• Home
• News
• Local

PORT TOWNSEND, Wash. - Sam Hamill, poet, publisher, editor and translator, co-founded the Copper Canyon Press in 1972. The publishing house has produced more than 350 titles.

In addition to editing and publishing, Hamill has produced 40 books, including "Almost Paradise," "Dumb Luck," "Gratitude," and translations of ancient Chinese and Japanese classics.

Hamill, 66, will be in Kearney to read from his work at 7 p.m. Tuesday in the Ponderosa Room of the Nebraskan Student Union as part of the University of Nebraska at Kearney Reynolds Series.

Suffering from hearing loss, Hamill answered questions by e-mail.

Q: With so much media available to consumers and readers, what still makes poetry valid and important?

HAMILL: I've always liked Ezra Pound's famous comment, "Poetry is news that stays news." Poetry is a very large house with many rooms, closets, attics, basements, bedrooms and kitchens. For me, the practice of poetry is a way of life - as it was for many of the ancient Chinese and Japanese poets I have translated. For me, poetry is for re-reading, a world to be explored and revisited, a world that enriches the quality of one's life.

Q; What does it mean to a publisher (Copper Canyon Press) to win awards such as the National Book Award and a couple of Pulitzers?

HAMILL: I didn't "win" those prizes; the poets I published were the happy winners. I spent 32 years as editor at Copper Canyon Press, serving poetry as conscientiously as I knew how. Publishing has changed a great deal since I "retired" five years ago. But "edit" is still a verb. Editing is both an art and a skill, a craft. As "publisher," Copper Canyon Press benefited as any press would in receiving multiple major awards - the press became a leader in American literary publishing.

Q: Can you recall your feelings upon learning of these awards?

HAMILL: To be perfectly honest, I was happy for the press and for the poets, but I don't personally put much value on those things. I let others go to the festivities. I've been fortunate to have received several grants/fellowships that saved me from crumbling during long years of living hand-to-mouth, and Copper Canyon Press was built on grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. My gratitude to them all is profound and undying. I hope I have given this country and the world's poetry something of lasting value. If prizes get more people to read the books, I say, "Goody!"

Q: With all of your projects and responsibilities do you still find time to write?

HAMILL: I've had heart problems the past couple of years, and my wife lost half a lung and went through chemotherapy last year and is now, luckily, cancer-free. I haven't written much. Perhaps I'll find more inspiration when we return to Buenos Aires in December. We spend part of each year there, and I love Latin American cultures. Argentina has its own unique problems along with those it shares with most of the world, but I find it deeply refreshing to get outside this country's military-corporate government and view the world from another perspective.

Q: Can you describe how you write: time of day, where you write, what you use (computer, chalk, pen)?

HAMILL: I make notes on napkins, in a notebook, on scraps or post-it notes. Some poems get drafted on legal-sized yellow notebooks. But most shorter poems get drafted "by ear," that is, by recitation, by listening/composing from an "inner ear," or muse, imagination. Poetry, for me, is a union of vision-voice-and-music, the gift of inspiration from the muse, which I must transform in order to give it away again in the form of a poem. Inspiration: to breathe in deeply and speak from those depths. Poetry makes noise. It exists as a body of sound. The words on the page are merely musical notation. When I think I have the poem "finished," I write it down; sometime later I may make a little change or two. But it's important to me to get the sound, the feel of it, just about complete by way of the ear. My BS detector is in my ear.

Q: What do you get from working with incarcerated populations?

HAMILL: I could write a book. We lock up more people per capita than any nation in the world. That's scary. Poetry saves lives. You can lock up a man, but you can't lock the voice and vision of his imagination. The way of poetry, the practice of Zen, shows us that our lives are simply an instrument of our practice. If we alter our practice, we change our lives. By changing our own lives, we may affect the lives of those around us in helpful ways. Often enough, that means not imposing our will on others - whether as individuals or as nations.

Q: Can poets make a difference in this world? I'm interested to know what message Poets Against the War sends? Is anyone listening? Should poets be political?

HAMILL: Of course poets make a difference in the world. Not all poets, but certainly some poets make an enormous difference. Every poet has his or her own motives, own vocabulary of experience, her or his own practice. The mere fact of poetry as a presence in our lives touches all those we meet, those we befriend, those who come to hear us give voice to the poem, and the circles continue to expand until we can no longer see them with the naked eye, and their energy (if you will) continues to ripple outward.

I had the good fortune to be in Cairo with Mahmoud Darwish shortly before his death. No matter how often he said he could not speak "for the Palestinian people" but only for himself, he was indeed a major voice of the Palestinian people, a humanitarian voice for all oppressed people, and he was loved around the world.

I knew Darwish. I'm no Darwish. But what called him to poetry called me. Each of us must answer that calling in his or her own way.

Poets Against War presents an enormous anthology (more than 20,000 poems) representing all kinds of American poets in a moment of solidarity opposing the moral depravity of our illegal invasion of Iraq. Virtually everything we predicted in January 2003 has been realized: The country is fragmented, its cities a shambles, its vast store of historical records demolished, millions of its people impoverished, exiled or dead.

We have published articles such as William O'Daly's essay on "Poetry & Torture" and Martín Espada's "Republic of Poetry," and other stories both domestic and international. Roberto Sosa, a leading Latin American poet, recently wrote a piece for us about the situation in Honduras.

Q: Does a hearing-impairment make a difference in your poetry? Is this a lifelong impairment for something new? How do you deal with it when doing public readings?

HAMILL: I have disintegrating nerves that connect my ear to my brain. I wear strong hearing aids, but do very poorly when there is ambient noise or echoes. I also have tinnitus, perpetual ringing in the ears that sometimes gets bad and interferes with all hearing.

As for affecting my writing, my friend Steve Kuusisto, a marvelous poet/essayist, has written elegantly about being a blind traveler and learning "to see" with his ears. He says the hearing-impaired are the least understood among the handicapped. And being blind or deaf is a handicap. For my condition, shouting makes this much worse. Speaking clearly in a firm voice is a great help. We get to play the cards we're dealt. I miss birdsongs every day - the robin, the distant goshawk, the thrush. Beethoven, old and deaf, heard plenty. I'm no Beethoven, but so do I. On the other hand, I've been known to turn off my hearing aids and dream my way through a bad poetry reading now and then.

Q: Is there something you know now you wish you knew when starting your career in writing and publishing?

HAMILL: I guess I somehow knew at the very beginning - as a teenager enthralled by the Beat poets and the jazz/blues scene, the beginning of the Civil Rights Era - that I was signing on for what would be the full venture of my life; my Zen practice, the practice of poetry, the practice of engaging issues such as war and human rights - these are not separate activities.

I was an 18-year-old Marine in Okinawa when I read Albert Camus: "We can be murderers or the accomplices of murderers, or we can resist with our whole being. Since this terrible dividing lines does actually exist, it would be a benefit for it to be clearly drawn." This fell right into place with the elementary lessons of Zen Buddhism.

Q: How does the national economic situation change the look and sound of poetry? Is there a connection?

HAMILL: It concerns me that so many American poets have chosen the path of academia. A university is a little universe - a vital one, to be sure - but a little universe also in the pejorative sense, with faculty follies and fables and politics, etc. In a way, many of our poets are slightly divorced from, say, blue collar America. But poetry, as I said, is a mansion and that would include not a few revolutionaries of various stripes along with those who remain comfortably in academia, doing the vital work of teaching our students.

Education gets more expensive and becomes available only to the privileged class. That affects everyone. More teachers on short contracts without tenure? That hurts everyone. I'm told, "Thar ain't no evolution in Texas!" while the Texas Board of Ed has enormous influence on this nation's textbooks. Our students must prepare to participate in the 21st century.

I hold a bizarre idea: that government should exist to keep peace, and attend to health and education. The latter two are in terrible condition these days and the first has never made a blip on the screen. They are our future.

e-mail to:

rick.brown@kearneyhub.com

Poet and publisher Sam Hamill presents readings from his work at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the Ponderosa Room of the Nebraskan Student Union as part of the Reynolds Series. Free admission.

Additional Readings in the Reynolds Series:

Friday - Reynolds Scholars, winners of the Reynolds Poetry and Creative Writing Scholarship, including Laura Jensen, Rachel Einspahr, Ryan DeMoss, Sandra Anthony, Amanda Brabec and Brittany Seawell

Oct. 16 - Setphanie Elizondo Griest

Oct. 22 - Matthew Shenoda

More about unk

• ARTICLE: UNK defense preparing for one of nation’s best running backs
• ARTICLE: Duluth sweeps Loper volleyball
• ARTICLE: Disability Awareness Month
• ARTICLE: Ancient humor still fresh today, still filled with sex, schemes in a language Americans can understand
• ARTICLE: UNK’s Miller gets Professor of Year award