Today's conversation with Darren C. Demaree about poetry and about his upcoming collection 'So Much More' due out from Small Harbor Publishing on November 7th was one for the bucket list of rural interiority and the wildlife of solitude as checkboxed by the necessity of my own ask and answer.
Our conversation is available on the youtube channel for the 'I Think I Can't Speak For Everyone Here' reading series HERE.
I had some words for the collection below:
As it sings re-choired in the collection 'So Much More', Darren C. Demaree’s work is the starstuff of purpose and confrontation. Signs, tattoos, vacated crows. The un-reminded world. A shapeshifting violence that roots us to form. An offering of unrest carried in the body of a deerlike creature that touches nothing with its living while living in a believable church where sleep can be turned on and off by any two of three hooves. Demaree’s verse lets home take us home because there’s a second time to have nothing. No insect is a lost insect. We are not, and were not, long for heaven. There is no earth, but here we are. Our children lovely enough to be terrified.
~~
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-one poetry collections, most recently “in defense of the goat as it continues to wander towards the certain doom of the cliff”, (April Gloaming, February 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
Please join us on Sunday, November 3rd, at 4pm EST for the 'I Think I Can't Speak For Everyone Here' reading series, where we'll be in conversation with Darren C. Demaree about his new upcoming collection 'So Much More' from Small Harbor Publishing.
Email bluejawedsnake@gmail.com for the Zoom link info
I had some words for the collection, as such:
As it sings re-choired in the collection 'So Much More', Darren C. Demaree’s work is the starstuff of purpose and confrontation. Signs, tattoos, vacated crows. The un-reminded world. A shapeshifting violence that roots us to form. An offering of unrest carried in the body of a deerlike creature that touches nothing with its living while living in a believable church where sleep can be turned on and off by any two of three hooves. Demaree’s verse lets home take us home because there’s a second time to have nothing. No insect is a lost insect. We are not, and were not, long for heaven. There is no earth, but here we are. Our children lovely enough to be terrified.
~~
Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-one poetry collections, most recently “in defense of the goat as it continues to wander towards the certain doom of the cliff”, (April Gloaming, February 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Arts Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.
I chewed quietly heard my body not need food
A pipe bomb in a neighbor’s garage took so much loneliness from a terrible baby it turned off a security camera and a few kinds of depression
Sober cops drove over a father in Ohio and named a street
Angels taught themselves how to scarecrow worship in an eel’s dream
Eel pretended parent in a ghost drone to spot god
Try
in a coffin
to roll
a cigarette
The eyes have only
their childhood
I only believe in god because of how long god takes
to kill my children.
Anyway, live.
Scare touch.
God’s stomach is a cigarette trying to eat on the moon. I am asleep in my homage to sleep. In hell you have to give birth to everyone you’ve killed. You can’t have your kids.
kingsoftrain 