Lewis LaCook
Kent, OH
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Lewis LaCook was born in Lorain Ohio on November 5, 1970, making him a Scorpio. At fifteen he joined the Black River Poets, and had his first published poems appear in their review. Leaving the group in his early twenties, he wrote features for the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, and the Lorain Journal. He is currently an undergraduate English major at Kent State University.
His poetry has appeared in LOST AND FOUND TIMES, WORLD LETTER, POTEPOETTEXT, POTEPOETZINE, WHISKEY ISLAND, LUNA NEGRA, ARIEL, BLACK RIVER REVIEW, THE COVENTRY READER, etc.
Lewis is working on a long collaborative e-mail poem called OUTSIDE THE BOTHER OF SUNLIGHT with Sheila E. Murphy and a collective text called UTOPIA which features several authors, among whom are Murphy, Thomas Lowe Taylor, and John Cone.
Editor of the e-zine IDIOLECT, Lewis lives in Kent, OH. |
• What do you do for a living?
I'm in a transition period as I leave Kent State University...I have, for several years, been employed by the university's student center as a Housekeeping Student Manager::::::janitorial work, basically, though as a manager my duties have been more, well, management-oriented (organizing student crews, planning student work schedules, writing policy...my latest project of love is a computer program I'm writing as a gift for the department, to help the other student managers keep track of the student workforce...basically an attendance database...)_-_--
I have also as of late taken the giant step into freelance web design & development....with my girlfriend Renee, I help design and implement websites and applications for individuals and business...I love making sites!!!! And Renee is a visual artist with a flair for great design...
• Who are your favorite artists?
God, that's a BIG question...I tremendously enjoy the work of my contemporaries...Sheila Murphy is both personally and professionally inspirational, one of the sweetest human beings on the planet...John M. Bennett's work challenges and pushes me toward textual surface, and has been overwhelmingly supportive over the years...Thomas Lowe Taylor's work keeps me going, as well as Alan Sondheim's (I count Alan as a bit of a role model, really...brilliant man, the matrix of technology and emotion, spirit and techne)...but these are people I know:::: I've always loved the French poets--Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Appolonaire, Desnos...& the Language Poets (Silliman, Lyn Hejinian, etc etc)...currently, I'm reading a wonderful collection of Simon Perchik's poems put out by Pavement Saw Press in Columbus Ohio, and am absolutely charmed by his work...Stein (of course...my Mamma), and Burroughs...Keats...Coleridge...Shakespeare...Gerard Manley Hopkins... in the visual arts: Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Salle, Robt Williams, Kandinsky, Picasso, Braque, Joseph Beuys, many many others...wow... in the aural: jazz (Miles, Bird, Mahavishnu)::::rock (Radiohead, Spiritualized, Bjork, Portishead, the Lemonheads, the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Syd Barrett and Pink Floyd::::techno/hiphop/dance:::The Orb, Massive Attack, a little Moby...808 State...
• What influences you to write about/how you do?
the language, consciousness....I like to play with my food...it seems easier to deal with the world when it's encapsulated in language...though many would argue that catching anything in language is impossible...but the shadows are interesting... on a personal note: marijuana is good for your head (sometimes), and I'm a horrible pothead...though I seem to use it more as a tool than as 'recreation'....for many years I was a big fan of the hallucinogens: LSD and I had a little love affair I had to break off, and ecstasy was always a little treat...these days I'm pretty tame, though...marijuana is the only one that I still talk to
• Where do you see the underground writing scene in 25 years?
ummmmm...despite the nay-sayers, I see the most important work happening online right now, with lush hypertexts making a gorgeous sorta artTV for the masses...i think many online writers will survive a lot longer than many of the strictly print artists right now, simply because of the thrust and increasing ubiquity of the medium...but the book will never die, naturally, & i like to think print and screen can coexist peacefully...
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