February 22, 2023
Emeritus professor Peter Johnson, Ph.D. oversees poetry anthology
By Christopher Machado
Despite his status as an emeritus professor of English at Providence College, Peter Johnson, Ph.D., an acclaimed and prolific poet and author, continues to leave his mark in the literary world. He is the author of several novels and short fiction pieces, but perhaps is best known — to his former students and the book-buying public — as an award-winning prose poet. Recently, Johnson and celebrated Australian poet Cassandra Atherton co-edited the anthology Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Here, Johnson talks about how he fell in love with prose poetry, the freedom the form offers, why fellow PC poets Chard deNiord and Jane Lunin Perel ’15Hon. needed to be included in the collection, and what other projects he’s working on.
You’ve written in several genres, but prose poetry has been central to your professional life. What is it about this form that has hooked you throughout all these years?
To be honest, part of my attraction was the fact that between teaching, editing a journal, and raising a family, I found it difficult to find the time to write long pieces of fiction. With the prose poem, I can write a first draft quickly, and then endlessly rewrite it in free moments of time. But I also was a fan of Franz Kafka’s and Max Jacob’s shorter works and the fragments of the philosopher Friedrich Schlegel. The work of those authors led me to a seminal anthology of prose poetry, where I found a home for my poetic sensibility. I no longer was constrained by line breaks, and I came to believe in Jacob’s statement that “The tiny is enormous.” It’s a real challenge to say a lot in very few words.
How is expressing yourself through prose poetry different than the other ways you write?
I think what initially attracts all poets to the prose poem is the freedom the prose poem seemingly offers. Not constrained by line breaks or forms like the sonnet, poets find it easier to let their imaginations roam and touch base with the unconscious. That is, it seems easier to write without Shakespeare looking over your shoulder. But I italicize the words “seemingly” and “seems” because I believe that you must be very hard on yourself as a poet when you are given this freedom.
In Dreaming Awake’s introduction, you mention the differences between American, English, and Australian prose poems. Can you explain?
Most of the differences between American prose poetry and the prose poetry published in other countries probably has more to do with what the poets in those countries write about —what their cultural preoccupations are. But I’m not equipped to generalize about that. I’ll let the readers decide what the differences are when they read the wonderful prose poems my talented co-editor, Cassandra Atherton, chose from Australia and the United Kingdom.
The works of Chard deNiord, MFA, emeritus professor of English, and Jane Lunin Perel, MFA ’15Hon., emerita professor of English, were included in the anthology. What’s it mean for you to still be connected to these former faculty colleagues and highly acclaimed prose poets?
Ah, Chard and Jane. Yes, we are the Three Amigos — very different in our sensibilities but all devoted to the word and all believing that poetry might actually elevate people’s lives in some way. More important, we have always believed that Poetry (with a big “P”) might change the lives of our students. It was fun working with Jane and Chard. We rarely fought and were never jealous of each other, which is rare in the literary world. We are all still friends, and I think we are doing our best work. Jane’s work explodes, Chard’s is quiet and philosophical, and I’m a comic wise guy.
What do you hope readers take away from this anthology?
Put simply, I want readers to be entertained by these prose poems and to see that, in the hands of master poets, the prose poem can be something special.
What forthcoming projects do you have and what you are working on now?
I am most excited by the publication in April of my collected and new poems called While the Undertaker Sleeps. It’s really the history of my career in the prose poem, collecting all my books, along with new poems and a hybrid memoir about how working in the steel plants in the early 1970s influenced me as a writer. I also have come to see the significant role that my students, especially those in my prose poem course, played in my life as a poet. Then I have a book of very short prose poems coming out in the fall. Next spring, a publisher is bringing out an art catalogue, including 20 paintings by the terrific artist Paul Coté and 20 of my poems (both art and prose poems inspired by the early days of COVID). Currently I am writing short comic essays for a Substack site called Old Man Still Howling at the Moon.
