“Well Hung” by Gram Davies, 2010
TCE: When asked to write a poem with a seasonal slant, what’s the first “sense” (hearing, smelling, etc.) that occurs to you? Josh Pearce: Sight is probably the sense hit the hardest when the seasons change. Overcast days make me sleep longer because they don't ever look like morning, but then once winter finally burns off and turns into spring, the color contrast on the edges of fir trees and snapdragons reminds me of visuals from drugs.
Mini-Interview: Pearce
TCE: What’s the hardest thing about writing a poem with a seasonal slant? The easiest? JP: The hardest part of writing a seasonal poem is not falling into making it a clichéd poem that equates the season with obvious emotions (spring equals love, winter equals depression, etc.), instead of coming up with something new. Fortunately, seasons give a writer a lot of imagery right at the forefront, which can be hammered into shape to work with nearly any subject. TCE: How often do you write about new growth, such as sprouts in spring, or a budding relationship? Or do you find you more often write about the opposite concepts: end-of-life cycles or death? Do these subjects often interrelate or cohabit in the same poems? JP: I think the theme that all my poems boil down to is, "Humankind is insignificant and worthless, but I really want to have sex with you." I feel that every poem (and much of English literature overall) ever written is either about sex, death, or both. Poems about love are really about sex or death, falling into either category about fifty percent of the time. Poems about spring, budding, and sprouts are all about reproduction and the sex organs of plants. Given the brevity and brutality of human existence, I find it unsurprising that we are obsessed with our imminent deaths and the things we do to distract ourselves from that knowledge. TCE: With two days in May set aside for memories (in the U.S.), the month of May is busy with remembering others. How big of a role do memories play in your poetry? JP: I have a terrible memory, and even the vivid memories I do have make for boring poems, so I tend to take my writing inspiration from pure fantasy, dreams that I often confuse for actual memories, or material within my immediate surroundings. Poems lend themselves well to this kind of mental state because they're short and very often vague.