Kevin Gallagher is a poet, publisher, and political economist living in Greater Boston. His most recent book is And Yet it Moves (MadHat, 2023) and recent books are The Wild Goose, and Loom. His poems and reviews have appeared in the Partisan Review, Harvard Review, ArtsFuse, Green Mountains Review, and beyond. Gallagher edits spoKe, a Boston area annual of poetry and poetics. He works as a political economist at Boston University.
KMD: Your new book, And Yet It Moves, recently launched from MadHat Press. What are three things you’d like readers to know before they delve into the work itself?
First, that seldom what we live through now hasn’t been experienced on earth before us. That is not to say that we are thus devoid of the ability to feel and move the needle. On the contrary, the second thing is that history can give us clues and inspiration of how not to be alienated by what we shun in the present, but to persevere and have hope. Third though, this is poetry not some history lesson. Poetic explorations through archaeologies of mourning when successful can take one to lyrical and imagistic spaces that may be more difficult to arrive at with our tools of the present.
The book has a short introductory section called ‘God’s Bankers’ which provides all the context for such an exploration. I share how times of darkness and denial of science and reason are not new. Indeed the book is an exploration of such a time that perhaps most parallels our own—renaissance Florence when the Medici—one of the richest and most powerful families in the world–shifted from patronizing one of the greatest artistic explosions of history but then sequestered it in a quest for power. They couldn’t handle the truth, which prevails in the end. Always.
KMD: You have an impressive background outside of and beyond the poetry community. How have these experiences have helped set your work apart from writers with more traditional backgrounds?
I’ve been writing and publishing poetry for decades. And Yet it Moves is my fourth full-length collection and I also have published five chapbooks. So in that sense I’ve long been part of the ‘poetry community.’ But it doesn’t pay the rent nor is it where all my interest and drive comes from. However, these spaces are not two different compartments, but different expressions of a broader effort.
I am an economist that directs a policy research center working to improve our economic system such that it promotes financial stability, human well-being, and environmental sustainability across the world. Currently, our economic system is inherently unstable, accentuates longstanding inequities, and is perpetuating a crisis in climate and ‘nature’ that all together play a key role in the increasing pressure on our societies and ecosystems. Now that I tally it I have published nine books in that space as well and am part of global advocacy efforts to align the global economy in a manner that is more low carbon, socially inclusive, and resilient.
The same inspirations and concerns are often in my poetry, but I just don’t tend to be so in your face about it. I try to be more creative, to be taken to different places. I wouldn’t see what I’m doing is so non-traditional. Denise Levertov, Octavio Paz, Gary Snyder and others are like this. Levertov and Snyder had the luxury or made the choice to put it all through their poetry for the most part. Paz however was an ambassador and statesman, more like Tang poets. Of course Williams is another version, a ‘local’ poet with a global eye, a concern for history in the American grain, and a day job that expressed it in a different way –and paid the rent!
KMD: Can you speak to the intersection of poetry and philosophy?
I’m not sure I can except to say that the two shouldn’t be confused as the same. Poets are free to do whatever they want of course, at least in most countries. If you want to philosophize go ahead, but you don’t see many poets being taught in philosophy classes.
That said, all poetry is an exhibition of particular philosophies. Western poetry from the Greeks to the modern era largely exuded intricacies within a Greco-Christian philosophy whereas the Eastern tradition was more of an empirical one. In my book I have a section on the discovery of Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things which may have been a rare combination of poetry and philosophy at the highest level. On the Nature of Things was hidden by the Church in a monastery for centuries until it was discovered by book hunters charged with digging up such texts during the renaissance. The book was the first epic poem with a philosophy of matter and space, of nothingness and being, the infinity of the universe, and the movements of atoms all without a God or a wand.
KMD: Will you share a writing prompt with us?
There are two kinds of poems I write. The first are those that just hit me, I’ve referred to those as ‘lightning bolt’ poems. Something happens or I see something or reflect and then comes what David Hinton calls ‘contact’ and boom I start writing and yeah perhaps 80 percent of what happens when the lightning hits my tree stays on the page in the end.
The other kind of poetry I write are more ‘projects’. My first book like that was LOOM, also published by MadHat. That book, in method, is the most similar to And Yet it Moves because it is an exploration and conversation with a history to make sense of the present—an ‘archaeology of mourning.’ The older and busier I get—rhyming ain’t the day job—the more important these projects are because they are always there for me. At this point in my life I’m dodging a lot of lightning bolts unfortunately but I can always pick up a ‘project’ and get in the moment after a little while.
KMD: What’s next? What can your readers look forward to?
I am working on a new book of poems tentatively titled A (New England) Tempest. I think it may be a ‘prequel’ to my book LOOM. Again, it is a series of poetic monologues set in the early years of colonial Massachusetts contrasting the philosophies of the Native Americans and the colonists. Few know that Stephen Hopkins from the Mayflower voyage is the same ‘Stefano’ from Shakespeare’s Tempest –and that the Tempest is based on a true story of a shipwreck en route to the Jamestown colony. There are more parallels than that. It is also inspired by Brian Friel’s Translations.