By Doug Holder

Kevin Carey has the rugged and weathered appearance of someone who has worked with his hands and knows the mean streets, not a man who teaches poetry under the shade of the academy. And indeed Carey came to writing and teaching late in life. He writes what he knows, and that is himself, and the environs he grew up in-- the scruffy seaside city of Revere, Mass.

Kevin Carey teaches in the English Department at Salem State University and Endicott College. He has published two books—a chapbook of fiction The Beach People, from Red Bird Chapbooks (2014) and a book of poetry, The One Fifteen to Penn Station (Cavankerry Press, 2012). He has recently completed a documentary film about New Jersey poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, called All That Lies Between Us,” and a new collection of poems, Jesus Was a Homeboy (CavanKerry Press, 2016). I had the pleasure to interview him on my Somerville Community Access TV show Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.K

Doug Holder: Would you be comfortable with the label of poet of the working class?

Kevin Carey: I think so. I'd like to think that is a world I know. I am comfortable writing about these issues—these people. I would be pleased to be identified with this.

DH: Do you ever write about different folks—different sensibilities?

KC: I don't know if I have written a lot of other things. I write mainly about my own life. A friend of mine said: '” I may not be much, but it is all I think about.” I waeaching being complimentary to writing—I wonder if I would be better off with a day job that had nothing to do with writing. Because I spend a lot of mental energy on both. With teaching you are always thinking about the craft. If I was stocking shelves I wouldn't be thinking of writing. I am usually able to generate work when I am teaching.

KC: Why do you feel MFA programs are valuable for writers?

KC: In my own case I got a lot of feedback. You need to be proactive. You are surrounded by wonderful writers—I tell students use it for connections and what you can learn from others.s thinking if I was going to write another book, I would have to look at other things to write about.

DH: You got your MFA and MA when you were in your 40s. What took you so long?

KC: I had young kids. I dabbled in writing. I liked the idea of being a writer, but I wasn't writing. My idea of a writer was someone sitting in cafes in Paris—living the bohemian life. I never really led that life. When I started to write seriously, I wrote about a lot of different things. Eventually writing became a job, another day at work. Once you feel you are in the writing world it is hard to get out of it. You can't really stop doing it—because you really love it. I sometimes say I am not going to write something for a week but then two days later I am writing something. It is a blessing and curse. And you have to develop a thick skin—there are usually a lot more rejections than acceptance when you start out and beyond.

DH: You went to get your MFA in New Jersey, and feel under the spell of the poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan of Patterson, NJ. I know William Carlos Williams and Allen Ginsberg and other poets came from there—a sort of Patterson School of Poets.

KC: Well I had friends who were New Jersey poets and they would go on retreats with Maria. I went, and I found out that we wrote poems from Friday to Sunday. I also found I really liked her as a person. She looked at poetry as a way of per serving history. Her poetry is about people, places, and things that happened to her while she was growing up. She made her life into narrative poetry. There is something about Patterson, N.J. that is really interesting. You see the city come alive in her poetry. It certainly has been the birthplace of some great poets. So there is something about Patterson and its urban life. There is a certain way poetry is treated there.

DH: Your new chapbook of short stories Beach People takes place in your hometown of Revere, Mass. It is written in a prose/poetry fashion. Why did you choose to do this?

KC: I am not sure how it first came to me. I had the idea that I had to capture these moments—in a brief manner. I never spent much time with one of the character studies without going on to something else. The book consists of these short snippets of these Revere characters that felt really wonderful to me.

DH: These Beach People are a rich mother lode of material. And they live and work on a spit of land near the ocean. Do you think the expanse of ocean provides a horizon to their dead end lives?

KC: I suppose it could be a horizon, but it also can be a place that these people are never going to get to. I think the ocean always does that. I think it could work either way.

DH: Have any of the folks portrayed in the book—recognized themselves?

KC: I haven't heard anything. The characters are often combined among two or three different people. There are a lot of fictional aspects to these characters—so people may not recognize themselves. The

DH: In your book of poetry The One Fifteen to Penn Station, in your title poem , you write about about your experience of travailing on a train from Boston to New York City. I always find trains a great place to write, travel and ponder one's existence. You are in sort of limbo between two points, neither here or there.

KC: I just love trains. I think they are very cinematic. In this form of traveling there is less rush—you slow down. It has a sit-back quality—everything will take its time. I love to look at the passing neighborhoods—the street scenes.

DH: How does teaching help or hinder your work?

KC: I think the experience of teaching certainly helps writing. I don't write as mu