Hinchas: With the advent of e-books and readers, what might happen to Poetry? Does the current technology present opportunities for burgeoning poets? What are you doing to ensure that poetry is not just read by other poets? Is ephemeral poetry somehow more natural and appropriate than poems printed on paper?

P. Scott Cunningham: Holy shit! That’s four mammoth-sized questions, and all of them are difficult. I’ll answer them in order. Poetry will be fine. I think there’s going to more and more of a stress on the live reading, not only in a financial sense but also in a “you haven’t lived until you’ve seen this band live” sense. I think we’re moving into a period when there’s going to be a lot more Matin Espadas and Tony Hoaglands, poets who own the stage, without delving into spoken word. But poetry itself is going to be bigger and more popular too, which means mores of everything—avant-garde, concrete, flarf, conceptual, formalism, etc. Technology: Well, what technology are you referring to? It’s cheaper to print a book than ever, which I think means more opportunity because there will be more small presses like yours. But let’s face it: most online poetry journals are fairly navel-gazing. There’s only going to ever be a few journals that matter, and what’s wrong with that? My philosophy is if you can’t get your work into one (and I include myself here because I guarentee you I have more rejections per minute writing poetry than anyone reading this), write better poetry. Until then, why not publish it yourself? Or print it out and give it to your friends? It’s better than stuffing it into a drawer.
#3: The principal thing I’m doing is using my grant money to pay poets to come to Miami, which I hope generates more interest. Most people don’t like poetry because they haven’t heard a good poet read before. You know those Levi Jeans ads with Walt Whitman reading? People love those. The sound of those words is so strange to hear on TV because you instantly know that they weren’t written by some over-caffinated ad executive. They sound like they come from another world, and it’s jarring and it’s beautiful. And there are a million more examples of this. The Sharon Olds poem in that suck-ass adaptation of “Into the Wild.” Dead Poets Society. When people really hear good poetry, they always love it. So that’s my main goal right now. #4 No, no, no. No poetry is natural, period. No good poetry is appropriate. I love poetry because like Robert Patrick in Terminator 2 it takes on whatever shape you require of it, and wiggles out of any box you try to stuff it in.

Hinchas: Do you feel that Miami poets write more about nature because it is so prevalent in the landscape of the city, or do Miami poets write just as much about materialism and the extravagances of consumption, i.e. silicone breast implants, expensively-detailed automobiles, and designer bronzing lotions?

P. Scott Cunningham: I truly can’t speak of Miami poets, partly because I don’t think there is such a thing yet. And now we’re back to the make-believe of academia. Once some young lit professor takes it upon his- or herself to codify whatever poetry has been written here, then we’ll know what traits it possesses. But even then it will be an invention. My suspicion is that Miami poets are no more nature-oriented than any other group of poets. The fact is all of us we’ve all internalized a lot of nature writing because we were taught the Western canon. It’s kind of inescapable. If we aren’t writing about the extravangances of consumption—and some of us, led by Campbell—definitely are, we should be. A Lamborgini is no less a poetic subject than a tree, but one of those two has received more than its share of air-time and one hasn’t. I think this is why people love Frederick Siedel right now. He speaks for that dark place of incredible wealth and priviledge that dominates our culture.

Hinchas: Does Miami have its own sound, in terms of Poetry? Is it a describable sound? Who are some of the Miami poets that are making the most racket?