The Interview

Cooper: What do you remember from your days at The School for Young Writers and/ or being published in Write On magazine?

Josiah: The biggest thing that I remember is a sense of community and fun. I always looked forward to attending during my weekend. I think my class were a bit naughty and frustrated the tutors a lot! We were more interested in experimenting and playing around with writing than ‘following the rules,’ which I’m sure is something that still abounds in the school for young writers! The School for Young Writers and Write On were my first real experiences with artistic rigour. Ultimately, working in the arts is not super glamorous, and includes a ton of dedication, resilience and practice. The School For Young Writers helped me with this, especially in the months(!) it took to write and finish my first published poem, which was in Write On around 2008 or 2009.

Cooper: Which early experiences/ opportunities/ classes influenced your writing the most?

Josiah: Ever since I was really little, I found that the medium of film really captured my imagination. I was always fascinated by the way that film could say so much with no words at all. This was one of my earliest influences! When I was about eight or nine I rented a DVD of Alfred Hitchcock’s silent film The Lodger, which is completely silent. I remember often trying to replicate the feeling of silent films in words. I was also really influenced by the adults around me. I often felt that adults were talking about mysterious, inaccessible things that I wasn’t allowed to watch or read or discover yet. A lot of my early writing was my attempt to satisfy my own curiosity - if I wasn’t allowed to watch horror movies, I’d write my own!

Cooper: How has your writing evolved over the years?

Josiah: When I first started writing, I was interested in storytelling and plot twists. In late high school, I came to be interested in aesthetics. By that I mean that I became interested in what language features were used, and the effect of those language features. I also became really interested in ‘adult content,’ so my early published work is pretty ‘out there’ and R18. Since then, I’ve settled down a bit and am more interested in exploring the current political climate - my work now focuses on matters of identity and queerness, as well as the way that violence is spoken about in public. And climate change is always on my mind, too. I’m currently returning back to my interest in storytelling and plot twists as I write a novel for young adults!

Cooper: When did you find your style?

Josiah: I was very lucky to finish my NCEA Level 3 in Year 12. That meant that during my Year 13, I could dedicate a lot of time to reading. In my Year 13, I discovered a few key books that helped ‘unlock’ language for me: Dennis Cooper’s Closer, James Joyce’s Ulysses, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. These books really helped me find my style. They are all ‘excessive,’ using unconventional grammar to create a feeling of being overwhelmed/overloaded. Here’s an example of excess in my writing:

The Man Outside The Shop (The MOTS) is sick of being surrounded by this much language. “...board recognizes cultural responsibility to the indigenous population. That’s what the document says, and we have to act on it with our policies about” … “long black for MIKE that’s a LONG BLACK for Mike” … “only need half as much iron as women and vegetarian women actually need half more than” … “missed that, could you repeat” … “Mike? MIKE?” … “anonymously get in touch about the” … “help you?” “short black for EZRA hey there you go have a great” … “I, I answered to, I was” … “Mike!” … “finish your lunch before I buy you the” … “Mike?” … “coffee up! coffee” … “yes so take IBPS, the RPB and PO versions, yes, both of them, and then move on to SBI PO and JPSC and then plug that into the FPI system so you” … “Mike” … “go home” … “latte for FELICITY latte for FELICITY” … “MIKE” … “ating my tools” … “fridge in the garage might have something similar in” … “absolutely fucked, had a tacky on the side of the road. Somehow I spent a few hundred bucks in a couple of” … “care what you think” … and so on … endlessly … and so on …

and an example of excess in Pynchon:

Things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of bureaucratic smegma that sifts steadily to the bottom,

made up of millions of tiny red and brown curls of rubber eraser, pencil shavings, dried tea or coffee stains, traces of sugar and Household Milk, much cigarette ash, very fine black debris picked and flung from typewriter ribbons, decomposing library paste, broken aspirins ground to powder. Then comes a scatter of paperclips, Zippo flints, rubber bands, staples, cigarette butts and crumpled packs, stray matches, pins, nubs of pens, stubs of pencils of all colors including the hard-to-get heliotrope and raw umber, wooden coffee spoons, Thayer’s Slippery Elm Throat Lozenges sent by Slothrop’s mother, Nalline, all the way from Massachusetts, bits of tape, string, chalk . . .

Maybe you can see the resemblance? I am very interested in what happens when too many details are given, so much so that you can interpret ‘the entire world’ through details. I used to get frustrated by writers who described things in too much detail. Now I am obsessed.

Cooper: Thanks, Josiah. It has been great having you back as a tutor at Write On.