Mapping the Artist: Tim Callahan

Tim Callahan and Kathabela Wilson

An Interview with Tim Callahan, a unique narrative poet, lyrical writer of all forms, and a natural artist and explorer.

By Kathabela Wilson

A telescope on the poet

How do you see the poet artist in the world, how do you see yourself in that way?

I have always felt like something of an outlier, one of those on the fringes of the bell curve. I suspect that the poet must be in that position relative to the rest of the human race. Perhaps those of us in fringes are necessary for the whole curve to function. After all, the bell curve isn’t and inverted “U”. The outliers in the fringes are part of the natural order of things. Perhaps even the supporting rim?

A microscope on the poet

Tim Callahan reading his poetry, with Rick Wilson on the flute.

How did your life lead you to being a poet and artist, and one where mythology and science fiction seems to come alive?

From a very young age, I was intrigued by things and places outside my world. These included prehistoric animals, space ships and far-off worlds and ancient times. I was captivated by the Prince Valiant comic strip, and The Boys’ King Arthur, illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. When I was 12, I discovered Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, illustrated by Harry Steele-Savage. At the same time I felt an inborn desire to write and draw, seemingly independent of any outside influences. Born in Palo Alto, I grew up up in an old neighborhood full of great old trees, particularly California live oaks. Within a reasonable walking distance was the children’s library and a junior museum where some stuffed animals and live ones lived in the “Hall of Evolving Life”. I remember the darkened circular path illuminated by dioramas depicting prehistoric animals from the Cambrian period to the Ice Age. It enchanted me from the first time I saw it. When I was about to turn 14, my father got a promotion in the insurance company to run a new general agency and we moved to Garden Grove. It was a devastating jolt, a cultural desert of housing tracts and pitifully small new trees. I was in the midst of puberty, very socially immature and shy. That probably influenced my love of science fiction, a nerdy path of escape, the mythology of the future.

A pulse on the poet

Tim Callahan at the The Storrier Stearns Japanese Garden.

How did you decide to write long narrative poems?

It’s a “long story” but I’ll make it short. In the late 70’s I joined the Mythopoeic Society, an organization dedicated to the works of J. R. R. Tolkein, C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams – and to high fantasy in general. One aspect of their conferences is a bardic circle, held in the evenings, where people read their own poetry or poems of others they enjoy. Here I developed a penchant for writing long narrative, story-telling poems, the first of these being Mlada, based on the Russian opera of the same name by Rimsky-Korsakoff. It runs about 30 pages. I often found writing poetry to be difficult, as opposed to writing prose. So I began to also write more long story poems, The longest of these was a science fiction epic of over 60 pages, “Upon the Wild and Troubled Earth”. I also wrote a satirical contemporary poem, “Her Demon Lover,” of about 36 pages. I would love to see long poetic works revived as a form of storytelling. In the last few years, as I was attending meetings of the Red Door poets, a new group was formed- “Long Form” where we each read more than usual for a workshop, excerpts of fiction, memoir, collections of poems. I found a “bardic circle” again. It was liberating to share, and have such interest in my work and I continue to read the newest 2 or 3 pages of my latest narrative each week! Right now I am up to page 33 in “The Warrior Maid of Kyndahahar” which will probably be less than 100 pages.

Mapping the poet

Tim Callahan

You have an amazing and like-minded partner who loves exploring, like you do. What have been the places of your life together, and their influence?

I met my wife, Bonnie, in 1978, and we were married in 1980. She, a poet and artist herself, introduced me to the wilderness and to hiking. My world was widened to include the San Gabriel Mountains and the Angeles National Forest, the eastern Sierras and such places as Red Rock Canon and Fossil Falls. We expanded our world, attending the week-long Tolkein Centennial Conference in Oxford England, traveled to Russia, a land that had long fascinated us. When Bonnie and I realized we were making enough money in the animation industry to buy a house, I recovered much of what I had lost in moving away from Palo Alto. We moved to Pasadena and then in 1999 we to our present home in Altadena, in the foothills, on the edge of the Angeles National Forest. I find my garden vies with my hiking as a source of inspiration for my poems. Here, I can walk out of my house whenever I want, and be in the forest within a few minutes. A steep, dramatic canyon, regularly takes me out of the hum-drum world into a place of joyous solitude.

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