Interview with Karl Koweski for Outsider Writers:

 
1) Hey Karl, how ya doing?
 

I’m on top of the world, Pat. I have a couple days off work. Feeling relaxed. The Cubbies have been winning. Little later on today I’ll take the kids to see Spiderman 3.


2) You live in Alabama right now, where are you from originally?
 
I was born in Hammond, Indiana, nestled up against the Indy/Illinois border near Lake Michigan. Lived the first four years of my life in an apartment behind a Go-Go joint on what was Calumet City, Illinois’s sin strip. Between four and nineteen I lived in Hammond. Bounced around a little after that before ultimately settling down in northern Alabama.


3) When did you begin writing? What were you writing then?
 
I can remember writing short stories in the fifth grade, and I just never let up. My mom raised me on a steady diet of comic books, horror movies and red cabbage. Reading X-Men comics or watching old Vincent Price movies, I’d sit back and imagine what I’d do in those situations. It’s a small leap from this sort of fantasizing to sitting down with a pen and creating my own characters and situations. At the time, I was immersed in the horror genre and that’s mostly what I read and what I wrote. It wasn’t until after high school I began realizing the literary landscape had more to offer than madmen and monsters.

3.1) How do you balance 40+ hours in a factory, a family and writing?
 
Very precariously. But I never cheat my family out of quality family time. I do however harbor no qualms about cheating the factory out of factory time. I’m actually filling this questionnaire at work right now. They can’t pay me enough money to leave my notebook at home. Hell, they don’t even pay me enough money to do the work they hired me to do. Even beside the time spent writing at work, I try to write an additional one or two hours a day. If the time has to come out of my sleep, so be it. If it keeps me from going out and drinking with the fellas, I don’t mind. It’ll never cause me to miss my son’s ball game or daughter’s choir concert, though.


4) When did you first get a piece of work published?
 
Shit, I think the first poem I had published was back in 1994 in a zine called Nerve Bundle Review edited by Dan Nielsen. Strangely, I can’t remember where I published by first story. It might have been "Lopsided Tits" in the 2000 Swank. Or, you know, I use to get a lot of stories published in an old xeroxed zine called Crystal Drum.... That’s going back a ways.


5) Why is humor important for a writer?
 
I don’t know if it’s important for every writer. It’s of the utmost importance to me. Given the subject matter, I couldn’t get away with half the shit I write without a self-deprecating sense of humor. I can’t point out the foibles in others without shining a light at my own. You can say damn near anything, if you say it with a smile.


6) Who would you say has influenced your writing?

As far as non-writer influences, I’m influenced by everyone I meet. Everything I see and hear I catalogue in my mind. My brothers are a big influence. They’re always doing crazy shit. I wrote a long short story called "Knuckle Society" based on their backyard wrasslin exploits. My wife and kids always offer new perspectives. Hell, even some of my more knuckle-headed co-workers (discounting my buddy Justin who is not knuckle-headed) gives me plenty of fodder.

7) What is your definition of an Outsider Writer?
 
Outsider Writer holds a couple meanings for me. Most of us here are marginalized, working outside the mainstream due to writing style or the subjects we choose to writer about. Writing for the small press, or independent press or underground press, whatever’s the popular designation at the moment is; there’s no shame in it. None of us can control the size of our audience, it’s best to just write what we love to write about. And I think that to be a writer, regardless of popularity, is to be an outsider. Writers are always on the outside looking in, always observing, always looking deeper, questioning the status quo.


8) Why are Polish women so goddamn lovable?
Because they ain’t got a choice. It’s tough out there for a pimp... but even worse for a Polack. A Polish man goes out there in the world, no telling how many times he hears someone ask "how come birds fly over Poland upside down," or "A Jew, a Mexican and a Polack are on a desert island..." he needs to be able to come home to a good Polish woman who is nurturing, loving, loyal, good-humored, and hopefully not too smart. Growing up in a predominating Polish neighborhood, I loved me many a Polish women. And by loved I mean stalked. None of the Polish girls thought very highly of me. You know what... maybe I’m not the most qualified man to answer this question.


9) Tell us about the time you and a few other writers were in a pizza place in Birmingham and you saw a cross-dressing pimp.
 
Well, I was kicked back eating an Italian sausage sammich, if I’m not mistaken. I was hanging out with a group of writers including one Mr. Patrick King. We just finished a Literary Circus reading (ringmastered by Pat himself). We were feeling pretty good. It was a nice turn out. We’d drank many beers at the coffee house. When all of the sudden what looked to be three women walked into the joint. The one in the middle had her back to us. She was very short, slim, had shoulder length black hair. The other women fawned all over this person. It was very confusing for us. Especially for me because I had no women of my own there. The one in the middle is a lesbian I said (which I suppose would have made them all lesbians). When asked how I knew I pointed to the suit jacket she wore. Only a lesbian would wear a suit jacket with suede patched elbows. Lesbians or high school English teachers. Come to find out, when the trio sat beside us, the lesbian was actually a Vietnamese man. The two women accompanying him were very attractive and very very into him. They sat at the table next to ours and I had to watch all the lingering stares and meaningful touches. It wasn’t so much that the two women were vying for his attention. They all seemed to have made peace with the fact that this little Vietnamese dude was gonna take them home and fuck the hell out of them and I was gonna have to go home and maybe watch a zombie movie.


10) Does weird shit like that always seem to happen to you?
 
Weird shit like that always happens to me. And if it doesn’t happen, I make it happen. Whenever the wife lets me out of my cage, I’m determined to have fun.


11) What outsider/underground writers are you reading right now?
 
Arthur Nersesian is an excellent writer who might be considered underground. I love all his books and would recommend him to anyone. Jonathan Ames is another. Steve Almond.. Bucky Sinister. Kevin Sampsell. As far as small press writers, I’m always happy to read the work of William Taylor Jr., Nate Graziano, S A Griffin, Aleathia Drehmer, MK Chavez. I’m really excited about the younger poets coming up. Guys like Kaveh Akbar and Matt Finney.


12) Tell us about your columns for antimuse.org and Zygote in my Coffee.
 
I started writing both monthly columns about the same time. There’s "Observations of a Dumb Polack" for www.zygoteinmycoffee.com and "Phantom of the Okra" for www.antimuse.org I enjoy writing the columns. For one, the deadlines keep me focused on writing. For the Observations of a Dumb Polack I usually post stories that fall outside the nor, stories that are more obviously fictional. Phantom of the Okra is more of a traditional column where I often offer advice on picking up strippers or ruminations on southern living.

13) These columns seem pretty confessional. Is that an act? Are they partly fiction?
 
I wouldn’t call it an act. It’s just fiction. I don’t pretend to be anything other than who I am, which is a big difference from how I might portray myself to be in stories. My writing operates on a Lucifer percentage. Eighty percent lies. Twenty percent truth. If I lived my life according to my stories, at the very least I would no longer be married. Or alive.


14) What advice would you give to a young writer?
 
Write because you have to. Don’t chase publication credits or delusions of fame. Don’t get caught up in the myspace networking side of writing. Just write. Keep the pen moving. And when you’re not writing, read everything you can get your hands on. Keep a notebook with you at all times. Write down everything.


15) What writer would you say has influenced your style the most?
 
Stephen King. He’s the author I read most growing up. Reading his classics like IT and The Stand taught me everything I needed to know about constructing plot and creating character. The other writer out of the many many writers I read is Jean Shepard. Everything I learned about writing humor I learned from reading Jean Shepard.


16) Do you hate Bukowski or just Bukowski wanna-bes?
 
Maybe a little both. There was a time I enjoyed reading Bukowski. Reading an author is like looking out a window. It can be a beautiful view, but over time looking out the window at the same scenery, it gets overly familiar until the time comes you can scarcely be bothered to glance through the window at all. I’ve boarded the Bukowski window up with plywood. Bukowski emulation among younger writers doesn’t bother me so much. He’s an easy, accessible window to look through. The older poets who can’t pull themselves away from the window and lose themselves in the view are the ones who irk me.


17) Though you're from Chicago, your writing is highly influenced by your time in Alabama. Country-fried rednecks who are drunk, unemployed or both fill the pages of your short stories. Yet, they're mostly sympathetic characters. Have you developed a soft spot for the South? Do you now attend Baptist church services and watch NASCAR on the weekends?
 
Ha ha. What soft spot I have for the south doesn’t extend to attending church or watching NASCAR, though I’d be more willing to attend a race in Talledega than I would a Southern Baptist revival. More exposed tits at Talledega. Most of the characters I create are largely sympathetic, regardless how rotten they might act. All of us like to think we’re pretty groovy regardless how others perceive us to be. I don’t love very many people in life, but I love every character I write about. I do love the south, though. The easy-going nature of things, the wide open spaces. I’m about thirty minutes away from everything, surrounded by horse meadow. It’s a great way to live considering I come from beneath the shadow of Chicago.


18) Tell us about your chapbooks.
 
My first chapbook of stories, "Playthings", was published five years ago by Kevin Sampsell’s Future Tense Press. www.futuretensebooks.com. At the time it felt like a fluke to me. Future Tense is a prestigious micropress that had published such respected writers who’ve gone on to larger publishing houses such as Sarah Grace McCandless, Jemiah Jefferson and Zoe Trope, and I was pretty much just a punk kid with the sort of publishing credits that wouldn’t make very many people jump up and take a chance on me. But that’s exactly what Kevin did and the resulting chapbook sold well and got my name out there a bit. "Internet Killed The Mimeo Star" was my first collection of poetry published by Hemispherical Press. It’s no longer available because I accused the editor of blatant asskissery and poked fun at his delusions of grandeur. I suppose you still might be able to score a copy if you email the editor and tell him is poetry is really swell. I’ve had several poetry chapbooks published since then. "Casualty of the Industrial Revolution" is a collection of work-related poems that won second place in the 2004 Nerve Cowboy chapbook contest. "Can’t Kill A Man Born To Hang" came out through Bottle of Smoke Press. "Mutually Assured Destruction" released by Scintillating Publications. My latest collection of poems and short stories has just been released by Andrew Lander’s excellent Showcase www.showcase-press.com. It’s titled "Demon Country". Within the next few months, www.sunnyoutside.com will be releasing my poetry collection "Diminishing Returns". If anybody would like to pick up a couple of my chaps, it certainly wouldn’t hurt my feelings.

 
19) Do you prefer to write poetry or fiction? Or is it a matter of what kind of mood you happen to be in?
 
I’m primarily a fiction writer. Every time I sit down to write, it’s with the intent to write prose. For me writing short stories is all about discipline whereas poetry writing relies on inspiration. I’m rarely in the mood to write. Usually if I can sit down at the keyboard, or more often, with the pen in my hand, and get to it, inside five minutes, I can forget about everything else other than the story. With poetry, I’m usually doing something totally unrelated to writing and the idea for a poem will hit me, and I’ll have to duck into a bathroom or phone booth and write it out. Sort of like a superhero changing out of his alter ego. Except instead of saving a woman from being robbed, I just write a poem about the time I got caught masturbating in the back of a Greyhound bus.
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20) What do you think of the literary movements that have recently become known? Do you know of the Brutalists or the Offbeat Generation? How about the Guerilla Poetry Project? The ULA?
 
I don’t take them very seriously. Hell, I could get four friends together and call ourselves the Alphabet Mafia. It doesn’t make us a literary movement even if we included a Latin inscription and a logo ripped off from Hunter Thompson. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect the writers involved. I do like the Brutalists individually. Offbeat Generation I’m not familiar with... kinda sounds like a boy band. I’m leery of self-named literary movements, cliques, clans or revolutions. At best they’re artistically-limiting, at worst they’re silly Amwayesque schemes like the GPP who charge enrollment fees to insert poetry of their choosing into books of their choosing. I like what Outsiderwriters is doing. It’s all inclusive, non-elitist and an excellent way for writers whether novice or experienced to network with each other, learn more about the craft and those who practice it and places to submit. It’s something that’s been needed for a long time. The ULA could have been it had it not been for one man’s Moby Dickian obsession with Dave Eggers and Rick Moody. The Outlaw Poets is another categorization that defies logic. Maybe if Mark "Chopper" Read wrote poetry, I’d buy that as outlaw poetry, but writers who reference Billy the Kid or Pekinpah in the poems they write between setting up poetry readings at their local coffee shop an outlaw poet does not make.


21) Anything else you'd like to add?
 
I never really got caught masturbating in the back of a Greyhound bus.

Last update : 27-05-2007 19:49

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