Meet Dan Boylan. Writer, filmmaker and creator of Call to Poetry.
I was born in one of the most historic parts of the United States, a suburb of Boston, a mother sing to me when I was a child. I left Boston in my 20s to Hong Kong and worked, lived, and had some scratches seriously close in more than 40 countries since. My trip was fast and wild, and I thank destiny that I'm still here.
You started as a journalist, there were moments that stand out in your career?
A survey at the beginning I did in Massachusetts discovered problems in the register of state arms and the reports probably saved lives. Years later, I worked with the Associated Press states covering blow, tragedy and chaos. After 9/11, I was working in the Muslim world and realized a moment that I had been in more than a dozen buildings targeted by al Qaeda.
When did you your first foray into the film and how is it done?
I grew up in the same house with my cousin Guy Taylor, who is like a half-brother because our mothers are identical twins. In 2006, I had just left Baghdad and had been reporting from Damascus. We met in Beirut, stayed up all night talking and took a sunbath along the waterfront. It Mediterranean we decided to make films about the madness of our time with a global perspective. Talk humble! I laughed out loud thinking now that we have entered!
what kind of movies you produisez-?
short film comedies. One, a satire on terrorism called "A Free Radical" did well at the Cannes Film Festival 2008. We also made the short comedy "Clam Pie" on the dream of an elderly woman from the sky. This included a bag fall from the sky and an opera singer. Clam Pie won shorter film awards in 2009 than any other court in the United States this year.
Something deep inside me drunk scribble poems on the walls of a legendary Hong Kong bar called Club 64. As a smoked joint of Paris 1920 and full writers, artists, gangsters and a wonderful way Chinese old lesbian who ran, the crowd at the club 64 loved the poems and the forces that made me write them followed me in Kabul and Baghdad, where I spent 2005 and 2006 wars, especially in Baghdad, were terrible and made some of us fear that we lose our minds. To re-find my sanity, I began to write poetry.
What themes do you explore through your work?
I love crush anger laughing. You also need to master time and space compression to locate the necessary pause in a truly great poem. This has something to do with balancing the masculine and feminine energy and it is impossible to explain, it just happens. Being a guy who constantly fights, I like demons. Earlier this year, I wrote a poem called Run, which goes: A demon may be behind. More than one and you're done.
Who or what influences your work?
Speak what we feel, not what we say. This is the third in the last line of Shakespeare's King Lear and I try to write poems that way.
Cities also inspire me, like Jakarta. I went the first time in 1991 when I was 20. As a journalist, I covered 1998 as a Fulbright Scholar I lived south of Blok M in 2001-2002. Those who love his love Jakarta because it is the genesis meets the Apocalypse and it often feels like Van Gogh painted street scenes that pass before me. Rumbling bajajs old Javanese compassion in the eyes of Ibu, spraying color of saffron water pipes like schoolchildren sing and the call to prayer wakes up well before sunrise. Jakarta is the largest city in the tropics and one of
largest world and she taught me so much over the years and I love it for its faults and its beauty. You were behind the critically acclaimed "call for poetry event in Turkey earlier this year, could you tell us about this event and what you hoped to achieve?
has the appeal of poetry Istanbul, we celebrated the history of poetry with a dramatic reading of the world's oldest love poem, which is housed in the Archaeological Museum of Istanbul. It is a little clay tablet the size of a cell phone and it is a great read rowdy, very erotic and fun. We also had a part of the evening dedicated to poetry of the Arab Spring. We had a sold-out crowd and people were hanging from the rafters. The overall objective was to find the right texture and create the right space to make the audience feel comfortable with the words they might otherwise ignore, like the ancient love poetry. The public trusts the words and the performers enough that we took on board and let them look down.
As I say, I love Indonesia. One of my best friends is an anthropologist, John MacDougall, who turned me on work Chairil Anwar years when we were students. We burn clove cigs, drink Bintang and let Anwar transport our souls. It was beautiful. I also knew that many people here, like John McGlynn, founder of Lontar, and Joe Cochrane, President of the Club of Jakarta foreign correspondents. When I mentioned the holding of a call for poetry in Jakarta they thought it would be a great way to showcase the Indonesian poetry and offered tremendous support, as the Face Bar and Jakarta International Fringe Festival.
At the end of this year, I think we will hold a call for poetry in Phnom Penh and for next year, so far, Moscow and Cairo are in the works, and more a big show in Boston on July 4.
What are your thoughts on the stage of the local poetry here in Indonesia? Are there any poets that stand out?
I've always been a great admirer of Goenawan Mohamad, his journalism, activism and poetry. Joko also Pinurbo and Sitok Srengenge. We are fortunate to have some of these poets to the call for poetry and we will read poems from each of them. We also have old love poems Javanese and great music.
Could you share a line of poetry that holds the most meaning for you?
I have long loved Haikus and groove seriously the work of the powerful old Basho, the great haiku most of poet who lived there about 400 years. Many Haikus are screwy and little sense when translated, but I recently read this Basho and loved.
In the moonlight a worm
Drills by a chestnut
Silently
Thank you Dan. To get in touch, email danboylan@gmail.com