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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 22, 2013)
7 street roots Nov. 22, 2013 The artist formerly known as From the streets to the stage, Sean Aaron Bowers grows up with poetry CLAIRE VALENTIIME-FOSSUM C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R S.B.: Street kids. oet Sean Aaron Bowers, 33, known to C.V.F.: Are they innocent? You write about many as Johnny No Bueno, writes innocence a lot in your work, and the image of with the grittiest of voices. Reading his poetry is like jumping into the moshpit a child in an adult’s body. at a punk rock show. The brash language S.B.: There is an innocence. Do they, do spins around to hit you in the jaw while we — I have to say we, just because I’m bringing up the nostalgia for cheap booze. older and I’ve been able to crawl out of the Bowers vigorously, and with seemingly no hell I’ve lived in, doesn’t make me any fear, shares with his readers his encounters different. I think I’ve said it in my books with violence, addiction, bittersweet love before, the crime may never be forgiven, but and a lost family. that the criminal should always be forgiven. Bowers’ childhood went from “The Villa” To some extent even some of the most of St. Johns to the streets of Portland. His heinous and horrendous stuff. parents were separated and he spent time For example, I’m working right now on attending youth correctional facilities. When forgiving the murder of my father. he was 12 his father, who had introduced him to poetry, was murdered. Bowers soon C.V.F: Are you using your poetry to work left home and found himself living a violent through your father’s murder? and drug-abusing life on the street. S.B.: N o .... Actually I just wrote a couple Now Bowers is well known in the days ago a poem from the possible Portland poetry slam scene. Under the perspective of my father’s killing. pseudonym Johnny No Bueno he has published “We Were Warriors” with C.V.F.: What was it like to try to write that? University of Hell Press. Currently he is at S.B.: For me there was some sort of Portland Community College taking creative disconnect. There>s a really interesting writing classes. disconnect that happens when I start to write. I’ll start with an image or a specific Claire Valentine-Fossum: What was it point in time or a feeling. And then I shut like to spend your childhood on the streets? off my heart. I didn’t really get into the P H O T O B Y JILL G R E E N S E T H S reasons because u ltim ately that’s what Sean Bowers: To me it was just growing Sean Aaron Bowers, a.k.a. the poet Johnny No Bueno, on his future as a professor: I would drives me mad now. You know, I’ve come to up. I tell people my story and they say “I like to give (youth) an obsession for craft, as well as be able, especially for kids who are locked terms that my father was shot in the face feel sorry for you.” But I say it’s just a up and on the streets, to do some sort of critical analysis. And then be able to take that critical with a 10-gauge. It took me a little while, the different setting. But at the same time, analysis into the world fact that, yes, my father’s face was blown off nowadays at the age of 3 3 ,1 have so many with buckshot and he had a hole through his maladjusted views of the world. I was able head, and as sick and twisted as that is, it C.V.F.: Are there other programs out there to survive, whereas a lot of my friends doesn’t really bother me. These are facts. like that? C.V.F.: When did you start participating in didn’t. I was able to make it through. Yeah Having an emotional tie to that is only self- nights were cold and I went without food, slam poetry? S.B.: There are a lot of programs, defeating. but the hardest part is now. Now, because I however they could do more. What happens S.B.: I had rallied for years against poetry have such diluted views of the world and C.V.F.: How did you quit heroin? is, especially when it comes to poetry, slam. I decided it did a huge disservice to interrelationships and how I deal with because of its therapeutic value, because of the English language S.B.: I was actually people. I meet the world with my fists up. its cathartic value, it’s an easy and great way and to poetry. I not the biggest fan of to investigate identity. What happens in thought it was a C.V.F.: Were you writing then, when you heroin. That didn’t most poetry workshops at that level is it just thorn in the side of lived on the street? keep me from being "What I would love io do, is stays there. literature. So strung out for a S.B.: I’ve always wrote poetry, sometimes to take these horrific and yet I would like to give (youth) an obsession begrudgingly, number of years. more than others. I remember my first trip for craft, as well as be able, especially for because my mentor wonderful experiences that Heroin when I first to San Francisco, hitchhiking to San kids who are locked up and on the streets, said I should do people are having, and be started doing it was Francisco. I found a copy of “Howl” by Allen to do some sort of critical analysis. And then poetry slam, I came just a cheap high ... able to turn that into Ginsburg in Golden Gate Park, sleeping in be able to take that critical analysis into the here (Backspace) and then I got strung Golden Gate Park in a sleeping bag under something much greater." world, because that’s ultimately what its with the sole out. There was the eucalyptus trees and reading “Howl” by about, to use those critical skills in everyday intention I was going definitely an allure, flashlight, and like “Oh, this is different.” I life. to read one of my but my allure was had liked poetry up to that point, but now It’s also the development of the craft. So darkest and most more existential. How I’m starting to love poetry. And I was like, often I see people, it’s almost textbook, offensive pieces and everyone was going to close can I get to death? I kind of played you can do that with language you can do anybody who gets sober or does time in jail hate me and I could go home saying I tried. with heroin like an artist would play with that with words. You can punch somebody in will write poetry. What’s going to happen is paint. How blue can I get before people start And I came here and I read one of my most the gut with words and just leave them they’re going to assume there are doors that darkest most offensive pieces and everyone getting worried? How much can I do till it’s breathless and to themselves. hated it and they loved me because it was so might be there because they’re writing almost too much? Poetry is just a visceral experience and so poetry, but (the doors) will be closed visceral. My ex-wife and I did heroin together and I always wrote, I always wrote. because they don’t understand poetry. What I had always done spoken word. Spoken then my quest to really push the envelope word is what made poetry accessible. Before I would love to do is to take these horrific C.V.F.: When did you want to be a poet? with shooting dope got to be too much, to and yet wonderful experiences that people I read poetry, I was trying to write poetry. the point where we had gone through the S.B.: I knew that I wanted to be a poet in are having, and be able to turn that into Then I heard Henry Rollins. I was a born inheritance of my father’s death, we were 2000. It wasn’t just poetry is going to be a something much greater. and raised punk rocker and I was like, homeless, I didn’t care. I had no interest in part of my life, but it’s going to be the main really even surviving, I was just like, I’m just Henry Rollins does poetry, poetry must be C.V.F: Do you have other writing in the aspect of my life. I read a poem by San good. So that was kind of more influential going to shoot dope and eventually I’ll die works? Francisco spoken word artist David Lerner. than anything else because my childhood from an overdose or hypothermia or liver The poem is “Mien Kampf,” every single S.B.: I’m working on two books currently heroes were poets. And I was like, OK, gotta failure and I don’t care. And she ended up line of that poem, if was almost kind of a and a collection of essays. I’m publicly do it on stage, like a punk rock show. leaving me. And then, due to her leaving “fuck you” to the poetry world, but at the dropping the pseudonym Johnny No Bueno, me, I started to develop this deep-seated C.V.F.: I read you want to be a professor. Is same time, it’s that duality, at the same time and I’m transferring to my birth name, Sean resentment to heroin, not because of what it that still your goal? I loved it, like this is us, and this is what we Aaron Bowers. I do want to selfishly break had done to me, but what it had taken from do. And I was all of a sudden, in this little into the world of academic literature. S.B.: I want to teach creative writing and me. obsession with poetry, I wasn’t alone. It is literature at a university level. My big goal is They’re not going to accept somebody I got busted for possession back in 2002 now my obligation to write, my obligation is named Johnny No Bueno, and so if I want to use that as a means in which I can and as they dragged me out of the to do what this poem did for me. I need to to, with my martyr complex, be the voice of sustain being able to do creative writing convention center bathroom in handcuffs I write and allow my poetry to do that for the 90’s forgotten youth of the streets, and I workshops for at-risk and incarcerated just looked up to the sky and said “If there want that voice to count; I can’t be that youth: homeless shelters, MacLaren School somebody else. is a God, thank you.” I asked the judge to street kid anymore. I have to play their role for Boys, juvenile centers, stuff like that. not let me go, to just let me kick, and I was C.V.F.: Who are the “Forgotten City’s and their face. able to kick. children”you write about in your work? P
