JERAMY DODDS

Jeramy Dodds for DESK SPACE

DESK SPACE Who (a witty one-liner or a bio)?

JERAMY DODDS Friend of the Animals, Poet, Amateur Enthusiast.

DS When did you start writing, publish your first book (or when are you publishing your next)?

JD I started writing during puberty because talking was impossible. I couldn’t get anything published for an eon and a day. Some things have changed, some of the people close to me have died and the natural environment has dilapidated. And Coach House Books is about to publish my first collection of poems, in a day or two, we’re calling it Crabwise to the Hounds.

DS Where do you write (at your desk/outside/in bed)?

JD I write in longhand while pirouetting around the room on my wheeled office chair, or surveying the circumference of my estate, or during commutes to and fro from work, or fulfilling visitations with family and friends. I sit at my desk only during the editing of final drafts. But I like sitting there, it means the poem has come through a lot; a lot of nay saying, ridicule, injustice and paratrooper-type hazings, and it is now time to treat it like a business partner, one who is no longer silent but has shown up with all the start-up cash needed to build a Christopher Walken theme park.

DS Why do you work where you do (at your desk because it is a quiet space/outside b/c it helps you think, in the park b/c you can smoke, etc)?

JD The Desk is not only a structure that interrupts gravity, keeping my laptop going to smithereens. The desk means business. It has all the needed utensils at hand, dictionaries, tumblers of vodka, trinkets of nostalgia and woe and best of all it doesn’t criticize, much. It is a platform, sure, but it is also a friend. When I’m at the Panel (the name of my desk) I am unstoppable and decadent, if only for a moment. It is here that I want to be found when the revolution begins, it is here where the shore meets sea, meets the horizon, meets the crass neighbours of our dreams.

DS What are you working on now?

JD I am translating the Poetic Edda from Old Norse/Icelandic to English. I’ve been at it for a few years now and I might be close to having a third of it done. I’ve been trying to teach myself Old Norse as I go along, but I am a poor teacher and one of those students who are easily interrupted by the janitor’s closet door ajar. I’m thinking of subtitling the work, ‘Speculations from the Old Norse’ instead of translations. I’m also really into robotics right now, so I’m trying to make some baroque cog and elliptically driven machine that will answer these kinds of questions for me.