Arthur Powell Interview
Skirmishes in the Atrium
I am really grateful that I was able to “sit down” with Arthur Powell to talk about his new poetry chapbook Skirmishes in the Atrium. In addition to short, imaginative, and powerful poems, he includes essays that guide the readers thoughts in each section.
Arthur is a long time online friend who was very encouraging and welcoming to me when I first started a project similar to this one. In 2019 I was posting on Twitter about Moldbug and Nick Land (and others) as if their projects started in 2019 and while Arthur was surely bemused by this, he nevertheless offered helpful guidance along the way. I also admire his writing because he also sits down to write with a clear idea he wants you to understand and he doesn’t beat around the bush with flowery adornments; he doesn’t try to show off, but this is not because there is nothing to see.
Links to Arthur’s projects:
Here you can purchase the delightful Skirmishes in the Atrium which we discuss below.
His first chapbook Horizons of Iron.
His poetry journal (which you should submit poetry to) Atop the Cliffs.
His Substack.
His X account.
MCC: I think that the titles of books are important; your title is intriguing—what is the significance of the title: "Skirmishes in the Atrium”?
Arthur Powell: Titles are important, in fact many times I have finished a poem and felt happy only to then become deeply troubled by what it should in fact be titled. As for the chapbook's title, Skirmishes in the Atrium, it felt fitting by nature of the fact that so much of what we are engaged in now feels like small scale engagements. We aren't in the heart of things but still fighting forward. In the same way the growing artistic movement from the wider sphere is just beginning. We are starting to skirmish and engage in battle in this realm.
MCC: I just spent a lot of time looking at the beautiful cover of your book. Can you say a little about what you wanted the artist to convey through the image? Is the modern soldier contemplating the change that technology has made to the life of the warrior? How much has changed between Rome and now with respect to the warrior's life and what has stayed the same?--that strikes me as the question that the cover is asking.
AP: Theodric S Taylor did a fantastic job with the cover, he was a pleasure to work with and others considering publishing would be remiss not to look at him for their artwork needs. One of the themes you alluded to in the book is that of warriors, and past battles. I was drawn to attempting to recapture those battles in the poems but wanted to acknowledge the more modern evolution as well. Too often people in our space are always looking backward without an eye to the future or even the present. The older soldier is an amalgamation of styles that Theodoric put together. It's not historically accurate and isn't meant to be. Rather he's a blending of different warriors and cultures. Note the Swiss Guard inspired bottom half contrasting with the Greco-Roman helmet. I think your understanding of the cover is entirely valid, good art has an element of subjective interpretation to it. To me technology is a force that has fundamentally changed all realms of life, warfare and soldiering is very different today but at the core there is something that burns eternal between a soldier who died in 1944 in battle and one who died in 1544 or even 44 ad.
MCC: In your opening essay, you mention that Dominique Venner places the Iliad as a kind of equal to the Bible for the West / Europe. Homer is a poet who writes about warriors. Much of your poetry is about the warrior and his spirit (though some of it is about writers, among many other things). Going back to one of our previous conversations, which type of man is higher, rarer, or more important: the warrior or the poet?
AP: Venner would perhaps even go further and say the Iliad is more important than the Bible - at least this is my understanding of his underlying beliefs from what I have read, a curious position for someone who ended his life in the Notre Dame. I think to even attempt an answer at your question here is to first understand how we arrive at the idea of the 'warrior-poet' as a concept. This is at once a Romantic notion and a historical one (as evidenced by Homer). The warrior in isolation is the violence of man perfected. He is action. He is might makes right, the law of the jungle. The poet is the chronicler, the historian, the bard. He is the teller of tales who enchants men and holds them captive before the flickering light of the fire. The warrior-poet is the idea of melding these two forces - something we see actually develop in feudal Europe as a way to tame the excesses of the Knightly class. This of course was chivalry and the idea of a code that gave restraint to the excesses of the warrior who ever wished to be on the warpath. In truth though I think in our tamed age true warriors are rarer than ever, but poets, as chroniclers and keepers of the flame during this darkness, might be more important. Violence and the warrior spirit is innately biological and it will arise, and I think elements of poetry must be cultivated.
MCC: I should emphasize that the poems in this book are really enjoyable; I say this as a late comer to enjoying poetry. Epic poetry has always been enjoyable to me, but lyric poetry often leaves me thinking that it is bad philosophy that could have been expressed better without all of the ornamentation. Camille Paglia's book Burn, Break, Blow played a big role for me in eliminating this unfortunate prejudice. The poems in the first part of your chapbook seem to me to emphasize the body--the first section is after all called "Blood." In at least three of the poems in that section, you mention hands / gloves--I don't know why I found this so striking, but I know that when I read those poems, I immediately looked at my hands and somehow felt them and remembered different times that they were wounded; you also talk about sight a lot, in addition to tears. I don't know exactly what I'm driving at, but did you wish to express some sort of insight about our embodied nature or something along those lines?
AP: It is interesting to hear your old perception of lyric poetry - a lot of what passes for modern poetry unfortunately doesn't even rise to the level of bad philosophy it is so firmly rooted in shallow solipsism instead. As you say, the title of that first section is simply BLOOD. To me these poems were rooted in blood and the physical. They are meant to be felt deep within you and speak to what was spilled across the centuries. Conjuring physical memories for me is one of the more potent inspirations for poems. As much as we tell a story with words, we live our lives with our hands. Rereading the poems you mention, the hand is a gateway to an experience conveyed within them, though this was not deliberate at the time. Truthfully as well I am captured by the symbolism and connection between blood and years. They are not easily brought forth (or should not be) and when they appear it signals a kind of vulnerability, a realization of what life fundamentally is about: struggle.
MCC: Section 2 of the book is called "Nature." As far as I can tell, the only technology that I detect in the poems in this section include: a shelter, cloaks, a knife, and the ability to manipulate fire in a knowledgeable manner. What effect does technology have on the poet for good or for ill? Is the intentional omission of advanced technology here meant to convey something about how we should live now?
AP: The future will be dominated by those of us who can set and maintain limits on the ever increasingly destructive technologies we invent. If you recall a few years ago you'd read numerous articles about how the Silicon Valley tech elite were sending their children to schools that forbid tablets and laptops. The technology we have burdened ourselves with is incredibly dangerous - truly in a free-market environment without any guidance it is bringing the worst out of people. There is a reflex for many conservative types to be mocked for saying 'things are worse today' but the evidence really has stacked up in obvious ways. The normal person is hyper-online, not just in the Frog Twitter user sense of things. We're all stuck playing these games with these horrendous machines. I won't go on but probably the best book about this is by Neil Postman - Technolopy. One reason it is so good is he wrote it before the current crop of technologies evolved and so it really captures the core of the issues without being distracted by the shiny novelty of the current year.
As for the poet we can distill it into how we write and how we interact. The keyboard is just a version of the typewriter, I'm not prepared to say the best poems must be written with pens or pencils (especially as composition fundamentally is the domain of the mind). That being said, something is gained by writing by hand - crossing out words, using the pencil to jot ideas. As a technology that is an extension of our mind the pen and pencil scribbler has some uniqueness to it that may benefit the poet. In terms of consumption though we live in a visual age. The aforementioned technologies are the most damaging to us because they are visual - mirrors. We look at screens NOT to read words but to see pictures or moving pictures. Violence, pornography, mundanity - anything that is visual is appealing in a way the written is not. This is the challenge the poet faces - it can be overcome perhaps with spoken verses. I have seen some of *our guys* do well with readings of past greats and their own - poetry should be heard and spoken of course. I'm not sure what the domination of the visual age means for poets, in the past I have experimented with shorter poems superimposed on top of images but it felt forced to me, inorganic.
MCC: That is extremely helpful! In the third section, your introductory essay continues with the theme of why we should not worship ashes--and it goes further in insisting that we "tell stories of our time." And in this section, the poems do engage much more directly with moral opinions and idols of our time, from Trump, to America, to eggs, and to whether or to what extent the Dissident Right is sufficiently coherent in its vision. Do you see this kind of poetry as polemical, hopefully timeless, or a mixture of both? This might be my inexperience with poetry creeping in, but the poems from the first two sections struck me as more potentially timeless in theme, whereas the poems from the third section, "Energy," are fun, but they seem to presuppose knowledge of online discourse, etc.
AP: One of the bigger debates that has happened, is perhaps still happening, is the argument over the political in art. Broadly speaking there are two camps. The first are those who think good art can be political (perhaps there is even a duty for it to be political) and we should make fundamentally political art. The second camp swing the other way so much they reject that any political art can be good art. Like most positions both are wrong at the extremes and I knew and know people from both camps, and of course they will accept there is some nuance, but broadly speaking the latter camp reject political art outright. To me this is somewhat of a mistake because I think we are people of our time and our circumstance, moreover these are shared experiences. The main problem and cheapness of popular contemporary poetry is that it is insular and myopic. Some of those poems do require knowledge of the scene or a certain contemporary event, that means they may be lost to the passage of time or perhaps used as a primary source by a future historian charting this movements evolution. I'm ok with that, famously the Japanese value the beauty of the cherry blossom season in part because it is fleeting. We in the West share an appreciation for the moment and that it may not last forever is not in and of itself a dead end.
One of my poems makes reference to Enoch Powell and to the current Prime Minister of the UK - Rishi Sunak. Certainly I don't wish to be remembered for such poems but they exist because they are the cutting commentary I wish to share with the wider world about the situation. Noble Red, an English poet, has written similarly political poems and his made me smile in the moment. That my great grandchildren might be perplexed and require extensive context does not invalidate it now - and if anything, if the poem is well composed on a very superficial level we gain some enjoyment from the rhythm and rhymes. For people interested in other poets who are both explicit and implicit Leo Yankveich and Juleigh Howard-Hobson have books to check out. The notion that engaging in politically motivated art somehow sullies the art form itself exists because of the propaganda regimes of the mid twentieth century. If something is bad it can be bad art because it is propaganda but also for a myriad of other reasons.
This is a long winded way to say that timelessness is a quality that may make the best poetry but we are uniquely placed to document the experience of our world at this time and now and should not entirely shy away from doing so.
MCC: The final part of the book is called "Anger." When one looks at the world today, it is difficult not to be angry at how many foolish or ugly things that have been done. What are the proper or most productive objects of anger today? How helpful is it to be angry (some of the poems here point to impotent men or to midwits or to betrayers; they seem like they could be sources of anger)? Many of your essays that I've read over the years do not point to you being an angry man; you are often exhorting others in light of your disappointment with their approach, but you aren’t angry. I have always admired your writing style for being concise and it seems to me that the angry person likes to indulge their anger and so writes quite a lot. If I'm not mistaken, your section on anger is your shortest section.
AP: In spite of everything, I remain an optimist most of the time. One reason ideas like the Kali Yuga have become powerful memes is because they offer a wider explanation - that this age is a cursed one but that does not inhibit your own ability to live well within it. For all his other flaws "Ride the Tiger" is the message most take from Evola and this is a healthy one. At heart I am broadly Nietzschean in orientation - there is the most value in struggle and overcoming. Anger can be a part of that driving force but as you point out, to wallow in it becomes destructive. It is the shortest section because of that. Some of the worst poems I've seen have been too transparently about the author's anger. In terms of channeling that anger the best outlets are the ones that take you away from the helplessness of anger. Angry people tend to make mistakes and are often too emotionally driven in the moment, this is where the connection between body and mind is important to understand. I've started gym sessions 'angry' but at the start they are not productive, rather there is a process of leaving the anger behind to focus on moving the weight or fighting the person that needs to take place. Of course, with online discourse it is easy to just continue to become angrier and angrier because it is such a passive form of consumption and there is a strong element of anger as being a performative force. It demonstrates to those around us a loss of emotional control but when we become angry in the vacuum of the online abstract world there is nothing to temper us or even shame us from the behavior was demonstrate.
MCC: Last question: there is a LOT more to say about your wonderful volume, but is there anything that I didn't ask about or that is burning in your soul that you wish we could have discussed or any parting words that you would like to deliver?
AP: There are few things I want to say, some about the volume and the poems and another wider comment to leave your audience with. For me, some of these poems have a mystic element - by that I mean an attempt was made by myself to break down some barriers with the natural world towards the super natural. The realm of imagination is this but here was something more - it's almost silly to write about but some of the poems that touch on Pagan themes of faith appeared as if a dream. Likewise, I spent a good while just meditating on the idea of what steppe life was like to write a poem about some forgotten warrior's death. The difficulty of poetry is that so much effort and thought ends up going into something of comparative simplicity. The aim of some of these poems is to transport in a fleeting moment the reader to another time or place, I am not sure how successful I ultimately was, but I think more and more of life is about echoes and small moments. Life can be hard, unbearably so at times, but learning to take the small pleasure of appreciating the sun upon the face or marveling at a sunset is powerful. These are to some people mundane everyday experiences but once you step past a barrier they are so much more. Language as a shared game is what poetry can be, just look at the game of Twitter - it is how you and I know each other and many other people. Through small thoughts shared rapidly, for all my previous critique of this as a visual age most people here on this side of things ended up here through reading.
The final point I want to leave the audience with is to some extent what holds people back is their inability to act. Whilst my poetry is now contained in two slender volumes, I originally just started a poetry journal to try and find other poets who rejected what modern poetry had become. The first poem I published on there was my own (of course) back in 2017. Stay the course. I was not the one to break through and propel dissident art and so someone like Lomez with his Passage Prize takes the accolades for that, but it all counts together. Too often I think people are still paralyzed in a passing culture of witty repartees or endless critiquing. We start now by building loose organizations that one day may end up as true institutions - networking is a part of that. I expect we will see much more now being built and ultimately, I am happy to see myself as just someone who was on the ground floor, helping lay a foundation for others to exceed and truly succeed.
Previous Classical Conversations:
Kruptos on building a parallel polity, the enframing of thinking by technology, and the loss of virtue.
Nobody on the core differences between ancient and modern poets, poetry vs. philosophy, and possibilities for the contemporary poet.
Lance Legion on contemporary military officer education, Romans vs. Greeks, Agamemnon, Julius Caesar, and the relation between Christianity / Vitalism.
Jeremy Carl on Hungary, right wing environmentalism, immigration, and Christian nationalism.
Space Age Maximalist on engineers as aristocrats of the future, technological optimism, and how to merge scientific and humanistic thinking.
William Wheelwright on agriculture preceding culture, a vision for a new school, and Homer’s Iliad.
Phocaean Dionsyius on Aristocratical Christianity (our second conversation on this)
David Azerrad on the American founding, a diagnostic account of the contemporary situation, and thoughts about how to move forward.
Always good to see something from Arthur. He's doing good work to foster the creation of culture in our thing.
Very excited to see AP on here! Jealous that you can call him a friend!