Roger Craik’s Interview Deborah Kalb

Roger Craik, whose latest book of poetry, In Other Days, has just been published by BlazeVOX. Here is an interview conducted by Deborah Kalb about his new book, published on her blog, Book Q&As:

Roger Craik is the author of the new poetry collection In Other Days. His other books include the poetry collection Down Stranger Roads, and his work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The Formalist and Fulcrum. He is professor emeritus of English at Kent State University.

Q: Over how long a period did you write the poems in In Other Days?

A: Some of the poems came from the mid 2000s, as far as I recall, but the majority were written since 2014, when my book Down Stranger Roads came out. There might even have been some that were worked up from efforts in the late 1990s.

Q: The poet Donald Revell says of the collection, “Craik adventures far beyond pathos and nostalgia, into something like a prospect of eternity.” What do you think of that description?

A: It’s always interesting, don’t you think, to hear what people think about your stuff. I am not sure exactly what Donald Revell means by “something like a prospect of eternity,” although it’s pleasing to read that the poems reach to this extent, and present such a long perspective.

I so like his word “adventures”— what a fine verb this is. It suggests to me a boldness and also, somehow, an enjoyment.

In the collection are many subjects, and viewpoints, in the minds of real or imaginary others.

There is a piece, “Exile,” about a Russian painter from a tiny village, who spends four years in Paris as an art student, and at the end of that time has to return to Russia for an arranged marriage, unwillingly, and perhaps (the poem leaves this uncertain) jumps off a stationary train in the middle of nowhere.

I suppose some of this came from reading about Marc Chagall, but that is all, and everything else came out of my head. I am not given to jumping off stationary trains.

There is a poem about a scientist in Cambridge, England, who makes a tremendous discovery (the poem doesn’t say what it is), tries it out time after time in his office (“it works every time”), then puts on his coat and hat and strolls home, with the discovery in his head, the early evening streets being as they always are at that time of day …..

Read the rest of the interview here

Check out Roger’s latest poetry book, In Other Days