Five Fishes Journal

Five Fishes asked poet Randall Horton a few questions, and we decided we could post them up here for everyone to see. Randall is a Cave Canem Fellow and a professor at University of New Haven. He is also the editor of a couple journals of poetry. Take a look at his own book of poetry, The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street. It’s a good read. We even reviewed it right here on Five Fishes.

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Five Fishes: So many of your poems in The Linga Franca of Ninth Street are set in a prison setting. What’s the story behind that?

Randall Horton:The story is that I spent almost five years in prison. However, I did not begin to write poetry until after my incarceration. In prison I was writing fiction and short essays. In some ways I like to think I am following in the tradition of someone like Etheridge Knight or Jimmy Santiago Baca. Prison forced me to become a writer because I had to deal with the silence in my head.

F.F.How much has the move from Alabama, to Washington, D.C., and finally Albany affected your work?

R.H.:Well, right now I have recently moved to New Haven, CT to teach at the University of New Haven. I have lived in many regions of the United States, yet I always bring Alabama with me. This place holds so much history and memory. It is the who of what I am. I learned early in life that one cannot outrun the past, so every place that I have lived I brought Alabama with me.

F.F.:What made you decide to replace the word “and” with its symbol?

R.H.:I actually begin doing the ampersand later on in my work. When I went to revise the manuscript The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street, which had been “completed,” I found out that in the revision process I was bringing a new attitude toward the work. The ampersand appears heavily in my new work, and I think this is sort of a bridge from the old to the new.

F.F.:One or two of your poems in this book mention the blues. How has that music genre impacted your life and your writing?

R.H.:I would say the lifestyle of the blues is what impacted my writing. I wasn’t necessarily listening to a lot of blues. However, I did grow up listening to the blues in my grandmothers bootleg house. The blues you hear of feel in these poems comes from a lived experience.

F.F.:How difficult is the time-management process of balancing dedication to your poetry editing and to your poetry writing? How does the one affect the other?

R.H.:Editing is just an extension of writing. In my opinion they go hand in hand. One cannot write without editing. In fact editing is more important than writing. This is where the real magic happens. I usually start of my day editing or reworking a piece of writing, and then I try and tackle something new. Usually in the editing, I am thinking about new ideas and new ways to approach poetry.

F.F.:Your poetry style is often very conversational; a chunk of language that could have been a re-written street conversation. Whose voices specifically have helped to shape this style?

R.H.:To be honest I like to think that I have my ear close to the streets. I remember Langston Hughes saying that he sees everything other people don’t see. I want to see what you don’t see. Even William Carlos Williams believed in the power of ordinary language. This is not to say that I don’t explored heighten language, it’s just that I don’t believe in alienation. Also, I tend to find a sort of beauty in “street conversation.” When I was small my grandmother had a juke-joint down south where an assortment of characters would come by and drink and party. The names and mannerisms has never left me. They often talked in coded metaphor and, in some small way, I like to think that is what I am doing in some of these poems. There were many voices that shaped the way I write thse kind of poems, too many to name. However, I remember them all in my inner ear. I never forget a colorful person or an interesting way in using language.

F.F.:Who are some poets that you’d suggest to readers of Five Fishes?

R.H.:Ed Roberson, Stephen Jonas, Eloise Loftin, Harriett Mullen, Carolyn Rogers, Angela Jackson, Tyehimba Jess, Antoinette Brim, Tara Betts, Curtis L. Crisler, Derrick Harriell, Sterling Plumpp, Pierre Joris, Brian Turner, Charles Stein, Barbara Jane-Reyes, Martin Espada, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Melanie Henderson, Truth Thomas. There are many more.

F.F.:How often do you have to force yourself to write? Or do you avoid that process entirely?

R.H.:I write every day. Remember: revision is a part of writing. Now everything I write I may not use, but I try and get something down every day in my journal.

F.F.:Are any of the specific characters or names used in your poems based on real-life folks?

R.H.:For this book: Blade, Pappy, Wolf, Pepper, Fella, Old School, Joe, Daquan, Sebastian, Lateff. I love names, and I look to incorporate ate them in my whenever I can.

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For fans of real-life poetry, The Lingua Franca of Ninth Street is an exciting read. Check it out.

- C.J.