Dr. Edmund Skellings, 2003 Judge for the Nature of Nature Environmental Poetry Contest
Jendi Reiter conducted this exclusive email interview with Dr. Edmund Skellings, the poet laureate of the state of Florida. Dr. Skellings will judge this year's Environmental Poetry Prize sponsored by the Laura (Riding) Jackson Foundation. He has published numerous collections of poetry including Personal Effects, Living Proof, and Heart Attacks. Science and technology feature prominently in his work, not only in subject matter but also in the variety of media he uses to record and enhance his poems. [Note: This contest has been suspended for 2005-06 while the Foundation repairs the hurricane damage to the historic Jackson home.]
Q: Your own work ranges from formal poetry to jazz-like slang. Do you feel that the quarrel between the formalists and the vers-librists is basically over? Do you gravitate more toward form or free verse lately, and why? What advice would you give to beginning poets about the benefits and pitfalls of trying different styles?
A: There are few poets who hold the Ph.D., and I might add there are few who know the difference between free verse and traditional forms. Other than the sonnet, I use few myself. What I do do is use a strong iambic beat (in and out) and many times a trochaic beat which has caused many people to think I write in sprung rhythm. I simply enjoy the counterpoint when I'm composing and so, much of it remains. I'm a two-beat guy and avoid long words derived from the Latin. Poets should read widely, or else, how does one know what has been written? Again, most poets don't read widely and concentrate only upon what they have to say. Young poets should avoid first thoughts on any subject. Just about everybody in the field got to those thoughts in another century. It is doubtful, for example, that anyone will improve upon the thoughts of Hamlet, "alas poor Yorick" or "to be or not to be." We could criticize Shakespeare for using too many repetitions of "be."
Q: What are your duties as the poet laureate of Florida? Whose interests are you trying to serve—poets, students, the general public—and do they ever conflict? What artistic or educational goals would you like to accomplish in this position?
A: There are no duties for the poet laureate of Florida. The laureate is selected by an anonymous panel from outside the state and recommended to the governor for appointment based upon earlier works. Personally, I am trying to serve my own interests which are the interests of the field and genre in which I write. I hope to be a good example, so I do not speed or spit on the sidewalk. I also try to take poetry one or two inches as an art form.
Q: The relationship between artistic freedom and government support of the arts is a perennial topic of controversy. Most recently, we've seen New Jersey poet laureate Amiri Baraka get into hot water because of his 9-11 poem, which at one point suggested that the Israelis knew about the World Trade Center attacks in advance. The governor tried to oust Baraka and wasn't able to. In your view, what is a poet laureate's responsibility to the community that selects and pays him, the people that he's supposed to represent? Is it right for the community to try to hold him accountable if his art expresses values that they oppose?
A: The poet has no responsibilities to the public or his readership. If he is a good poet doing new things, he will probably disturb the comfortable as he comforts the disturbed. Anyway, that's what Emerson thought in "The American Scholar". A good selection process will get what it deserves.
Q: You've spent many years exploring the interplay between poetry and other media, including visual images and computer technology. Please describe some of the multimedia projects you've developed.
A: Poetry is not another medium. Poetry can be created for any media. Poetry can even erupt in a novel, i.e., Faulkner or Hemingway. I have worked in many media. I have used all of the technologies to distribute my work. I think a live poetry reading or a recorded playback of a recording are equally ways to distribute a poem. For years, poetry has been illustrated with pictures and drawings and no one should be surprised if the computer is used to illustrate a poem's images or when it is used to record vocals. The computer is simply being used as a superior recording machine by and for artists. We should not be surprised, but we probably are. Poets will attack other poets for almost any reason.
Q: Your career as a "multimedia poet" is a sharp contrast to that of most other poets, who rarely venture beyond the medium of the written or spoken word. I get the impression that many writers who aspire to "high art" would mistrust the incorporation of images and computer technology into the poem—perhaps feeling that it's a capitulation to a glitzy nonverbal medium that would overwhelm the sacred word, or a substitute for imagination (like TV compared to reading). Whereas you've found a way to make the interaction between word and image fruitful rather than antagonistic. Do you feel that today's poets are passing up the chance to expand the boundaries of the form? How would you like to see contemporary poetry "shaken up"? How did you come to break the technology taboo?
A: Most poets are afraid to venture from the back room of the house into the parlor. On top of that, they are also afraid of themselves. Many do not fly. There is high level of cowardice in the academic world and it tries to risk little. Of course, there are exceptions and that usually indicates a long-term success. I have been attacked (really!) for composing on an electric typewriter, for reciting my poetry aloud to groups, for being the first poet to bring out a record-book which had LP's in the cover, for using computers to type poems upon. I feel sorry for all those poets because the typewriter is now obsolete and no more are being made. I like technology and even go from poetry reading to poetry reading, flying my own airplane. New generations are television generations and at least I will have left them some poetry to watch and listen to.
Q: Does the multimedia poem contain barriers to access that the written word does not? I'm thinking of software and hardware obsolescence, intellectual property rights, unequal access to computers and the Internet. How do you get around those problems?
A: I don't even consider the problems of technologically distributed material. That is for publishers, and publishers are interested in making money.
Q: Another gap that you have tried to bridge is that between art and science. In the university, my personal impression is that the humanities crowd respects the sciences more than the reverse. Hence course names like "Physics for Poets", meaning physics for dilettantes. Any ideas about how to get the two cultures to communicate better?
A: My collected poems has a long essay by Donald L. Kaufmann on the subject. Let me clear up a common misunderstanding. Art is the fruit of the humanities. Technology is the fruit of the sciences. Humanistic study and scientific study are both disciplines of dedicated inquiry. The objects they produce, statues and computers, are objects we use in the world, but they are results of study.
Q: Please describe the history of, and the artistic philosophy behind, the Laura (Riding) Jackson contest.
A: I suppose it is a fashion to have contests in the name of dead poets to remember them and stimulate reading of them.
Q: Almost all poetry contests are written-word only. The exceptions, like poetry slam competitions, are still entirely verbal. Would you like to see multimedia poetry competitions? How would you compare such works? It's hard enough to compare written poems in extremely different styles; you become uncomfortably aware of your own stylistic biases. I imagine that judging a multimedia contest would be like comparing a flute concerto to a layer cake.
A: If a poet thinks up a poem and writes it down with the technology of a pencil or an ink pen or records it on videotape for a listenership of millions or carves it into a rock with a chisel or has a monk color it to illuminate it or recites it an Elizabethan theater-in-the-round, it's still the same old poem. It has not been transmogrified. One must remember that the greatest multimedia poetry ever presented to the public was by a script writer, name of William Shakespeare. He owned part of the Globe Theater and the Globe burned down four times one summer from the gunfire of the cannons they used behind the scenes to illustrate his history poems. So much for all the argument from the ignorant. They are bound to get everything mixed up in order to beg a quarrel.
Q: Any thoughts on the future of poetry publishing in the Internet age? My experience as an online publisher is that poetry contests and journals don't take advantage of the Web nearly enough. Looking at cost and ease of distribution, I can't see why anyone would prefer receiving snail-mail submissions over online ones, or publish a literary journal on paper instead of online. What's the psychological barrier here?
A: Let us hope the Internet will provide us a final medium of all the others to provide a great papyrus of the future where our children can play and invent.
Q: Any other advice for contest entrants?
A: Send in poems that you have written for other reasons than a contest, perhaps a poem on a death in the family or a moment of deep love.
Winter 2002-2003
