BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we interviewed Travis Hupp about his writing and his debut book, Faster, Annihilators!,, a gorgeous work that beautifully explores individual angst and timely socio-political issues. (Read the review here.)

When did you know you wanted to create a collection of your poetry? Did the collection come about naturally after you had already written many of the poems, or did you go into your writing knowing you wanted to craft a full collection? Or was it something else?

When I was fifteen and realizing that this thing was gonna stick – I was gonna keep writing poetry, I loved it, I needed it, etc. – it seemed obvious that a collection should happen. I have trouble letting things go, so I edited and whittled at my poems, never quite having the confidence that they were “ready for primetime” until now…at 41. And I decided to just get this thing published, despite still thinking “this line should really say…” or “I have to run back and fix blah blah”. I realized that I’ve wallowed in the editing process more than enough. Here is my work: Not everything I ever wrote made the cut, but if it has something to say, here it is.

Faster, Annihilators! grapples with, among other themes, the dichotomy of conformity and nonconformity. What is one piece of advice you would give to someone in this kind of position, struggling with this in their own lives?

Do. What. You. Have. To. To survive and find laughter. There are very few cases where conforming is actually your RESPONSIBILITY. Keep mining your actual passions and the things you actually love as a means of doing good work, making “art that means business” as far as getting over shyness about promoting your work if you believe in it–anything that helps you bail yourself out of conforming to the fullest extent possible. And surround yourself with others who will damn sure take a way out of as much conformity as they can, too.

Also, we should bail each other out more. When someone knows they’re supposed to write but it’s gonna be a lot of work before any money comes from it, when someone wants to start a non-profit to save the biosphere we all depend on, etc, etc, you could give endless examples…

We should support each other, trusting each other to recognize our own paths. And artists should support each other however much we can by buying each other’s art.

Sorry, you said “one” piece of advice. White guys talk too much, my bad.

A lot of the poems in this collection utilize humor. Would you say humor is a key part of your poetic style? Does it come naturally to you to write humor into your work?

I have to try really hard to turn my humor off in a lot of really inappropriate situations, and at inappropriate times, to be honest. When the boss is mad and has his “I mean business” look I want to ask him if he farted or ask for a raise for the whole staff so we can live above poverty level. Kind of put his problems in perspective. And also make him think “DID I fart?”

Seriously, if I stop saying the thing that other people want to but don’t, people act like I’ve just let them down at this point.

Who are your poetic inspirations?

James Baldwin (who someone compared me to once, and that was the highest praise I’ve ever gotten, I think)

Allen Ginsberg – (“Howl” is obscene and sweaty and gross and beautiful and about fifty thousand other adjectives that should mostly contradict each other, but just complement each other in unexpected, very authentic ways)

Alanis Morissette – A singer/songwriter, but I love the very distinctive place her work comes from, what it tries to bring to light, how she fearlessly bares her soul and how she writes so that you will understand the point she is getting across.

I disagree with people who think most poetry should be vague, disjointed and unknowable. Layers of meaning, cool, but I find it refreshing whenever any artist, in any medium, cares deeply about people understanding what they’re saying, even if people still sort of make it their own, too.

Robert McCammon and Ray Bradbury – Two of my favorite novelists. Every line McCammon writes is an absolute pleasure to read. He’s that good of a writer. And Bradbury just seems to exude poetry effortlessly and without pause throughout all of Something Wicked This Way Comes. I’m still amazed at that book’s breathless, haunting magic.

Do you have any favorite poems in the collection? If so, which ones?

“Hiding Place,” because it’s honest. I wrote it when I was a teen and went through a brief period of either cutting myself or having to talk myself out of it. “Hiding Place” is me confronting the memory of one instance where I did cut myself and talking myself out of doing it anymore, while understanding and confronting some of what it said about me, at the time, that I had resorted to something that destructive to deal with my life.

“Faster, Annihilators!” – The “title track”…Humor and honesty and a subtle (or not so subtle?) undercurrent of environmentalism.

“Face Toward.” “Free to Obey.” “Fortress” – if it starts with “f” it’s one of my favorites, and no, I didn’t plan it like that.

Oh, and “Comma Hoarder” – I might never write anything I like as much as “Comma Hoarder.”

And I feel like I should also say that my LEAST favorite is either “Savage Anthem” or “Nefarious Fire.

Were there any poems you wanted to include in the collection, but later decided to cut? What did that process of curation look like for you?

There were a few I couldn’t find in time, didn’t finish in time for Faster, Annihilators! There are a few I wrote after the manuscript went to press that I wished I’d finished in time.

Faster, Annihilators! is your debut poetry collection. Do you have plans to release more poetry in the future, and if so, can you give us a sneak peek at what’s percolating in your mind?

Yes, I’ve actually nearly finished the manuscript for my second poetry collection, which will be called Sin and I.

I’m also writing a horror novel (first in an intended trilogy) called The Omnipresence: Book 1: Strange Flesh. There will be all-out supernatural, unsqueamish terror and gore, but hopefully the truly scary thing about it will be how it points out how many things we sow division based on, and how if the gays hate the Christians or vice versa, or the trans community and Muslims are going at each other, it really works to the benefit of those truly evil forces that want us distracted while they get away with whatever they don’t want us looking at.

Mainly making sure those projects say what I need them to is what’s percolating with me. That and putting my money where my mouth is as far as buying the work of other poets and artists. Speaking of, buy Spectral Evidence by Trista Edwards and Every Word You Cannot Say by Iain S. Thomas, because they’re both breathtaking.

And thanks for the questions, I appreciate your time.

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