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Interview: Mike McMahon August 15, 2005
1. How long have you been a resident in Siskiyou County?
A little over three years.
What brought you here?
I have been in the area since 1993 and was coming up here on the weekends. When I first finished school I still wanted to be in Northern California but I didn't want to stay near Redding. This just seemed like a natural place to come.
2. Can you give a short explanation of your specialty or your artistic medium?
I write poetry.
3. How long have you been making art (professionally and unprofessionally)?
Since high school probably.
4. Is art your full time career?
No.
5. What else do you do as a profession?
I am a message therapist.
6. How have you learned your art? Have you had any formal art education? If so, where, when and for how long?
Lots of reading. I have always been a reader. Through school and college I would enjoy writing of all kinds. Not fiction so much but papers and personal essays, that kind of thing. I think if you get really into reading, at some point you start to pay close attention to how the writers write and if you write you pay more attention to that. I think a lot of it was just through osmosis. I didn't take any writing classes in college but I was a literature major.
7. Have you had any special mentors that have influenced you and your style?
Gary Snyder's work certainly has influence both my thinking in general and a style of nature poetry that incorporates living and being outside. Jerry Martien calls it the 'bearshit' school of poetry. Clem Starck who has come here has impacted me somewhat. His style is very precise; he is a carpenter and his poetry is the same way. I don't adhere to it completely but it works for him. However, there is a way to make every line and very word in every line matter. He pays such close attention. What I learned from working with him, which was perfect, was just how to work with getting a poem down and having something to work with but knowing that there was also a bunch of clumsy places in it. I learned about going back in and doing some of that work.
8. Can you talk a little about your experience as an artist in Siskiyou County? (In other words, what is unique about being an artist in this area?) (Pros and Cons) (economic, cultural, physical/geographic)
For me as a writer and being oriented around the wilderness for most of my adult life, this area is great. Opportunities to be out in it and there is a lot of subject matter in that way. It is not just about wilderness but it’s about how a community integrates itself within that larger framework of the natural environment where that community finds itself. I think this is an area where there is a lot of interesting opportunities and questions in that area. That as a subject matter for poetry is very interesting to me.
9. Do you feel like living in Siskiyou County has influenced your art? Do you feel your poetry has changed from living here.
I have always written about where I am. In that sense it's not any different. The wilderness is more magnificent here but writing about something that magnificent is kind of boring, it's just too broad. On another level, writing about an experience at this specific creek or that specific creek, whether it's somewhere else or here, it's not that different really. I guess the difference is that I am more consistently out in nature here, more saturated.
10. Do you feel like art in Siskiyou County has any prominent trends or patterns? If so, how do you see your own art in relation to these?
There are definitely trends I get to observe through the poetry. There is the whole spiritual, new age trend and you see a lot of visual art around town that pertains to that. There is also a fair amount of people that write about nature similar to the ways that I have been talking about. There is the typical, very personal poetry and then there is some younger people who have been coming in. They are great and they bring a lot of great energy and different perspective. They have their own style which is hard to classify. It's not abstract in the way that most people experience poetry and think, 'I don't get it." It's more engaging, with imagery that is not set in any context. But the imagery is incredibly precise and very tangible. I think it is quite good actually.
11. If you had to describe your style in a few words how would you do this? First 5 words that come to mind?…
I try to be concrete,direct and specific. I have friends who tell me that the poems tend to be like a journey, like a movement from beginning to end. I haven't seen that as much as other people have. I like making juxtapositions and using imagery to open up that space where there are two things happening at the same time. Saying that the mountain is beautiful is not enough. I can never separate the fact that this is incredibly beautiful and I feel so nourished by it with the larger reality of what's happening to the world. I don't want to separate it. We are all part and parcel of it. I think addressing that in some way is a lot of what my style is about.
12. What is it about making art and the creative process that you find most interesting or are most passionate about?
The mystery about sitting down to write and not knowing what you're going to say even if you think you do. That is the best part. It's also the most intimidating part.
13. Do you teach art in anyway or are you interested in being a teacher?
I have taught some to kids. I think with the Writers Series that is maybe the best form of teaching for me. It just creates space for people to find their inspiration no matter where they are at in their writing.
Can you talk a little more about the Writers Series?
It is kind of two fold. It started with just wanting to bring poets to town to give readings because as a poet I would learn from and be inspired by hearing other poet's read. Generally we have about four readings a year and about one or two poets will read each time. Every poet that I bring are poets who have real lives, they have jobs. They are not the academic based poet. They write about their life and their work and their engagement with wherever they live. For me, stylistically that is poetry at its best. That's how poetry originally was. It was a people's art form where everybody would be around the campfire and the poet would recite the poem which was a story about something that they all understood. It would be told in such a way that everybody got it and everybody was enriched by it. So that is my agenda, to bring that sort of poet and I think that sort of poet really speaks to our community.
14. Do you have one particularly interesting story about your adventures as an artist? The most unusual work you've done, the hardest work, the most interesting commission, celebrities you’ve worked with, your biggest success story or biggest failure, or your earliest memory of making art.
The Writers Series has been very gratifying. To see how many people showed up and how much people enjoyed it was an incredible experience for me. This is something that I love and out of that love I put something together and had no idea what would happen. People were very touched and enriched by it. For me, there isn't anything better than that. That stands for what art is all about, that level of connection that people experience and inspiration of being with other people. It all creates a whole vibe that I think is essential.