Rick Lupert has been involved in the Los Angeles poetry community since 1990.  He served for two years as a co-director of the Valley Contemporary Poets, a twenty-three year old non-profit organization, which produces a regular reading series and publications out of the San Fernando Valley.  His poetry has appeared in numerous magazines and literary journals, including The Los Angeles Times, Chiron Review, Zuzu's Petals, Caffeine Magazine, Blue Satellite and others.  He is the author of nine books: Paris: It's The Cheese, I Am My Own Orange County, Mowing Fargo, I'm a Jew. Are You?, Stolen Mummies (Ain't Got No Press), Lizard King of the Laundromat, Brendan Constantine is My Kind of Town (Inevitable Press), Feeding Holy Cats and Up Liberty's Skirt (Cassowary Press).  He serves on the Artist and Community Advisory Council of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center in Venice, California.  (Though he's not sure how that happened or what it means.)  He has hosted the long running Cobalt Café reading series in Canoga Park since 1994 and is regularly featured at venues throughout Southern California.

Rick created and maintains the Poetry Super Highway, a major Internet resource for poets. 

Currently Rick works as a music teacher at Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge and the Valley Cities Jewish community Center in Sherman Oaks, as well as at Hillel of Pierce and Valley Colleges as the Assistant Director.
 

Lily: At what point in your life did you begin writing poetry? Who were your favorite poets then, who are they now?

RL: It's possible that I scribbled haiku on the walls of my mother's womb.  As I honestly don't remember whether or not this happened, and no one is willing to implement the procedures necessary to verify, I'll have to defer to my first actual memory of writing.  It was during junior high school.  A group of poets was visiting Jamesville-DeWitt Middle School in DeWitt, New York, and leading our classes through a series of writing exercises.  I remember writing  number of different styles of poetry and then having a 3 line acrostic poem about pigs published:

Pigs are very piggish
Irregularly attached to mad
Gosh darn it, pigs are messy

Already you can begin to see the genius I was harboring. 

Perhaps frustrated that they only selected one poem from the volume I wrote then, I put down my pen until high school when I noticed women and the different curves they had and I began to wax on about these curves in poetry.  I also started making observations about the absurdities I noticed in everyday things.  I was influenced by the English humor sensibility found in Douglas Adams books and Monty Python movies. The more random the better.  I also was reading a lot of Harlan Ellison at the time.  His science fiction was attractive to me, a young guy with wide enthusiastic eyes looking towards the future...plus his raw language and street situations created an interesting, attractive mixture.

Shortly after high school, a friend of mine gave me a copy of the book "The Abortion" by Richard Brautigan.  This changed everything.  Brautigan (Who although dead since the 80's has managed to release at least 3 new books since his departure.)  Brautigan had a sense of the beautiful in the absurd.  He was a straight man in a world of irregularities... a David Lynchian scene writer.  I read everything I could get my hands on and it was the fusion of all of these sensibilities that influenced the style I use today.

My favorite poets today are Brendan Constantine, Jeffrey McDaniel, Richard Brautigan (hoping a few more posthumously released books will appear) and scores of others who show up at poetry readings all over Los Angeles.

Lily: Do you feel that your Jewish faith is a major influence on what you choose to write about? If so, how? And how about the teaching of music?

RL: Yes, not exactly and not always.  Any artist creates from their own experiences.  A good deal of my experience revolves around my involvement in the Jewish community which all of my paying jobs are a part of.  (I work as a music teacher at a synagogue and as the assistant director for Hillel at Pierce and Valley colleges which provides Jewish and social programming for college students.) 

I would not necessarily use the word 'faith' in describing my connection to Judaism.  Partially because I'm not really sure where my 'faith' stands.  I do believe in and have a strong connection to the family of Judaism connected from one generation to the next, passing traditions down, etc.  I love the culture and holidays.  I love the sense of family that I've experienced existing in the Jewish community.  I certainly seek out and try to facilitate spiritual experiences (especially through music).  However I wouldn't necessarily classify it, for me, as a strong faith...rather it is a strong connection. 

That having been said, as one who writes about what I see and experience, as a good deal of what I see and experience revolves around the Jewish community, you can see Jewish references and downright Jewish poems in almost every book I've published. 

Not to mention that two of them are explicitly Jewish themed books.  ("I'm a Jew, Are You: Poems from a Tribal Perspective" and "Feeding Holy Cats: The Poet's Experience in Israel.")  In fact one of the collections I haven't published yet is a new collection of poems from Israel written over the last few trips I've helped lead.  It will be called "A Camel With No Name".  You heard it here first.

As for the teaching of music... to clarify, I am a Jewish music educator who teaches Jewish concepts, history, holidays, and spirituality through songs.  I don't teach, nor do I have any knowledge of music theory.  As this work also revolves around the Jewish community, it really influences my writing in the same way that any Jewish experience does.

Lily: What do you think people get from listening to a poem read aloud that they might miss from simply reading it
silently to themselves?  What value is there for poets themselves in reading their work aloud?

RL: The answer really depends on whether or not the reader can confidently read their work.  The audience has the potential to more easily understand an author’s poem if the author is reading it to them in exactly the way she or he intended it to be intonated.  There is no guessing about what words should be stressed... no  interpreting where pauses should go... no imagining what how the author's voice would emphasize various parts of the poem. 

In a way it's the ideal form of turning a book into a movie.  People (you know, people) always complain that the movie version is never as good as the book.  Scenes are left out... the story strays from the author's original intentions, characters are changed.  Imagine if a book's author could present every detail of their book, exactly as they intended on the screen.  This is the opportunity a poet has when they present their work at a reading.  It can be lost if the reader isn't confident on the stage or with their work. I'm a pretty good reader of poetry... though sometimes I slip.  I wrote a lot of poetry on my honeymoon in Europe in July and have been slowly reading it at the Cobalt since I returned... just a few poems every week at the end of this reading (which I've MC'd weekly since 1994). 

I've realized after the first few weeks that I never went back and read any of the poetry since I'd written it... so by the time I get to the stage, I'm presenting material that I'm not all that familiar with.  I've stumbled over words and intonated the wrong punctuation and breaks. I didn't come off so well and didn't necessarily serve the audience well in helping them understand my intentions in the poems. 

The metaphor I always use in explaining this concept is the idea of a good reader versus a good writer.  The two are not always both present.  An amazing writer could have the driest presentation that could bore your guts out.  On the other hand, a dynamic performer might read the ingredients off a cereal box and have you proclaiming her the spoken word-messiah.

I think the value of a poet presenting their own work aloud is the opportunity to become more familiar with their own work as well as have an instant gauge as to how an audience perceives their work.  This is not always useful and is perhaps not necessary at all, but if you intended a laugh at a certain point, and you're greeted with silence... maybe you need to rethink that line.  If people come up to you and express a connection and understanding about a poem you've read, then maybe  you'll have a realization that you did what you intended to do.  Going to poetry readings and sharing your work makes this possible.

It also gives you the opportunity to meet other poets and develop critical colleagueships in what will be an expanding artistic world.

Lily: In reading your bio information at Poetry SuperHighway, I gather that you’ve done some traveling and that the travel has inspired you to write. Where in the world have you found yourself most poetically inspired?

RL: Pretty much everywhere that I haven't been before.  I've found when traveling, whether to Europe, Israel, or Fargo, North Dakota, that I become hyper-aware of my surroundings.  I tend to write observationally... so when there's so much new (or ancient for that matter), it really stirs up my creative output.  It's also about just being removed from my daily routine where I've got regular places to go and tasks to accomplish.  When traveling, my only responsibilities are to feed myself and wander around wherever it is that I am.  It's happened everywhere I've ever been... no one place more so than any other.

Lily: Take me through a typical day in your life. How do you find time between your day job, Poetry SuperHighway and poetry readings to devote to your own writing? Do you write every day?

RL: The key is to devote as little time as possible to my day job.  Honestly, as I am so busy with jobs, readings, and the poetry super highway, I don't write nearly as much as I used to.  I used to sit every night in a local coffeehouse and write my ass off.  These days I tend to write more when I'm removed from my normal daily routine, when traveling, etc... Sometimes I write when I'm at the poetry reading I host. 

Sometimes I'm working at home and something occurs to me that should be written down, so I stop everything and sit at the computer and write.  I never used to have to think about having time to write... it just automatically happened, but I've been so busy the last few years with work that that automatic time isn't usually there.  I've been thinking about asking friends to send literary exercises and forcing myself to complete them... just so I can purposefully engage not only in writing, but in growing as a writer.

There is no typical day, in terms of schedule, in my life.  My day job has me working a different schedule every day, mornings, afternoons, evenings, weekends.  It's a bit wearing but not as heavy as I think it'd feel to work a regular "9-5" day job, which would undoubtedly suck the soul out of my body like some kind of crazy soul sucking succubus who sucks your soul out.

As for the work on PSH, I answer some e-mail during the week, but try to do all the major work (reading submissions, updating the site, creating the weekly newsletter, etc.) all at one time, usually on the weekend... otherwise it would become a full time job unto itself.

Lily: How do you think the Internet has changed the community of poets and the poetry reading audience?

RL: Certainly the Internet has expanded any potential artist’s audience by millions of people.  I personally am more famous on the Internet than in my own house.  (Sometimes my cats walk by me as if they have no idea who I am.)  Before the Internet, a poet would struggle to get their work seen and published.  We still have this struggle, but the Internet has given everyone an often free and extremely easy venue for exposure to their poetry.  Anyone can set up a website, put their work on it, and then send some e-mails out letting people know it's there. Hand in hand with this is the easier access to self publishing.  Anyone can upload a manuscript to a number of printers online, and within 2 weeks receive quality "bookstore quality" printed books in the mail.

The community of poets hasn't so much changed as a whole new community of poets has been created. It used to be that your community was who you encountered in person on a regular basis.  Now anyone can be friendly with people who they've never met (or may never meet), who live in any part of the world.  I have interacted for years with people on the Internet who I know quite well, who I both may never meet in person, and who I never would have met if the Internet didn't exist.

Everyone has access to everyone else's poetry. The explosion of poetry websites (I have thousands listed in the Poetry Super Highway's links section and I'm sure that's only a fraction of what really exists) has given everyone in the world with Internet access a super library of almost every poem that exists.  Anyone can be exposed to poets and poetry they may have never encountered in their lives if it weren't popping up on their screen.  The Internet is everything, every piece of knowledge, a jpg of every work of art, instructions on how to re-tile your bathroom or blow things up (not recommended).  Find your soul mate, get advice on what to feed your Chinese water dragon, expose your inner workings through a nude pictorial essay, blog your lungs out.  Soon no one will ever leave the house again.

Lily: About how many submissions do you consider every week for Poetry SuperHighway?

RL: Well, as I mention in the submission guidelines, all submissions are saved for 6 months for possible consideration.  So although I don't re-read every submission every week for 6 months, I mark each submission on its first read with a different status indicating the probability that I'd want to publish it.  Then each week, I sort all of the submissions by those status markers and review or re-review the highest ones.  I do read every new submission that comes in every week (anywhere between 0 and 20 new poets sending in work every week) and then I re-read the ones that are flagged with a high status (limiting to the top 10 or so)... so the exact number varies but it's anywhere between 15 and 30 submissions which I read for the first time or re-read every week.

Lily: What’s your advice to aspiring poets in regards to writing? How about in regards to publishing?

RL: Writing: Always read other people's work so you can expand your repertoire of what can be written as well as refine your own style and opinion of what you like and don't like.  Always write.  I think Billy Crystal's character in "Throw Momma From the Train" said it best with "A writer writes."  So the difference between someone who is a writer and who is not a writer, is that a writer actually writes.  One should always be engaged or immersed in the world of their art.

Publishing: If you choose to submit poems or manuscripts anywhere, the very best thing you can do is to make sure that you have read and explicitly follow the submission guidelines stated by that publication or publisher. Although guidelines can vary dramatically between publishers, they are set up so the publisher can deal with the large volume of submissions they receive with integrity and in an organized manner.  Many publications state that if guidelines aren't followed, that submissions will be thrown away unread.  Regardless of the quality of your work, it is essential that you have the courtesy to follow these guidelines.

Also, self-publishing and promoting are completely valid and wonderful ways to expose and distribute your work.  The stigma of self-publishing is that it doesn't come with the "Hey, you're okay with us and therefore a legitimate artist" stamp that you get when someone else publishes you.  However, that doesn't mean that your work is invalid or of lesser quality.  Again with the movie metaphor (I live in greater Hollywood after all)... Who hasn't seen a movie that had such preposterously horrible dialogue, plot, and, well, everything?  It's not that there aren't 100 much better scripts sitting somewhere. Not every great work will ever be seen by the 'right person'.  You can maintain a high level of artistic integrity, produce quality books, and with a little work, get great promotion for your materials as well.

Of course submitting work to publications and publishers is also a great thing.  It expands your audience regardless of whether anyone but the publisher reads it.  It allows you to participate in the greater world community of artists.  It helps strengthen your tolerance for rejection... it gives you that one opportunity, that minuscule potential, that you could be a star.

Someday poems will be optioned for major motion pictures.  Poets’ names will appear on brightly lit marqees... they’ll be beamed into outer space for the benefit of culturally literate aliens, so they'll know - this planet Earth... sure they produced "Ishtar”, but look at that... let's give them one more chance.