Dr. Brad Modlin | Poet

He/Him - Brad Aaron Modlin is a poet/writer and an endowed chair/professor of creative writing. He wrote Everyone at This Party Has Two Names and Surviving in Drought. He enjoys collaboration with other types of artists and has co-created with painters, sculptors, video artists, and orchestras. Several of his poems have been set to vocal music, and he has written lyrics for composers. He has participated in residencies with the Banff Centre for the Arts, Artscape Toronto, and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. His essay “The Summer of the Commune, and Some of the Summers Before That” appears in the new Welcome to the Neighborhood anthology. His poem “What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade” will be featured in the premier episode of the Poetry Unbound podcast by the On Being Project (makers of On Being with Krista Tippett). www.bradaaronmodlin.com 

I read Everyone at This Party Has Two Names in one sitting at a cottage in the Cape Breton Highlands over the summer. It was a rare long weekend when I had absolutely nothing else on my plate aside from sitting, eating, and reading. Obviously, we should all strive to have these moments more often, but it was a chance for me to focus on nothing but this one collection without any other nagging thoughts. Nothing else on my plate. What a treat is was to use that time to read Brad’s work. I laughed out loud. I cried. I sat and stared at the scenery for an hour at a time. I was thrilled to then be able to talk to the author. I hope you enjoy our discussion.

{Jacob} - So, I would love to start with a bit of a bio from you, and you can make it as academic-y or life-y a bio as you like, whatever suits your fancy, but I’m curious about who you are and where you come from. 

{Brad} – Academic-y, I am the Reynolds Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska, Kearney, where I teach creative writing for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as write. I have an MFA and a PhD in creative writing, so writing has been important to me for some time. I have always loved to read and to write, and secretly, when I was in grade six, I wrote a book! It was ten pages long. I told no one. 

{Jacob} - That’s impressive, honestly. 

{Brad} - The first chapter was all capital letters—I used caps lock because I couldn’t type, and I didn’t want to have to deal with capitals and nonsense. 

{Jacob} - That’s practical.

{Brad} – Since then, I have published a book of poems, Everyone at This Party Has Two Names, as well as a short collection of short stories, Surviving in Drought. I’m really interested in self-consciousness and awkwardness. Everyone at This Party has a lot of awkward moments, which were very fun to work on because I would be at parties—or receptions as we often are, as artists—and sometimes I’d think, “Wow, this evening is really uncomfortable.” But it would be redeemed when I thought, “Oh, it’s research!” For a while I was also writing a series of bad-date poems. That research lasted longer than I would have liked. At readings, I remind the audience that the character in a poem is not necessarily the poet—sometimes it’s an entirely different person—especially when the character is making an idiot of himself. But I wrote bad-date and bad-party poems. Maybe that’s what art is about. You get to make something good out of something terrible or awkward. 

{Jacob} - Absolutely. So, I’m sure every poet and writer loathes to hear as the first thing in an interview, but as I was reading “Everyone at this Party has Two Names,” it was not what I was expecting, and by that I mean…I don’t know what I was expecting at all, but I think it was much more unexpected and jarringly sad at times. And awkward. I think I felt more quick-change emotions than I was expecting. It was really beautiful. It was a really lovely read. So, I’m curious, you say a lot of it is a study in awkwardness…. what were you doing when you were writing this? Where were you in life and in space? What was happening that you were writing those jarring and sad moments?

{Brad} - I wrote it over time, and the poems have lived through drafts and seasons, which means I was in multiple interior places throughout the process. I think poetry can mirror that. I’m interested in how we can experience multiple emotions simultaneously. A funeral is an easy example: It’s a sad event, of course, but we might also refer to it as a celebration of life. We feel happy in some ways, because we get to see family and friends and talk about the person who has passed away. 

I’m an optimistic person. I like to think it’s an informed optimism. Sometimes I grow concerned looking around the world, as with the poem, “The Seminarians Want to Rename God,” which came from this moment when I was feeling that everything was terrible. And unsteady. People abandon each other. Children disappear. Looking around me, I kept seeing images reflecting that. In the kitchen, meat on a dish. It looked so bloody as if even our food reflected suffering. An old photo I had taken of sidewalk graffiti: a skeleton with a sickle. All of these images come together to say that life is precarious. You seek, as the poem says, “a floor steady enough to walk on.” So, in that poem, we have a feeling of isolation, that nothing can be trusted. 

But the opposite feeling can also be true. In the final poem of the book, in which the modern world seems to be completely falling apart and is literally spinning more and more quickly, we have this love and this relationship as the center that holds us. A lot of my poems originate from the recognition that experiences are often many true feelings simultaneously. I’m also interested in community—which is many true people simultaneously—and when strangers form a togetherness. There’s the poem “Everyone at This Party Remembers We Were Once Babies,” in which partygoers share this realization together. But almost as soon as they have that connecting moment, they break it by deciding they must compete with each other again. 

One of the short stories is about five different men reacting differently to a drought. The final man decides he can make a lot of money by selling overpriced bottled water. (The story is a bit surrealistic.) But at the end he realizes that he can’t do this to all these people — all these thirsty people. He looks into the crowd and recognizes people from his small town. The self-conscious banker, and the marathoner whose knee busted irreparably, and the man whose son never calls anymore. The main character decides he will give everyone the water for free. For three minutes, they will all be happy in the same way. That moment of generosity could only exist alongside the selfishness of that character. We can see both sides simultaneously. I think this ability to see may be unique to us as humans. Is it especially important to artists? Perhaps there’s also a queer element, recognizing that one entity can be multiple entities at the same time. 

{Jacob} - I mean, I don’t think that’s untrue at all. I think that paints you perfectly as a — wait, how did you phrase it, an informed optimist? But I do think that’s true, I think the more that I talk to people about the way they create art, but also create their art in non-queer spaces, is absolutely true. I think we have multiple identities built into our fundamental identity, so much more, or we have maybe even a better understanding of it, because I think everyone has multiple identities of course. I think maybe we are more in tune with it. It’s more just under the skin. Perhaps. But as I talk to people who perform, and they identify in their solo work, in their own writing, or their own performance of themselves, is very hyper-queer, but then they perform in a more “hetero” sense… it’s a strange way of flipping back and forth. 

{Brad} - Yes. 

{Jacob} - So, then, the short stories…who did you write that for? Yourself? Is it just stories for you?

{Brad} - That feels like a philosophical question. We create art for ourselves and for somebody else, right? I’m always pointing out to my students that if we want to write just for ourselves, then we write in our journals. If it’s only processing our own emotions and experiences—which art certainly can help us do—then we put it in a notebook for ourselves. When we’re sharing it with other people, we’re recognizing that it is a type of conversation, an act of communication. You are trying to meet someone else where they are. So, my answer is both.  

I wrote it with topics on my mind, one of which was the concept of change—life changing, relationships changing, views about marriage and family changing. The first story is in two parts. It opens with families who live in submarines. A suburb of submarines. A humorously 1950s life, with that stereotypical marriage dynamic and children. The couples are arguing about baking cakes, following a particular recipe, and they shout so loudly the windows of the submarine break and the submarine floods. The children swim away with the recipe books, but the ink is smeared. In part two, we shift to today, and the main character (unspecified gender) of that section and their fiancé (unspecified gender), are baking a cake, but the couple doesn’t really know how. Their next-door neighbors are putting political signs in their yards about who they feel does not deserve wedding cakes. The main couple (Are they same-sex? Opposite? Something else?) doesn’t heed the neighbors. They are too busy trying to learn to cook from scratch. 

The final story is a husband and wife in a rowboat after the last glacier has melted and the world has flooded. In this new world, they can create a whole new set of rules. They’re trying to decide whether to have a child and what that would be like. 

My writing is not necessarily always about “queer things,” and many of my characters are non-queer. As a person, I have manifold concerns, including sexuality, relationships, love, and building families of various types. Queerness offers practice in creativity—in figuring-it-out-as-you-go—which finds its way into the work.  

{Jacob} - You are the first writer that I’ve talked to for this project. 

{Brad} - Yeah, I noticed that. I enjoyed reading your project, and it’s almost entirely musicians, right?

{Jacob} - It’s almost entirely musicians, which is purely a manifestation of my connections with people and their network of people. But, I am excited to branch into other art forms! So, when you are writing, when you sit down and write, what does that process look like for you? Are you a very studious 9-5 sit down kind of writer, are you a 2 am bender writer? 

{Brad} - I was a bender writer earlier in my life—until I realized that wasn’t sustainable long term. Staying up all night to work on something was not practical poem after poem. Now I make it a regular part of the week or day. If I create frequently or every day, then even when I’m not sitting down to my desk, the writing is on my mind more. I move through the day thinking about the project I’m working on or noticing new material, and since I know I’ll be returning to the desk soon, I can use it. A lot of writers preach that you have to write as soon as you wake, before stressors come to you, and I tried that for a long time, but of late I’ve been trying something new. First thing in the morning, the world is new, and there’s optimism, and it’s great, but it’s also easy to imagine the day and grow distracted. 

Lately I start the day off teaching and completing practical tasks. In the afternoon, I say, I accomplished these tasks. Now I get to spend time on the page. I find I’m a bit more focused then because I no longer have a to-do list to daydream about completing. 

The ability to daydream is the writer’s enemy and friend. 

A couple years ago, I was invited to contribute to one of Halifax’s Pride events. Symphony Nova Scotia was hosting an afternoon tea dance, a concert people could dance to on the lawn. 

When they asked me to write a poem for it, I remembered a poem based in daydreaming: a light, unfinished poem about celebrating together. I knew the daydream needed to be completed and shared with—and in parts, sung for—the Pride community. 

With Somebody Who Loves Me

In my daydream, I take 

the 9am train

and greet everyone on it.

I say, In this messy 

and sometimes destructive world,

let’s create something!

I show them the elaborate

group dance I have 

choreographed, and everyone

eagerly leaps to feet.

Because we all have pretty decent 

coordination and timing,

no one says, Dancing’s

not really my thing. 

Giving a burst

of joy to strangers 

is too hard.

We practice, practice,

super-speed, and at the last

stop before the city,

an unsuspecting audience

boards. I strike up the

old boombox and we all

become alive and hopeful—

look at such a world

as the one we live in,

a world that hath

such generous amateur

dancers in it!

My baby takes the morning train, 

we sing. And each of the harried commuters,

the balding uncles,

the bobbing kids 

realizes that the song is about them,

that each of them is someone’s baby

taking that morning train. 

When the train stops, we all burst out.

We find strangers on the sidewalks,

take their hands, and lead them 

in waltzes and polkas. They call 

their friends to join. The city orchestra

hears the crowd and runs toward us,

cellos and tubas lightweight in their hands. 

The mayor 

declares it a holiday. We all toss 

away our afternoon to-do lists, 

our planners and plans

without a second glance. 

The orchestra lifts its batons and its bows

and the whole city becomes

a giant tea dance. 

{Jacob} - Well, I am extraordinarily sad that I missed that. What else is in the works for you at the moment?

{Brad} - I’m working with videographers in Ontario on a words-meet-film project. I’m completing another poetry collection and a book of linked short stories.