Interview conducted by Cam Kurtz

Cam Kurtz: When was the first time that you were published as a poet?

Johnny Cate: Well, the first time I count was actually not that long ago. I believe it was like last year. It was kind of mid-summer last year. I had three picked up randomly before that, but I’d never read them to anybody, I would never perform them for anybody. It was a small press in Portland or something, but I don’t really count that. I think that was sort of like a fluke thing. So I count my official history of publication as beginning last summer basically. I think it was like last April that I got my first poem picked up.

I started to try [to get published] because I was coming to the end of my MFA, so I was like, okay, I’m going to start transitioning from the work of writing this book or this thesis, into the work of publishing. And that’s when I seriously started to find opportunities and push them out and really get going.

CK: What has it been like as your first year as a published poet?

JC: Oh, it’s been a lot of fun, man, I mean it’s, you know, I graduated from the MFA mid last year and I took the second half off of that year from writing and decided to just push out publication, find submission opportunities. And it’s partly grueling cause you get rejected endlessly and endlessly and endlessly. But Geoff Bouvier, who was a professor at Vermont College of Fine Arts, where I went, he looked at me the last day he was like Johnny, you’re going for a 0.01% acceptance rate, that’s what you hope for. And so I really try to keep that front and center. I’ve tried to keep that in my mind over the past year and roll with the punches. I’d be lying if I said I don’t get really mad like when people reject my shit, but I think I get over it a lot faster than I used to. On to the next one, and it makes the ones that you get feel that much better. But I’ve had a lot of fun and I feel really, really blessed. I mean I’ve, you know, over the course of a year, since I really started trying to get published, I think I’ve been pretty blessed comparatively.

CK: I was told to hope for a hundred rejections.

JC: I think if you’ve done the work, you’ve really been honest with yourself to push your poetry to a publishable level, I think you’re going to know when it’s publishable at a point. It’s an odds game. So you can celebrate rejections in the sense that you know that it has shaved away the odds. Right, that’s the way I think of it. So every rejection that comes in, you’re shaving away that percentage. So you can celebrate every response you get. 

CK: So slight pivot. You have a very specific writing style. Where do you think that comes from?

JC: I think it’s a result of whatever kind of unique cocktail makes me up as a person. It flows out of what I like and it flows out of a kind of musical language. It’s full of pyrotechnics, as they call it. I’m always kind of aspiring to reach this kind of designer language, I want it to be marked and I want it to be specific, I want it to be very, very high fashion, and to do that I use stylized language. I use language that I feel is new and fresh.

And I grew up really being into punk rock music and so I’ve always gravitated toward things with a certain amount of speed and a certain amount of attack. Before I was into writing, I was into music mostly. I didn’t get into writing until the end of my senior year of high school. I spent my entire high school experience not really paying attention to literature at all and focusing on music. I think your output is going to be a result of your inputs, and I’m constantly kind of gravitating to and inputting things into my mind and creative chamber.

CK: It’s not often, at this point in my English student career that I have to go look up a word and with your work I had to go do that quite a few times. The word everyone at the table kept getting tripped up on was zygomatic. We had to go look it up. We had to have a discussion, figure out what that meant. But also looking at it, it’s the perfect word. It’s doing a lot of work there. Which I can’t say is always true for the big thesaurus words you see sometimes.

JC: I’m so glad that you feel that way because just in a certain moment, you can’t do anything about it, and I think that particular poem is so much about the sonic force of it and just the launch right from the start. You know, I think that poem (Blood Moon Blues) has got a number of just kind of like zany words in it that just move and keep it moving toward the conclusion but also give it this kind of oblique, bluesy sound. I’m so glad that because I love the word, and I’m glad that you guys sat around and were like, did he fuck up here or does this work? And you ultimately came to the conclusion that it did.

CK: There’s a forward motion to your poetry, it bounces.

JC: That’s what it’s all about. You know momentum, when I get into that flow state and I’m writing, I know when there’s momentum happening and I definitely want the reader to be carried. I think that’s why the language is so important to me, because sound is how you carry someone along. I do want it to be like a song, it has to move. And so if you were to break it all apart, obviously you’d be able to find those little tricks I’m using, like the assonance and the consonance and whatever else it is, and obviously the rhythmic kind of construction of it. You’d be able to dissect it and look at all that. But I think, as you read it, my hope is that those all blend together to just create kind of a network of hooks that pull everything along. You’re getting tugged along by the sounds, because one sound gives rise to a next and one sound gives rise to a next. I like it to feel as if it’s growing out of itself at a very quick pace and you’re growing along with it.

CK: What’s next for you?

JC: I need to go through another round of sending my manuscript out. I sent it out to a bunch of contests and didn’t get the nod, which is fine. I’ve heard about legendary poets getting rejected 50 times, it’s no big deal. I decided to take a step back and focus more on getting the poems published, which is going well. I just won a North Carolina poetry prize, the Kakalak Poetry Prize, which I’m excited about and happy about. I don’t know what kind of momentum or energy that builds so I’m just trying to pump shit out.

It’s just a lot of work and I’m trying to write new poems, like I’m already working on the second book. So, where am I going to put the free time that I do have when I’m not writing copy and dealing with other stuff? Do I need to focus on the publishing aspect or do I need to focus on the composition aspect? Right now, and I think that’s kind of just that’s the negotiation that you have to have.

CK: Is there anything else you would like to add?

JC: It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it because I’ve been so swamped writing copy so having these moments to talk about poetry has been really great this week. I owe you a thanks and hope everything goes well for you.

CK: Well, this has been a really great joy for me for me as well. Thank you for your time!

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Johnny Cate is a poet, copywriter, and vintage T-shirt collector from Asheville, NC.

Cam Kurtz is a NOR intern studying creative writing and marketing at Ohio University.