Competitor Profile: William Brian Sain
"My priority is for my poems to have a simplistic complexity. I want my poems to have layers, reoccurring themes. I want my poems to take the reader somewhere else, and consistently return them to the same place. My priority is to have the reader riding the spiral."
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Everything is A-Okay L-A-H-O-M-A
The sun rises, another empty Sunday,
sprinkling gold on Oklahoma plainsā darkness,
standing by the bed of my white Silverado
parked in a cow field next to a pond
me and an old friend used to fish in,
finishing off a Camel
adding another empty Budweiser
to the pile of aluminum waste
another wasted Saturday night alone left me.
Tears smother my blank stare into the sun,
drown my face until they fall,
puddle on red dirt at my feet.
Light another Camel off the butt of the last one
non-smokers call this chain smoking,
I call this trying to breathe.
Sometimes fresh air is suffocating.
The morning dew is drying off
but the sun is powerless in drying up
the results of witās end emotion.
The world is waking up,
all I can think about is going to sleep,
something I havenāt done in five days,
something Iād like to do for a lifetime.
I feel this dead end closing in
stuck in a wide open field,
sticking myself between barbed wire
eighteen years of red dirt reinforcing fences
used to keep animals imprisoned.
I look around for suicide:
maybe start my truck
take bong hits off the exhaust pipe,
maybe tie intricate knots
fasten my hands to the steering wheel
drive into the pond,
maybe find a nice tree
to tie a mean noose around,
maybe use my coke cutting razorblade
slash open my jugular vein,
maybe swallow all my meth
while smoking an
entire crack rock ,
maybe grab the bull
by his horns
piss him off
Iām already
wearing red.
I look at the red mud my tears created,
smile at the fact Iāve constructed an ocean
in the middle of a cow field.
I remain marooned on a red dirt island
surrounded by my own salt water,
look at the time on my cell phone
itās nine-thirty-six a.m. on Sunday.
Grandma is in church with my aunts, uncles, and cousins
in Minco, Oklahoma.
The Oklahoma Sooners won their football game yesterday.
Everyone is wonderful.
Momās getting groceries to feed my brother
in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Brotherās sleeping off a night shift at a restaurant.
Theyāre all fantastic.
I am contemplating suicide
in middle-of-nowhere, Oklahoma.
The family is doing great.
Everything is beautiful,
everything is picture perfect,
everything is A-okay.
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Name: William Brian Sain
Stage Name: William Brian Sain
Age: 28
Years Active in Slam: 2 years
Teams Youāve Been a Member of: 2014 Baton Rouge National Poetry Slam Team
Place from which you are traveling to get to TGS: Baton Rouge, Louisiana
Top 5 influential poets: Franz Kafka (Even though he only wrote prose, heās still the greatest writer ever.) William Blake, Matthew Arnold, Walt Whitman, George Gordon Byron.
Have you been to TGS before, & if so, what are you hoping is the same/different from your previous experience? Yes. Last year was a remarkable experience. I hope the atmosphere is the same.
How would you describe your writing style? Deeply personal and drug addicted. I relive memories, return to binges, and go home to dark placesā¦ to Oklahoma.
Do you consider yourself more of a writer or a performer? Writer. I'm still working on performance. It's a work in progress, progressing slower than anticipated.
Who are you looking forward to/nervous as hell to compete against? I don't like the idea of competing against anyone. Iām going to Texas to tell my story.
What is your goal for this competition? To escape. To meet incredible poets reading incredible poems.
What is going through your head before you get on stage? I try to shut everything out. Go back to hell. Try to relive the emotions. I metaphorically begin smoking crystal meth and crack cocaine again.
How has Franz Kafka's prose affected your poetry? Or, you as a poet? Or, your writing process?Ā
Where do I begin with this question? Kafka has changed my life. Reading Kafka is like being completely out of control. When I first read him I knew I found an accurate depiction of myself in text. His characters are representative of him, and he is representative of the human condition. Through Kafka I learned there are no answers. Black and white does not exist. Life is nothing but gray areas. Iāve stopped trying to find resolutions in my poetry. I'm not looking for an end because there are no endings. Every failure is a success and every success is a failure. Erich Heller describes Kafka beautifully:
"In Kafka we have the modern mind, seemingly self-sufficient, intelligent, skeptical, ironical, splendidly trained for the great game of pretending that the world it comprehends in sterilized sobriety is the only and ultimate real one ā yet a mind living in sin with the soul of Abraham. Thus he knows two things at once, and both with equal assurance: that there is no God, and that there must be God."
Ā This is why Kafka is the greatest.
Ā What is it like, as someone who has struggled with substance abuse, to get up on stage and be vulnerable about experiences that are traditionally shamed?
It's scary. It's difficult. It's painful. It's difficult to go back to the dark places. It's painful to relive the experiences. It's scary to put my true self on the chopping block for a crowd of strangers to judge. Sometimes I feel disgusting. Sometimes it hurts. Despite all of this it's refreshing. Itās liberating. Not everybody has been a drug addict, but a lot of people have been self destructive. Thatās why I get on stage, to relate to people. In my experiences off stage after a performance I've learned that more people than I expect have been touched either directly or indirectly by drug addiction. If they haven't hopefully they understand I grew up in rural Oklahoma, what else is there to do?
What keeps you coming back to slam?
The community of poets in Baton Rouge. There are some amazing people in my city. Poets who are focused on the craft of writing and not the scores. Poets who share their personal narratives and allow themselves to be vulnerable on stage. There is a network of support and friendship. People like Donney Rose, DesireƩ Dallagiacomo, Xero Skidmore, Rodrick Minor, and Geoff Munsterman keep me encouraged to keep getting back on the mic.
What is your priority when writing? Are you more concerned with word choice? Form? How the poem will be read?
My main concern is being honest with myself. I ask myself how I can present my struggle in a way people can feel it. I want people to feel the hopelessness of drug addiction, rural poverty, and a tumultuous paternal relationship. How can I engage the reader enough to draw them into feeling my poem instead if just reading it? My priority is for my poems to have a simplistic complexity. I want my poems to have layers, reoccurring themes. I want my poems to take the reader somewhere else, and consistently return them to the same place. My priority is to have the reader riding the spiral.
What is your all-time favorite line of poetry?
I can't just pick one line of poetry but I can narrow it down to a few lines.
Every Night & every Morn
Some to Misery are Born
Every Morn & every Night
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to sweet delight
Some are Born to Endless Night
from āAuguries of Innocenceā by William Blake
