Matty Layne Glasgow : part five

How important is music to your poetry?

I’ve always loved playing with sound and rhythm in my work, but I’ve spent much of my short writing life seeking balance between the two. For whatever reason, I’ve always struggled with metre. Iambs, feet, and stresses frequently elude me, so my scansion is nothing to write home about. I do, however, generally strive for a lyric and musical line, and I pay careful attention to internal rhyme, word play, and different rhythms in the poem. I generally read a poem aloud as I’m drafting because I want to hear how the sounds meld together, how they echo. I practice reading aloud how I’d like the poem to be performed. I can’t read every poem in the same drone, so I try to figure out the tone and personality of that individual piece as I’m writing. Does it need a line break or a caesura to slow things town? Does it need to be over the top and have the same end rhyme throughout the entire poem? My gloryhole poem needed that. It really did.

Matty Layne Glasgow : part four

What poets changed the way you thought about writing?

Two friends and mentors who helped me believe I could write are Sara Cooper and Long Chu. Both phenomenal poets in their own right, Long and Sara not only read my work and provided patient feedback when I had no idea what I was doing, they also introduced me to an array of poets that changed the way I read, write, and live.

Long lent me copies of Richard Siken’s Crush and Carl Phillips’ Cortège, which were the gay masterpieces I never knew I’d been waiting for all my life. Up until that point, most of my poetry immersion was from my French studies as an undergraduate. I enjoyed Baudelaire’s musicality and visceral verse, but Arthur Rimbaud was (and still is) one of my favorite writers. However, Crush and Cortège helped knock something loose in me, and I felt like I could actually write about myself, who I was. Siken and Phillips each bring a distinct beauty and candor to their writing, and that candor pushed me toward an unabashed reclamation of my queerness—something that, even in my mid-twenties, I hadn’t been completely comfortable with, and certainly not comfortable writing about.

Sara lent me a copy of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, a stunning book that defied form and remains my go-to when I’m in need of inspiration on lyric mastery. Beyond craft and concerning the content, Citizen obviously challenged many of us to examine our whiteness, to recognize micro-aggressions, and to better understand the inherent racism people of color experience in our society. As a young writer and a cisgender white man, this was a pivotal book for me. It caused me to examine myself and my own behavior, while also putting a mirror up to my privilege—a reflection I’d been naïve to throughout my youth and into my young adulthood. So, without Sara and Long, I wouldn’t be a writer at all. And without Siken and Phillips and Rankine, I wouldn’t be the writer I am today.

Matty Layne Glasgow : part three

What are you working on?

I recently submitted the final revisions of my first collection of poems to my publisher, and that process has left me much more emotionally and creatively drained than I previously understood possible. deciduous qween will be out in May of 2019 with Red Hen Press, but most of my excitement remains shrouded in dread and anxiety, so I’m juggling a few projects depending on the day and my mood.

In terms of poetry, I’m writing more about Houston, particularly our environmental history: the construction of bayous, the ship channel, the toxic industries inherent to our community. There’s also a book-length project I did a great deal of research on over the past few years during my MFA that follows the life of a transgender soldier during the Mexican Revolution. It’s a story and an individual I have a great deal of love and respect for, but I still have a lot to work through to make sure I bring Amelio’s life to the page in an ethical way that is the artifact of queer world-making befitting of his life. I’m also working on a novel that is all about queer magic and the ghost of a drag queen who protects a forest under siege. Drag, ghosts, and trees are my holy trinity.

To maintain my sanity and for my own personal pleasure, I’ve been reveling in some queer erotica about my beloved Houston Astros too. It may never live in the world, but it’s a nice way for me to interrogate and deconstruct toxic masculinity by queering my hometown squad. Bottoms up! Or rather, “Batter up!” Whatever they say.

Matty Layne Glasgow : part two

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

This summer I’ve been enraptured by several collections—most notably The Carrying by Ada Limón, The Rabbits Could Sing by Amber Flora Thomas, and Equilibrium by Tiana Clark. Both Thomas and Clark have new collections coming out in September, and I love to delve back into a poet’s last book or earlier work to ready myself for their latest. I’m truly ecstatic about Red Channel in the Rupture and I Can’t Talk about the Trees without the Blood; I’ve had them pre-ordered for months, and I check the mail everyday praying for an early miracle. As for Limón’s The Carrying, it has truly shaken me to the core. I admire her keen eye for environment and how it emerges through bees and dandelions, in caves and trees. Her candor in these poems though—the way she meditates on grief and forgiveness, but also joy—crafts the kind of connection between the poet and the reader I love most. Her poems are complex in their imagery and echoes, but they also have a skilled accessibility to them that allows them to pinch a nerve or steal a breath and only make me trust her more as a writer. I never feel led astray; every meandering is beautiful and purposeful and makes me grateful these words are in the world. I’m horrified of caves and being underground, but “Notes on the Below” inspires me to follow her through Mammoth Cave National Park, as long as I get a flashlight or something. I’m scared of the dark, too. I suppose her work helps me confront my own fears then, not only as a writer, but as a human sharing this world with so much life.

Matty Layne Glasgow : part one

Matty Layne Glasgow is the author of the collection, deciduous qween, selected by Richard Blanco as the winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award and forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2019. He is runner-up for Missouri Review’s 2017 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize and finalist for Nimrod’s 2018 Pablo Neruda Prize. His poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net anthologies and appear in the Missouri Review, Crazyhorse, Collagist, BOAAT, Muzzle, and elsewhere. He lives in Houston, Texas where he teaches with Writers in the Schools and adjuncts his life away.

Photo credit: Iran Garcia

Why is poetry important?

For me, poetry serves as one of the most transcendent ways in which we as humans can connect with one another, with the environments where we seek shelter and breath, with whatever cosmos or magic or spirit helps us find purpose. Our craft combats injustice, processes trauma, unearths hidden truths, celebrates our joy, and communes our grief, our uncertainty. I’m often in awe of how these journeys can occur in just a few lines on a page or through an epic narrative. Regardless of length or style, each poem affords the reader the opportunity to see the world through the poet’s eyes, and that connection is a hopeful one. Most importantly, I believe everyone is deserving and capable of this connection, this hope. I’ve had the privilege of teaching with Writers in the Schools since 2013, and their mission “to engage all children in the joy and power of reading and writing” is one I live by. Everyone—regardless of age, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or economic resources—has a powerful story to impart, has a way of seeing the world wholly their own. Perhaps they do not long to be professional writers, but their words and their poetry can still build these connections, inspire those around them, and give us all more hope.