A Stellar Conversation with Cameron McGill

Photo courtesy of artist

Cameron McGill is a professor, poet, and songwriter from Champaign, Illinois, and the author of Meridians (Willow Springs Books) and In the Night Field (Augury Books). His poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Grist, Raleigh Review, RHINO, and Western Humanities Review. He has released six albums, most recently Gallows Etiquette. He teaches at Washington State University, where he serves as co-director of the Visiting Writers Series. He lives in Moscow, Idaho.

UZOMAH: How do you select which poems you want in a book? Is it any different than selecting what songs you want on an album?     

CAMERON: I think there are similarities, though I’ve yet to release an album with forty-five songs on it! I’m someone who gets easily overwhelmed by too many options, so I let conversations between the poems or songs guide me. I’m looking for threads of resonance, for narrative or emotional arcs that are developing, and I follow those. My first book, Meridians, had an organizing principle, which helped; I alternated imagistic, punctuation-less poems with latitude/longitude coordinates for titles with slightly more narrative poems connected to the same places. I wanted to tack back and forth between specific locations and the emotional coordinates connected to those locations. Sequencing has something to do with tapping into the emotional, conceptual, and sonic arcs of a work, but also much to do with feeling. Which song feels right following the previous song…which poem placed in a certain section of the book works to shed new or different light on previous poems? In my second book, In the Night Field, there were quite a few more poems to work with, some of which were included in Meridians, but were placed in a different context and a different sequence, which changed all the side conversations that the individual poems were having with each other. In short, when I’m stuck, I go with my gut and with which path through the project most pleases me.   

U: Who are some of your favorite songwriters? Which do you consider the most poetic of them all?

C: Oh, so many. Let’s see: Nick Cave, Sade, Cass McCombs, Sharon Van Etten, Anderson .Paak, Tom Waits, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Randy Newman, Black Thought, Harry Nilsson, Nina Persson, Warren Zevon, D’Angelo, Nina Simone, Ray Davies, Aimee Mann, Bowie, Dylan, Lou Reed, Rufus Wainwright, Elliott Smith…The most poetic is a tough one; in that regard, there are so many poetics, so many types of lyricists: those working with multi-layered associations and internal rhyme, the lyricists of the deep image, of the surreal, of plain-stated wisdom. In the romantic sense of poetic, I’d have to go with Nick Cave.  

U: Who are some of your favorite authors and poets? Which would you say has had the most influence on your writing style?

C: In terms of studying poetry, I was a bit of a late arrival. It was musicians and songwriters who first turned me onto poets, and it grew from there. My work is forever indebted to poets Alexandra Teague and Robert Wrigley who brought me to the University of Idaho MFA. Some of my other favorite poets: The Wrights (C.D., James, Charles), Neruda, Lorca, Safiya Sinclair, Michael McGriff, Plath, Jericho Brown, Solmaz Sharif, Vievee Francis, Sam Roxas Chua, Paul Celan, Dorianne Laux, Patricia Smith, Li-Young Lee, Canese Jarboe, Ross Gay, Carl Phillips...and so many more on any given day. Thankfully, influence is constantly changing; it sifts through us in different ways depending on where and when we are in our lives. It crosses planes. Every time I fall in love with a new poet, it turns an hourglass over in my poetic voice, and everything feels new again. I don’t hold onto it forever, but I am forever changed by it. The poet Ross Gay speaks about influence as a “lineage that disappears” into him and reappears later in a poem or during a particular reading of a poem. I love that; we carry things forward in unknown places of ourselves. Books speak to us in such different ways across time. We change and are more open to hearing them; we know more or less, and we are then ready to receive their gifts.   

U: How do you think the use of words is no different than a painter using colors to describe a scene on canvas?

C: Having only ever painted two paintings, both terrible, it’s hard for me to say exactly the process equivalent between the two mediums. It seems painting and writing have always been in conversation about capturing the human experience in images and capturing our perceptions of the world. Painting has that added dimension of the process coming through on the canvas. As if beneath the finished poem, one could see vestiges of its revisions, deletions, and margin notes all coalescing. I like trying to find equivalents between art forms—of course, there is never a 1:1 ratio, but it usually begets creativity and a changed perspective. A simple vertical vermillion brushstroke could be the sun on someone’s face at a distance. What is the equivalent in a poem? Perhaps having to say that. Poetry’s images, rhythms, ciphers, and sounds accumulate toward a larger picture, a more complete resonance by way of experiencing the poem. I love seeing the process as part of any work of art while still seeing the “finished” piece as separate from the process if indeed they can be separated. Poems and paintings are their own accompaniment—poetry can have such wonderful musicality, the instruments and rhythms all come from the words, from the spacing, the form, and from how it is read aloud. How wonderful that the musical accompaniment exists on the page, between the words, and in the rests. When paintings compel me, they have a feeling of movement, of potential energy, like something is currently happening or happening perpetually, or something has just happened, and we’re left with the intimate aftermath. So, there is movement even in a still life; there is light and shadow, there is an open window, and a knife near the edge of the table. And there are conversations between the painter and the world, and between other painters. What a fascinating and mysterious medium, though I could say the same for any art form I love and in which I do not work.      

U: As an educator, what was the best advice you got from a teacher that helps you be a teacher today?

C: When I started my MFA at thirty-nine, I had never taught. I was, of course, terrified. I had been a performer playing music for decades and was comfortable on stage, but this was an entirely different type of performance. The director of composition told us to not take things too personally; the kids can be tough on you, and we can be tough on ourselves. I felt, like I’m sure most new teachers do, the weight of imposter syndrome. The best teachers showed me that teaching is about listening and then asking good questions, about sharing more than it is about divulging information. Someone told me to be just another learner in the classroom. That made so much sense. If the students know that’s how I feel, then an exchange of ideas becomes possible, and from that, a level of trust—them knowing I have their best interest at heart is everything to me. Most importantly, I recognize and celebrate the expansive breadth of experience and knowledge that each student brings to the classroom. There is so much learning that happens in encouraging them to share with one another.  

U: What do you like about performing in front of an audience whether doing a poetry reading or doing a concert?

C: I love this question. Performing is such a visceral and technical experience. It is exhilarating and anxiety-inducing. I like not knowing what’s going to happen next. Even though you prepare and know the song and have studied and read the poem, the moment is different from when you last sang the song or read the poem, and so the piece also changes; there are so many readings of the same piece. How you frame something given the crowd, the news of that day, something that happened to your friend that week, your grandmother’s passing…all these things inform a performance, or at least they do for me. Performance is an interesting litmus test for the work (the reaction we get from an audience), but also a litmus test for ourselves in performing that work. Mostly, it’s about getting out of my own way and trying to be present in the performance.

How does being an educator keep you learning about how to be a better writer?

C: Such a good question. I can only speak for myself, but there seems to be several aspects to this: I learn from my students first and foremost: from their questions, from their work, from their response to poems and essays I’ve assigned; and I learn from the mistakes I make in trying to teach something a certain way, which inevitably is short-sighted or misguided; lastly, in changing up my curriculum, I’m asking myself to always consider and re-evaluate and be open to new and different work. Being at the edge of unknowing or at the edge of not knowing is such a gift because of what comes next, especially when you and the students find some understanding together.  

U: What are some things you find universally appealing to others about writing and especially poetry?

C: I love that poetry comes from a place of stillness and/or discomfort, a place of searching; it is an act of moving toward understanding, toward allowing something to be other than what it is, or should be, or what you want it to be. I love this quote from C.D. Wright: “Poetry is a necessity of life…It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” It is a necessity to me, like eating or sleeping; it is not a necessity for everyone, but it might be. People think poetry isn’t for them, until it so closely speaks to the way they are feeling, to the present human condition, that they begin to consider it, be it at an inauguration, a wedding, a funeral or graduation. For a long time, humans have turned to poetry to help us understand our lives, however, I resist the notion that art or writing or poetry should or need be universally appealing. Historically, this notion has been used to discredit the writing of women and marginalized communities by referring to the work as not “universal” enough, which of course meant not universal enough for a white, male, cisgender audience. I like to focus on the fact that certain emotions are universal, that joy manifests itself in laughing or tears or a physical embrace. Poetry makes me feel more in touch with being human and thus more in touch with other humans and their experiences. How amazing that as a species we get to share joy, pain, sadness, love. Empathy may be the last good weapon we have in the world. I believe poetry cultivates it.            

For more information about Cameron’s writing and music please visit his site. Please find Cameron on Instagram and Twitter. Also for more information about Cameron’s new book please visit here.