by Catfish McDaris
I’d been reading westerns and war books
because they fit in my pocket. I learned about the classics from different
authors of all nationalities. I decided I could write, so my first attempt was
a western set in my home state of New Mexico. It never got published. I
finished my three-year hitch, then headed “back to the world.” I explored
Mexico where I fished for sharks, lived in a car through a winter in Denver,
built adobe buildings, worked in a zinc smelter. I kept a few notebooks from
then, but never sent anything out. Later I moved to Milwaukee, got a job in the
Post Office, and married a beautiful Mexican lady.
I discovered small presses and
Bukowski. I started sending poems (which to me were always stories) and short
fiction to magazines in 1992. After lots of rejects, I began to get published.
I was able to write at work in small notebooks or on scraps of paper, then
rewrite on my typewriter. I figured Buk did it this way. In 1994 I went to De
Paul University to read at the First Underground Press Conference and met many
publishers and writers. I organized several charity music and poetry events in
Milwaukee called Wordstock. In 1997 I was published in a three-way chapbook
called Prying with Jack Micheline and
Charles Bukowski. By then I’d done five or six solo chapbooks. In 1998 I went
to Cherry Valley, NY to Ginsberg’s farm and read with all the Beatniks left
alive. (Burroughs and Ginsberg were dead) This was a three-day event that got
real wild.
In 2007 I took my wife, Aida to Paris
for our 25th wedding anniversary. I read at Shakespeare and Co.
Bookstore. I also read on 42nd in NYC with a Jimi Hendrix
impersonator. All of my readings were practiced and rehearsed in Milwaukee at
various venues.
I was leery of the small press on the
web. I was so used to the envelope, snail mail, SASE method. I didn’t trust or
like computers. I had what I called my Hammer. It was a Smith Corona word
processing typewriter. It held ten pages of memory, then you had to erase it.
I’d written 20 chapbooks on it. Finally my wife gave me a computer and a few
lessons. I was amazed at the ease.
I’ve met people from all over the world
because of the web. I’ve been translated into many different languages. I quit
counting Pushcart nominations after 15 and Best of Net. I’ve won a few things
over the last 25 years. I was a contributing editor to Latino Stuff Review for over ten years and Shrimp over five years. I earned lots of money for Hope House here
in Milwaukee for abused women and children. The sheer joy of writing has opened
my eyes and heart to many things.
A few years ago Marquette University
Special Archives bought my collection of books, magazines, and broadsides. They
also collect anything electronic about me or from me in their archives. Now I
can read over the phone on radio shows. Technology is amazing. I hope writing
is never replaced by computers. Now I’m going to take a walk down to Lake
Michigan, good day.
The Mirage
Spaniard
screamed in the rain and drank from the sky trying to figure where he went
wrong and lost his way. He met a beautiful maiden, they ate rabbit and quail
and soon she led him up a steep trail.
___________________________________
Catfish
McDaris has been active in the small press world for 25 years. He shot
howitzers three years in the army and used to fish and hunt as a boy in New
Mexico. Sometimes he goes down to Lake Michigan and feeds seagulls and dreams
of mountain horses. He’s working in a wig shop in a high crime area of
Milwaukee. He’s been translated into Spanish, French, Polish, Swedish, Arabic,
Bengali, Mandarin, Yoruba, Tagalog, and Esperanto.
His book, Sleeping With the Fish, contains poetry
and prose and is 265 pages for under $10 from Pski’s Porch
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