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TEN with meika loofs-samorzewski
We crossed the International Date Line and the Equator for this interview, so we’re made the most of our trip and asked follow-up questions for the first time. We’re posting half of our interview with meika today and the other half in a week.
We caught up with meika in his foundry where he pours molten bronze into molds. It was hot yet amazing to watch him work. If you want to see examples of his sculpture, check out his website. He has an amazing mind, as you will read shortly, and was able to answer our questions whilst working bronze and posting on Twitter.
- What was the first book/poem/phrase that rocked your world? A primary school reader in grade 4, I forget the name exactly, Mrs-So-and-So goes to Mars.
What is the first thing you’d do if you went to Mars? Smile. - Dr. Who picks you up in the Tardis. Where/when do you go? This is really hard, probably somewhere never visited or mentioned in any Dr Who show. Someplace where nobody famous is at all likely to be met— a moist mossy place under the light of another star.
So you prefer the beauty of ordinary to the flash of special? Or is it the lure of unique? I like rambling, that cross between wilderness hiking and the city flaneur. I’d like to do that across the galaxy, resting in special places that might be quite uniquely ordinary. - What was your first published piece & where was it published? A chapbook entitled A Sonnet of Unsonnet, Post Neo (an imprint by Pete Spence) Melbourne, 1987. This is a good question because it reminds me that that style of short punchy lines would work well for Twitter. Maybe I was ahead of the times in available media.
We’d love to see some! I’ll eventually put a PDF of the chapbook. It’s been on the to do list for sometime now. - Do you think the internet hurts or helps literature? If you mean capital-protective IP law ‘Literature’ gatekeepered by Publishing Houses, it’s hurting, but otherwise it will be helped as the Houses themselves (which are required to produce all books) are crowdsourced and web-botically enhanced. Like any artform, literature will disappear if it continues to lazily rely on the unchanging nature of the human condition to produce new work. “Literature” as such, is a subgenre defined by indulgent pomposity. Take nothing for granted.
So you differentiate between Literature and Muse-Inspired Phonetic Art? No. More between peoples in their social context and and their life as readers. - What about authors? “Authors” in da Publishing House are labels, the ultimate/genre category. The likes of Stephen King may never be seen again, and the only well-known & broadly known authors will be sweet voiced fluff; LOLcat equivalents, of whom the majority will not know of nor care to. As a result of technological change, the splintering into subgenre’s and other literary fractalised neighbourhoods, all writers will soon have to have writer’s statements. Artists currently write these in order to quickly frame their context, their concerns and their compositions. They don’t have to explain the body of work, but reflect the process of working. Writer’s Statements should be a natural fit for writers. Though for this reason it will be fiercely resisted, as it may seem like stating the obvious, whereas it is not always so clear in the Fine Arts.
I’ve never seen an Artist’s Statement. It’s a fascinating concept & proposal.writer’s statement: meika loofs-samorzewski
compare to
artist’s statement: WikipediaRecently most of the hits on my website have been referred from
search engines for people searching for “Writer’s Statements” or
similar, so they must be happening ‘out there’ somewhere now. I never got round to writing a long writer’s statement, seems
more silly for some reason. I wrote mine directly in response to some bloggy heat I generated a couple of years ago over my self-published http://www.lulu.com attempt “.before Country”.
Be sure to read meika’s picofiction on PicFic this week. And come back next Monday to catch Part 2 of TEN with meika.
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