Today we’d like to introduce you to Anders Carlson-Wee.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
I grew up in northern Minnesota, the son of two Lutheran pastors. After high school, I attended wilderness survival schools and learned how to live on almost no money. For five years, I stopped buying food altogether, harvesting everything I ate from dumpsters behind supermarkets. I also stopped buying almost everything else: clothes, shoes, headlamps, toothpaste, painkillers – I got everything I needed from the trash. I did all this because I wanted to be a poet, and to become a poet, I knew I needed an enormous amount of free time. Throughout my twenties, I lived on $3,000 per year, worked as little as possible, and spent all my time reading and writing and traveling the country by bicycle and freight train (free modes of transportation). Finally, after working on it for ten years, I published my first collection of poems, THE LOW PASSIONS (W.W. Norton, 2019), which focuses on my years of traveling and staying in the homes of strangers. My new book, DISEASE OF KINGS (W.W. Norton, 2023), is about two friends who have sworn off money and dumpster dive for all their materials needs. It’s funny and also very sad and deals with the end of a friendship – a topic I find extremely compelling and relatively unexamined in literature.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
For me, the biggest obstacle to becoming a poet was time. I loved books and had a bottomless passion to pursue the craft, but I needed time. Lots of time. At 20, I imagined I’d need about ten years of unencumbered free time to become a writer. In the end, it took more than 15 years, and of course, even today I’m still learning, still refining my style. In order to buy myself all those years of development, I chose to forego all things that cost money – concerts, clubs, cars, restaurants, vacations, and shopping: I did none of it. Which meant it was almost impossible to be friends with “normal” people; my only friends were like-minded scavengers. It also meant my life was profoundly limited and extremely specific. So, my choice came with great cost, but it worked: year after year, I was able to spend the bulk of my time writing.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I write narrative poetry that uses the cadences of language and associative imagery to help tell the story. So you get the propulsive rhythms and associative leaps of poetry paired with the narrative tension and character development of a novel. My new book, DISEASE OF KINGS, explores the tender yet volatile friendship between two young scammers living off the fat of society. One of the characters is based on me; the other is based on my friend North. Together, they scrounge, con, hustle, and steal, alternately proud of their ability to fabricate a life at the margins and ashamed of their own laziness and greed. Many have described it as a poetry page-turner.
How do you define success?
I believe true success is entirely internal. It’s about knowing how hard it was for you. How deep you had to dig. How much you put at hazard. How much you sacrificed for your vision. Success is odd because it won’t make you happy, but it will be meaningful, and meaning, for reasons perhaps none of us understand, is of greater value than happiness.
Pricing:
- DISEASE OF KINGS, $26.95
- THE LOW PASSIONS, $26.95
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.anderscarlsonwee.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anderscarlsonwee/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anders.carlsonwee
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anders-carlson-wee-8506885a/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndersWeePoet
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Disease-Kings-Poems-Anders-Carlson-Wee/dp/1324064706
Image Credits
Author photo and dumpster photo: Anessa Ibrahim Other photos: Kai Carlson-Wee
