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Interview with poet and writer Tara Lynn Hawk

Tara Lynn Hawk is a poet and writer whose work has appeared in Occulum, Spelk, Anti-Heroin Chic, Uut, Midnight Lane Gallery, Idle Ink, Spilling Cocoa, Social Justice Poetry, Poems & Poetry and more. Her work focuses on the human condition: the unspoken, the forgotten and the marginalization of the consumer culture. Born in northern California, she has traveled extensively and lived and worked in the UK and Europe.



You address many aspects of the human condition in your book The Dead. Which was the most challenging for you?

It is all easy, and all difficult for me. I continue to be alternately amazed and appalled with what I see and experience in my day to day life: isolation, loneliness, the willful ignorance, the pain, the lack of humility. I write free verse in a confessionalist manner and all my work has meaning, often deep and intense, for me. Tone, atmosphere, the desired level of intensity - I calculate and re-craft it till it just settles, till it feels right. I am not a shock poet, but if my words give a reader a bit of a “jab” to wake up to a particular issue or matter, well then, my work is done.

What is your creative process?

Pure manic joy alternating with sheer mayhem! Seriously I cannot articulate my process. I write because I have to. It is my primary artistic expression and I find it just comes when I need it to. I have periods where I write a considerable amount fast and furious. Then I may not put anything on a page for a week. I have learned to leave it alone and not overthink it, making a point of practicing patience and self-compassion and just letting it all be what it will be. Also, I endeavor to write with how the piece will “read” in mind. The cadence and the pacing are of utmost importance. Even though, to be honest, I do not have a great passion for reading my work and have done very little!

And the critics?

If you publish your work, any work, especially now with the net, you are going to have people who do not like your work. That is just what is. You cannot thrill everyone, and if we all liked the same, well, that would make for a pretty boring world. I have been so very fortunate to have been accepted for publication in OCCULUM, Midnight Lane Gallery, Uut, Idle Ink, Spelk, Anti-Heroin Chic, Social Justice Poetry, Wanton Fuckery, The Poet Community, Poems and Poetry, etc. Spilling Cocoa on Martin Amis was my first, publishing my poem “Interview” last year. I appreciate any and all feedback I get. There are many journal editors who go above and beyond to write down some feedback and get it to you. The journals Here Comes Everyone, Salome and Poethead have been especially generous and helpful with feedback.


Inspirations?

So many. I grew up in a creative family and was encouraged to read and read. To name a few: the beat poets, especially Lew Welch. Montaigne, Rumi, Baudelaire, Sexton, William Carlos Williams, Lucretius, Shakespeare, Elliot, Wolfe, Yeats, Heaney, Patti Smith, Blake, Panayotopoulos and Akhmatova. I am blessed to have the inspiration of so many amazing active poets. In particular Greta Bellamancina, Scarlet Sabet, Kevin Bateman and Rus Khumotoff.



What do you feel is the state of poetry today?

Poetry as a force and impetus for change has never been stronger. Social media has so much to do with this. Unfortunately, the state of our society, the planet, the religion of consumerism and the idea propagated in the media that money equals happiness and “success” in life are all fodder for discontent and activism in poetry. It is exciting to see so many young people embracing poetry as a means of uncensored, and unashamed, articulate self-expression. I am honored to be an active contributor to the current poetry scene.

Cassandra

Unmitigated darkness
Does not prevail
For very long
It being a mere apparition
A False fear
That the new light eventually
Shatters
Our lives
And we Merge and separate
With a hazy, almost mystic rhythm
A magick of no description describable
Each seeking
Something other
Than the other
The blood always wins
In the end
Especially
When the dark falls
Cassandra has left the building
Now you are on
Your own

Copyright © 2017 Tara Lynn Hawk
Originally published in Anti-Heroin Chic

Tara’s first chapbook of poetry, The Dead, is available through Smashwords.
Her next volume, Rhetorical Wanderlust, is publishing in November.

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