"...I’m very fortunate because I have poetry which they simply cannot take from me."
a mini-interview with Bradley Paul
For over a decade I ran a reading series called Rhapsodomancy. During that time I met dozens of writers new to me. I’m not even sure how that link to the reading series survives but it’s what still lives, along with the many acquaintanceships and friendships with the writers I met, some of whom I stayed in touch with.
Bradley Paul is one of those people. I met Bradley when he read for Rhapsodomancy. We’ve been friendly ever since. When I told Bradley many years ago I was thinking about writing for television, he generously shared with me the tv script he’d written that had gotten him an agent. Then many years after that, when I thought, Okay, I might be really serious now about tv writing, I asked him to meet with me for coffee to tell me more about his experience. Bradley is one of the WGA writers on strike, and it’s our sincere hope that the writers get what they’re asking for immediately.
Bradley Paul was born in Baltimore in 1972. He received a BA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of Plasma (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), The Animals All Are Gathering (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), winner of the 2009 Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, and The Obvious (New Issues, 2004), winner of the 2004 New Issues Poetry Prize. His IMDb reads: “He is known for Animal Kingdom, Better Call Saul, and Lodge 49.” Lodge 49 is a sweet show I particularly enjoyed during some of the hardest days of the pandemic. Bradley lives in Los Angeles.
As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Bradley to respond to three to five questions from a total of eight offered.
Today you're any animal you wish: who are you?
Today I am that psychic octopus who accurately predicted the outcome of World Cup games.
What Kind of Psychic Soccer Octopus Are You?
I’m rooting for Belgium
because of their fries.
No, I’m rooting for Slovenia
because of their statues of poets.
No, I’m rooting for Deutschland
because of käsekuchen.
No, I’m rooting for Italy
because Il Corriere loves American TV.
No, I’m rooting for Angola
because it seems about time for them.
No, I’m rooting for Mexico
because of the days of their dead.
No, I’m rooting for Ethiopia –
lions, stand up!
Come out of the forest and free us
from their aquariums and tongues,
lions, o lions, o lions.
Tell us about a book, tv show, or movie that you’ve most recently been enamored with.
I’ve been reading We Have Always Lived In The Castle by Shirley Jackson which I really like. It uses this certain voice that seems to appear in the second half of the twentieth century in books that are narrated by smart but provincial teenagers – they’re observant and casually articulate but shy in their awkward interactions with other people. It’s kind of a naive intelligence. I hear it also in Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping among other books. Is that an incredibly obvious thing that everybody already knows and I’m just now catching up? I’m also reading a history of World War I and the thing that’s just so amazing and heartbreaking is how this incredibly bloody war that set off the bloodiest century seems to have been entirely avoidable.
Take us on a walk through a place that gives you life.
My grandmother’s house, which I think of very often. It was on the corner of Wilkens & Beechfield Avenues in Baltimore, and you entered through the kitchen, where she had a round table at which she always sat, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Past the kitchen was the living room with a big cushy sofa but also another table with maroon velvet chairs and one of those big wooden console TVs. I usually think of two specific times of year: summer, when I’d lay on the floor in front of the TV watching the Orioles game while the AC was blasting and I was chugging one Coke after the next; and late fall/winter, when the radiators would be going. It’s a very particular kind of heat. And I think about walking around the neighborhood, and since it’s summer now as I write this I think about walking to Cold Cut Charley’s on the next block and past the dumpster where’d they throw all the crabs they hadn’t sold, and the sour, pungent fog of rot that came out of it and hung in the humidity that somehow seemed sweet as well.
Where is poetry in your life these days?
In terms of reading, I’m doing the constant search for new things that might be interesting and old things I haven’t read. It can be slow going because (I can’t be the only poet that thinks this) so much contemporary poetry falls into one of two camps: prosaic, linguistically flat personal and/or political narratives that end with a pithy revelation; or fragmented sequences of thoughts, images, and phrases that interrupt one another as they accumulate but ultimately border on gibberish. But then you find stuff that’s somewhere in between, that’s inventive but also meaningful, and it’s wonderful! There’s just a bit of a slush pile you have to go through to get to it. I hope that doesn’t sound too negative! I love poetry and it’s central to my life! But there are only so many neato MFA-accented insights a person can handle.
My own poetry is a disaster. For most of my writing life I’ve written short, lyrical, very metaphorical poems so now I decided to write a book length dramatic monologue with some narrative passages. What was I thinking? I’ve got between thirty and forty text-heavy pages and I don’t know what to do with it. I’ve had some kind friends offer to read it but I have to swear to them, this isn’t false modesty or shyness or whatever. I know a mess when I see one, and this thing is a mess. I’m not showing anything to anyone yet because I can’t handle the inevitable one-two punch of emailing them some work and them replying “Yay! I can’t wait to read this!” And then the silence followed by the eventual reply (that I solicit) of “Sorry for the delay – there’s so much great stuff in here, I’m really eager to see where it goes!” And then they change their email address.
You’re one of the many tv writers on strike. How are you coping?
To be honest: I am so goddamned stressed out. I’m trying to write a spec script – what you’re “supposed” to do during a strike, because when this is all over they’ll want to see fresh work, right? But it’s a grind. I force myself to do it because I want to have done it, but I can see that, at least in the first draft, there’s so little joy coming through the writing. On good days when I have lively conversations in my head I go back to the script and put some of that energy into it, and I believe or at least hope that when all’s said and done it will be okay. But the financial strain and the job insecurity (not just the fact of not working right now, but the idea that TV writing as a sustainable career is very much under existential threat) and the rage at how, once again, thousands of people are going without because a handful of very wealthy and powerful people just don’t want to pay what is, to them, pennies, are all very present every day and difficult to process. BUT! The answer to the actual question of “how are you coping?” is “methodically.” Every day I remind myself to exercise, to read, to write, to be present with my family, and to avoid doomscrolling. Some days are more successful than others. And of course I picket; the community and the sense that this is our effective if slow form of negotiating help a lot. And I always know that I’m very fortunate because I have poetry which they simply cannot take from me.