence your work as a poet?
My background in filmmaking influences my work as a poet because it has made me an even more detailed, visual writer. This I can also attribute, relatedly, to my experience writing scripts. My filmmaking background has also made me focus on being more efficient in conveying the ideas or telling the tales in each poem I write.
Furthermore, my films are generally of an avant-garde variety. This factor has given me more confidence to experiment with my poetry.
I also might never have been able to convincingly pull off the concept in Home to Me if it wasn’t for my experience as a filmmaker. This is especially true when considering how well it gets inside the mind of The Mind.
What’s inspiring you lately? A book, film, music, or other media?
I wholeheartedly agree with the saying “Art inspires art.” Therefore, I am almost always watching a movie, reading a book, or listening to music.
Lately, I’ve been re-watching a lot of motion pictures from directors that I admire on the cinema streaming platform MUBI.
Of these pictures I’ve recently revisited, Bela Tarr’s near seven-and-a-half-hour masterpiece, Satantango (1994), which deserves its acclaim as one of the greatest films ever made, is at the top of my list of current artistic inspirations. Its patient, novel-like approach to the material, bold artistry, stunning black-and-white photography, and always timely commentary on the human condition make it an essential film for artists and cinephiles alike.
Correspondingly, Lars von Trier’s brilliant contemplation of religion and its effects on the religious, Breaking the Waves (1996), continues to be a creative muse, especially upon rewatching it, for its boldness, themes, character focus, and its ever-timely message.
As far as books go, there are three of my favorite books from last year which continue to inspire my art many months after I had the pleasure of reading them. They are The Curse of the Marquis de Sade: A Notorious Scoundrel, A Mythical Manuscript, and the Biggest Scandal in Literary History by Joel Warner, The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin, and 50 Movies Made: Lessons Learned on a Filmmaker’s Journey by Jared Cohn.
All of these volumes offer tremendous insight into the formation of art. This is especially true with Rubin and Cohn’s offerings, which have this subject as the focal point.
The Curse of the Marquis de Sade certainly has occasions where it does this as well. Regardless, what I admire about Warner’s book is the insight it gives into one of the most rebellious writers of all time, and a personal favorite author of mine, the Marquis de Sade. This is while providing a history of the handwritten manuscript of de Sade’s most controversial work, The 120 Days of Sodom (1785), that is so immensely fascinating to me as a writer, a lover of words, and as someone well aware of their infinite power and worth that the pages in Warner’s effort couldn’t turn fast enough.
Musically, the songs of 2Pac, even after listening to them for nearly three decades, continue to inspire my poetry as potently as ever with their straightforward honesty and social awareness.
Also, before we go, I would just like to thank you one more time for the opportunity to discuss my work! I appreciate it!
Thanks so much for being a part of coalitionworks Andrew, and again: congratulations on your latest release!
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