From our September issue, swamps and storms from Caleb Kaiser.

1. These two poems both have water as a central element; tides, swamp waters, river-waves. What do you draw from the water?

Water obviously has a universal quality to it. Constantly present and always being recycled through various areas; it’s a sort of universal medium for life. More relevant to my writing, though, are bodies of water. I’ve always been drawn to creeks, rivers, tides, etc. because of the sort of eternal movement they possess. I spent a lot of time playing in the creek and the ocean when I was young(er), and the feeling of being immersed in something that is fresh and new, but still massive and old, is a recurring theme in my writing. I try to write the way I feel, which is that every moment and sensation is something vibrant and new, yet part of something older than I can completely grasp. Working with something you can’t completely see, for me, is where the magic happens in poetry.

2. Generation after generation seems to be drawn to the swamps, to shores, where they are inevitably taken over. What’s the most unusual place you’ve found a body?

My dining room. When my father passed, he had one of those sick papery hospital beds set up where our cheap dining room table had been. In a sense, I left my own body on the floor next to his. I broke into that house a few years later. No one has lived there since (it’s a rundown house in a shitty housing market), and the room was exactly the same minus his bed and body. I could smell both of us rotting there. Continue reading →