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Terrie Relf: How did you come to be part of the local "poetry scene"?

Ed Decker: I don’t know. I never cared much for poets or poetry – especially the whole slam scene and poetry readings. I know that seems strange, seeing as how I love to write poems, and I occasionally indulge in a poetry reading. But my feeling is that a poem is soiled if it tries to become anything more than the feeling evoked by the words on the page. When you read your poem aloud, you inject yourself into it – and nothing taints a poem more than the invocation of the author.

TR: So who—or what--moves you to write?

ED: New Orleans; Jitterbug Perfume; Ray Davies; Cuzco, Peru; The Stranger; all historical witch hunts (McCarthy hearings, Salem trials); N.W.A.; every single woman who let me sleep with her; George Fucking Carlin; Amsterdam; Richard Brautigan; Flannery O’Connor; Drugs and booze and rock and roll; Fahrenheit 451; Bukowski; The Coliseum; Steven Wright; Jon Krakauer; Denali, Alaska; Japanese horror movies; Amsterdam, Rome, Pompeii; the condom; Country Dick Montana; The Bacchanal; and Mad Magazine.

TR: Believe it or not, I used to read Mad Magazine, too.

ED: Mad Magazine gets top billing because it was my earliest influence. Much of my sense of humor comes from Mad (Should I be admitting this at 40 years of age?) even though I haven’t read it in 20 years. They just got to me early, when I was young, and it stuck. Mad taught me to be highly suspicious of authority and institutions moments before the Christians tried to teach me to be a slave to it.

TR: What about ecstatic or epiphanic moments with poetry?

ED: It’s hard to talk about epiphanies without sounding like a pompous poetry asshole. But I’ll try. Hmm, I was about 18 years old when I learned that poetry didn’t have to rhyme. It opened up this whole new world of poetry, where ideas were more important than cute, same-sounding phrase endings. I still wrote rhyming poetry, but only because the poem called for it and not because I had to. It wasn’t until I learned how not to rhyme, that I learned the value of a rhyming poem.

TR: Would you say that your poetry follows themes? Does your work fall into different "stylistic" periods?

ED: Like I said, it’s hard to talk about poetry themes without sounding like a pompous poetry asshole. But I’ll try. My themes are generally day-to-day stuff. Cross-sections of life (that sounded pompous didn’t it?), individual thoughts that pop into my head completely out of context. I like to build poems around absurd sentences that burst into my head.

TR: So what about your process? What opens the sluice on those poetic juices?

ED: I have about three different processes, which occur randomly:

1) I am drinking in a bar. A brilliant idea hits me. I write it down on a napkin. Go home and pass out. Wake up next morning and read napkin. Idea sucks. Throw napkin away.

2) I am drinking in bar. A brilliant idea hits me. I write it down on a napkin. Go home and pass out. Wake up and read napkin. Napkin is unintelligible. Throw napkin away.

3) A brilliant idea hits me. I read the idea in the morning, and though the idea was not nearly as brilliant as originally believed, it’s still good enough to be a poem.

TR: I know you’ve been published quite a bit, and that you also read/perform in public.

ED: It is extremely difficult to present your bio without sounding like an indulgent, egomaniacal, pompous poetry asshole. However -- I’ve contributed hundreds of articles to various magazines around the country (Tucson Weekly, Seattle Stranger, Creative Loafing to name a few) and write regularly for the San Diego Reader, The San Diego Union-Tribune, SLAMM, and San Diego CityBeat.

I also do a poetry reading from time to time. Recently, I performed at Greg Gerding’s derailed at The Whistle Stop.

TR: I know you write more than "just" poetry.

ED: I write a weekly column for CityBeat called Sordid Tales. It has been running for five years and is highly popular here in San Diego. Sordid Tales is about the comedy and tragedy of the bar and nightclub scene as told by a bartender (me) who has been slinging drinks for twelve years.

I’ve written songs for bands, travel journals (Alaska, Peru, Europe), articles and interviews with musicians and artists (most recently, I interviewed Tenacious D)--all of which you can read on my website:
http:// www.edwindecker.com

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