In Episode 17 of Make/Work, host Scott Pinkmountain speaks with writer Brett Fletcher Lauer. Fletcher Lauer’s poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Fence, Harper’s, Tin House, and many other places. His debut book of poems, A Hotel in Belgium, was published this year by Four Way Books, and he’s also working on memoir and long form writing.
Fletcher Lauer speaks about his role as deputy director at the Poetry Society of America, where he’s worked for over ten years. He also talks about his reluctance to rely on personal connections to get his work into the world, even though it might have accelerated his career to do so.
I remember at an AWP maybe five years ago, someone said something like, “I hope your book comes out so people don’t think of you as the person who works at the Poetry Society of America.”… I was like “No, I’m a poet who works at the Poetry Society of America. I’m not an administrator who also dabbles in verse.”
Listen to Episode 17 (and subscribe to Make/Work) now in iTunes. Or get the direct download. And you can now get Make/Work through Stitcher.
You can read Fletcher Lauer’s poem, “Representative Character,” here.
Every creative laborer has a different story to tell about how they negotiate their relationship between their creative work and their paycheck and how they balance their lives to sustain their creative practice. In Make/Work, Scott will speak with emerging and established artists working in a wide range of creative mediums about how they survive, how they make a living, and how they maintain their work over the long term. New episodes will be released every other Thursday.
