Friday Feature: @T_E_Trueman
If you keep wanting them, we’ll keep posting them. We’re getting fantastic feedback from lots of you about these spotlight sessions, and have some great answers to our questions lined up from Prosers old and new. By ‘old’, of course we mean in time served posting to Prose, NEVER in age!
This week we speak to a true hard hitter, regular poster, supporter and commenter; he himself says of you lovely Prosers “I feel like an elder statesman here, an older brother or dad or grand-fuckin’pa watching over my kids and beaming with pride at your growth and achievements.”
Yes indeed, it's the one, the only: Terry Trueman. Strap yourselves in Prosers, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Otherwise known as Terry Earl Trueman on some of his first publications circa 1969-1970, Terry lives in two homes; one in Spokane WA, (March to end of Oct) and the other in Tucson AZ (Nov to end of Feb). He fills us in on the rest: “My Prose name is T_E_Trueman which I selected because Terry Trueman is the name on my young adult/kids publications and I knew on Prose I’d be going beyond and above that level, content and language-wise.”
We ask him to tell those who don’t know him what his occupation is. He tells us: “I’m a full time author/poet/writer, mostly retired from speaking and public readings/presentations, after over a thousand such events from the last 16 years or so.”
Prose asks what his relationship is with writing and how it has evolved. Terry responds: “Next to my relationships with my wife Patti, son Jesse, dog Rusty and a few close loved ones, writing is the most important thing in my life. It evolved out of being the thing I did best, using words to woo women and make people laugh and like me and giving vicious nicknames to kids I didn’t like much. I got praised for writing early and often enough to make it my focus and to place all my hopes & dreams for amounting to something in life into it."
"Then after a lifetime of trying, at age 52 my first novel got published, went platinum and made me rich and a bit famous. In other words I got VERY fuckin’ lucky.”
We probe him on what about his personal and professional life, namely what value does reading adds. His reply: “I’ve always been a reader but as a kid it was all comics and Mad magazine. I move my lips when I read, am very slow, but I can’t imagine NOT reading. I like so much of what I see younger writers doing on Prose and find much of it either just plain good, or at least very promising. And I’m not saying that just to suck-up. Mostly, at my age I don’t give a fuck what people think of me anyway. There’s some good writing happening here.”
We all want to know what he’s up to now and in the future. He happily informs us: “More of what I’ve been doing, poems in the here and now with some flashback shit probably, but mostly the state of my life/consciousness/experiences now. My wife calls what I write and the way I write “Blogetry”, which I think it pretty accurate. I’ll have a 2nd volume of Selected Poems coming out this Spring (working title, WHERE WE GOING WITH THIS?) My first vol came out last year, (WHERE’S THE FIRE?) I’m happy with both these books and I hope they attract an audience someday.”
Ever needy of assurances, Prose tugs on his sleeve and ask why he loves us so much: “I’ve already hit on this a bit. I love the young writers (and not-so-young ones) I’ve met here and trying to help them in their struggles to advance their craft. I like smart, pretty women who listen to me and treat me with kindness and appreciation. I love being able to post poems here and put links to them on Twitter so that I might be able to continue building audience and readers.”
Same question to him as to everyone: what book would he recommend everyone read before they die? His comeback: “Yep, STUCK IN NEUTRAL by…well…ME. Seriously, every human should read it; it’s fuckin’ awesome, just ask anyone who has ever read it.”
Prose asks if there is an unsung hero he would like to, well, sing about. There are more than one: “Quite a few actually, all my writing teachers, Kay Keyes, John Keeble, my friend poet Robert Sund. And I have a few loudly sung one’s too, Ken Kesey whom I had the honor to meet and visit with and listen to him talk about craft and life. And Bukowski, of course, my favorite writer/and especially poet.”
We ask him to describe himself in three words. Impossible: “Kind. Loving. Selfish. Generous. Formerly sexy. Smart. Inept. Recalcitrant. Atheistic. Sensual. Alcholic-lite. Anarcahistic. Socialist. Unwilling-to-obey-arbitrary rules like describing myself in three fuckin’ words.”
He gives us a quote that he feels epitomises him: “Yes there probably is…but I haven’t read it yet. Anyone who can be summed up in ‘one quote’ is a pretty simple motherfucker, which fits me to a tee, but, again, I don’t know that quote yet.”
Does he listen to music when he writes or reads?: “I rarely write/read to music. Mozart is the only one I can think of and that was back while writing STUCK IN NEUTRAL.”
The Prose Time Machine lands in that dreary and bookless dystopia once again. What does he say to them? Here’s what: "I don’t tell them shit! I ask “Where’s the nearest bar?” Same thing I’d say if there were books littering every inch of space. Actually yer describing a future I expect and am fine with (see below)”
Does he have a local Indie Bookstore he’d like to champion? “In Spokane, Aunties Bookstore is an institution but I feel books are dying, not writing, not stories, the power and importance of language, but the codex book, paper, ink, dead trees, fuck that—it’s all gonna be electric in the future…fine by me.”
We know he’s shy, so we force him to tell us anything else he’d like us to know. Here that is: “Not much really, most of my social media energy goes to Prose and @TTrueman on Twitter. I also publish some shit on @LitWeaverNews (that’s the Twitter handle, I think it’s Litweaver.com.) What more to know about me?”
“Nah, it’s all there in my work, the poems on Prose (I’ve posted close to 300 of them in the last couple years). I’ve been so much luckier than most. Like my editor at HarperCollins kids’ books said to me recently, “We had a hell of a run and a lot of people never get any run at all!” True words and I feel great gratitude for that truth. In the end, the work we leave behind us is all of ‘us’ that’s gonna be left and so we need to make it the best we can. I feel that I’m very fortunate to wake-up every day and hit it again, for the joy it brings me and, I hope, the bit of good it might do others.”
“Thanks for letting me carry-on. Like a friend once communicated by handing me a little packet of post-its with the quote, “But enough about me…whata you think of me?” Hey, maybe there’s that quote we were looking for earlier. LOL”
Thanks to Terry for that awesome, honest and funny interview. Get following him in the app where he is @T_E_Trueman or on Twitter as @TTrueman
Get interacting, he’s one of what makes Prose what it is. If you are an active Proser or know one you'd like to hear more about, drop us a line at info@theprose.com