Interview: Megan Falley

Megan Falley’s poetry, featured this month in Kill Author, stretches the limits of poetic form, forcing meaning and voice into places unexplored.

Her poem Adam’s Apple Pie, for example, is a revengeful recipe dedicated to a certain lover.

Her work trills with a certain energy and excitement, yet loses nothing in its irreverent romping. Her message is honest and striking. This sort of art heads the future generation of poets; writers unafraid to discover, happily disrespecting the authority of stricter forms for the benefit of the new.

Megan has done fantastic spoken-word work; she currently coaches the New Paltz Slam Team. She’s been published a bunch of places—PANK and the like—and has two chapbooks of her own: Cricket Fuel (2008) & Autobiographical, Erotic Non-Fiction (2010).

Over e-mail, she told me the MS she’d been working over has been chosen as a finalist over at Write Bloody. Sweet!

You must check out her blog and her twitter.

An Excerpt

Interview Follows

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Though practical, does the e-reader dilute the “artfulness” of print works? E.G. does the sparse, hyper-digestible presentation influence the content?

MEGAN FALLEY

I suppose I am in love with real books; the way they smell, the many different colors and sizes they come in that sometimes hint towards what’s inside, the weight of them on my lap, the way they look in crowds or alone by a fireplace or in the hands of someone sitting on a subway.

There is a real, snobbish romance in me that wants to proclaim, once and for all, that the old-fashioned way is the only way to read books. But really I think that if it’s between an e-reader and not reading at all, that I can settle my beef with the Kindle and the Nook and let people enjoy art in whatever medium they are most comfortable.

So no, I guess.  There’s no real difference.

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Is there a difference between Art and Entertainment? Is it important to distinguish between the two, in this decade of blurred mediums?

MEGAN FALLEY

I’m going to say that there is definitely a difference between Art and Entertainment without any real rubric for how to distinguish the two. Television, for instance, is typically is considered mere entertainment, but there are some powerful shows that I would most certainly call art. The HBO series Six Feet Under or Showtime’s The Big C are no less paintings or poetry than they are television. The Jersey Shore? Not so much.

By this logic, anything with a commercial break, censorship bleeping, or New Jersey is not art. That said I don’t see any real value in separating the two for any reason other than lessening the merit of other artists – something I am opposed to.

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You do a lot with a few words. Bringing Over the Jello Mold, published in PANK is one example. When The Ghosts Come, from Kill Author, is another. What attracts you to brevity? Are shorter poems maybe more appropriate these days?

MEGAN FALLEY

I always try to say as much as I can in as few words as possible.  Sometimes what I have to say really does require the three minutes and ten seconds allotted to a “slam poem.”

Other times everything can fit in two lines.  A better question than “What attracts you to brevity?” might be “What doesn’t?” If life is as short as the world seems to impose upon us, why would I accomplish something in 50 words if I could do it in 15?

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Penelope Pussycat Finally Speaks…, the first poem presented in Kill Author‘s collection, delivers arresting material in a pop-culture package. Can you speak a little about the poem and its origins?

MEGAN FALLEY

I love revisiting things from my childhood with adulthood’s critical eye, but Women’s Studies classes have made almost everything that is not extremely culturally sensitive almost unbearable to watch.

When revisiting Looney Toons I realized that Pepe Le Pew basically trained a generation of young boys that a woman’s consent was optional, that her refusal could be bargained and even laughed at.

The more I watched and read up on the history of Penelope Pussycat (a name that was not given to her until a very recent Looney Tunes movie wanted to credit her as something other than “The Black Cat”) the more incensed I became.

Dominant female characters are not only rare, but the entertainment industry has made it okay to keep women nameless and voiceless (Remember gaggle of models holding up brief cases on the game show Deal or No Deal with no purpose other than looking pretty?)

Rape culture is perpetuated even in children’s entertainment.  I guess this poem was my attempt to give voice to the voiceless.  Most of my art has been building myself as my own dominant female character.

If what you want does not exist, write it into existence.

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“Adam’s Apple Pie,” A Recipe, is inventive and surprisingly arresting. Often, devices of format cloud the content––in this poem, that is not the case. Do you like pushing poetry into new forms?

MEGAN FALLEY

Thank you! And yes. In my current working manuscript I am writing poems in the forms of email exchanges, overheard dialogue, found poems scribbled on a bathroom stall, a “choose your own adventure” style poem.

I have turned poems into screen plays and charts.  Poetry exists in so many places besides books – and why shouldn’t art reflect that?

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You’re the loyal employee of a supermarket; this probably brings you into contact with some great people. What are a few jobs you might otherwise suggest as inspiring labor?

MEGAN FALLEY

The particular supermarket I work at happens to employ a lot of artist-types whom I adore, but I would not say the work itself is particularly conducive to creativity.

The job does, however, get me out of the writing room and interacting with people which is important for the days I would have otherwise been over-cafienated and under-showered with ink stains on my mouth.

I believe artists should keep a variety of side jobs.  Some I imagine are particularly fertilizing to art would be an undertaker, a hair stylist, drug dealer, a slaughterhouse employee, a nurse in an old-age home.

I suppose to really be successful artistically, one must be around constant death.

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N+1 and Slate recently published an article entitled “MFA vs. NYC,” discussing the artistic viability of America’s “two distinct literary cultures.” As someone familiar with both the educational and cultural aspects of ‘the writer’s life,’ which might you prefer?

MEGAN FALLEY

I won’t pick one as more valuable than the other, but I will say that teachers are everywhere.  Even if they don’t have a degree in teaching, even if the person is not trying to teach you anything, even if you only meet a person once or you’ve made them up in your head – everyone has a lesson to offer.

Everyone is a potential character.  All human experience is swimming around in the same grab bag waiting for an artist to yank it out and make it pretty.  That can be done no matter what city you live, or which university you have studied or not studied at.

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Who’ve you been reading recently ?

MEGAN FALLEY

I only just recently read Sylvia Plath’s “The Bell Jar” for the first time and loved it.  I much prefer her novel to her poetry, especially the bits about young Ester living briefly in New York.    This question makes me want to pick up one of the unread from my bookshelf right now in fact.  I’ll let you know which!

Related posts:

1. Interview: Ashok Karra
2. Interview: Nathaniel Bellows
3. Interview: Bryan Emory-Johnson
4. Interview: Marion Bolognesi
5. Interview with Poet Beverly Rivera