Dave: Maybe we can just do this like Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. I think the secret sauce is that we’ve known each other for a long time, our writing has been inspired by each other’s entire back catalogue, and throughout Versefest, Two for One, Riverbed, the Factory Reading Series, and we’ve been talking about jokes with increasing intensity.
IAN: Yeah, when we're at poetry events together, we're usually sitting somewhere at the back, joking and riffing off of each other. So that's kind of how the chapbook came together – we would send poems back and forth, writing and rewriting as we went, riffing off each other's ideas.
Dave: I think play is an important part of the project. Comedy writing is often done in small groups. Some of my favourite moments are sitting together and cracking wise during readings. We're old friends - who only really hang out at readings. It's nice to have a thing. One of the things I think we have both experienced is that poetry events can be...well...self-serious. The number of times I've texted a friend "somebody throw a pie!" during a reading could single space fill its own 30 page chapbook. Once we realized that this stand up project was going to work, we immediately started thinking of ways to make it fun for as many people as possible.
I think both of our sections in the book walk the line between parody and pastiche and I think the "stage show" really mirrors that.
IAN: I've always had a serious, depressing streak in my writing, and there's definitely a place for that. But humour makes the sad stuff go down a little easier. And people like to laugh! It brings us together. The world is full of so much sadness but sometimes it's so sad that it's kinda funny.
Our stage show came about through riffing as well. Someone comes up with an idea, and you just keep trying to escalate it until it's so ridiculous it shouldn't work, then you do it anyways. We start our reading of the chapbook by copying a darts champion's walk-on song, and we end with a Saturday Night Live outro. Then in the middle we read a bunch of weird poetry and expect to be taken seriously. Riding that line is fun, where the audience isn't sure what's a joke and what's not. The higher the tension, the better the release.
Dave: Ok, that's a fair point. There's nothing wrong with serious depressing readings. There's always an undercurrent of that (?) in my work as well but I do think if you ask people to leave their houses there should be some effort to add something to make it feel worth it. For my money, Christine McNair is one of the best readers around. She's not exactly Conan O'Brien but she creates a definite mood – a container to hold the audience in stasis until the reading is done. A great reading, a great set, holds you every second until it drops you in a cornfield somewhere without your wallet, your house keys, your shoes, and with somebody else's iguana to take care of.
I guess we should talk about the poems. After we were going back and forth, I hadn't reread IAN's poems until we were doing final edits and I laughed out loud so many times that I couldn't believe how lucky I was to be collaborating with them. For me, IAN's poems in This Guy Gets It transport me out of time and space. IAN does such a good job of replicating the dark stage, hot spotlight feeling of a comedy club while at the same time injecting that space with a whole world of characters, structures, and philosophies. It's such a pleasure to have my poem's next to theirs.
IAN: My poems may take you out of time and space, but yours put me in every time and space at once. Dave's very first poem immediately makes the link between comedy and philosophy, this ceaseless need to observe and question and reframe things over and over and over until you understand it all, or realize that you can't. His poems draw from all these different sources, music, TV, mythology, history, and mash them together in different configurations to try and make some sense out of the bizarre, iterative project of humanity. Dave is so great at capturing what it's like to live in the present, constantly haunted by everything that came before, and dealing with the absurd amalgam of what has survived.
Also he's very funny.
Dave: We like each other. We also both really like the book. I'm very grateful to rob mclennan for all his help. People seem to like the book (and the roadshow) too.
I don't want to make a big thing about this but I saw a lit mag this week say "Don't send humour." Which is in itself very funny. We're seriously starting to put together an expanded full length manuscript. We both talk a lot about how frustrating it is to send our full length M.S.s out and to not find them a home.
This project feels special, though. It feels like it might be a place to start. We're adding a bunch of new poems – we're co-writing more. In This Guy Gets It, the last poem is co-written and I honestly think it might be the funniest poem in the chapbook. We wrote it knowing the shape of the rest of the book. Right now, we're kicking around a poem without a name yet about Lady Gaga that would be great in a full book length project.
For this chapbook, I really do want to thank rob, because there can be 99 publishers in a room and 99 of them reject you – all you need is one publisher to say "fine" to change your whole life.
What do you think IAN? There can be 99...
IAN: ...sandwiches?
Dave: Sandwiches.
David Currie is not IAN MARTIN. He is a different writer with whom IAN MARTIN is collaborating. David's work has appeared in various places – he wishes he could be more specific, but he forgot to write them down, and has been collected into six chapbooks. He is the author of no-book-books, so what are we even doing here?
IAN MARTIN is large and barely in charge. Their work has appeared recently in periodicities, BAD DOG Mag, Discordia Review, and Sumac Literary Magazine. IAN has published six chapbooks, most recently EVERYONE IS MY ENEMY (2022). When not writing, IAN makes small video games and complains. Visit www.ianmartin.rocks at your own risk.
Their collaborative chapbook, This Guy Gets It, appeared recently through above/ground press.