henry 7.reneau, jr.
Oyster River Pages: Why do you write and/or create?
henry 7.reneau, jr.: I write because I have to. In certain perspectives, the written word is where everything in our known universe begins, the word signifying form, interpreting reality. I try to base my writing on what I've seen and experienced, rather than a conventional set of reactions preordained by race, belief or social status. The imagery in my work derives mainly from the truths I have experienced in my life, as opposed to a ready acceptance of mainstream dogma framed in the protocols of social assimilation, creative compliance, or how I have been academically taught to interpret the world around me. The origins of my writing, the narratives and images, with their ironic signifiers, seek to embody everything that is unique, as well as diverse, while simultaneously, universally communal, into the methodology of my writing. I believe poetic imagery should compare and contrast in a manner that is both peripherally observant and inwardly introspective, a universal human autobiography becoming an iconography of shared commonalities. The poet, as storyteller, should seek to enlighten minds, while simultaneously, igniting the conviction in others to analyze, in order to think through, opposing realities.
ORP: What is the most challenging aspect of your artistic process?
H7R: The most challenging aspect of my writing process is the endless editing necessary to create a final version that authentically presents my observations and intent, while making it palatable for the reader. I believe every artist must strive to better enable an artistic empathy, between the artist and their audience. Towards this end, I constantly seek to create new methods of poetic storytelling, which more readily will enable me to bring the audience into the work, creating a space for the readers, or listeners. to engage with their own preconceptions, fears, and hostilities.
ORP: What would you say is your most interesting writing and/or artistic quirk?
H7R: I suppose that my most blatant writing quirk is that rejection has always been a green light to me, a ladder propped against the razor-wire barrier of possible publication. I am very persistent, and I have confidence in my ability to create poetry that will aurally blow the tops of readers heads off. I love to read poetry, period, and the discipline necessary to create meaningful poetry has provided me a means to redirect my anger, frustration, and cynicism to a constructive direction. The fact that I am Black, an ex-con without a college degree, and not part of the MFA contingent of traditionally taught poets, nor a professor in an accredited institution of higher learning, is a hindrance to my work being published, but not an unscalable brick wall.
ORP: What do you think is the best way to improve writing and/or artistic skills?
H7R: The best way to improve one's writing, or any artistic skills, is to do the work. Look at the world around you, and create the most authentic interpretation that your human senses, and innate abilities, can articulate. Disciplining oneself to do the actual work, in the face of hardship, criticism and/or persecution, is the hardest part of improving one's artistic abilities. That is why of all the billions of people who have existed, or now exist, on this planet, only a mere handful have maximized the ability to create an interpretation of reality based on a persevering and analytical observation. It's too terrifyingly hard for most humans to look God in the eyes and call bullshit.
ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?
H7R: The books I've read more than once that immediately come to mind are Some Changes by June Jordan, Space, in Chains by Laura Kasischke, Song of Solomon and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, Blindness by Jose Saramago, and The Stand by Stephen King. All of these books speak to the truth of self-preservation, to what humans are most apt to do most often, as opposed to the romanticized version that idealizes humans as courageous, compassionate and rational. As I, as poet, struggle to lay bare the wonder and awe that binds us all, the atrocities that divide us, and the mysteries that drive us to constantly question, and reaffirm, our existence, stories are created to explain, and improve, the human condition. It is in this imaginative space that our stories unfold—this space of crisis, that holds as much power now as it ever has. Poetic language is, and always, it seems, has been, by definition, a language in crisis. The poet, as storyteller, by definition, should strive, artistically, to remedy the self by bleeding someone else’s wounds. Poetry should believe in, and live the urgency of the word—walk in another's shoes, to resist, in and beyond one's country, and thus, to better interpret, and co-exist, in the world around us.
