[the Writing of Kuypers]    [JanetKuypers.com]    [Bio]    [Poems]    [Prose]


Penny Dreadful Press interview with Janet Kuypers, 2009

    Penny Dreadful Press: C Ra here, hello. We feel like we know a little about you, but the rest of the world may not. I’d like you to tell us about your publishing days with Penny Dreadful Press and Penny Dreadful Review.
    Janet Kuypers: My days with Penny Dreadful?... Well, I can start with the “creation” of Penny Dreadful. I wrote about it while traveling around the country, which was when I even met C Ra McGuirt.
    From my travel journals (in the book Changing Gears):

March 28, 1998
3:05 p.m. Central Standard Time

    Met C Ra McGuirt last night. I have worked with him in the poetry world ever since I started publishing “Children, Churches and Daddies,” back in 1993. He submitted work to my magazine, and was so thankful that I accepted his work he asked what he could do for me. I told him to start his own magazine and publish me.
    So he did. He started the magazine “the Penny Dreadful Review.” Asked for advice. I tried to help him out.


    Okay, so apparently, even though C Ra did most everything else under the sun in his lifetime, he had not started a magazine. But once he did (which had a very different feel from my cc&d magazine), he started accepting my writing for issues, including material right at the beginning of Penny Dreadful Review in 1994, in “best of” issues, and even through 1997 and 1998 issues (when we had met for the first time). And I guess it’s funny, when I first started publishing cc&d (like what is probably the case for all small magazine with no base when they first start out), there weren’t many writers submitting material to me for consideration. I was just starting out myself, trying to get my writing published and known in the underground literary community (so to speak). So when I accepted a lot of C Ra McGuirt’s writing, and he asked me how he could repay me, I thought it would be a great idea if we both became these underground publishing tycoons, each with our vastly different stories, but each with a lot to share with each other — and with the world.
    And as a side note, when I was working on releasing my epic novel The Key To Believing (which is almost sold out of it’s first print run), I asked a few people to write essays for the novel (for a preface, even a section called “a novel Philosophy”) and one of the men writing one of these sections seemed stunned and amazed that I actually had C Ra McGuirt writing something about my novel. After he said he submitted material to him and was waiting for a response, his tone almost asked “how did you manage to get him to write something?” Some can think it’s stunning that we know each other, but it’s just funny, because I think we’re somehow bound together somehow now, like we’ve become close friends over these intertwined publishing years.
    I know that was more than what you asked for. But over the years of knowing each other, I thought that first question involving Penny Dreadful Review deserved a more intricate answer...

    Penny Dreadful Press: At what age did books and words begin to interest you? When did you begin to learn to read?
    Janet Kuypers: When did books interest me? I couldn’t tell you. I do know I read early... I only remember reading a street sign while in the car with my mom when I was three (and no, I don’t think it was a stop sign, but something you actually had to read, like a “railroad crossing” or “children at play” sign).

    Penny Dreadful Press: What were your favourite sort of books as a child?
    Janet Kuypers: I have no idea. I read Shel Silverstein when I was little; I have a ton of books (I even have a library now), but I don’t remember many child books as I grew up (there probably were children’s books, I just don’t remember them). The only books I collected as an adult were Dr. Seuss books, after one was given to me when I graduated college.
    It’s strange, when I was little, what I remember is watching television (while eating chocolate ice cream). When I played when I was little, I didn’t play on being a television star (you know, from my watching “Solid Gold” or “Donny & Marie” so much), but I actually played (instead of house) office, where I ran a company, had a big desk with a board with toggle switches where I felt like I was accomplishing things. I remember designing a book when I was little for school (with a cover of sticky paper over cardboard) about a murder mystery. So, whether or not I remember childhood books , I remember writing a book when I was young.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Did you “know” you wanted to be a writer one day? If so, when was this?
    Janet Kuypers: I liked writing when I was young. The first poem I ever wrote (for a class) when I was nine actually got published in Read magazine. I started writing more rhyming poetry (like the first poem, Under the Sea), but I think they were all pretty poor, looking back at them (I think I liked the idea of writing poetry, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say, so I just did what I thought I was supposed to do when I wrote). I also started taking a lot of pictures, and by my senior year in high school I got a nice 35mm camera. So I found myself in my spare time writing and taking pictures, while studying mathematics and computer programming languages. By my senior year I was accepted as a computer science engineer at the University of Illinois (the third best school in the country for it at the time, after MIT and Berkeley).
    But in my senior english class, the teacher asked us to write a letter to ourselves as if we were 64. Well, per usual I didn’t think of the assignment until my previous school hour Physics class, so I wrote quickly. This is what I told myself in my letter: You chose the road that would make you money. You chose the husband that was obvious, financially successful, and basic (though you probably don’t love him). The life you chose seems pretty straight-forward, but you’re not happy. And you know, you used to love to take pictures, and write. So why don’t you go to your desk and write something. Or better yet, get your camera bag out from the bottom of your closet and look for art again.
    The day after we all handed in our letters to ourselves, the teacher (who also had the first name of Janet, by the way) called me up to her desk when everyone was writing in the last ten minutes of class. She had my letter in her hand, which made me worry that I did something wrong in my letter. When I got to her desk, she pretty much said, “If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I wrote this letter to myself.” (Which was another reason our both having the same first names seemed spooky.) She told me that she thought this way when she was younger, but decided to change her career choice. She then told me that I should do what I want to do with my life.
    I even wrote in a journal when I was in high school, “I’m too creative to waste my life away in computer science. There’s no profession to fit my talents; no market for my skills.” So apparently I was at a crossroads. Then again, at times now I still feel like I’m still at those crossroads.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Who do you feel has had considerable influence on you as a writer?
    Janet Kuypers: I liked a select few writers as I was taking poetry classes, but I only liked a select few writings — the prose poem “The Colonel” by Carolyn Forché, or the poem “The Good Shepherd” by the the poet Ai. The thing is, I didn’t purchase poetry books, but philosophy books. When I write editorials and short stories, John Yotko pointed out to me that I write like Ayn Rand (philosopher who started Objectivism and wrote best-selling epic novels; I’ve heard the rumor that the only book with more copies sold over history than Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged is the Bible). Well, I have read everything of hers ever released in book form, and I probably do lend her philosophy to a lot of my writings, but the style of going from one long paragraph to one 5 word sentence is not her’s alone (even newspaper columnists do that).
    So when it comes to how I write. I truly believe that on many levels I have no influence. I might like a writer, or a written piece, but I think I put myself too much into the writing to attribute the style to anyone else.
    People ask me, since I am an editor, what famous books do I read in my spare time, and I tell them that as an editor, I spend a third of my day reading submissions from people for the magazine, and a third of the day designing magazines and books and CD recordings. So after reading things from other submissions every day, I have NO interest in pulling out some famous person’s book to read more. I usually just do my work reading submissions, then get to my designing and writing on my own terms.

    Penny Dreadful Press: What is your philosophy of life, and do you promulgate it through your art?
    Janet Kuypers: It’s funny, I do a lot of performance art shows now (that seems to be my specialty now, doing shows; my only tax-paying job I have is in the sale of audio tracks from my poetry readings and performance art shows). Whenever I go to a performance art venue, I am always insanely early. I have equipment set-up, yes, but I want to be early so that there are no problems with my show. Every other poet I know running these venues seems to operate on “poet time,” which means they are always an hour behind schedule. I’m not like that. With how I want to live my life, I don’t allow for slacking or lagging behind. I push to get things done, and in a lot of ways that makes me different from the usual Chicago poet I see.
    But when it comes to my “philosophy of life,” it’s not something that I consciously try to promulgate through my poetry. It may show through in the way I say things, or the way I come to conclusions in the writing I create, but it’s not something I force down people’s throats.
    Actually, the closest time I’ve come to discussing philosophy in poetry was when Lisa Hemminger, who ran the open mic “Yammer” in Chicago for years, wrote a poem about her poetic idol. Emily Dickinson. She wrote a poem called “Two Minutes with Emily Dickinson,” which was a poem that took two minutes to read, talking about what she would say to Emily. She then asked a few of us regular poets to write a two minute poem (if we wanted) about our respective poetic idols. I know one woman wrote a “Two Minutes with Anais Nin” poem, but I think people thought it was strange when I wrote “Two Minutes with Ayn Rand.” I wrote that if I were to talk to her, I would want to thank her for actually showing me her philosophy (so to speak), and for writing such phenomenal novels with protagonists any rational person couldn’t help but love.
    But when it comes to throwing my philosophy into my poetry, it would only appear in subtle ways. When I write my poetry, I write about the issues that matter to me — I wrote a lot about sexism (being a woman and seeing it everywhere), with poems like “Too Far,” my only poem with a formal video. I wrote about rape (I was an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator for years, where I also designed flyers, brochures and newspaper ads for C.A.R.E., Campus Acquaintance Rape Education). I wrote about vegetarianism (“Everything was Alive and Dying,” although a very long poem, is in my opinion one of my better poems). Certain things, when they hold such a emotional or moral tie to me, come through in my writings.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Have any of your early cherished beliefs changed in a major way?
    Janet Kuypers: No. Sorry, you probably wanted something longer than that. Religious beliefs changed, but those beliefs weren’t that cherished in the first place, they were cemented as grew. As I aged, I grew into my beliefs, and if anything, those beliefs have only become stronger.

    Penny Dreadful Press: What made you decide to start a literary magazine?
    Janet Kuypers: My wanting to get my name out there, really. When I first tried to formally get published, I was regularly rejected, and when I would receive magazine issues, I saw that the editors who were rejecting me were being published in these other magazines. So I thought that maybe this was a step I could take, to start my own magazine (I am a designer, I can figure out how to do this, I thought). So I named the magazine after the title of one of my poems (“Children, Churches and Daddies” is a poem that talks about the dysfunctionality of those things at times), which first got a lot of submissions from people whose cover letter started by saying “I’m a christian mother of four with rhyming poems for consideration.” So I quickly adapted the by line “the UNreligious, NONfamily-oriented literary and art magazine,” and over the years, calling the mag cc&d seemed to flow off the tongue.

    Penny Dreadful Press: How did you come to be a multi-media sort of artist, rather than a simple writer / publisher? Was it a slow process, or an idea that arrived all at once?
    Janet Kuypers: I think every expansion I have made for my work has come in steps over the years. I wrote through my teens, but wrote my first book (and then the magazine) in the early 1990s. After two years I went to my first open mic (introducing me to reading poetry to an audience), but a year later I both had my first poetry feature reading show, and worked on my first audio CD (to incorporate music and other people’s voices with my own in audio recordings). I had an Internet Radio Show (at BZoO.org) for a year and a half (Chaotic Radio), a radio station of just my wor (JK Radio) ran for 2 years, and I ean Scars had “Scars Internet Radio” for 3 years. I even appeared on television shows for poetry a few times both in Nashville and a few times Chicago, and I did shows in the midwest and was in a Chicago poets show at the 1998 National Poetry Slam in Albuquerque NM (still writing quite efficient and well-crafted pieces then), but about 5 months later I was almost killed in a car accident, while stopped at an intersection.
    After I recovered (which took years, and I think I’ll never be fully recovered) I started reading again, then started immediately doing shows. But when I was given to option to do a show in 2000, I wanted to do something more than just reading poetry, so I used sound effects and a PowerPoint visual display of my artwork during the show. I’ve even sung songs in shows, and playted video during my readings. Since then I have only been looking for more ways to get my work out there — from being featured on radio shows to getting my poetry videos (from live shows and from reading on the road) featured on YouTube (one of my YouTube videos has even had over 68,125 views so far, the poem segment of “In the Air,” from my 07/17/07 show “Living in a Big World”). I found an agent to distribute my poetry mp3 tracks on places like iTunes or Napster or Rhapsody (or a ton of others), where people literally purchase my poetry from around the world. I’m even working on starting up an hour-long poetry television show in Chicago right now with other artists.
    I think after the accident, I started looking for other ways to get my message out there. People don’t pay much attention to poetry as a whole, so if I want people to hear what I have to say, I have to use every avenue I can think of to help get my message across.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Why do you think poetry is such a boring art form for most persons in the Western world?
    Janet Kuypers: Well, I think people, as a whole, don’t want to take the time to read something you have to put too much thought into. I mean yes, novels with well-outlined plots and structures (laid out so the reader only has to absorb and not study too intently) exist, but a lot of people prefer the concept of a movie instead, so they can shut off their brains, and they don’t even have to think about something by reading it. Poetry is something where the reader is an active participant, and I think that people get too tense from their workday that they want to shut off their brains. So when people (on average) read any poetry, they don’t want to take the active role to understand it on the many levels it holds. So they don’t pay attention to it, and they find it boring.
    I think people today think poetry is boring because they don’t want to actively have to think about its content — they think it’s boring because they don’t want to have to think about it. Which makes poetry to most a lost cause.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Do you think that we, the poets, have a responsibility to encourage higher readership? If so, will we have to give up anything of importance, or “dumb down” our art?
    Janet Kuypers: I try to get my own work out there for people, because I actively want people to be involved with my writing and my work. Because I work to expand what cc&d does and has to offer at http://scars.tv for people, I never think about having a responsibility to encourage higher readership (that’s my self-imposed job at the editor). One thing I won’t do, though is “dumb down” what I want so say. I may have to edit something so it is more understandable to a larger audience, but I never dumb down my message. It’s my message. I’m not dumbing it down.

    Penny Dreadful Press: Did nearly being killed in an automobile accident affect you as an artist?
    Janet Kuypers: Yes. Through the 1990s I wrote about issues that related to being single (and probably feeling invincible), and just before the accident I was writing well-crafted pieces, being in control of my life, having money from a successful job and traveling around the country to experience more of life. After the accident, I had to re-learn to walk, and talk, and eat, and eventually even read again. The stock market crashed just after my accident, so any money I had saved started disappearing (and I was in no condition to control my finances then), and... And I became more concerned with trying to figure out how to get my life together than writing breathtaking poetry.
    My outlook on the world — and my own life — drastically changed after that accident. (My philosophy didn’t change, it became stronger, but my perspective changed.) My writing ability changed some immediately after the accident, and what I wanted to write about changed. Combine that with other things that happened in my life after the accident (getting married, for one), everything changed. I have been unable to keep a job in my profession since the accident (and if you know me, I am a very work-directed, my work is my life, and working on cc&d was often the only thing that kept me going, because on some levels I need my work to justify my worth).
    Immediately after the accident, I wrote feverishly (because I wanted a record of what I was going through during the recovery in the hospital, abd I just released the book “(recovery)” with those writings related to the accident), and as I recovered more, what I wanted to write about also changed. So the accident did totally change how I work as an artist. It changed my focus because I knew the precariousness and finality of my life. It made me consider the impact I want to have with my writing. I talk more with my husband about issues that drive me to write (issues I might not have considered otherwise, and I never had such a wonderful man around me to give me these additional ideas for my writing). So since then, everything has changed. But I think it also means I have new stories to tell in my poetry.


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