Black Fag: the Shane Allison Interview

With his simultaneously shocking, intimate, and unabashedly funny voice, poet Shane Allison happens to speak from the perspective of a black gay Southern man, but could be speaking to the taboo in all of us. Read the 2GQ interview (originally appeared in Issue #3 of 2 Gyrlz Quarterly).

BLACK FAG:
Shane Allison's Big, Big Love
by Tiffany Lee Brown & Nora McCrea

With his simultaneously shocking, intimate, and unabashedly funny voice, Shane Allison happens to speak from the perspective of a black gay Southern man, but could be speaking to the taboo in all of us. "Not to say he doesn't love big, he seems to relish everything in his life, all presented to us without a hint of guilt," comments one reviewer in Broken Pencil.

An MFA graduate of the New School in New York, Allison is a Pushcart nominee and has published in the Mississippi Review, New Delta Review, Oyster Boy Review, Chiron Review, Coal City Review, and online in 3 A.M., Plum Ruby Review, Tattoo Highway, and ThievesJargon, among others. His latest chapbook, Black Fag, was published by Portland's own Future Tense Books. He recently conversed with 2GQ editor Tiffany Lee Brown via email.

2GQ: How did you get into poetry?

S.A.: I wrote my first poem at 16 in an English class. Before that, I didn’t know I had a poetic bone in my body. My English teacher dug my poem, and it was all downhill after that. Recording sappy love poems in notebooks in class when I should have been doing math. Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, and Angelou were big influences on me. Then Ginsberg and gay contemporaries came much later.

2GQ: An 18-year-old would-be poet approaches you in a café. “Sir,” she says, “how can I become a poet like you?” What do you tell her?

S.A.: I would tell her she should keep writing to find her own voice, make her own niche. I would never want anyone to write like me. I would tell anyone to embrace their own individuality. Popular culture continues to play an important role in me as a writer. Embracing culture is important. Be yourself, and don’t try to do what someone else is doing. Or you can take what someone else is doing and turn the shit on its ear by taking it to a higher level. You make it your own that way.

2GQ: How important are identity politics to you and your art? You seem to both embrace them and take the piss out of 'em, calling your book Black Fag and that sort of thing.

S.A.: I know there are those who get tired of the gay themes in my work. But it doesn’t bother me. When I hear that, it gives me fuel to go and write something that’s just crazy and off the wall. If they say it’s too long, I make it longer, if it’s too erotic, I make it even more erotic. I don’t do it because of criticism. That’s just how my head works. I’m not going to bullshit anyone. I like writing about sex. Whether they want to admit it or not, or whatever ha ngups people have about sex, they can’t help but be drawn to it because of the subject matter.

I celebrate who I am in my work. I got a sick sense of humor. I don’t set out to shock or piss people off. Some just don’t dig my kind of honesty. It’s all about fucking labelling… we need them to identify and judge. People need to call me a shock poet or a porn poet in order to get where I’m coming from. Once they know that, they either keep their distance because they want no part of it, or it’s, "Now that’s my kind of motherfucker." You know what I’m saying?

It’s easy for me to tell [people] who don’t like my work not to read it, but that’s not enough. The fact that it exists pisses them off to no end. They don’t want it out there; they don’t want it to exist. This is the case with most artists. No one would have a problem if I was writing about trees and clouds.

2GQ: I'm curious. Who actually says these things to you?

S.A.: There are some who don't dig my work, but sex has always been a taboo issue. People don't like the idea that artists make this sort of thing public. I'm sure as hell not the only one who's ruffled feathers. I won't be the last I'm sure.

2GQ: A lot of poetry, including mine, has trees and clouds and other such official poetry material, alongside the things people don't want to accept as the stuff of poetry. The minute you say "fuck" or "cock" or even just speak of sex, blood, or sensual imagery, you lose the attention of a bunch of people, you know? I think it gives people a major brainfart when they have to see their precious poetic expectations colliding with the fucks and cocks that are just plain part of reality, culture, and language.

S.A.: Exactly. They don't want that disrupted. Instead we get lied to in order to protect us from the harsh shit that is really going on out here. But sex is like a car accident. Terrible to watch, but you're going to be drawn to it regardless.

I don't have anything against those who write poems about [trees and clouds]. It's just that... poems about nature, or family, or whatever, are more acceptable to people. It doesn't harm or provoke or cause dis-ease. It's about not being able to face our own self-insecurities, not feeling comfortable in our own skin. We are such a repressed society.

2GQ: Poetry is only read by a tiny slice of humanity. Why do you suppose that is?

S.A.: Because fiction is more acceptable to the public than poetry. They think it's all ryhme and iambic pentimeter. Poetry has never been, or ever will be, just one thing. It's far too vast. Just the fact that we all have different ideas of what poetry is proves that. Some argue that slam and performance poetry, for example, isn't poetry due to some narrow idea of what poetry has always been in their minds. But performance poetry, for instance, is just taking it to the next level.

Poetry is seen as being complex, where you think you have to read between the lines. Fiction is more accessible, therefore acceptable.

2GQ: Should poetry care that it's unpopular?

S.A.: I think it's always been popular, but I guess you could call it a different popularity. Poetry will never die as long as we are here to breathe life into it.

2GQ: If you could send out any call to action, what would you have people do?

S.A.: Bum-rush the White House.