An Interview with Travis Hupp

For over twenty-six years, Travis Hupp has been writing poetry about resilience, God, breaking free of oppressive structures, good trips, bad trips, love in its myriad forms, quantum physics, nature and the color blue, among other topics. American Entropy is his third book. His other two, Faster, Annihilators! and Sin and I, are also available on Amazon.com and wherever books are sold.

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Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

American Entropy jumped quickly into the forefront of my brain when I started writing these poems and realizing how cohesively they all link together to—even while each having their own singular point or story—really coelesce into an almost forensic scrutiny of America’s descent into an authoritarian abyss. There are pieces that detail how political discourse is hindered by people with opposing beliefs not even being able to agree on a basic shared reality. Poems that demonstrate how maintaining optimism and achieving real change when it’s necessary demands a kind of willingness to have society try to drag you for having the temerity to try to make anything better, poems that deeply examine the flattening, nullifying effect Trump and his influence exert on collective empathy and curiosity, leading to an alarming number of people who just feel what Trump says they should, or empathize only with Trump’s grievances, while no longer wondering what it feels like to be on the other side of Trump’s targeting and accosting of people, accusing everyone who says anything critical of him of treason, and just brazenly trying to create an environment of despair and fear and powerlessness against this wave of racist, transphobic, homophobic, misogynist white nationalism he’s riding high on as he exceeds every power of the office he inhabits.

All that just couldn’t be encapsulated more accurately or succinctly than by referring to this era of life in the USA as “American Entropy”, which is what this poetry collection is laser-focused on; how we’re living now and what we’ve lost in comparison to how we felt freer and safer to live not too long ago. How we can thoroughly document and bear witness to everything that’s falling away about society, and simultaneously fight to preserve those things American citizens should still treasure, how we can make free speech into art that calls out the poison hatred of Republican rhetoric and policy in ways most actual politicians still appear too politically neutered to explicitly say, making it apparent like we need it to be for all who have forgotten that the power in this country resides in the people, and the book really brings the point home that we, the people, are gonna have to show the government and each other and all manner of assorted bigots and fear-mongerers what that means.

I think calling it American Entropy suggests an urgency for those of us who still refuse to let our power be stolen to stop the decay and find out how deep it’s rooted so we can dig what’s causing the rot up.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

My friend Michael Sizemore who I’ve known since middle school and always been an admirer of for how deeply talented he is in drawing and all kinds of visual art drummed up the imagery used for the cover, so I got to hold it in my hands before it was my cover art yet and feel like it was literally vibrating in my hands with a strikingly similar vibe to what I think is established by a lot of my verses, which navigate a lot of emotions and terrains that we tend to view in forms of half-light, finding that kind of emotional palette and ambience both comforting and peaceful sometimes and bleak and seemingly barren at other times. I felt this art communicates similarly that things are murky and foggy and the crows are circling tighter like harbingers of cataclysm but also, it gives off the feel of an early walk through a forest with dew still cooling things down enough to help you think, and the trees are still sporting a lot of lush green leaves, reminding us that not everything is dying and the natural world is still tolerating us, meaning there’s still time to convince more people not to wage such unrelenting, self destructive war on nature. It conveys a feel of squinting through the alpenglow on an overcast day to see what’s seeing you back, and realizing how much of the ecosystem remains unconquered. I kind of see the cover as challenging us to get in touch with the things that can’t be conquered in us. So yeah, the more I study the art Michael was kind enough to allow me to use as my cover, the more I love it and it’s so cool that it made it so one of my best friends is involved with this project too now.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

So many folks did or currently do make me want to write or keep doing so. James Baldwin. Robert McCammon. Danez Joe Brainard, Tommy Pico, Terrence Hayes, Mary Jo Salter, Alanis Morissette, Ray Bradbury, and an endless number of additional amazing writers I could list who all make impacts on me and my work that only get more multifaceted with time.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I’ve worked retail, including ten years working in bookstores, which I loved in many ways, sales door to door of things like cutlery or digests, telemarketing, T-shirt printing, fast food, warehouse work, doing surveys about environmental issues, a whole bunch of stuff. None of it ever felt like my calling to the extent poetry always has, though.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Bringing the manuscript to a place where I knew it said everything I felt it was most important to say, that it acknowledges and lets in the dark and the despair but insists on finding humor and hope and empathy and grace in it too. That the poems get heavy but also nourish the energy to lift heavy things. One thing that means a whole lot to me about the book is that it doesn’t go the easy, shallow route of decrying or disavowing or denying the existence of God as a reaction to the fact that things are painful right now and virulent evil is gaining footholds in all arenas of life, but instead notices God right there beside us, especially vigilant in guarding us now because of the serious threats we’re under and details some of the ways God answers prayers that we tend to write off or fail to notice when we’re dismayed and have defaulted to thinking that believing in things like being saved by a loving God seem absurd. And yet, it emphasizes that trusting God’s love is not absurd; it’s absurd to think we don’t need it now more than ever, and absurd to think it won’t be there for us at every turn.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

“Close Your Eyes and Count to Fuck” by Run The Jewels and Zach De La Rocha, “Reckoning” by Alanis Morissette, “Lounge Act” by Nirvana, “Landlocked Blues” by Bright Eyes, “Big Chair” by Travis, “Something to Believe In” by Young The Giant, “Bodyguard” by Dawn Landes, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk, “The Widow” by the Mars Volta. So very many others. It would never end.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

Resilience! How even we feel absolutely depleted, that’s how we know we’re gonna find another 879th second wind! How God clearly loves us a lot or we wouldn’t survive all this and how we keep turning “not dying” into “fighting back” and even doing so in ways that are ebullient and fun!

What creative projects are you currently working on?

My fourth poetry collection, tentatively called “What Everyone’s After”. I have about sixty poems written to go into it and I want to cap it at around 100.

How was working with Atmosphere Press? What would you tell other writers who want to publish?

I love working with Atmosphere Press. They make it clear the value of everything they offer to authors and they provide that value and then some, with enthusiasm and professionalism and crucial expertise and such great care given to doing all they can to ensure an author’s artistic vision is realized and uncompromised.

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