Local poet Michael McLaughlin began the Live from the CORE poetry series in order to get a regular poetry event going in the Santa Maria Valley, but also to welcome poets from far and wide to come read.
The upcoming event is no different. The series also puts the spotlight on local poets, and featured at the next Live from the CORE on Aug. 13 is David Ochs.
McLaughlin picked Ochs as a featured poet for the event because of his brash style, McLaughlin explained in an email to the Sun.
“David Ochs is an arch and homespun sort of underground military,” he wrote. “He has his appetites as under control as a bulldozer out of which someone forgot to take the key.”
Ochs began writing under advice from his anger management counselor, according to his bio. His interest was further stoked when he went to a poetry reading in Linnaea’s in SLO and felt inspired to dive headfirst into verse.
“There were some poets there I liked, and I thought that maybe I could, not write like them, but maybe have a voice of my own,” he said. “I went back to Linnaea’s one night and I read a couple of my poems that I thought were good and I got a great response, which is when I knew I was connecting with the audience, which is something you can’t fake.”
If the response had been lukewarm, he might not be doing poetry today, Ochs said, but connecting with an audience was the affirmation he needed to keep going.
Connecting and helping others with poetic expression was a driver for him early on as well. Ochs worked with inmates at the California Men’s Colony years ago, helping them craft poetry and express themselves.
“I found that the things that worked for me in writing seemingly could work for them too,” he said. “It’s like they say in AA, you try and give some of what you have. Poetry and writing is definitely therapeutic.”
Ochs has been published in magazines and poetry journals and has yet to publish a book. A couple of his pieces can be found online, but he tries to keep his focus on writing.
The creative process is like a habit, or a practice, he said, and a poet has to work constantly.
“It may sound boring, but my idea of a good time is getting my notebook and going to Starbucks for an hour or two of writing in the evening,” he said. “That’s how I enjoy myself, as dull as that may sound.”
Ochs isn’t spending his time writing about roses and violets, but plumbing deep-seated emotions to come up with something authentic, raw, and real.
McLaughlin compared Ochs to the infamous Charles Bukowski, only funnier. But unlike Bukowski, Och’s “charm isn’t the grimeball variety,” according to McLaughlin. This comes from Ochs’ drive to crystallize real emotions, no matter how unsavory they might be, he explained.
“I think that most poetry is bad, because the impression of what most people think poetry should be is optimistic, and the ‘isn’t life wonderful,’ type of thing, and it rings false,” Ochs said. “That’s why most people don’t like poetry, because it’s polite, and innocuous, and inoffensive.”
Connecting with people requires authenticity, Ochs said, and sharing your struggles or your real feelings is actually a truer form of expression. This kind of poetry is what inspires more people to write, read, and listen, he said. Poets get to share personal truths, wherever their minds may find it.
And that’s why Ochs likes reading live, he said, because he gets to share his verses directly, and color the words with his physical voice, married to his poetic voice.
“I’ve been in magazines and I’d love to have a book published, but a reading is just another way of getting an audience, and that completes the equation,” he said. “And if you read poetry to people you can tell if you are connecting or not, you can feel it you are connecting or not.”
Ochs won’t be the only featured poet, though. Fresno area poet David Campos will share his verses as well, many of which were published in books like Furious Dusk or in The American Poetry Review.
Arts Editor Joe Payne is not quite so prose-y as he likes to believe. Contact him at jpayne@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 11-18, 2016.
