Matthew James Jones is a poet, novelist, storyteller and veteran who has published in Arc, F(r)iction, and many other places. His novel, Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures, is forthcoming from Double Dagger Books. Today, Matt writes and teaches in Paris: leadership at the École militaire and creative writing at SciencesPo. He edits prose at The Wrath Bearing Tree, co-hosts the WriteTime workshop, and organizes fitness enthusiasts who use trees as barbells: the Log Club. Subscribe for a free wordgift and track his path.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
I remember my chapbook, White Flowers and Landmines, which I published at In/Words Press back in 2014. Like every early publication or reading, the chapbook was a green light from the universe to keep creating. I was still in the military then – stable job, good pension, despite the odd chance of dying in a fireball. Even after coming home from war, it required courage to transition into writing, so precarious.
It took me a decade, years of therapy, countless poems, a few kilometres of journalling, to process what I’d seen, and distil it into my upcoming book. In both works, I wanted to write to write something that was half light and half shadow. Like then, I’m still an old garment, well-worn, stained.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
Easier to write a poem on long watches at sea, than to keep a whole book straight in the mind. But these lines have always been blurry for me, since I like a poem with a story, and prose that sparkles. Zoom out – everything is storytelling: a dress, a painting, a body. Especially a body.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
The only time I’ve written an entire book, without discarding 50,000 words and mashing my face on the keyboard, was when I planned each scene, systematically. Then it was a question of discipline.
Sometimes the poems came near fully formed – I was the mere midwife. Other times I edited until they were either fixed or irrevocably broken.
I read; I research; I sing in the shower. Writers are just magpies building nests. I remember on basic training polishing boots. With prose, after ten or more coats of polish, you can finally see your smile reflected.
4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
A poem begins with a feeling. Sometimes there’s an image connected. Sometimes that image is captured in words, one line that circles round with the addictive quality of a television jingle, or crack. Pull the earworm out with tweezers. Splatter it.
A book begins with themes. Since every character is a puppet of the psyche, universal themes connect us to others, bring us beyond the ego. We may not know the themes at first. We may confuse trauma for themes. On one level I believe that writing is a path to healing the self. On another level, I know a lot of broken writers, caught in their own mazes.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Public readings were how I reminded myself I wasn’t just screaming into a hole in the sand. I was an extrovert caught in an introvert’s passion. On the stage, you can see when a line works, or when a piece flops. Starved for attention, you might like the backrubs that come after a strong performance. In time you’ll learn to bluff lines that don’t work, with the strength of your voice alone – like a pop musician. Finally, you’ll be teaching public speaking to business professionals, and you’ll move an entire classroom to tears by reading a recipe for pizza dough. Accept at last the voice is just another lie, but it’s one you’ll keep on telling.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
For Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures it was always the theme of dehumanization that drove me. Not only the dehumanizing quality of the drones themselves (the technological distance, the blurry cameras, the way it all felt like a video game) but a hierarchy that deliberately blurred responsibility for “strikes” and watered down the language itself. That’s how human beings became “targets.” Unlike the many victims of drone warfare, the words we killed could be brought back to life. I wasn’t actually a machine the way they said; the language spills off the page because it must.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Canary in the mine. A sensitive satellite, pointed at outer space. Jeremiads. Someone to scream “the sky is falling” when the sky is falling. People who dream hard, who grew imagination like a muscle. People who dance on the rooftops as the meteors crash. Tricksters, pranksters, healers, wizards, fools.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Some of my favourite published pieces achieved their final state through the help of insightful editors who pushed me. My best editors will not be bluffed by half-assed efforts, even as I bluff myself. Working as an editor was one of the ways I sought to grow in craft – I think it’s been nearly ten years now. Currently editing prose at Wrath, I deal with many veterans seeking to cross the same bridge I did. Mostly the game is ego management, like teaching, like learning a language, like marriage. I ask questions that are actually statements: a bit more showing here? For grammar, I allow sarcasm to do its work: are these two hyphens masquerading as a dash? Writers wonder how I got like this: your quotation marks are not curly enough. Or, you’ve added a double space here when a single suffices. They say I’m pedantic; I say every religion needs priests.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
“Don’t be ashamed of your monster.” CM Taylor, at a writing conference in York.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I co-host The WriteTime Workshop with an American writer, Grace Bialeckie, held monthly on Zoom. Here, and in the creative-writing classes I teach in Parisian universities, I prescribe poetry to prose writers, and prose to poets, like medicine. In terms of the study of craft, one has much to learn from the other, on the level of the line and beyond.
Pragmatically? In terms of writing for the marketplace? Sometimes, it chafes. Looking for blurbs for my novel, I quickly realized I mostly knew poets in Canada, though there were a stalwart few who helped me. In terms of grant applications, it can be problematic to cut a wide swathe through art: some grants will only consider you a poet, for example, if you’ve published ten paid poems, but what if you’ve published eight, and a handful of fiction short stories, two chapbooks, and a few creative non-fiction?
Awkwardly, there is usually someone behind a desk who gets to choose which one of us is an artist. Grant writing is where the rubber meets the road. Still, being awarded a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts for Predators, Reapers and Deadlier Creatures, was a life-changing, maybe life-saving moment that arrived just as I giving up on art, on the cusp of trading in my fountain pen for an ugly tie, and grinding my way towards cubicle-death.
11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Writing is one of several daily disciplines that also includes cardio, weights, French training, reading, and wrestling Clawdia. I try to write every day for at least an hour, though a book will occupy more than this, particularly in the editing phase. Sometimes I’ll work on a poem, or write a beautiful spam for my mailing list. Other times I’ll journal. Whatever we can do to preserve sanity will help us make art in the long run. Tragically, these daily disciplines have to contend with a full workday, editing, a social life, a love life, making healthy food, visa drama, and domestic chores. I used to say, “A writer is someone who writes every day.” Now I say, “Do your best.”
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Usually the biggest issue for me is too much money-work or life drama. For example, this term I’ve refused a few teaching gigs, knowing I’d need more time for marketing the book and writing the follow-up. Burnout, heartbreak, death in the family: all provoke a return to self care. Therapy. Reading for pleasure. Walking in nature. A return to the garden of friendships with roots of trust, mutual respect, and laughter. Slide into the tub and scrape the callouses from your heels with a stone.
It’s normal to turn inward when we’re in pain. Sometimes we use our skills to entertain others, but it’s OK to use them to frantically hold onto ourselves. Stop running from the shame, and feel it, I’d say. Or, this dry spell is nothing a little loneliness won’t fix.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
Boiled cabbage
14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
All of these, definitely, and add television, movies, video games, bodybuilding, conversations with artists, bathtub stains in the shape of Jesus, the sound of a cat chasing a pen lid at three in the morning when you desperately need to sleep. No matter your inspiration, the key is watching closely, with an aware mind, not distracted, not anaesthetized, to be present in a full and honest way, even if excruciating.
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Constantly exploring in prose: just read Percival Everett’s Erasure. Working on Nafkote Tamirat’s The Parking Lot Attendant. I’d like to read the latest Rushdie, after the stabbing. Salman, if you’re reading this, let’s get a coffee.
I meet multi-disciplinary artists in Paris through a variety of not-for-profit associations. Sometimes I read books on craft. Sometimes a famous writer. More and more frequently, people I know. I take inspiration watching writers develop in workshop. I take inspiration from the many veterans with whom I interact, at the ecole militaire, at The Wrath-Bearing Tree, or my publisher, Double Dagger Books. Every writer must find his/her people. And while we veterans might all be murderous scum, even among killers there is an underlying honour code, and shared principles of leadership, that invoke trust. We also always show up on time.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Take if from someone who spent his twenties well over three-hundred pounds: part of us will always be ruled by the unlived life. I wanted so hard to be beautiful, desired. That’s how I became the magician whose only trick was to transform. I’ve been all over the world and I’ve drank as much of the cup of life as I could without drowning. Seems like everything I learned was the hard way. Seems like I was always a train stuck on the tracks of trauma, or a ping pong batted back and forth from one unlived life to another. Peter Pan’s crocodile ticks because it ate the clock – an easy metaphor of mortality – but perhaps we have finite heartbreaks, too. So long as we are ruled by internal forces we don’t understand, we will bruise ourselves and those around us. The next journey is inward; all I need is peace.
17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
Even in the military, bosses would eventually figure out that I had certain skills and would shape the job to exploit them – this is how I became the personal editor/ass-wiper of several high-ranking officials. We can’t escape who we are. Moving forward, beyond books, perhaps I’ll chase a more perfect artform, a Gesamtkunstwerk, that incorporates visual art, fashion, dance, architecture, music, writing, poetry. Add tactics, strategy, avant-garde forms of storytelling… looks like my future will be to write video games. Any why not? I’m not snobby about the media, and it might lend some stability; see my above answer about peace.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I did do something else. Many other things. But the boomerang kept coming back to my hand, as it does for everyone: “what do I do with my brain?”
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
It seems a good time for a shout out to Ottawa’s own, David O’Meara, newly embarked into the world of prose after writing and publishing a lot of exquisite poetry. His book, Chandelier, will make you cry and hug your parents.
For films, let me recommend a French classic that I watch every Christmas: Le Pere Noel est une ordure,” translating to “Santa Claus is garbage,” but named for English audiences: “Santa Claus is a stinker.” This is the only true story written about Christmas: depression, loneliness, suicide, alcoholism, murder.
20 - What are you currently working on?
After teaching leadership for five years in France’s ecole militiare, I’d like to assemble my thoughts (and thousands of conversations with some extremely impressive meta-humans) into a book on leadership. Set in the Parisian bohemia. Rooted deeply in the body, with the edges blurring into French. Long-suffering English-Second-Language students lay siege to an entrenched bureaucracy. Soldiers become artists and artists become soldiers. Golden glints the rooftops in fair Paris; the rats gorge on day-old croissant and cheese. Skeleton armies animate and crawl from the catacombs. A cynical Parisian smokes a cigarette that never burns low.
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