Do you think it's getting harder or easier to publish a book of poems, stories or a novel these days?

I think it’s harder to get a print book published in this country right now than it was when I started in the independent press world back in 1976. There are ostensibly more presses, and certainly more writers, and the technology is in place so that everybody can get a book out, and yet the corporate publishing world has zero interest in poetry, only a passing interest in the short story, and their only interest in the novel is in terms of selling fodder to the movie studios.

You are one of my favorite contemporary poets. I like to think you write for the people due to that great human and domestic element in your poems. Can you speak a little about those elements and 'pop culture poetry?'

I’m flattered. Thanks. A poet of the people? I dunno. I know that my recent one two punch of baby related poems and Bush bashing poems have been crowd pleasers. When I perform I believe that’s a good thing. I’ve never been a difficult or obscure performer. I’ve always played to the audience. But at the same time I’m aware that I’m trying to master what amounts to an archaic art form with a dwindling audience. At least in this country. Poets have a lot in common with classical musicians—we both practice dying art forms. Pop culture is what the public knows best. I didn’t set out to be a pop culture poet in the way that others have mined the TV trough, though I am also acutely aware of what’s going on out there and have always tried to bounce ideas off that highly impermeable wall. How successful I am I’m never sure.

What do you think are the pros and cons of writing workshops? Do you think they help or hinder?

This is a hoary old battleground for academics. I teach because I believe in trying to help poets and writers achieve self-reliance. I’m basically putting myself out of a job. I want to teach them about the marketplace, how to submit, publish and promote their work. How to gnaw on the bones they throw us. I believe you can workshop something to death. I believe that there are great teachers, good ones, and terrible ones. I’m sure you could poll a smattering of my students from the past 19 years and discover that there are some who think each of those things about me.

What influences make Richard Peabody put pen to paper?

An early delusional infatuation with the writerly aspect of the films Charlie Bubbles and Paper Lion. Discovering Aldous Huxley, Spaghetti westerns, and French Cinema while in high school. The fact that I can’t play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. Always being an outsider. That I’m shy. That I’m a late bloomer. That I want to play my stereo so loud you have to listen to what I’m listening to. The quest for groupies. In lieu of that, the rapturous acceptance of a bare smidgen of fleeting attention. And the desire, to quote an 80’s tune, for “Everything I touch, everything I see, fame, fortune, immortality.”

What kind of writing process works for you?

Due to my little ones I’ve focused all remaining energy on editing projects. I need chunks of time to write prose and have none. Poetry is more available to me right now and that’s what I’ve been writing when I get a minute. I have to square (rearrange papers, straighten books, vacuum, do the dishes) and then I have to put some music on to distract my critical brain, and then I just have to move my hands. But getting to that point where you’re sitting still and moving your hands is near impossible these days. I’m nodding into the laptop right now.

Is it fair to ask what genre of writing you prefer the most and do either of the genres tend to mix into what you are writing at that time?

I irritated a college jazz instructor because I liked old timey jazz and Bitches Brew. He could not comprehend how anybody could like both. It’s like cake and mustard he said. Well, I put mustard on my veggie dog and then I eat cake afterwards for dessert. So his point was what exactly? We all like what we like. We all have favorites that other people think suck. I manage to write poetry and fiction. I find I write poetry in the spring and fall, and prose in the summer and winter. I always have. Took me a long time to figure this out. Why? It might simply be because I’m outside more in spring and fall (my fave months in DC) and write for shorter amounts of time.

What would you like people to know about Richard Peabody?

I'm the only Democrat in my family tree, that I'm a vegetarian, that I adore the music of Scott Walker and Jackie DeShannon, that I also like prog and fushion music. (Still.) That I play lead guitar—albeit badly. That I own almost every book ever written about the Washington Redskins and Washington Senators.

Richard do you like my poetry?

Yes, Shane. You make me laugh. But that’s such a broad stroke. Some poems I like, some I don’t. Just like anybody’s.

Who are your least favorite writers?

Always easier to talk about who you love: Paul Bowles, Jeanette Winterson, Mina Loy, Jasper Fforde. We tend to simply ignore the work of people we don’t like, and so of course we don’t even think of them. To put it another way, are there reputations I don’t grok? Yeppers. And I’m not particularly keen on the conservative (return to form and structure) movement afoot in poetry today. They don’t interest me and I’m sure they don’t even consider my work to be poetry. But then I doubt the slam folks consider what I do to be poetry either.

What is the D.C. writing scene like?

The big fish in the fiction world circle around the annual PEN Faulkner Award and their events, the MFA programs at American U., George Mason, Johns Hopkins, and Maryland on one end, and the world of journalists who write thrillers, mysteries, and mass market novels on the other, with the eroticism of folks like Zane thrown right into the vast middle. Two of the local treasures who are becoming more and more famous by the day are Edward Jones and George Pelecanos.

The poetry world is tripartite in that you have the academic world of the programs and the Folger and the Library of Congress reading series, the Poet Laureate et al., then you have the smaller fry who inhabit the coffee house slams, the independent bookshops, the Writer’s Center, and land in the small mags. Some of these folks are open mic slam folks and some are print folks. And then you have the net poets. They keep to themselves for the most part, start ezines, and many of them are currently students. I find very little crossover from one of those worlds to the next. And that’s something I find absolutely fascinating—the fragmenting of culture and the tribal nature of the arts. There is also a lively and productive Language school in the DC environs. I don’t mean to dismiss them. They are oft times academic, oft times small mag print folks, and they tend to congregate around the Corcoran School, George Washington University, and a bunch of bookshops and reading series.

Who's ass would you like to kick?

Where to begin? Bush and his entire cabinet. The U.S. Senate. Most of the House. The Supreme Court. All of the TV and radio know-nothing talking heads. The UFOs could land tomorrow and abduct every single one of those people and the planet would instantly be a better place.

Photo credits on this page include portrait (circa 1977)
Richard with daughter in straw hat by Margaret Grosh
A day of protest by Robert Starbird