Featured Poet: Christopher Moore
We recently had the opportunity to interview Christopher Moore about his new book Dark Edens and his approach to poetry.
Congratulations on publishing your debut book “Dark Edens”! What inspired you to write this book?
Thank you, I love getting praise for my work. What inspired me to write this book was the craziness a few years in my personal life has formed, that and the craziness currently in the world as a whole. I am not going to lie, my book “Dark Edens” does have poems in it that show and uglier side of humanity, but that’s only half the book. There are some poems in it that are interesting, some dealing with mythology like Atropos Scissors, one of the Fates in Greek mythology, Pandora’s New Year, inspired by Pandora’s Box. While other poems are written from either personal experiences or from people in my own life that I know. The poem Redheaded Queen was inspired by an amazing and beautiful friend of mine. The Purgatory Diner is based off an actual diner from my local area I would often visit with my family in the late 1990s/early 2000s and it really hasn’t changed much, even when I currently go there, it still brings back memories. Other poems are just plain silly just because, like The Mad Hatter Quarantined.
Can you describe your creative process?
Well I really do not have much of a creative process. I guess if you would call it a creative process, I do often times write my poems on scrap paper before writing it down in my personal poetry notebooks, of which I have five full poetry notebooks and half way full with my current sixth poetry notebook, I use regular composition notebooks for my poetry. I have close to 400 original poems though in my personal poetry collection, sadly it would take too long to type up ALL of them into a Word doc to save up. I think at the time I am writing this interview, my current poetry collection stands at 388 poems to date, that’s over the 2013-2020 period though I will not lie though, sometimes the creative process to write poems is very hard. There have been moments where I banged my head with the palm of my face because I couldn’t think up a poem to write, but there have been other times where the “poetry machine” in my mind keeps cycling out one poem after the next. I do know that listening to music on my Spotify app on my phone helped the creative juices flowing while I was typing up poems for “Dark Edens”.
What does your workspace look like?
My workspace is a mess, I have a laptop on a desk, but the desk is cluttered. Almost half the desk is taken up by a big Epson printer and the rest has scattered papers and a few water bottles, etc. I use to carry around my poetry notebook to write poems, so my workspace used to be anywhere I would be going, but I do not often take my poetry notebook around with me much anymore, discovered my best poetry writing is done at night. Plus, in the case of writing “Dark Edens”, my workspace also has loose pieces of tablet papers everywhere on the floor, either crumbled up because I didn’t like the poem I wrote or just stacked in a pile for the poems I put into the book itself.
What is your motivation for writing?
There are a few things that get me motivated for writing. Sometimes something I see gets me motivated, other times it is someone in my personal life, anything can motivate me to write poetry.
How did you become a poet?
I sadly cannot tell you every detail of this because it is too personal, but I will give you a quick non-detailed overview. Between 2010 and 2012, my life had taken a downturn for the worst, culminating in what I call a “bomb” once 2013 happened. This stirred a revolutionary further in my own soul. When I was little, I remember learning that whenever you feel down, writing your feelings about it often helps, so I started writing what I was feeling. I soon discovered some of what I was writing easily formed poems, so I got a composition notebook that was lying around my room and started writing poem after poem. My first published poem however did not occur until late 2015 when I submitted some poems for my community college’s literary magazine at the time, in which I got into often between 2013 and 2019. My publishing break came in late 2017 when a small publishing company designed by poets for poets loved my work and wanted me to write a poetry book for them to publish, thus my first book Poetic Timeline: History Through Poetic Verse, was first published in June 2018. Since then, I have gone to write several other poetry collections, my recent book, Dark Edens, is my fourth book of poems.
Has the Coronavirus pandemic changed how you approach your craft?
It kind of has, but also hasn’t. I do know the riots this year have fueled a poem or two, one of which is even in my recent book. The actual Coronavirus itself, well there is only really one poem I kind of wrote in Dark Edens that kind of hints at it, but not by name. On page 96 of the book there is a poem titled “The Plague Doctor of Penn’s Woods”, that kind of is about COVID-19, but not exactly directed by it, if you get what I’m saying. The Coronavirus has actually helped me with poetry believe it or not. My university has a poetry society that meets every Tuesday evenings, but since I do not live near the university, I would not want to travel through the mountains in the dark just to go to a two-hour poetry meeting. Now that everything is through Zoom, I can finally be part of the club.
What does literary success look like to you?
One word, REVIEWS, REVIEWS, REVIEWS. Although my poetry does have a big local following, NONE of my local fans have an Amazon account to buy my book, most won’t even create an account just to review my book. Although I did have one person who hated my book New Golgotha and created an Amazon account just so he could write a not-so-good review on it. My philosophy is that you can keep telling the poet the book is good until you are blue in the face, that won’t help sell their books though. Online reviews whether they be through Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc., really do help sell books. When the literary editor of Le Spectre Politerary Journal read one of my books and did an Instagram post promoting it, that particular book saw an increase of sales on Amazon just because he told his readers that my book was amazing. So literary success to me is knowing my books are being promoted and people are actively telling others to buy it because they loved it so much.
What are you looking forward to?
By “looking forward to”, I assume you mean as far as my literary perspectives go. Well I am looking forward to new poetry projects I have in the works. In December 2020, I am going to be publishing a small poetry chapbook called Heard the Bells, possibly out the first or second full week of December 2020. I also am working on a volume 2 of my first poetry book Poetic Timeline titled Like Devils They Came: Poetic Timeline Vol. 2, set to come out possibly Spring 2021. I also have in the works another poetry collection, but so far it has an un-named title and it might not be out until 2022 or 2023. I am also going to be taking a crack at writing a mystery novel, a historical mystery novel called Le Rebel Rougue, it is going to be a mystery set in 1880s Paris and the American South.
Where can readers read more of your work?
Well the majority of my poetry books can be found on Amazon, with the exception of New Golgotha, that one is available through Lulu Publishing. My future poetry projects will also be available through Amazon whenever they are completed. Two of my poems were featured in the Summer 2020 issue of Le Spectre Politerary Journal and a few of my poems have been accepted into some poetry anthologies over the recent years. Three of my poems have appeared in Divine Choir: Divine Drama Anthology Vol. 2, a poetry anthology about angels and their interaction with humans, published back in 2018, my poems are on page 178 and 179 in the 415-page poetry anthology.
