Poetry Spotlight: Ben Evans of Fogged Clarity

May 5, 8:58 AMChicago Poetry Scene ExaminerLarry Sawyer

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Recently I spoke with Logan Square resident Ben Evans who is editor of the brand new online literary journal Fogged Clarity about his new site, Lolita, the New York Times, and his future plans for FC, which includes sound files as well as the written word.



LS: Where and when did you begin Fogged Clarity?

BE: I began thinking about Fogged Clarity two years ago while living overseas. I was in a small French village writing for a Swiss online journal and working on a collection of poetry. I was suffering from these crippling panic attacks almost daily, and I watched my own work shift as a result. It became of the utmost urgency that I write, that I had something poignant to leave behind if one of the heart attacks I feared paid a visit. This necessity to create, all the tingling beauty and strangely painful nostalgia I was feeling at the time served as the impetus of the journal. I returned to the states early in 2008, learned to play the piano and recorded an album entitled "The Nicotine Heart Attack Premonition" E.P. It wasn’t good, but it was mine and it was something I needed to do. After that was complete I turned all my attentions to developing a comprehensive arts review, contacting all the artists and scholars I had met in my travels. We launched our first issue from an apartment in Logan Square on February 1st of this year.

LS: What's the most interesting part of your day as editor of a web magazine?

BE: Reading, viewing and listening to the submissions, without question. I have been exposed to so much brilliant work that I never would have found without Fogged Clarity. Conducting the interviews is something I also enjoy. It is always fascinating for me to get a more intimate look at the influences behind a creator and his or her work.

LS: How do you manage the site—do you have help?

BE: Chicagoan Ryan Daly has been my partner in this endeavor since January, and he is unbelievable. He designed the site, and at the end of every month he writes all the code and inserts the interviews to make Fogged Clarity appear as it does. He is as committed to beauty and art as I am, and I think that has allowed this project to work out as well as it has. Lee McEwen represents us in Brooklyn and is responsible for creating a lot of our promotional materials. As for me, I do everything else. I select, edit and input all the work that appears in each monthly issue (Ryan helps with visual arts), conduct and record the interviews, promote, recruit, and maintain correspondence with the ever growing Fogged family. This all usually amounts to about 70 to 80 hours a week.

LS: What would be your advice to those who wish to start a webzine?

BE: Find a gifted and passionate web designer, and don’t compromise quality simply because your project is online. But, I don’t consider Fogged Clarity to be a webzine. It is an arts review, regardless of the medium through which it is presented. In any case, “webzines” are a dime a dozen now. If you are going to garner a readership you really must have a distinguishing characteristic, an organizing principle, and a digital aesthetic that reflects that principle.

LS: Do you promote? What channels do you use?

BE: I believe in all of the work that is displayed in Fogged Clarity, therefore my aim is to find as many individuals as I can to view it. Promoting is essential, not only does high traffic help to validate the time we are putting in to make this possible, it also generates an abundance of submissions from which we can put together future issues. With the advent of all the social media tools on the internet the promotion of anything has become far simpler. Twitter and Facebook have proven useful, but I much prefer a more personal approach. I love going to galleries, readings, and small concerts to spread the word about the clarity. I recently returned from San Francisco where I spent a week visiting artists and promoting our April Issue, which featured a great interview with TC Boyle. Around Chicago, Bill Hillmann, the director of the Windy City Story Slam has been great about sharing Fogged Clarity with the city. A lot of promoting is just reaching out though, seeing work you like and then asking the artist to climb aboard.

LS: Rumor has it that Fogged Clarity was mentioned in the New York Times? How did that transpire?

BE: That is correct, but I may or may not have blown the whole instance out of proportion in the interest of promotion. In our March issue we featured the work of a very skilled poet named Michael Tyrell. The Times did a feature on the anthology Mr. Tyrell edited, Broken Land: Poems of Brooklyn. Fogged Clarity was listed alongside the Paris Review as one of Mr. Tyrell’s past publications, and FC was linked on the New York Times website.

LS: Who are some of your literary influences?

BE: John Cheever is probably the biggest. It seems every Cheever story I read leaves me gaping at his brilliance. His stories are so tragic and beautiful. I hear him sighing in resignation on every page. The way in which he explores the subtleties of loss and longing is unmatched. Nabakov’s Lolita changed the way I thought about writing, and Steinbeck’s East of Eden is the finest novel I have ever read. More recently, I really like the work of Junot Diaz.

LS: Do you have any print aspirations?

BE: Our tentative print date is October 1. Some pretty prominent literary names have already confirmed that they will debut new work in our inaugural print edition. That work will be featured along with the best pieces appearing in our first six issues.

LS: What do you like about Chicago's poetry scene?

BE: The city itself has such a weight to it. It’s a wonderful muse. The poetic diversity in Chicago is amazing; you have the whole slam scene still going strong, the experimental and conventional poets, and then you have a visual poet like Tony Fitzpatrick, who is doing some altogether different.

LS: Any favorite spots around town?

BE: I have attended some pretty powerful readings at Molly Malone’s, and I really like the Spoken Word. Myopic Books is the place to be on Sunday Night though.

LS: Where do you see Fogged Clarity 10 years from now?

BE: Still standing.

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