Matthew Schmidt's 5 Poems and Poetic Dead Labor
Announcement of Matthew Schmidt's poems - an introduction to Osmanthus and EarShrub that likely overlooks a lot of people and events - an interview excerpt with Matthew Schmidt
Our editors are pleased to announce the publication of Matthew Schmidt’s 5 Poems, a suite of poems that can be read here. The following discuss Osmanthus’ story and a part of an interview-in-progress with Matthew Schmidt.
Thinking about distribution methods and publishing models, Carl and I discussed cassette tapes and zines. We shared voice messages, I was in my family’s garage. Carl somewhere in Ontario. We discussed the methods as relevant to niche-micro or independent presses with smaller or not much financial capital involved. He shared a list of micro-presses. He knows way more about it than me. With smaller presses often times it seems like decisions are made within specific means related to material conditions.
I’ve thought a lot about physical media recently, but perhaps not discussed it much with Carl. During the second year I lived in Hunan, I found a bootleg DVD shop. The inventory contained all the recent releases, some had just ended their worldwide theatrical showing in the United States. For the most part those places are non-existent nowadays. Maybe the one in the French Concession area of Shanghai might still be around, but for the most part, I have not been to a DVD shop in years.
Osmanthus began as a localized poetry workshop and community in 2019. We released our first and only zine titled EarShrub in June 2019. The university where I’ve taught since 2016 co-founded the Chinese/American Association for Poetry and Poetics (CAAP), and in December 2018, a CAAP conference was held in Wuhan. I attended a talk and couple panels with a heavily-stacked group of poets, editors, and academics. In one of the presentations, Charles Alexander gave a historical talk about Chax Press. Books as object or perhaps art object stood out. Maybe I misunderstood the talk altogether. Crafting a physical object resonated with me though. Circulating back to the idea of physical media.
The next week I bought a printer off of Jingdong, which I placed in my campus-apartment, and contacted Rivka Clifton to see if they had any chapbook manuscripts.
The apartment became a gathering space for printing. The inkjet was particularly slow, but it worked. I bought some book binding materials off Taobao. We got to poking and stitching.
Shortly thereafter in January 2020, I flew back to Chicago for a brief minute to do a two week tour in support of Rivka’s chapbooks MOT and Agape. It was fun to say the least. The minute turned into months, a novelty at first, but now everyone’s pretty much used to it.
I was the Patient-Zero joke at a bar in Kansas City one night, until people realized the seriousness of it, but some still haven’t.
During my extended vacation, Osmanthus released a couple chapbooks, and then I disappeared to Seoul. Just bought a ticket one day and left. Osmanthus continued to persist. I went inward to explore Korea, which ended up home for half-a-year. Seoul is one of the best cities either before or after Montreal.
Osmanthus’ first iteration ended shortly after I left Korea.
Perhaps that’s a bit of an overshare or unneeded given that sentimentality is a weakness, but I would like to place the importance in physical media, works in progress, and situate Osmanthus’ current release in a historical and/or aesthetic place.
Osmanthus owes a lot of ideas to many people.1 For years, I grew up in libraries, voraciously reading anything there. Outside the baseball diamond, as cliche as this sounds, it might’ve been my second home. That’s a story for me, and a weak transition, but it’s one of the reasons that Matthew Schmidt’s work has found a place with me. Outside of the poetry he’s written, he co-founded 1-Week Critique which currently operates programming in coordination with the Iowa City Public Library. Osmanthus is pleased to publish Matthew Schmidt’s work. We hope you’ll find thing that you enjoy, and things that you can share with friends.
Matthew Schmidt’s work can be read on Osmanthus’ website.
Recently we sat down to Matthew Schmidt to ask him questions about his personal engagement with poetry. The following interview is an in-process interview with Schmidt. Here’s a brief snip from the interview:
Osmanthus: When was the moment you decided that you wanted to write poetry?
Matthew Schmidt: Summer of 2012. I wrote poetry on and off for years before that, but it was never more than a hobby prior to 2012. That summer I visited a friend in Austin and ended up staying on their couch for several months, quitting my desk job (which I hated) in the process. I realized I didn’t want to be another keyboard jockey for a business that I didn’t believe in. I also wanted to do something that felt meaningful. Poetry/writing was the only thing I really loved at the time so I began a more earnest study of the craft, including writing regularly.
Osmanthus: What was the first poetry reading you ever attended? What questions did you ask the performer[s]? Given the chance would you ask the same question? How would you revise your questions?
Matthew Schmidt: Wow, this is a tough question in the sense that I’m not sure I remember. What I do remember in my poetic trajectory: my junior-year English teacher in high school taught a small poetry unit. I wrote a few poems in an attempt to join a poetry club my freshman year of college—the club was unimpressed. Sophomore year, I took a writing class that had several weeks devoted to poetry. Later, I performed a poem with a classmate at some sort of reading event that students put on. Junior year of college is when I took my first semester-length class in poetry. In fact I took a couple—one on the study of poetry as literature, one on the creative writing side.
I want to say that the first reading I went to that wasn’t a student reading was my junior year of college. In all honesty, I don’t recollect who the readers were. I know for certain I didn’t ask any questions, I didn’t want to look like a fool in front of everyone. What I really wanted to know at the time was how to write good poems. I could write a poem in the sense that it was lineated, but I didn’t have any idea what made a poem “good.” Even now, that definition is debatable in the hierarchy of the poetry community.
Thank you for being part of the community. Osmanthus is always open for contributors. We read year round and are at the mercy of where the world takes us. Osmanthus will always be around though. If you’d like to be a part of our community please reach out in the comments or share. We’ll never ask for paid subscriptions, but we might ask for donations - mainly just to pay writers accordingly.
Thank you for reading. May you forever be on your way.
Our current publishing model was developed with A Dozen Nothing’s publishing model in mind: A dozen poets. One a month. Nothing more.