The Madhouse is in the boxing ring this week, as we at Raw Dog Screaming Press are happy to announce that we've signed author/poet, Matt Betts, for his poetry collection, Underwater Fistfight. This collection is set to debut in early 2016 and is a mixture of SF, Fantasy, and Horror. It will tug on the [bizarre] heart strings of monster fans and siren hunters alike, so if you're up for a battle of oceanic wit served with some tidal waves of dark humor, then this is a collection not to be missed!
Want more? Here's a interview that I did with Matt to give you a sneak peak into this process, his influences, and how Underwater Fistfight came to be.
1.
What is the title
of your collection and how did you come up with the name?
The new collection is called Underwater Fistfight. I’d really loved that title for a long time
for some reason, but could never write quite the right piece for it. I’d always
intended it to become a metaphor for the struggle to create poetry. A poem to illustrate
the difficulty in creating viable art, but I couldn’t make it work? Imagine! Early
on, I tried to conjure the images of the undersea battle in the James Bond film
Thunderball, and the strange battle between the undead and a shark in the movie
Zombi 2.There were spear guns, bubbles, fish. Kelp? There may have been kelp.
Just couldn’t make it as fun as I saw it all in my mind. So it ended up as a
pseudo-educational introduction to the collection as well as the title.
2.
What was the
inspiration for your collection overall?
I’m a pop culture junkie and I’ve always loved science
fiction, fantasy and horror. Underwater
Fistfight is kind of my thank you to all those amazing directors, actors,
writers and creators that made such amazing films as the original Godzilla, The
Blob, Them! and others. Growing up, it was a labor to get to watch them. Way
back then, with no cable or internet TV, we had to rely on whatever the TV
antenna would pick up. There were maybe three channels we could get normally,
but if we adjusted the antenna just right, we could pick up channels out of
Detroit, Ft. Wayne, Dayton and Columbus. Of course, they could still turn
blurry and fade out, turning snowy at the worst possible times. Certain
stations had a monster feature on weekends and that was the only way for me to
see so many of those old movies. I have fond memories of that struggle to find
the odd and the unusual, and they show up in my work.
3.
How long have you
been writing poetry? What is your background with it in terms of education,
experience, etc.
I’ve been writing poetry for about 12 years or so. I
took a few classes way back in college, but I didn’t really receive the
encouragement I needed at that point. I was trying to branch out from what we
were learning in class and the professor was not really interested in the forms
or subject matter that made me interested in poetry, namely horror and sci-fi.
Believe me, I know at that point I wasn’t writing any classics, but I enjoyed
stretching beyond what was handed to us in class. When we did critique
sessions, I remember getting a good reaction from the other students to what I
was doing, but I just couldn’t get the professor to give me any sort of
direction.
I gave up writing altogether for a number of years,
both fiction and poetry. It wasn’t until I moved to Columbus and joined a
writing group that I really got serious about it again. I read a lot more of
the classics, picked up some ideas from conferences I attended and I went to
readings. At one point, I was co-hosting a monthly poetry reading at one of the
libraries.
It wasn’t until I attended a conference here in
Columbus that I learned that speculative poetry was a viable form of the art.
It was a revelation to me that I could write poetry and flash that dealt with
monsters, robots and other themes I enjoy. I also love to work humor into my
poetry and fiction. I find it’s an effective way of getting a message across in
a sneaky way. I really hadn’t felt that comfortable trying to use humor in
poetry before that. Really that conference opened up a whole new world for me.
4.
Where have you
previously published your poetry?
My work has appeared in Star*Line, Kaleidotrope,
Illumen, Dreams & Nightmares, The Rhysling Anthology, Ghostlight, The Book
of Tentacles, Red River Review and a few others. I self-published my first
collection of poetry, See No Evil, Say No
Evil a few years back and it was picked up by Alliteration Ink.
5.
Who are your
influences?
You know, there are a lot of poets that I really
enjoy. Some I like to read, some I really prefer to listen to when they perform
their own work. But I think one of my favorites is former Poet Laureate Billy
Collins. I think what I love about him is that he makes his work seem
incredibly easy. When I first started writing fiction back in college, I loved
Stephen King because his stories seemed so simple, so easy to write. Same goes
for Collins. Their work seems so homespun and light, that I assumed I’d be able
to do it immediately. Not true (in the case of King or Collins) unfortunately They
both have a careful measure of what they’re doing and how each word or image
will impact their reader. It’s hard work to get everyone to follow you where
you want them to go. It takes work to seem that effortless.
I was introduced to Russell Edson’s work at Bowling
Green’s Winter Wheat conference years ago, and I really fell in love with his style
and weirdness.
Other influences? Well, I mentioned that my eyes were
opened to new possibilities in poetry at a conference. I’d be remiss if I
didn’t mention Mike Arnzen and Timons Esaias were the ones that gave me that
shove. They both write amazing poetry, and Arnzen is the poster child for
gleeful creepiness. Bruce Boston accepted my poem, Godzilla’s Better Half, for a
Star*Lines prose poetry issue, and it later went on to be nominated for a
Rhysling Award. He’s had an amazing career with a number of my favorite works.
6.
What is your
writing process like?
Chaos. Chaos is a process, right? I suppose it is the
way I do it. I take ideas and collect them in notebooks, on my cellphone, on
scraps of paper, etc. and I let them kind of ferment there. They take a while
to form, but one day that idea starts pushing its way out. I suddenly have to
sit down and write it immediately. Many times, that piece comes out really
close to how the final draft is going to look. In some ways, it’s a lot like my
fiction process. I’ll write a paragraph, word for word, in my head. I’ll do it
over and over so that I have each line perfectly (more or less) ready, so that
when I put it into a Word document or on paper, it’s pretty much been worked
and reworked. It’s a great way for me to reclaim commute or drive times. I
practice some line or stanza in my head until I think it’s ready. When I
finally have time to write it down, it’s well on its way to being complete.
7.
What are you most
excited about with this collection in particular, i.e. what was shocking or
surprising to you while you were writing it?
I really enjoyed putting Underwater Fistfight
together. The pieces were written over a number of years and yet I was
surprised by how some of the same themes and ideas kept cropping up in my work.
And I’m always surprised by the odd places I find inspiration, you know? There
are pieces that came from watching a Kids in the Hall sketch, from the unnamed
townsfolk in Jaws, I wrote “Notes on Ordering a Deathbot by Mail” based on a
G.I. Joe action figure, and a number of pieces were inspired by 80s cartoons.
It’s not like I set out to write pieces about them, they just happen. And I
think my best work comes naturally from the pop culture I’ve absorbed over the
years.
Author Bio: Ohio native Matt Betts grew up on a steady diet of
giant monsters, comic books, robots and horror novels. Matt’s speculative
poetry and short fiction appear in numerous anthologies and journals. He is the
author of the poetry collection See No Evil, Say No Evil, the steampunk novel Odd
Men Out and the urban fantasy Indelible Ink. Matt lives in Columbus, Ohio with
his wife and two sons.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattbettswrites
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