ANDREW MCGOWAN

Andrew is a Brisbane-based poet who is currently studying a BA with an extended major in Writing and a minor in Russian at The University of Queensland. His poetry draws on the physical, the elemental, and the gothic. His is currently working on a full-length manuscript of poetry.

All-Stars is Andrew's second appearance in PASTEL.

In your appearance as an original contributor in PASTEL Issue One, you described your poetry as on "the physical, elemental, and the gothic". How has your work evolved thematically, since?

I’ve been honing my craft for many years now. I first started writing at 14. I didn’t take it seriously until I was about 19, which was when I first started submitting poems to zines. I got published pretty quickly and that was satisfying, but there wasn’t any money in it, so life offered me many distractions: I floated around in various jobs, working in factories, in nightclubs, playing in bands as a guitarist. I was more serious about music until the age of 24. I stopped playing in bands when I was 22 after a series of health problems made it impossible for me to continue on with that. Over that time, I’ve been trying to get my poetry as close to something honest as possible.

The emphasis on the physical, elemental, and gothic has always been there. I’ve just gotten better at expressing it over time. In order to understand that I think you need to understand my love of physics, biology, and mathematics, which is almost equal to my love of writing. These days I spend a lot more time writing science fiction stories, which is something I’ve been putting more effort into as I think that’s where I really want to go. If poetry paid better, I think I would write more poems. That being said, poetry is still something I love. It is an under-rated art form. There are some important literary lessons to be learned from writing poetry: how to condense your thoughts into universal emotions and experiences that are translatable to even the most whimsical reader. I think that’s an important lesson, which I now apply to science fiction stories.

All three themes play prominent roles in your Issue One contributions. "New Farm Noir" is a violent, gothic take the suburban sun-down; "Swan Song" is a sensory wade through water and waste.

The first of those two is mainly about a sense of placelessness. The subject of the poem is a lost part of the self, a kind of disconnect which leads to a fugue state. The speaker in the poem is at war with himself, so he goes hunting himself in the fog. The military references are meant to draw attention to that. It’s a kind of war between the ghost of yourself within the fog, so that the person you once were is being shot at, while they’re fleeing from you. And in the end you realise, you can never be yourself again. Something important has been lost, but it’s too raw for you to think your way through it. You need time and space to figure that out, but you don’t have it, only a numb sort of feeling like losing a limb.

The second poem is about a scene that I observed after the 2011 floods that hit Brisbane in January of that year. I was in those floods. I lived in New Farm at the time. I remember being evacuated on the morning of the flood. Half of New Farm was underwater. I had to stay with my housemate’s family for a few days while the street was being drained and the clean up was underway. Fortunately, I didn’t lose anything in the flood. My apartment was two stories up and only my garage downstairs was underwater. It was a surreal experience walking through the floodwaters, as high as my waist, while families of ducks went swimming past amidst the broken glass plastic bric-a-brac floating in the floodwaters around me. I had a lot of time on my hands during the evacuation period. I decided to go visiting other flood affected areas, and I started documenting the floods in poems. That’s where Sawn Song came from. I was walking through one of these areas in early evening with a notebook and a pen and I was writing down everything I could see as clearly as I possibly could. There’s a lot of historical background to that poem. It’s a piece of Brisbane history.

What inspires your vicious, unforgiving picture of nature in your poetry?

I’ve always loved nature poetry, but I strongly detest the contemporary trends in nature poetry. I think it’s a betrayal of nature poetry to articulate things in such a romantic way, because that’s not nature poetry, that’s bullshit. Everywhere you go, animals and insects are ripping each other to pieces. The world is brutal. Nature poetry is concerned with two things: the state of humanity’s co-existence with the physical and the connection implied therein. One of the many things you learn with a good science education is the importance of objectivity, of honesty, and pattern recognition. There are clear, observable patterns in biology and physics. You can see this in nature. There is a beauty to it, but beauty is not nice, nor is it pleasant or comfortable to look at. It’s quite the opposite. It’s confronting. It destroys you. There’s no fantasy lurking behind my words. No delusion. It’s how nature truly is.

Reprising your talent for All-Stars, but simultaneously walking PASPals back to 2011, "The Floodplains" returns to the devastating Brisbane floods of the same year. Similarly, as this piece promises to drown all life, "Swan Song" details the ruin of the floodwater. Might you suggest "The Floodplains" is the spiritual successor to your original submission?

“The Floodplains” was written first in 2011, whereas “Swan Song” was a rough draft I had sitting around for years. It was only a few years ago I put some serious work into it by revising, editing, and rewriting parts of it. “The Floodplains” and “Swan Song” are very much two sides of the same poem; they were just developed years apart. So yes, I guess you could say that. They are twin poems.

Could you recall for PASPals your experience during the Brisbane floods?

I was homeless after the floods. I was 22. I had lost my job only a week before along with a major long-term relationship, which had been a character-building relationship for me. I felt that loss deeply. I was directionless in my life already, and then the flood hit, making me homeless. I tried to go home to my parents, but I was a black sheep in my family so to speak. They were deeply religious types. I was the only atheist. They didn’t want me to come home, so I was turned away. I had no one to turn to, so I wandered, an error in the landscape. Eventually, I crossed paths with an old friend from another lifetime, who took pity on me and took me in. I was able to get back on my feet. But ever since, there has been a feeling like something was lost that can be regained. This is something I still feel to this day. I think it was a loss of innocence on an emotional level.

I was quite naïve before. I was forced to strip away all the unnecessary parts of myself under harsh circumstances. I had to leave myself behind in those flood waters in order to survive. In a very real way, I drowned in those floods. In the physical sense, I lost nothing. In the emotional sense, I lost myself. The feeling of which was like living as a ghost of yourself in the flesh and bone you always had, except it was no longer yours. It was somebody else’s. I was just holding onto it. It’s arduous to put it down to any one thing. I think it’s easier to articulate such complex things in the form of poetry, so I lean heavily on poetry to talk about things I can’t talk about otherwise. There’s simply no way I can. Writing is my main form of communication. Ordinary conversation often seems superfluous by comparison.

In "The Floodplains", you mention life looking 'like it will soon end'. Nearly a decade later, have you - or those around you gravely affected - managed to rebuild? Or, might you suggest the events have resulted in a transformation, for the better or for the worse?

Nothing is black and white. Shades of grey are numerous. At the time, I did think my life was over. When you are homeless, that’s exactly how things look. You feel like an obsolete. Each day becomes a debt you cannot repay. People look straight through you, not wanting to make eye contact, or make any contact at all. You see people for what they are when you no longer have anything to offer them. They show you. That’s true loneliness. Not being able to connect with anyone because they are too far away from you to ever understand what you want them to understand, what you need them to understand. They don’t listen to you. They stare down their noses at you, write you off, assume your character without evidence or logic. It’s easier for them than to understand you in anyway.

I no longer care whether people like me, what they think of me, or anything like that anymore. I realised a long time ago that people will understand if they want to and if they do not, it is because they have not matured enough to do so. All I care about now is doing things in the present to express my own humanity. That’s enough for me.

You were, and will always be, an original PASTEL contributor. What impression do you hope sharing your experiences with PASPals has had on readers?

I don’t think about my impression on readers as much as you might think. If you’re going to write anything, then you need to write for yourself first, and others second. That is the key to honesty. That’s how you improve. The right people will come to you, but not if you’re still trying to be some other poet. You need to be true to yourself first. Otherwise, you will get lost.

To enjoy Andrew's All-Stars contribution, pick up a copy of PASTEL Magazine All-Stars at pastelthemagazine.bigcartel.com