I see that you have had a wide array of creative revenues: essayist, poet, fight director, and screenwriter. How do you feel these different conduits of storytelling connect to each other?

I see performative and fine arts as the beginning of a dialogue in search of a listener, a reader, a watcher. I approach them all in that way—with narrative as my vehicle. I arrive with an idea, make a mess of it, and battle backwards and forwards to see if my mess is worthy of putting in front of an audience. There are starts and stops, hitches and embarrassments. I find nearly all my writing to be spurred by my physical pursuits, just as I find physical work—cycling, hiking, shoveling horseshit and still loving the animal that produces it—necessary to the come-down after a long session writing or the time spent working with theatre artists. 

As a theater artist myself, I’m very curious as to how you see fight choreography as telling a story on stage? 

Theatre offers surprises in more than one dimension. As a choreographer, I may enter into rehearsals with notions of what I want to see on stage, but actors bring their own physical style and character traits. We all have to adapt. The fight takes over the job of storytelling when words fail, so the physical work acts as an enhancement to what came before, spins a story into something new and, ideally, introduces what comes next. Most fights need to move in a particular direction, but that doesn’t mean we can’t play with how we get there, add tension and twists. As well, what I imagined in my choreography will be transformed by an actor’s physical nature and how well they have integrated their stage character into their movement. I think the same thing happens in writing, especially in the first burst of words, when we have to abandon our pretense of knowing what works. 

With fight work, I’m given the task of creating a language without using words. Writers should so aspire, huh?

Your poem “Leaving” dances between bitterness and hope. Maybe more overall bittersweet. What are your views on the importance of going through something bitter to appreciate the sweetness?

This poem is a work of invention, playing with the need for and appreciation of human attachment that we discover in the smallest of moments. I think bitterness and sweetness simply co-exist. Sometimes the world tips one way or the other, but there is always a balance. I don’t believe one enhances the other.

What inspires you to write? 

 My neighbors are people who wonder what all the fuss is about. Why the romance about country life? They don’t believe they’re worthy of a story. I’m a lover of narrative. I’m stuck on telling people’s stories, whether with 25 words or 100,000. As a writer, I get to step into others’ lives and histories. I’m not particularly interested in metaphor, though I suspect it occasionally shows up in my work. If I’m fortunate, if the coffee was good and I find an audience, they might be introduced to something new or surprising. That’s what drives me—that the people I write about are worthy of inviting to dinner, that they have something to say. 

What creative avenue came first for you?

After the Sturm und Drang of teenage scribblings (which scribblings I count among the best of my work, though, without regret, lost), I imagined myself a novelist or a screenwriter. Instead, I found myself writing letters. While toying with fiction and essays, and seeking opportunities for a good kill, I’ve never stopped writing letters. I’ve whipped myself through technique and structure, and practiced dishonesty in the pursuit of an audience because writing can feel pointless without one. But I have had my greatest successes and joys writing to family and friends. So… It all blends. Narrative is where I’ve landed. But nothing can top the unadulterated freedom that comes from communicating with people who already know me. 

There’s a great deal of movement and narrative happening in your poem “Leaving”. It feels as if I’m reading a play and a novel all the while in poetic verse. Your various writing styles came together smoothly in this poem. What was the process like writing this piece?

I spend months playing with even the shortest of pieces. “Leaving” took the better part of two years. I’m a bastard of an editor. No reader has ever been as hard on me as I am on myself, though a few have tried. Performing a piece, no matter how pleased I might be with what’s on the page, always brings changes. When I hear my voice bouncing back to me in a room, when I see the faces in that room, my false notes stand out like proud flesh. Even if I can hide them from an audience most of the time, I can’t hide them from myself. I wish there was an audience that would give me fifteen hours to read through the novel I’m working on—that’s editing.

Read Patrick’s Poem, “Leaving” in dulcet Literary magazine, vol. One, Issue No. 1.