Mapping the Artist G. Murray Thomas

G. Murray Thomas and Kathabela Wilson

An interview with G. Murray Thomas, a brave and honest writer at the heart of the Southern California poetic community. He projects gentle warmth, humor, patience and inspiration.

His positive realistic views help other poets along the way. He will win your heart as a friend in person, but even before that, with his words.

By Kathabela Wilson

A telescope on the poet

How did your life as a writer begin?

Apparently I was a born writer. Before I even knew how to write, I would dictate stories to my mother and she would jot them down. I am sure my mother still has those notebooks somewhere. Once I was able to put my own words on paper, I did so enthusiastically. I wrote short stories and poetry throughout grade school, tried my hand at cartooning, even going so far as to produce a daily comic strip, which I presented to the family at the breakfast table every day. Since then I have often moved from genre to genre; to me, writing is writing — the final form is less important than the act of putting words down. In high school I would sit at a typewriter late at night and bang out poem after poem. I recently reviewed many of my high school poems for Sarah Thursday’s “Then and Now” project, in which we are asked to rewrite poems from a previous period and found most of them cringe-worthy, not just for their quality, but for the person I was back then.

A compass on the poet

What part has the place where you live and the sense of community played in your life as a poet?

Probably the most important event in my life, as far as my writing is concerned, was when I moved to southern California. California itself was also a great influence on my poetry. I grew up in upstate New York, went to college in Massachusetts, and, somewhat randomly, spent six years in Idaho. So everything about southern California was new and exciting, especially the beaches, but also the traffic, the endless suburbs, and Los Angeles in all its massive glory. I liked to joke that I only wrote about two things: the oceans and the freeways​. ​You can read some in my book ​Cows on the Freeway.

Here I encountered a true community of writers. I first moved to Laguna Beach, and quickly discovered Laguna Poets. At the time, I was working on a novel, but attended their Friday night readings regularly in hopes of meeting other writers. By listening, I learned how to craft interesting, meaningful poems. When I started out, there was a newsletter called Outloud, which listed poetry readings throughout the L.A. area. At that time, poetry readings were rare and scattered, and Outloud was the only resource available on them. But then it folded. I, perhaps foolishly, decided to replace it, but I had a larger vision. I decided the SoCal poetry community deserved not only a newsletter, but a newsmagazine. That became Next… a monthly calendar of events, plus news reports, interviews, and reviews of poetry readings, venues, and books. It strengthened that community. It informed poets of where readings were, and introduced some of the poets they might encounter there. I was not just writing articles, but putting together the issues, deciding what and who we would cover, and doing the layout for most of the issues. I wrote very little poetry while I was publishing Next… the magazine itself, became my artistic project (it lasted almost five years.) The magazine folded in 1998, but the calendar lives online.

A microscope on the poet

Your book of poetry “My Kidney Just Arrived” inspires us with your fine work imbued with your frank, positive, humorous attitudes, how did this come about?

I got sick, and that, not surprisingly, turned into another great influence on my writing. I had polycystic kidney disease. I spent seven years on dialysis, eventually getting a kidney transplant five years ago. At this point I returned to poetry; it seemed the best form to tackle the things I now had to say. But the poetry I wrote was much different from what I had been writing before. Now I started writing very personal poetry, about my direct experiences, about my feelings, about my body. I’ve never been a prolific poet, I’m a one poem a month kind of guy, but I wrote, or at least started, five different poems in the week immediately following my transplant.

These poems formed the backbone of my second book, My Kidney Just Arrived. All the poems in that book were written during the ten years following my diagnosis. Even the poems not directly about my health still fit in — I wrote about family, about death (coincidentally I had several close friends pass away during those years), and about waiting, which, while not a conscious decision at the time in retrospect seems inevitable.

Pulse of the poet

What are you excited about doing now?

I’ve moved into writing about music (another genre switch). It started with CD and show reviews, but I am now working on a book about my experiences as a rock fan. Or, as I like to put it, an excuse to write about all the great concerts I have seen. My musical talent lies in listening to it. But music has always been a big influence on my writing. After many years of lessons as a child, I decided I do not have any musical talent. I tried writing straight lyrics myself, and the rhythm always comes out wrong. Yet, when I actually tried reciting with musical accompaniment I discovered it actually worked quite well. I soon had a band, called Murray (I did not choose the name), and for several years I performed regularly around SoCal with them. You can ​listen to some of my work with musicians here. The secret was that, rather than trying to force the rhythm of my poems on the music, I had to adapt the words to the beat of the music. It was almost like rediscovering the poems.

________________________________________________________