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Radio: Welcome to all of our listeners out there tonight. We᾿re talking to Janet Kuypers, the author of many different poetry books, and the new novel The Key To Believing about AIDS and a government conspiracy. If you could tell us even more than what I᾿ve told all of our listeners about all of the different literary experiences that you do and create, that would be wonderful.
JK: I᾿ve written poetry for probably over twenty years and I᾿ve probably got four or five books of poetry published, starting in 1993. I run a web site for Scars Publications, and they᾿ve got everything from information about their magazines, as well as downloadable chapbooks (PDF files), there᾿s a news and philosophy text archive, we᾿ve got sound files in our audio and video section; there᾿s some really cool stuff there. Primarily what I᾿m doing a lot of now is performance art, setting up shows, not only with poetry, but with journals and short stories as well, and setting them up with images in a display with music in the background (because I᾿m a photographer and do some music in my spare time).
Radio: Janet is going to tell us a bit more about writing some of her pieces about death.
JK: It was such a traumatic thing for me to go through as an innocent bystander (going through having ones close to you die), and not being able to do anything and seeing all this destruction; I didn᾿t know how else to be able to get out my feelings, and get them across without sounding obnoxious, which is why I write what I write, which may explain why most of my work is about this - because I don᾿t think it is a subject most people usually want to think about.
JK: The first book was published in 1993, it is called Hope Cheat In The Attic, because it is the idea of all those things you want to store up, it is a collection of thirteen years of poetry and prose and art. The second one is called The Window, and that one has a lot of writings that are parts of series of writings. Some are stories, and are parts of a series of what people tell you, and this was the window I was looking through. The third book I did probably has the best title of them all; it᾿s called Close Cover Before Striking.
Radio: I like that one too...
JK: The byline says, Ᾰthe book of poetry, prose, political essays, artwork and philosophical rants ... so I get to delve into having more essays and philosophy in my work, instead of just having lists of poetry. I did a very short novel in letter form, called Autumn Reason, and I also did a spiral-bound book all about the clash between the sexes, because long ago I did work as an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and got to hear people᾿s stories about dealing with rape - stories about what people have heard or about what has happened to them, so I have this book called (Woman.), which has a bunch of pieces, some never published, a lot of short stories. The last, or most recent, wide-spread book of poetry is called Contents Under Pressure. And that one also has quite a few short stories, and a lot of political pieces and essays in it, probably more than in any other book. I᾿ve done a few small printing runs of books, another woman᾿s book called The Average Guy᾿s Guide (To Feminism), and I also did one after traveling around the United States by car with a friend called Changing Gears, and it was a bunch of journal entries and stories about going from state to state and what we saw, and what bizarre experiences we᾿d go through in meeting new people and finding a place to stay. Those were most of them, expect the big, huge novel, the six hundred-fifty page opus called The Key To Believing. It᾿s a private printing, which we have done right now for it, I᾿m working with agents right now to get it trimmed down for dealing with a publisher. But that book is about medical researchers that are looking for a cure and medicines for AIDS patients, and one of them stumbles upon information that leads them to believe that there is a government conspiracy about AIDS᾿ origin. And that the government may also possess the cure for AIDS. It always started off with a more intelligent bent on learning more about the virus, but it them also becomes much more action-packed, about trying to figure out how to save lives, save their own lives when they got this information from agents.
Radio: In your work with literary magazines, does that flow into your performance art?
JK: Sometimes it does, yes. I᾿ve found that people recognize me as an editor and think that I could do performance art. That was how this started for me in recent years. At my first show, they wanted me to do something of poetry, and so I thought, ιokay, I have to make this more interesting,᾿ so I interspersed short stories and journal entries into there, and I talked to people about ideas, and that would flow into something that could become a poem. So I set up this forty-five minute long show with a bunch of images, because I᾿m a photographer, so I᾿d have images that would go with what I was saying. And then I would have music in the background as well, so I would be a sitting person with a computer setup and I would have this whole show. And I think after that show they said, Ᾰokay, you᾿re going to be a regular nowᾹ so I do quarterly performance art shows. Because people recognize me as being the editor of a literary magazine, they want to make me the highlight, or most important performance artist of the evening. So yeah, being an editor, people recognize you and they want you included in their projects, and they think, ᾸOh, you should do this,Ᾱ which is very helpful, because if I᾿m not running around to be in the middle of shows doing everything in Chicago, people will recognize me because I do things other than just sitting at open mikes and reading my work every week somewhere.
Radio: In the book that you sent me, Hope Chest in the Attic, at the beginning of this you did say that some of the items mixed fiction and...
JK: Oh yeah, that᾿s what I᾿d usually say about most everything I᾿ve written, I mean, usually if you᾿re going to write something down, even if it comes from something that you᾿ve understood or experienced or lived through, your own interpretation of it, versus how other would see it, might seem fictitious. Everyone puts their own spin or interpretation on things, and the words you choose to use are a way to get an emotion across to the reader. So I would say that even when there are elements of truth in something written of mine, there will also always be something to make the writing stronger, which might be a bit of fiction.
Radio: How many poems have you written over the years?
JK: Oh my gosh... Over a thousand, probably over eleven hundred, I᾿d have to guess, I don᾿t know for sure. A lot. I᾿ve done short stories, probably toward fifty. Very few articles, I᾿ve written essays, ten to twenty of those, but I᾿ve also done a lot of artwork, because I was a portrait photographer for years back in the early 90s, and I love the camera, because that is a beautiful way to be able to capture things, and working on the computer as well, because you can be able to morph and create new images with editing work, so I᾿ve probably had artwork published about nineteen hundred times, on line or in magazines or books.
Radio: That᾿s incredible. I᾿d like to tell our audiences that the artwork on the covers of Janet Kuypers᾿ book, and inside, like in the beginning of chapters and all, she has created herself.
JK: The only one I can᾿t say I took the photographs for was for the cover of The Key To Believing, I used stock photography of a gun and an AIDS ribbon and a key, but I just manipulated them to make them work for the cover. But yes, I᾿m usually taking my own pictures and creating on my own. Sometimes you don᾿t know exactly what you᾿re looking for when you᾿re looking for an image for publication, and that᾿s then when I think, ιoh, why I don᾿t do it myself,᾿ to get the image I was looking for.
Radio: Would you like to tell everyone how your writing process usually goes?
JK: When I write, I do so because I need to get it out of my system, so I try to think of a way to out it to words, because if I can do that, it will help me to process bad experiences and events that I have seen or gone through in, my life, and it can also therefore become therapeutic.
Radio: Is that why you frequently write about women᾿s issues, and why you studied them in college?
JK: I studied that in college, and ... and I think my family was really worried because the heard my stories and thought, ιoh my God, what happened to her?᾿, and I would say, ᾸNo, that didn᾿t happen to me,Ᾱ but that᾿s irrelevant. They saw what they want and whether or not it happened no longer becomes the issue. But the thing was, I decided I wanted to get into this because I saw, if nothing else, the fact that women were treated differently from men - even ones that were hard working, and driven, and oftentimes better than half of the men out there - they still had to deal with this obstacle of men looking down at our breasts instead of actually thinking about the brain in our head. So I decided to see what I could so to help women that are going through experiences like this that a lot of people might think are not a big deal, because you know, rape can be thought of as just sex, and they᾿ll think of it as commonplace (well, rapes are commonplace). I learned that one in four women after going through college will be raped - not by a stranger all the time, but by an acquaintance - it could be a boyfriend, or somebody they had broken up with, or somebody they had gone on dates with, or a buddy that they knew and felt comfortable enough with to bring them back to their own dorm. The statistics further say that one in three women will be raped in their lifetimes; that᾿s a scary statistic, because if you know enough women, like if you᾿ve got a family with three women in it, two sisters and a mother, you know, if nothing has happened to them, they might have dealt with this same kind of pressure somehow, even if the haven᾿t gone through a rape.
And I would see these things, and because people knew I was an acquaintance rape workshop facilitator, and I did shows about things like pornography against women (and that kind of thing), people would come up to me and tell me about how they᾿d been raped. Now, there᾿s nothing wrong with people telling me these stories at all, but at the same time it starts to wear at you a little, because there᾿s nothing you can do to stop these things, and all you can do is hear all of these bad stories over and over again. So trying to get that out of our system, it often helps to write them down.
I have a rape education series of poems in the second book, The Window. Once, for example, when we were in a meeting, a woman started raising her hand and asking questions about what the University could do to help press charges or punish a rapist, and the person running the meeting asked if this had happened to her, and the woman responded that yes it did. So the woman running the meeting asked, ιForgive me if this is rude of me, but when did this happened to you?᾿ and by the professional look and tone in the voice of the woman asking the questions you᾿d think it happened a few years ago, and she responded that it happened six days ago. And I was stunned, because she was so composed. When I heard that, all I could think was that some day it would hit her, it doesn᾿t look like she᾿s had time to react to it now, but someday all of these emotions of what has happened to her will hit her.
So yeah, my writing would be about things like that, and no, I᾿m not the woman that went up in a meeting and asked what could be done to help prosecute a rapist, I᾿m not the woman that said I was raped six days ago, but this is what you write about. So yeah, a lot of women᾿s issues will come out, because you write about what you see around you, and I put myself into the element to hear all of these things.
Radio: I᾿d like to remind everyone that you᾿re listening to the ArtistFirst Network, and this is the Authors First Show, I am Jade Logan, your host, and I᾿m interviewing Janet Kuypers, who has written man different poems , essays, a novel or two, and does lots of performance work in the Chicagoland area.
Copyright Janet Kuypers.
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