Cab Ride, April 18th 2013
for Harper’s Bazaar
My new video with Harper’s Bazaar about finding a place within an ephemeral world. Featuring love and New York City. Please share.
”In the third of his exclusive films for Bazaar, our roaming poet, filmmaker and model Max Wallis presents Cab Ride, April 18th 2013 all the way from New York.
The film looks at trying to find a place within an ephemeral world and focuses on New York and its walls of advertising for inspiration. It comes from Wallis’s next collection of poetry, supported by the Arts Council, written on the theme of modelling, with the tentative working title of Ephemera Turned Solid taken from this very poem.”
Amy Key tagged me in the next big thing project, where writers talk about their new projects. You can read her responses here.
What is the working title of your book?
The next one is called Jack Frost & the Swans. But that’s a book of poetry for children and it’s on its own little journey around publishers at the moment. My most recently funded book (by the Arts Council) is a collection based around modelling. The project is currently called Transparency/Obscurity but that will almost certainly change. They have appeared on Harper’s Bazaar and Mr Porter.
Where did the idea for the book come from?
I model, but really it comes from the stories you hear when modelling. There’s no cookie-cut approach to the business: there are people who fall into it, people who strive for it, and people who hate it but have nothing else. There are those who have loved within it, and lost within it, and those people that are left behind - watching the world spiral while still working in a pub in Dulwich.
The children’s book came from another funding opportunity from the Arts Council. I went to Norway to experience the polar darkness there and came back gripped by an urge to write a children’s book. It’s illustrated by the phenomenal illustrator Grace Lowe.
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry. I’ve also been working on a novel for the past (Christ, is it really that long?) twelve years. It has a title. It involves time travel and other worlds. Let’s leave it at that for now.
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
The boy in Jack Frost & the Swans would be played by a young Macaulay Culkin. I mean seriously, the kid is 8 years old.
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
A boy wakes up in the middle of summer to find the world gripped by winter and the sun stolen by the personification of Jack Frost. It’s about his quest to save that sun. Alternatively: “It begins with a quiet storm/and a draught that wakes me.”
Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
Jack is currently under review by Bloomsbury as well as Faber and Faber. Cross your feet and pass some gold over your palm.
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
Jack took about a year and a bit to really get it all together. Once the idea was there I wrote every day to hone it. Plus, I did a Masters at Manchester University so I worked on it a lot over there. The idea had been gnawing at my skull for another year prior to that though.
What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
In terms of poetry, it’s not so easy. The book is 90 poems that tell a full story. So in a sense it is a sequence cut up into parts. But really it’s closer to a novel than a poem. I’m quite interested in that approach.
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The town of Tromsø helped. Really I was inspired by novels though. I wanted to write a collection of poetry that told a tale that could grip as hard as a novel could. We’ll see if it worked.
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
There is a Texan yeti called Hoarbeard and a shape-shifting cat-cum-bear called Norm. Ahem.
I’m going to tag:
Message for tagged authors: Rules of the Next Big Thing
***Use this format for your post
***Answer the ten questions about your current work in progress
***Tag five other writers/bloggers and add their links so we can hop over and meet them.
“Today your eyes/when you realise I’ve told a lie/ - a lie worth telling - and you laugh.” New poem for harpers soon.
I made a poetry film for Harpers Bazaar about the fashion world. Hope you enjoy.
while I edit a Google document; consider vowels
in ‘Amen’. The half rhyme with hymn. How long
would it take to replace the words we have learnt?
Those we have mumbled. Or else, redaction,
how easy or hard would it be to rewrite time?
The sine curve of our last year: like a squirrel
that scurries across the wall. The flock of pigeons
shooed. A basket of laundry chucked from a window, see
how boxers twirl, how socks tell a story that isn’t mine?
Poetry Society of America Chapbook Contest
Judged by:
Thomas Sayers Ellis, Nick Flynn, John Yau, and Mary Ruefle.
$1,000 prize and publication.
Accepting submissions from now until December 22, 2012.
More information here.
Dem new boots
