Nothing Works, Everyone Labors: An Interview with Poet Lacluster by Sarah Carson

Nothing Works, Everyone Labors: An Interview with poet Lacluster

By Sarah Carson

Flint Performance poet Lacluster’s debut full-length collection Nothing Works, Everyone Labors is an unsympathetic portrait of what it means to live in Flint, Michigan in the 21^st century.

Published by NIC Publishing, an imprint Lacluster started himself to represent Rust Belt voices, the book is as honest as it is pleading. He writes of arson, desolation and love all with an eye toward what could be: “Sometimes / you have to sacrifice/ a house full of dreams/to find your real home even / if that means, / setting up camp on a / patch of new grass/ and re-imagining.”

I sat down with him at noon on a Sunday over Irish Breakfast shots at The Torch. As downtown church bells rang around us, we discussed the collection, what it meant to him to write it and what he thinks is next for the city he loves.

So what’s the name Lacluster about? Where did the name come from and why the choice to use a pseudonym?

A lot of people know my real name, so I’ve created this alter ego to separate myself from that – which a lot of poets, rappers, etc. do.

Although these poems are based around real issues, I use a pseudonym to separate myself as a real person from the persona who’s narrating the collection.

Lacluster relates to how people from Flint are viewed through the eyes of outsiders. If there is any association, it is typically negative — violence, no jobs, funky water, poverty. And young people live up to those negative stereotypes as underachievers partially to cope but also to carve out an identity.

What does Lacluster have in common with the real life author of these poems?

I would say that I have a sort of schizophrenic writing personality. You know, it’s me, and it’s not. What’s nice about having a kind of a pseudonym is that first and foremost people can’t judge you by your name. They have to read the book.

Let’s talk about the title. Where does Nothing Works, Everyone Labors come from and what does it mean in terms of what you want to communicate with this collection?

The title is a phrase from the poem “Most Dangerous Fame.” Part of living in Flint is constantly dealing with the disappointments and lack of opportunity. Either you settle for less, hustle harder and create those opportunities yourself, or you choose to move away. It speaks to the larger struggle to achieve a sense of progress in life while everything around you crumbles faster than you can repair it.

When you talk about “everything crumbling around you,” are you talking about Flint? Or are you talking about something more personal?

I think it’s scalable. I think the experience of living in this city — you have to just deal with the fact that every single day something horrible is going to be in the news. Everything we try to do in this town to move us forward always takes us two steps back.

Some people have this mentality that things are coming back: GM’s coming back. This town’s coming back. It’s going to be this big city, but any progress is actually a step backwards. Either it’s done lazily or it’s done incompetently.

It’s a constant flow of BS, you know?

So why write a book about that?

Why write a book about any time and place? To share it. To get it out there.  To show people that this is not just happening in Detroit, but that it’s something that could also come into their backyards.

We have problems that should be national news, but I don’t think they’re ever taken seriously because we live in the shadow of Detroit.

Fuck Detroit. Come to Flint. We have the same kind of problems, and we need the same solutions.

But the book doesn’t necessarily tell people come to Flint. Or do you think it does? What are you trying to do?

I’m just trying to paint a picture of what I feel as a citizen is how you experience daily life. I’m a huge booster for Flint. I always have been. But you can’t walk up and down the East Side or the North Side and say how pretty it is. It ain’t pretty.

The reality is, it's really challenging to live and do well here. And most people move away because there are other cities that have opportunities for advancement – including Detroit.

People come into Flint and see there’s nothing going on. But what is going on may be beyond their looking glass. So let’s take a peek at what really exists, at what I’d see if I was taking the bus all day.

I’m painting a place. I’m trying to say on a personal level, the city feels like this, and my own struggles feel like this, and they’re interrelated.

Why do you choose to write about Flint? What does it do for you? What do you hope people will take away from reading/hearing your work?

I write about Flint as a kind of exorcism because it can be a heavy burden to live here.

As an artist I want to bear some kind of witness even if my perspective is skewed. I hope people find something unexpected in this book or at least something that is true to its time and place.

Nothing Works, Everyone Labors can be purchased on Amazon. 

Flint Poems: Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan by Danny Rendleman

Cheese Lines, Flint, Michigan

Gray lines of women at the North Flint Plaza
Waiting their due, surplus cheese and butter
We can't use, the lines that shuffle
Down the weed-split sidewalks,
Past the boarded-up display windows
Of the Fair, United Shirt, Nobil Shoes,
While at the curb monstrous green Buicks
Idle and rust.  The day is overcast,
Threatening drizzle, feinting autumn
And further calamity.  I drive by, this,
My old neighborhood, this shopping center
Our hangout, a pack of Luckies secreted
Behind a loose brick, our leather jackets
With The Royals on the back,
Our pointed Flagg Bros. shoes, and duck ass hair.
We the pioneers.  These the women we went
To school with who never moved away,
Whom we never spoke to, let alone dated,
Or whom we desired, but never let on.

Flint, a city as hard and abrupt as its
Quick-bitten name.  Home of Chevy-in-the-Hole,
Where men like my father got used to days
Etched thin and gritty as Mohawk vodka
And steel shavings in their aching hands
And little wretched patches of back-yards
Where they maybe played catch
With their kids before the noon whistle.
See how easily those women are forgotten?
Even in poems devoted to their bad luck.

— Danny Rendleman

Flint Profiles: Sarah Carson

I was happy to discover the poetry of Flint Expatriate Sarah Carson over the holidays. She has two chapbooks — Before OnStar and Twenty-Two — both available on Amazon.  

One of my favorites is In Buick City:

GG inherited the Buick when Mrs. Sacco died, though she hasn't driven it in years. The last time was the morning that little boy followed her home from the grocery store, acted like he had a gun in the lining of his jacket, and told her to hand over her pocketbook. Since then she's kept the car in the garage between the tool bench and the riding mower, climbing in every so often to turn on the radio or admire the chrome around the speedometer. There's a sticker inside the driver's side door says it was made downtown on Leith Street before OnStar, before the hundred thousand mile power train warranty. When Uncle Robert has nothing else to drive, he’ll come pick it up and use it to run his errands. He says he’s surprised how smooth the ride still is.  He thinks it’s cause the car gets so little use, doesn’t drive downtown on the cobblestones or around the potholes on the freeway. I think it’s just cause some things aren’t ever really as bad as they seem.

Although it's not always explicit, her experiences in Flint heavily influence her work."I was born in Flint, but raised in Flushing," she said. "Both my father and grandfather worked at General Motors, and seeing my father's experience with the factory had a huge impact on me. Many of my most vivid childhood memories revolve around the factory — whether it was waiting in traffic on 475 to pick up dad from work or visiting the factory on Take Your Daughter to Work Day or watching my dad deal with the loss of his friends who died or were seriously injured in accidents on the factory floor. After college, I moved back to Flint and lived on the South Side in the Cody School Neighborhood. I left in 2007 and moved to Chicago where I still live. My mother and I, though, are now fixing up a house in Carriage Town — Mayor Ray Brownell's old house across the street from Atwood Stadium!"