Passionate Pursuit: An Interview with Chip Dameron

Interview by McKenzie Jones

Chip Dameron has been in the industry working as a writer, as an editor, and in the collegiate education system for more than forty years. In that time, he has composed over ten books of poems. Now, as a full-time writer, he serves as a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and as a board member of the Writers’ League of Texas. He is also a contributor to the Texas Poetry Assignment.

How did you come to be a part of the Texas Poetry Assignment? How has being a part of the organization shaped your career/poetry?

CD: I’ve known Dr. Musgrove for a number of years, and when I heard of this project I was glad to respond to various of the topics. He had established a community of poets, both through the website and through the periodic readings, and I’m pleased to participate in both. I’ve known many of the participants, whom I enjoy connecting with again, as well as meeting other poets who are doing fine work. It helps keep me active, and I give thanks to all the good work that Dr. M does for all of us. I’m pleased he’s gotten you and your classmates involved in these interviews and in reading submissions to the anthology.

I have read your bio and poems on Texas Poetry Assignment, and I'm wondering what else you might want readers to know about you and your background as it relates to you and your poetry. Are there other experiences in workshops, readings, or publications beyond Texas Poetry Assignment you want to share?

CD: Over the years, I’ve participated in more than a hundred readings, and I’ve found it to be valuable to deliver the poems verbally in a public environment. It’s another way to share the poems: for others to read the poems is one thing, but hearing them, with the pauses and emphases that the poet brings to a reading, is its own experience.

Also, I’ve enjoyed being involved in editing literary magazines, which I’ve done three times over the years. It’s a challenge to judge the poetry and fiction that comes in, and it’s a pleasure to interact with contemporary writers through this process.

Over the 40 years you have been writing poetry, how has your perspective changed on craft? Dr. Musgrove teaches about poetic consciousness and how reading and writing poetry can reflect how we see the world. Would you say that you have developed a good poetic conscience? If so, how does it affect your view of the world?

CD: I experimented with rhyme in my early poetry, particularly slant rhyme, but I eventually chose to work in forms involving syllable count and/or stanza patterns (two lines, three lines, etc.). As far as poetic consciousness goes, I’ve found that my poems can be about whatever interests me, large or small. They can address important world matters as well as the bird I see perched on my feeder outside. I try to be open to all I see, read, experience, think about.

How would you describe your origin story as a poet? What are your first memories of reading and writing poetry?  Which people, teachers, and poets were most influential to you in the beginning?

CD: The lyrics of the early rock and roll music of the 1960s were essentially poems set to music, and they sank deep into my consciousness. Then, in college, reading the great American poets in a survey course inspired me to write. I was especially influenced by Dickinson, Whitman, and Frost, as well as the Irishman, W.B. Yeats. Later, in graduate school, I met and became friends with Dennis Brutus, a controversial poet forced to leave South Africa who spent several years as a visiting faculty member at U.T. Austin. His vivid poetry and personal history were inspirational.

You mentioned rock and roll. Do you still find any of those artists influencing you today? Has their work ever inspired any of your poetry?

CD: I haven’t consciously written poems that are influenced by musical artists, but I’m sure that Bob Dylan’s songs of social consciousness have been influential. And Van Morrison’s mystical love lyrics no doubt have influenced love poems I’ve written. I don’t think that music currently has much influence on my work.

How would you describe your writing process when it comes to poetry? How do you know when you are ready to write a poem, and how does the drafting, revising, and editing process work for you?

CD: Sometimes I have an idea for a poem and that gets it launched. Other times I sit down and see what occurs to me at that moment: what do I think about, and how do I begin writing about it. Early on, in either process, I begin to get a feel for its form: what line length does it seem best suited for? Do I want to work with a fixed number of lines per stanza? Most of my poems are relatively short, generally fitting on one printed page. So I may get a first draft down in one sitting, or it might take several sittings. As I move from line to line, I also reread what I’ve provisionally written. So I generally am doing editing as I’m continuing to write the poem. Once I’ve got what feels like a completed draft, I’ll go over it for a few days, tinkering as needed. At some point, then, when it satisfies me as finished, I’ll likely be done tinkering.

You mentioned earlier that you work more with stanzas and syllables. Do you ever feel confined by this in your writing?

CD: More often than not, I’m shaping poems using a stanza pattern, which gives me room to work the lines without focusing on a syllable count. But other times, working with a set number of syllables feels right.

Do you ever find yourself wanting to keep poems for yourself? How do you know if it is a poem for publication or personal archive?

CD: I have a few poems that are finished but don’t seem to be satisfying enough to me to try to publish them. Better to then just move on to new impulses, new poems. I’ve written some “occasional” poems to specific people—my wife, some friends—that aren’t intended for others. But I’m willing and interested in sharing most of my poems with readers.

What topics or issues frequent your poems?  Have those changed over time? How did the pandemic affect your poetry?

CD: I’m not consciously aware of having particular topics or issues that I write about. That said, I can look back over my poems and see that many are about the places I’m living in: the landscape, the people, the animals. I love to travel, and many poems are about experiences I’ve had in travels in Europe, in China, in Mexico.

Ah, the pandemic. Actually, I found myself in April 2020 pulling out a children’s story I’d written 25 years earlier (never published), and I revised it radically and then over the next year wrote two more stories as part of that series. I wrote only a small number of poems, as my creative energies drew me to these stories. Unfortunately, I’ve sent dozens of queries to agents and have had no takers. On a brighter note, I decided at the beginning of 2023 to write daily haiku poems. So on December 31 of this past year, I completed #365, and my goal is to get them published as a book of haiku.

I have read your poem "Letter to a Child Never Born" on Texas Poetry Assignment. What do you recall about the inspiration for this poem? How does it reflect the choices you regularly make in crafting your poetry on the page? Shape? Line? Music? Comparison? Balance? Were there any new craft choices you made?

CD: The poem is based on a very sad situation. A young woman in my extended family became pregnant, and she and her husband were excited about welcoming a first child. Unfortunately, it became evident that the fetus had multiple, very serious birth defects and would die soon after birth if it even lived to be born. The couple made the painful decision to end the pregnancy. Which means, if you live in Texas, you must leave the state for an abortion elsewhere, which they did. 

I chose not to use stanzas, but I did use an eight-syllable line for its form. I wanted to include as much specific detail about the fetus’s condition as there was. I have no idea what happens after death, but if there is some sort of existence, I wanted to express our human love for the being that would never be. And no, no new craft choices.

What advice would you give to young people who are interested in reading poetry, writing poetry, and publishing their work?

CD: Read widely, and then hone in on what you connect with best. Write as regularly as you can, and recognize that if you are beginning, your poems will inevitably have shortcomings. But you learn as you go, and if you persist you will write poems that are worthy of your efforts. That is when you should send them out to live in the world. You will get rejections, perhaps mostly rejections, but if you persist you will succeed in placing poems that others will read. Always remember this: you are the poem’s most important reader!

If you had to recommend one or two Texas Poetry Assignment poets to other readers, who might you suggest?

CD: Jerry Bradley and Betsy Joseph.

How would you distinguish contemporary poetry from poetry from earlier eras?

CD: In the late twentieth century, many poets moved away from rhyme, which can often feel forced and lead to sentence constructions that don’t sound like the way people actually speak. The focus then became reliance on metaphor, imagery, and clarity.

If you had a chance to ask a question to a poet you admire (living or dead), who is the poet, and what would you ask?

CD: While I admire many poets greatly, I have no questions for any of them. I let their poems say everything that needs to be said.

I’d like to shift into a discussion on publishing. Dr. Musgrove teaches a lot about reading relationships between the text and the reader. There is also a lot to say about the relationship between the author and the reader, though. How would you describe your relationship with your readers?

CD: While every reader is different, you know, as a poet, that something has brought them to your poem or poems. I want my poems to get their attention and hold it, through my word choice and imagery. Be clear, be vivid where called for, be authentic. As with fiction, but typically in a much-compressed way, I hope to take readers through an experience that leads to an insight on some aspect of the world we all share. Do so with respect for readers but with confidence that the way I word the poem will be worth their reading it. That is my goal. Since I do not know who these readers may be, I am and must be honest, to being the first reader. I must be satisfied with my experience with a poem, and then I can share it with whoever reads it afterward.

How would you describe your view of writing pre and post-publication? How did your expectations change once you experienced the publishing world? On the spectrum of small publishing houses to corporate publishing, how has your perspective of the literary world been shaped? What were your experiences as a newly published poet? What processes did you go through in publication, and do you wish you had done anything differently? How does this all differ from how you go about publishing as a previously published poet?

At the beginning of my publishing experience, I hoped that editors would like my poems and accept them because of their quality. As I began collecting rejection letters, I realized that some of my poems needed further work. I also realized that without previous publishing credits, editors were likely to reject my work and look for poems by poets who had already established themselves. So instead of sending poems off to major publications, like The New Yorker and Poetry magazine, I began to focus my submissions on literary magazines and journals in my region. And that made all the difference. I also talked with fellow poets, and through those conversations, I found out about small publications that weren’t overwhelmed by submissions and might publish a poet who didn’t already have an impressive resume.

These days, I do send off to a variety of publications that aren’t regional, and my previous publications likely lead to frequent acceptances. But I still value smaller regional publications, and I’m pleased to support them with my work.

The industry has taken some massive shifts with the turn of the century. If you were a new and upcoming poet in the twenty-first century, how do you think you would go about your career? What things would be different or the same?

CD: I am still old school, at this point in my life. While I do have a website, which I highly recommend, I do not participate in Facebook, Instagram, etc. I send poems out for publication and I participate in readings, in person and online, whenever possible. But I’ve made my career, and I’m comfortable where I am now.

However, if I were a young poet trying to launch a career, I would likely create a website once I had publications to promote. And I likely would be active in promoting myself through social media. I would network with other poets (which I actively do now), and I would get involved with literary organizations, including literary magazines, for experience and connections. I would read poetry as widely as possible and absorb forms and metaphors, and then look for new ways to structure lines and paragraphs and image my ideas.

And then face reality: writing poetry is a passion, but for 99% of poets, it is not work that will pay your bills and support your retirement. Do it because you love it, because it allows you to express your experiences, beliefs, and dreams. Some fiction writers become bestselling authors and make enough money to live on, or even become wealthy. Few poets, if any, do. But if you love writing poems, you’ll find a vocation that allows you to pursue your passion. And that, in the end, means everything.

McKenzie (Mack) Jones is currently a graduate student in English at Angelo State University. Her undergraduate specialization was fiction creative writing with minors in Spanish and psychology.  She is from Llano, Texas, but currently resides in San Angelo, Texas.