Ras. Mashramani and I knew we wanted to start a site together. The original plan, conceived by Ras., was a site for apocalyptic literature—ours, and others. But after the rapture, and the advent of Mike Kitchell’s powerful chapbook Arrebato, this theme seemed overplayed. We sat on it for a while, until one day Ras. asked me if I’d want to collaborate on an erotica site. I said yes. Sexuality seemed to run through our poetry, the poetry we’d already posted or submitted to sites like Let People Poems, New Wave Vomit and others. One of the first things I noticed and admired about Ras.’s poetry was her easy handling of sexual themes and tones. I can only assume she felt the same, or similarly, about my writing.
After the big decision had been made, we got to work on the details. I was sitting on my friend’s couch one night when I came up with the name for the website—DOWN—which seemed good to me and to Ras. based on the diversity of things the word ‘down’ could refer to, both containing sexual connotations and not. The capital letters added a little something special. It wasn’t long before Jackson Nieuwland created the first ‘DOWN macros,’ which we’ve since used as promotion, that helped me really start to visualize the site.
What was your intention for the site?
Our aim is and always has been to create a good space for poetry that fits a certain niche that often gets overlooked or intentionally skipped over by ‘respectable’ poets and writers. Poets haven’t been known to shy away from sexual or romantic themes, but at the same time, they’re rarely ‘allowed’ to be sexually explicit. Bukowski did it, a lot of Spanish-speaking writers are doing it (see Chronos (Loves) Kairos or Tenían Veinte Años y Estaban Locos for examples.) Personally, I think sex, in all its forms, can be seen as poetic—whether it’s pretty or loving or just plain dirty.
How do erotic poems fit with your personal brand or lifestyle?
If you had told me six months ago that I would be spending the summer writing 30+ poems sweepingly categorized as ‘erotica,’ I would have laughed. I mean, you probably could have convinced me, because it would have seemed like something I would be capable of doing. But erotic poetry wasn’t on my radar then. Writing poetry in general wasn’t really on my radar then. ‘In real life’, I’m an MFA candidate and soon-to-be lecturer at the University of Maryland, and my concentration is fiction. Six months ago, I would have told you I’d be spending my summer writing a novella (which I’ve also been doing). Six months ago, I didn’t know who Steve Roggenbuck, Ana C, Blake Butler, Frank Hinton or even Ras. Mashramani were. I would be lying if I said Tao Lin had been more than a blip on my radar. My AWP experience in late January barely skirted things like the Lit Party. I was only just hearing about the online lit scene from Shaun Gannon. Now, I don’t think anything plays a larger part in my daily life.
As has been publicized, I’m not one to favor public displays of emotion. Some might call this cold. Some might see that as conducive to writing about love from a purely physical aspect. Probably not too many DOWN readers would suspect me of being a romantic—when in reality, I’m one of those saps who runs around grinning and saying things like ‘I love love’ when I fall into it.
So why write it?
Plain and simple, erotica is fun to write. Most—if not every—adult readers today can relate to these topics. Overwhelmingly, my friends ‘in real life’ tell me how glad they are to have access to this, because I’m saying everything they wish they had the balls to talk about. So yes, many people I know can relate—but only some have shown their approval for erotica as poetry. I find that realistic, and fine with me. I think some people probably see it as tacky, some don’t find it serious enough. Some have—with both positive and negative intentions—referred to it as ‘poetry’s version of porn’.
As of right now, my name probably seems fairly synonymous with DOWN in the lit community. Some lovely articles (by Beach Sloth, Lit Gossip) have even surfaced to this effect, and I appreciate and welcome this attention. But it seems worth mentioning that erotic poetry is hardly the 'only kind' of writing I do. Not only has poetry been generally less comfortable a medium for me than fiction, I’ve been working on fiction for far longer. It feels doubtful to me that all of my subsequent projects will center around the same theme as DOWN. It feels doubtful that all my future internet writing will even be poetry. So um, stay tuned!
What does the future hold for DOWN?
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