If you remember anything from this interview, please remember this: Anton Cancre is a hero.
(Anton Cancre is also a charismatic badass who owns FERRETS, but mostly, yes… HERO.)
I friended Anton sometime back on Facebook because I knew they were a poet who left engaging comments on the posts of our mutual friends. It was pure coincidence to discover that Anton, like myself, is a lover of ferrets. And that’s a big deal to me, because ferrets are my spirit animal. Another poet that also has ferrets? Pretty sure that’s my soul doppelganger, right there.
To say I’ve become a fan is an understatement. But I can’t very well declare someone a hero just for ferret love. (Okay, that sounds weird, sorry…) See, Anton is a high school English teacher. In this mad world we find ourselves in, constricted by pandemic and quarantine, Anton navigates the restrictive and difficult guidelines to teach our teenagers the importance of Language Arts, while attempting to instill a passion for the written word in a generation that typically prefers touch screens to paper books. It is a thankless job, but an invaluable service, one which they approach with enthusiasm and creative integrity.
Major props for doing what most parents truly cannot do, Anton!
Recently, Anton released their collection of poems, MEANINGLESS CYCLES IN A VICIOUS GLASS PRISM — an inspiring ode to life, death, and the frequent inconvenience of zombism. The verses within are lush, tragic, often ironic, and occasionally amusing… just the right cocktail for the trying times we all face right now.
Currently, proceeds from the sales of MEANINGLESS CYCLES are being donated to The Trevor Project, an organization providing resources and support for our LGBTQ youth. It is a very important platform, and what better way to show your support, than by ordering a copy of Anton’s collection for yourself! (If you click on the book cover, it will take you to a Facebook post that will give you further ordering instructions. Doooo eet!)
I was pretty excited for this interview, as you can imagine. I like to pretend we were sitting under a tree somewhere having this conversation, as our ferrets danced madly around us. In fact…yes. That’s exactly how this went down. I just edited out the constant interruptions and furry shenanigans happening off-screen.
Enjoy!
1. Who was the first poet that cemented your love of poetry?
I dug Hughes and Dickenson quite a lot from the start, before Chuck Bukowski and Mary Oliver settled into my 20’s, but I don’t think I discovered a love for the force and desperate need poetry was capable of until I read Charlee Jacob and Linda Addison.
Are there any particular poets and or collections that you recommend to others when trying to turn them on to poetry?
For people who think they don’t like poetry, I usually point them toward Matt Betts because his stuff is so accessible and fun. UNDERWATER FISTFIGHT is a damn good book. Wrath James White is another one, but he is more suited to fans of brutal and sexy stuff. IF YOU DIED TOMORROW, I WOULD EAT YOUR CORPSE is striking, brutal, gory, romantic at times and sexy as fuck always. But if you want the real real, then you should hunt down a copy of VECTORS, by Charlee Jacob and Marge Simon. It’s a story of the last days on earth as humanity is destroyed by a virus that is so incredibly raw and human and completely humane that it destroys me every time. Unfortunately, I think that one is out of print. Charlee and Marge, as well as Rain Graves and Linda Addison, have a bunch of outright corkers in THE FOUR ELEMENTS.
2. Did you decide you wanted to become a teacher before you decided to teach English? Were there other subjects you considered teaching before English won you over?
Oddly enough, I’ve never even considered teaching anything else. I knew I wanted to teach from the time I was around 16 but I never really felt any connection to any other subject. Even when I was working with Multiple Handicapped students, I was still teaching reading and writing. I just adore what words can do. They are like magic that puts your thoughts in the brains of others and form reality from vibrating air.
Was English your favorite subject back in the day when you were just a young Anton?
Most of my favorite classes were English, though I really got into physics and Spanish was pretty neat. The Art of Language (it just sounds neater that way) taught me more about what it means to be human than anything else.
3. Do you find that today’s high school students are more easily engaged with literature, or poetry?
To be honest, it is a fight sometimes. I don’t really think it is any more or less of one than when I was a teen, but it is a fight. It doesn’t have the direct use of science or math or programming. Parents often think them frivolous pursuits and don’t really support it much at home. Plus, there are so many competing forms of storytelling now. So many ways of experiencing our humanity. It means that we, as artists, need to re-examine what we do and why we do it so that we can either provide an experience those other forms cannot or embrace those forms and work alongside and interlocked with them.
Do their age differences seem to play a role in what they appear to enjoy most – for instance, is there a difference in how freshmen respond to poetry, versus your senior students?
I think the trick there is what they have access to. Teenage me would have lost his mind reading Bukowski’s “The Night I Fucked My Alarm Clock” but I didn’t even know there were poets like that. I try to do my part to expose them to as much as possible, but poetry isn’t in the state standards so there often isn’t time and… well, you’ve made me sad now. But for those who enjoy poetry, what they like is very affected by where they are in life. It can even change what they like about artists they continue to love their whole life. Someone who is drawn to the drama of Plath as a young teen might find themselves drifting more towards the rage in her work as they get into their 20’s and might find relief in the commonality of desperation and hopelessness in their 30’s.
ALSO… have your students ever read your poetry?
I run a student writing group and those students occasionally ask to see my stuff. I have even had the pleasure of collaborating with some of them over the years, which is incredibly humbling. But my regular students: Oh hell no. That would not go well.
4. Does the music you listen to ever influence your fiction or poetry?
Very much so. I’ve ripped off so much of the feeling of Dax Riggs (from Acid Bath, Agents of Oblivion, Deadboy and the Elephantmen, and solo work) that I finally asked his permission and forgiveness. Lately, I’ve tended to lean on Stoneburner and Neurosis. They both fit my mental landscape at the moment.
I’ve noticed we often enjoy similar bands and genres of music. Do you ever listen to them as you are writing?
It depends on what I am working on and what the goal is. With MEANINGLESS CYCLES IN A VICIOUS GLASS PRISON, I wanted to keep my influences tied to Delamorte Delamore, so I didn’t listen to any music while writing that. If I am just aiming for a feeling, though, then I will listen to something that carries the same feeling that I am trying to convey.
5. As both an artist, and as someone who is very essential to the intellectual growth of our future generations (and let me just add, thank you very much for the work you do!) how are you keeping it together these days?
I don’t usually feel like I am keeping it together, to be honest. I consider my work to be a sacred charge. Please don’t think I am being self-righteous. There is nothing so important about me, but I am part of a process and an experience that is vital to the students that I work with. Now I am seeing their youth and position in society being used as pawns, putting their long term physical and emotional health at risk to push a political and economic agenda. Especially since I work with so many students, almost exclusively from African American and recent immigrant families, who have lived in the shadow of a society that makes it very clear on a broad cultural level that they are not valued as human beings. Fighting against that both on a larger cultural field and within the very personal lives of my students is hard as hell in normal circumstances and what we are dealing with right now sure as hell ain’t normal. When I have freshmen telling me that they feel like their school is using them as guinea pigs because they are immigrants or handicapped I just want to fucking choke the people who make them feel this way.
What routines or pastimes are helping you stay grounded and connected in this current climate in which we find ourselves?
The writing has always helped me process trauma and it is doing doubletime now. As is the time I get to spend with my wife and our house full of fuzzy friends (we have about 1 pet per 100 square feet in our tiny ass townhouse). Those and talking to the kids. Trying my best to provide as much physical, emotional and intellectual security as I can in 45 minute chunks. I hear so much bitching about “kids these days” but most of them sincerely give me hope. If we can keep them alive long enough, take what they have to say seriously, and keep ourselves from repeating our own past, maybe we can help them turn this shitstorm around.
6. You and I have one particularly important thing in common. We love us some ferrets. I have written horror fiction inspired by my fiendish cat snakes, even. Have ferrets ever appeared in your writing, in either poems or stories?
I haven’t really used any ferrets in my stories. No idea has come up that has fit them well enough yet. But I have written a few poems about them. Unfortunately, most of those have been dealing with losing them. I’d really like to find a way to focus on the more fun aspects of these terrifying, cuddly, goofy ass, way too damn smart for anyone’s good little creatures.
Would you ever consider collabing on a collection of glorious sonnets dedicated to our slithery furbeasts? Er, asking for a friend…
Don’t dangle a carrot unless you are willing to feed the donkey at some point, because I have found that I really like working with a collaborator, I’m trying to push myself more with poetic forms and I think that there is a very specific, fanatic market of similarly inclined carpet shark, toe-chomping, stinky thief fanatics. But I call Angoras first. They’re sooooo fluffy!
Anton Cancre’s mother wasn’t really pregnant with them when she went to see The Exorcist, but they tell people that anyway, because it sounds cool. Their debut collection of poetry, Meaningless Cycles in a Vicious Glass Prison: Songs of Death and Love is available through Dragon’s Roost Press. They’re also a luddite who still has a blogspot website (antoncancre.blogspot.com) and runs the Spec Griot Garage podcast (specgriotgarage.podbean.com) where they get to gush over other people’s poems with cool folks.
Memoirs of a Midnight Masochist 