Poet to Watch: Peter LaBerge

Phillip: Thank you for your enthusiastic interest in doing this interview with me. I want to know what attracted you to poetry? When did you find yourself simultaneously dedicating your life to writing while also honing your knowledge of business/entrepreneurship?

Peter: What’s funny is I don’t think I was necessarily ‘attracted’ to poetry in the conventional classroom sense. I stumbled upon poetry rather begrudgingly as an anxious and frustrated high school freshman. For my English class, I had to write an Ars Poetica, a poem imitating William Carlos Williams’ “The Red Wheelbarrow”, a shape poem, and a free-write poem. At the time, of course, I didn’t understand much about poetry, so I thought it was an easy A.

I got a B- on that collection. It frustrated me — how can someone tell me a bunch of words on a page aren’t as worthy as any others? — but I also saw it as a bit of a challenge. I have no idea if that’s what my English teacher was going for when she gave me that B- five short years ago, but poetry saved me in an important and all-too-real way. I remember exactly who I was before I found poetry — confused, self-deprecating, intensely introverted — and I never want to go back that place. Poetry transported me from that life as I stared at the grade in slight disbelief, wondering what depth in life I’d been missing.

Phillip: Was the creation of The Adroit Journal also part of this impulse?

Peter: The beginning of my publication The Adroit Journal was equally impulsive — I don’t think there’s any other way a fifteen year old high school sophomore can start an international publication, if I’m being honest.

“I’d been submitting to places like Poetry and The New Yorker because I couldn’t find similar resources for young writers at the time.”

I also don’t think I’d be nearly as mature or knowledgeable now had I not started the journal and really forced myself to stay acquainted and in tune with the literary publication world — the journal is quite like a baby in that sense; it doesn’t stop crying (or growing) just because you’re tired or busy with other things.

At the end of the day, I’d say I found myself happily dedicated to writing and business/entrepreneurship once in the middle of the ongoing dialogue between established and emerging writers. I’d like to think that’s where my work with the journal and my own poetry has put me.

Phillip: This is awesome! You’ve have a very organic process coming to poetry that I can really appreciate. It’s as though you were destined to fuse your interests into something that would leave its marks on the world, even though poetry came at a hard price.

Can you talk more in-depth about The Adroit Journal? How many issues do you have so far and how many years has it existed? Is there anything in particular that you look for as an editor in the work you choose? When reading it myself I love how diverse the work is and the great mix of younger and more experienced voices. Was this part of the mission with The Adroit Journal?

Peter: Sure! As I mentioned, The Adroit Journal has been in existence since my sophomore year of high school — and the tenth issue (featuring, among other beautiful artists & writers, Alexandra Teague, Brittany Cavallaro, Randall Brown, and Caroline Crew!) just went online [last month]. I’m very excited about this particular issue of the journal, as I feel that it reflects how the publication’s aesthetic and mission has grown alongside the experience of the staff of readers and editors. Originally, I aimed to supply teenagers & emerging writers with that initial yes to basically say, “You have talent, and you should be reading, writing and sharing your work with the world!”

As we have continued to grow in terms of readership and submission volume, however, I’ve been forced to alter the way in which I aim to specifically cater to the youth audience. The journal is now fortunate enough to be at a point where the staff is accepting approximately .5% of submissions it receives. As such, it has become quite rare for a youth contributor to make it into an issue itself. However, the editors and I have made up for this with programs that specifically target our youth readers — mainly, through our youth-generated blog, our Adroit Prizes for Poetry & Prose (judged this year by Tarfia Faizullah & Alexander Maksik!), and our annual online Summer Mentorship Program for high school students around the world. On a submissions level, the way the staff has continued to offer the range of work you reference (thank you for noticing!) is by evaluating each submission with truly a variety of perspectives — in the company of like-minded students in high school, college, and graduate school from around the world.

“At the end of the day, I meet a classmate or a friend who doesn’t understand how important creative writing is to the upkeep of society every single day.”

This — how we as students are taught to think in 95% of high school classrooms across America, how the arts are defined in conventionally quantitative terms and therefore actively discouraged by parents and teachers alike — is what I try to un-teach through The Adroit Journal and its offshoot initiatives.

Phillip: What do you hope people will get out of poetry that grade school and high school education hasn’t done?

Peter: Through my publication, and my own personal poetry, I hope readers understand just how relevant and necessary writing is. That writing is the key to global compromise and mutual empathy-building in a way that (in most cases) is not overtly political. A good poem, story, essay, or script doesn’t say, “think this” like a textbook or PowerPoint slide does. A good piece of creative writing wraps you up in the arms of another individual’s life, and says, “Think about this. Draw your own conclusions. Nurse your own ideas.”

Especially in the wake of recent events, I don’t think it’s possible to underestimate the importance of entering a story not with a defense at the ready, but rather with an open body — a body that says, yes, I want to understand. I need to try and understand. Please, if only for a minute, let me pretend I understand.

Phillip: Please talk about your relationship with Sibling Rivalry Press. How did that get started?

Peter: I was initially introduced to Sibling Rivalry Press as a senior in high school two years ago. A friend of mine had recently published a group of poems in their poetry publication Assaracus, and suggested I might check it out as a place to share my work. Ultimately, I sent eight poems along, and they were included in the April 2013 issue of the journal. Over the next year, I kept in touch with Bryan Borland & Seth Pennington, the miraculous couple behind the press-turned-foundation, and I ultimately was invited to read at the initiation of the 2014 Rainbow Book Fair in New York City — an invitation I happily accepted.

At the reading, I casually mentioned that I was looking for a home for my first chapbook, more as a joke than anything else. About a week after, however, Bryan reached out with an offer to publish my debut chapbook Hook. After thinking about it for a few seconds, I decided to leap at the opportunity; Hook will be available from Sibling Rivalry Press in the fall!

Phillip: Congratulations! I’ll ask my final question about Hook. Can you tell us more about what Hook is about? What inspired you to work on a chapbook? What do you hope people learn about you as an artist after reading Hook?

Peter: Sure! Hook is a reflection on the stories of Matthew Shepard and Bobby Griffith in the context of modern-day queer adolescence. With the release, I really wanted to stitch the stories together in a way that lent itself to the progress we are facing not only as a society, but also as individuals. The book is structured in an arc — from self-hatred (with the first stanza of the first poem, “I found the forest where I was allowed to hate / and I built my body inside it”) to self-exploration, to self-satisfaction. I purposely resist using the word ‘self-acceptance’ to describe the chapbook’s conclusion; I’m not entirely convinced the narrator comprehends what it is exactly that hangs in the balance of self-acceptance, so I think self-satisfaction, at least in the context of the collection, strikes me as more accurate.

I was inspired to work on putting together the chapbook itself (after receiving the offer from Sibling Rivalry Press) a couple of months ago. I resorted to reflecting on much of what I’d been writing for my classes here at the University of Pennsylvania. Specifically, I found that I’d been responding to many different themes of gender and sexuality, and began to trace patterns through the months and years of writing.

The last portion of this question is, of course, tricky to answer. Rather than put the spotlight on me, I hope people understand the varying amounts of pain, injustice, and isolation that Matthew Shepard and Bobby Griffith faced in their short lives, and that many men and women today continue to face to this day.

“It is never a choice to be who one is; rather, the choice comes with accepting or antagonizing that self-identity.”

I hope people understand from the chapbook that queer adolescence is not a period of gender or orientation development. It is instead a development of self-perception, a recognition of the unflinching beacon that is gender and sexual identity. That’s a key point, I think.

Phillip: Thank you so much for taking the time out to do this interview. Where can people reach you if they want to learn more about what you do or even solicit you for your own work?

Peter: Thank you so much for having me! I can be most directly reached either via Facebook or email (plaberge@sas.upenn.edu). Furthermore, more information about me and my contact information is all displayed on my website (www.peterlaberge.com). I’d love to hear from anybody & everybody who’d like to reach out.