Michael McLaughlin’s love of poetry goes back to the third grade.
“I had a great teacher who had us memorize poems,” he said. “We had to memorize one long poem by the end of the year. She had me memorize a Robert Frost poem. And she had us writing poetry, too.”
The early exposure stuck, and today McLaughlin is an acclaimed poet with numerous awards and publications under his belt. Twice nominated for Pushcart Prizes, McLaughlin is the author of two novels, Western People Show Their Faces and Gang of One, as well as three collections of poetry, including his most recent, Countless Cinemas.
In 2003, he was named Poet Laureate of San Luis Obispo County and teaches English at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria.
“I’m kind of very much a post-beat poet. I have influences like William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, [Jack] Kerouac, Gregory Corso,” McLaughlin said. “I lucked out for my second book and landed the editor for the beat poets, Larry Fagin. He was really instrumental and introduced me to more poets that were in the same vein.”
For the first time in three years, McLaughlin will take the stage at CORE not just as the emcee, but as a featured poet, reading his own work at the event he regularly hosts. He decided to do the reading at CORE as a birthday present to himself, after three years of hosting and promoting other poets.
“I always avoid reading at the venues where I emcee,” McLaughlin said. “I want the attention to be on the poets themselves.”
One of the things that drives McLaughlin is a passion for bringing poetry to local audiences, especially in Orcutt. And with a home within walking distance from Old Orcutt and CORE, he’s as local as it gets.
For the past 27 years, he has worked as the Artist-in-Residence at Atascadero State Hospital, a maximum security facility, as a Contract Artist with the California Department of Corrections as well as San Luis Obispo County Area Coordinator for California Poets in the Schools.
McLaughlin describes his poetry as a “mish-mash” of styles. While some work leans toward surrealism, much of it also includes a more journalistic matter, including poems about 9/11, drive-by shootings in Los Angeles, and suicide bombers on the West Bank in Palestine. McLaughlin also spent a year in Japan and studied haiku and tanka poetry.
“I draw from both of those areas,” he said. “On the one hand it’s more hyper-realistic. On the other, it’s more surrealistic. And then I write short forms, too.”
The reading will also include Ventura author and musician Jeff Grimes, who started the first creative writing program at Camarillo State Hospital. Grimes’ work has been featured in Pslam 151, Bombay Gin, Cometbus, X-Ray, Shark Fetish, and more. Grimes is set to read and perform music to accompany his poems. In addition to Grimes, McLaughlin’s son, a musician based in Berkeley, is also scheduled to perform.
When it comes to working with live musicians at his readings, McLaughlin said he is inspired by the freeform nature of the way they work. He said musicians often treat his poetry like another instrument, playing along to the beat of his voice.
“I like that interaction on that level more than on some sort of content level because it’s much more intellectual,” he said. “We’re just going to have at it that night. It should be a lot of fun.”
I would have taken a cleaver
Gaza Strip November 1995
I asked the mother of a young man
who’d blown himself up
what she would have done
if she’d known
what her son was
planning to do.
I would have taken a cleaver,
cut open my heart
and stuffed him deep inside
she said.
Then I would have sewn it up tight
to keep him safe.
—Michael McLaughlin, from Countless Cinemas, 2016 University of Hell Press, Portland, Oregon
Arts and Lifestyle Writer Rebecca Rose has been to countless cinemas. Contact her at rrose@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Mar 1-8, 2018.