Jeremy Hight: Who and what are some of your influences? Have they changed at all over the years?
John Swain: Too many to name. Poe, Dickinson, Whitman, and Blake. Later Kenneth Patchen, Jeanette Winterson, Pablo Neruda and Eugène Guillevic in translation. Influences demonstrate the range of possibility, but a writer must shed these teachings to find his own voice. The work is to discover what is unique and worthwhile in one's own life and then to communicate that experience with vitality.
JH: You have a lot of amazing nature images and metaphors in your work. What about nature do you think so deeply resonates with you and your work?
JS: The idea of source and returning among the clothes of the spirit. Intensity of the senses and the exhilaration of chance. Arenas of revelation and dreams.
JH: What did you dream of doing before poetry found you and you found it? What were some of the things that fascinated you as a kid growing up?
JS: In grade school, I somehow got the idea that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. Don't know where that came from other than looking back now, maybe was searching for an understanding of my mind and the minds of others that I found so bewildering. By the time of my teenage years, I was lost to poetry. I loved knights and myth and maps and books and boats and leaves and fireflies when I was growing up.
JH: What is your most recent work? How did this group of poems come together?
JS: Last summer, Red Paint Hill published my first full-length collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky. The book is an assemblage and revision of poems from my early chapbooks and various unpublished works.
JH: Your work crackles with an almost imagistic sparse power. Did you ever work in longer sentences or other forms before finding this style and voice?
JS: Yes, I once worked almost exclusively with longer sentences in a kind of intoxication. Then I began to break down, distill, and simplify. I like the poems that blend these modes and rhythms. Ultimately, the line length depends on the idea or image conveyed.
JH: What are you working on right now?
JS: Tightening and arranging the manuscript for a second full-length collection.
JH: What about poetry most draws you to it?
JS: Sidney called poetry "a speaking picture." Words communicate intuitive depths while allowing the author to move without limitation through the created environment. This was spellbinding to me as a reader. Poetry engenders a sense of freedom and transformation by allowing the poet to be both immediately present and completely disappeared.
JH: What of Kentucky rises up in your work? Are your images born equally from your travels?
JS: Hills and fields and caves and rivers. The brightness overwhelming when a face emerges from the water.
JH: What draws you so to nature imagery and short cadences in your work? is is a conscious stylistic choice? What of nature is most evocative?
JS: I try to craft the words to follow the natural rhythms of breath and pulse and thought and feeling. Intuition provides the stylistic foundation rather than a conscious choice. The strangeness and wonder of the unseen animating forces within the human being.
JH: How many works have you published? Do you sense a growing body of work at this point? What poems are you most fond of out of your works over the years?
JS: To this point, I have published several chapbooks and one full collection with a second collection forthcoming. I don't think of my work as a body as such, but I strive to continue growing in skill and perspective. My sense of the work tends to focus most intensely on the writing of individual poems. While certain themes emerge through various groups of poems, I find the joy of poetry in its hermetic restlessness. The freedom to discover the self and world anew each day unbound by prior declaration. At the moment, out of my collection, I am particularly fond of "Light is Altar," "Clifty Falls," and "The Winnowing" because they represent to me the transition from struggle and development to a nascent sense of my own voice. My favorites vary.
JH: Has there been a shift in publishing and the sense of poetry community with the rise of social media? How has it affected you?
JS: I can't speak to a shift in publishing because my involvement with the small press coincided with the rise of social media and online zines. I am most proud of my books and chapbooks, but I think the proliferation of online publishing is absolutely a positive thing. That there is no longer a false dichotomy between online and print in terms of quality. Now it is simply a matter of preference. The most important thing is that the work is communicated to others and the internet empowers people to speak that might otherwise have been silenced. I don't believe in gatekeepers of culture and taste. The more ideas the better. People can decide what they like for themselves. I think the internet is a great tool depending on how it is used. It has connected me to people I would have never met otherwise and in some cases the connection is such that I can't imagine life without these friendships. The internet has also exposed me to new ideas and art and allowed me to share my ideas and art with people all over. However, it can also be a distraction and opiate. The discipline is to be an active participant allowing the virtual world to expand and enhance one's actual world.
Jeremy Hight is a Staff Interviewer at Unlikely Stories: Episode IV. You can learn more about him at his bio page.
John Swain lives in Louisville, Kentucky. Red Paint Hill published his first collection, Ring the Sycamore Sky.