John Dorsey on Sacred Versions of the Profane
A conversation with John Dorsey on memory, labour, influence, and the chapbook form in his new chapbook, Sacred Versions of the Profane, published by Analog Submission Press.
Sacred Versions of the Profane moves through river towns, hospital corridors, steel mills, and domestic interiors. When you begin a poem, does it usually start with an image, a memory, a line of language, or something else entirely?
When I start writing, it usually begins with a memory. Sometimes a title will bring something out.
There is a steady restraint in this collection. Is that tone something you consciously shape, or does it simply emerge as you write?
I believe in a real economy of language these days, more than in the past.
Industrial spaces sit beside moments of intimacy throughout the chapbook. What draws you to placing those worlds so close together?
A lot of times that’s how life is — everyone so close together, and yet we barely notice one another.
Work and industry appear throughout this collection. How has work shaped your writing, if at all?
Before I came into the world, several generations of men in my family were mill workers. It was everywhere — my parents’ home, my grandparents’. You can’t really escape your roots, and those roots turn into poems, as they should.
Wallace Stevens and Ezra Pound flicker briefly through these poems. How do you live with influence without letting it take over your own voice?
You eventually find who you are, or you don’t. I feel like I have, but that changes every few years.
What does a writing day look like for you now? Do these poems tend to arrive quickly, or do they take time to settle?
Lately I’ve been getting up around 6 a.m. I write until 9 a.m. and then I leave it alone, unless something really hits me.
How do you know when a poem is finished?
I turn off my computer, and that’s the end of it. I don’t go back.
What appeals to you about the chapbook as a form, especially in small print runs?
The idea that a book can be like a rare flower, both inside and out. I like the whole concept of once something’s gone, it’s gone.
Memory feels central to this collection. Is it something you trust?
It is.
If a reader were to begin with one poem in this collection, which would you suggest, and why?
I’m not sure. Maybe “Sleepwalking Through Life”, because they recently put me on meds for depression and that brought with it three months of darkness, almost no writing, and so it just feels the most immediate and real at the moment.
Sacred Versions of the Profane is available to pre-order now. The chapbook is printed in an edition of 56 copies, with 50 numbered for sale. Pre-orders include three A6 mini broadsides featuring artwork from John Dorsey’s earlier Analog Submission Press chapbooks.
Marc Brüseke | Editor
Analog Submission Press
York, England
analogsubmission.com
