Tim Armentrout is a West Virginia-based poet and educator whose writings include the poetry collection All This Falling Away and the book-length poem Someone Screaming Out. He has also released the audio recording Pilgrim of the Neo-Dark Ages, and he has a blog called Breath Made Visible. Recently Armentrout and I talked about his literary influences, studying at Naropa University, his involvement with WV Writers, and his ongoing projects. 

DG: How did you first get interested in writing?

TA: My interest in writing was fostered, if not genetically mutated. My father was an English teacher, not by trade when I came into the world, but in his heart. He had long since given up teaching (at least in the career sense) in pursuit of more money and less politics. Literature was all around us though…sometimes like a pain in the gut. One of my dad’s favorite jokes to play on unsuspecting participants is to extend his hand and say “shake” like he’s offering to shake your hand, but due to the fact that he smiles devilishly and tends to know his victim in advance the gesture seems out of context at best, and curiously dangerous to those inclined to suspicion… Lucky for him, he comes off as harmless enough that most people are willing to take the bait despite knowing that something is up. As his victim reaches out, somewhat apprehensively, he jabs them in the gut with his index finger as he yells “SPEAR!” Get it? Shake? Spear?

DG: How else would you say your parents influenced you, in terms of your desire to become a writer? 

TA: My father’s sense of humor, his wit, his strength is based entirely on language and relationships, and my mom is a counselor. They complement one another in a very beautiful way. Our house was full of books, conversation, and a feeling of connection. For me, writing has always been an expression of the relationship to connection…our distances and balances alike.

DG: How did your interest in writing develop as you got older? 

TA: As an adolescent, writing was a way that I could deal with everything around me; one of the first and almost only things that I’ve ever stolen was my high school library’s copy of Thanatopsis. I knew that a certain element in poetry represented the most radical fringe, but the catalyst for ever considering myself a writer really came from watching (and I know it sounds cheesy now) Oliver Stone’s The Doors, when I was about 13 years old.

DG: How did "The Doors" influence you as a writer?

TA: I would sit with that movie and a journal alone and write through the entire thing. I kept writing consistently from that point forward, but I didn’t share that side of myself with many people. When I went to college, it became the first thing that got the attention of my professors, and with their encouragement and support I started to write seriously.

DG: Who are some of your literary influences?

TA: In no particular order, Henry David Thoreau, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Philip Whalen, Sonia Sanchez, Anne Waldman, Akilah Oliver, Max Regan, Junior Burke, Peter Okun, Bill King, Kristin Prevallet, Gurney Norman, J.R.R. Tolkien, Chuck Palahniuk, Bobbie Louise Hawkins -- just to name a few individuals that had a very profound impact on me.

DG: How would you say your undergraduate years affected your writing?

TA: My college professors taught me to love the classics, and introduced me to the writers I would go on to study in graduate school. Like other writers though, my individual experiences and their relationship to the macrocosm influence a tremendous amount of my work. I feel blessed by the fact that I exist as a poet in a time where there is so much history to draw into the present, both as form and content.

DG: What would you say are some of your highlights of studying at Naropa University?

TA: Every last second of being at Naropa was a highlight really. But, to be specific, it wasn’t just one thing that was illuminating, it was that the entire community there exists at all, or rather, how it becomes apparent there. Naropa opens an incredible sense that all is connected. At Naropa I saw firsthand what an amazing community there is among poets, and I became part of something that I never thought I would be a part of.

DG: Would you say what you had heard about Naropa matched what you experienced there?

TA: I truly believed that when I arrived there would be no way for it to live up to what it sounded like, but it was so much more than I ever hoped. My apathy got a reality check, and I left Naropa knowing that I had set my life in the best possible direction. Many of my instructors became peers, the friends that I made there are people that I publish with, collaborate with. The most important highlight is the recognition of lineage, and knowing, no matter how overwhelming it felt, that I was a part of it all.

DG: Who are some of your favorite Appalachian writers? What do you like about their work?

TA: Breece Pancake, Gurney Norman, Lee Smith, John O’Brien, Pinckney Benedict, Wendell Berry, Doug Van Gundy. And there are a lot more that come to mind, but I think that my experiences reading these authors came at a foundational time. These are the writers that helped me understood who I was and what it meant to be from Appalachia.

DG: What are some specific aspects of those writers' works that you find particularly interesting?

TA: Breece Pancake and John O’Brien both invoke the specter of fatalism, and like smoke exposing shafts of light they make known a part of our world we often overlook. Lee Smith captures the sound of history, her language like a spool of time. Gurney Norman and Pinckney Benedict both deal with the gravity of life in Appalachia, how home pulls you back when you leave (or think about leaving). Wendell Berry is an old fashioned radical. I don’t always agree with him, but I like his certainty. He makes sense. Doug Van Gundy is a poet from WV and has a great collection from Red Hen Press, A Life Above Water. His work blends the boundaries between worlds, like some faint music seeping up from underground.

DG: How would you describe some characteristics of the literary scene(s) in West Virginia?

TA: Scene? Here? Well, like a lot of things it’s spread out over several smaller communities. The scene depends on where you are. There are a lot of great writers from and in the region, but I think that my experiences at Naropa have left me feeling the need to be more connected with the outriders that are here. There are pocket scenes you know, and I got involved for the first time as an undergrad, in 1999.

DG: What would you say are some aspects of your involvement with the literary scene, when you were an undergraduate?

TA: There was a scene because there were a small number of English majors and we all had a lot of energy, so the literary magazine became our focus. I took the position of editor and served for three years, and we had support from a local coffeeshop / restaurant and the campus pub, so there were monthly readings for most of that time. When I moved a few years ago I noticed that there was a tremendous amount of support for the arts in Lewisburg, but it wasn’t as strong with regard to writing. I participated in the two main literary events that happened the first year that I was in town

DG: How would you describe what WV Writers does? What kind of work have you been doing with that organization? 

TA: WV Writers is a non-profit group that hosts both events and is dedicated to promoting writing and writers in the area. I have taken a position as the regional representative for WV Writers.

DG: How did you get involved with WV Writers?

TA: I had been introduced to then President Eric Fritzius and he has been a great advocate of my work. With his help I landed several workshop positions, one at our local Carnegie Hall. He helped in making me a featured reader at an annual literary reading series hosted by the Greenbrier Valley Theatre, as well as scoring me a spot to read at the WV State Capitol this past winter.

DG: What are some plans that you have, in terms of your involvement with poetry in West Virginia? 

TA: I’m eager to reach out to other avant-garde poets in the state. But despite stylistic differences, there is exactly the kind of strength and support that writers need to keep pushing their work outward. It’s my intention to bring alternative poetics more toward the surface here.

DG: The &Now Conference in Buffalo was a lot of fun, it was good meeting you there. 

TA: That was a great conference. Some of my closest friends from Naropa were there, poets Jared Hayes, Joseph Cooper, and Andrew Peterson. Jared and Joe were presenting with Jen Karmin and Cara Benson, so Andy and I got to see rehearsals, brainstorm, and participate in the final “panel” they had created around the questions of ownership and control. Jen and Cara are both amazing people/ performers, and meeting them was certainly a highlight for me. But a few things that stick out in my memory directly from the conference…

DG: What were some of your favorite highlights of the conference?

TA: I was unfamiliar with Shelley Jackson’s project Skin: A Mortal Work of Art. One of the first things I did when I returned home was apply to become a word. I was surprised that I hadn’t come across her work before, especially a work on that scale. Vanessa Place was also new to me. She has such an incredible presence, strength, and I was impressed by the work that she’s publishing through Les Figues. Overall my highlight was just how rejuvenating it was to be there. Between my life as a father and husband, and my teaching position I don’t get to stay as enveloped in the movement of poetry as much as I might like to.

DG: What ongoing projects have you been working on?

TA: I’m involved in several projects at the moment. I’ve been composing a book length poem, Someone Screaming Out, which uses several of Shakespeare’s tragedies as the source texts for erasure. A reading of the first section, taken from Macbeth, is available for download on the WV Writers Podcast. 

I’m also writing a graphic novel, The Infection, with a Virginia-based artist. Transmissions from the survivors can be found on The Infection blog. And I routinely keep a poetry blog. 

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