Q. How’d you think to combine the two forms? What came first: The fiddling or the poetry? What led you to become a fiddling poet?

--Asked by a journalist

Ken's Answer

Back at Duke, I majored in Management Sciences, but took literature classes and a couple of Creative Writing classes as electives. I even wrote a story from that time that I kept, and which eventually got published. So I was writing then, and had it in my mind to continue to write sometime.

After graduating, all I knew was I didn’t want to go into any kind of business. I was teaching tennis in the summers, taught the summer after I graduated, then spent a year traveling with a tennis camp pal. That year we had little money, but plenty of time. I read a lot, but also would find these little antique shops, and buy old postcards. The things can cost a fair bit now, but in the late 70’s you could pick up some really interesting old cards for a nickel or a dime, maybe a quarter or fifty cents at most. I had no money, but I had a little, and of course, I fancied myself as having the best of taste. So I’d find the postcard rack or postcard box at every shop, spend an hour flipping through the collection, would choose the ten or twenty strangest, most unusual cards, and pay my dollar or two.

Sometimes in the afternoons, but lots of times in the evenings, I’d find an appropriate bar, order a beer, often a black coffee too, spread out my cards, and write to friends. The postcards limited what I could say, so they were short, but I filled them, I hoped, with everything interesting that was going on, whether that day, or even that moment. Part travel chronicle maybe, part stream-of-conscious journal. If I saw that writing now, it would probably embarrass me, though I’d guess they’d have a peculiar energy about them that might be fun. I have no idea. But at least I was writing.

The following winter in Boston, hanging out with my girlfriend Frannie, I worked a number of odd jobs, took a writing workshop in Cambridge, and managed two or three new stories, which received positive responses from readers. I wanted to write but, despite taking the class, I struggled finishing pieces. I just didn’t quite know how, must not have been ready.

Then I didn’t write for several years. Frannie had joined the Peace Corps and I had vague plans to teach tennis in the Southwest. Visiting a friend for one night in Durham, North Carolina, my old college town, I spent a week, then two. I ended up spending the next four and half years in the area. My true college education I call it, working in a bookstore for a year, then waiting tables, getting introduced to string-band music, picking up the fiddle, seeing most every bar band passing through town.

One night at the bookstore, I picked up a collection of short stories by a familiar name, but not a writer I’d previously read, Delmore Schwartz. When I read the title story, “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities,” I was amazed. I wished I’d written that story, and soon after came up with an idea of my version of the same. Instead of the character confronting his parents on the screen in a dream movie theater, in mine I’d have the character confront his parents in the course of a surreal auction, the possessions of his life being held up for bid.

For four years I imagined this plot, but it wasn’t until I moved to Seattle in the autumn of 1984 that I wrote the story, or I should say labored it through completion. Nothing great, but at least I’d written it out of my system. A few months later, trying to keep distance from a woman, I wrote a story called “Mushrooms,” about arriving in Seattle and about some mushroom picking I’d done that fall near Bellingham to the north. I felt as if I’d found my voice. Not only did the story seem to flow from some deeper place, but it was a place I was sure I could return to. I felt I’d somehow become a writer. In the next months I applied and was accepted to the graduate Creative Writing program at University of Alaska Fairbanks, and I moved to the Alaskan Interior.

The program was small those years and workshops were cross-genre, meaning in one class there were poets, fiction writers, and non-fiction writers all sharing pieces. I was introduced to work I wouldn’t have been reading otherwise. I graduated three years later, having written enough short stories for my master’s thesis, though I’d also started writing poems. Some of the professors didn’t think much of my first efforts—I remember one of the poets on campus remarking that I showed real promise as a fiction writer and I’d be best served if I immediately quit trying whatever it was I thought poetry was. Fellow classmates were more supportive. I left having written maybe two or three dozen serviceable poems.

Those same three years in Fairbanks, I continued scraping along the fiddle. In my cabin I had a cheap little cassette player, and while I didn’t listen to a lot of music, I did listen to some, and when I did it was always old-time fiddling. Each weekend there were also a couple of excellent radio programs that I was sure to listen to—in fact, my last two years I was an occasional disk jockey myself—so even though I was somewhat isolated, I was keeping up with what was new. My second summer, I remember, it seemed all those years of playing everyday with little improvement finally started paying off. A friend of a friend had moved to town. He was a fiddler, needed a place to stay, and so he spent a few nights at my place. He showed me a trick or two with the bowing. It wasn’t all that much of a trick, but it was something I’d never have thought of, but could do without much trouble. I’d hardly had to practice it, don’t even know if how I adapted the technique was accurate, but it made me start sounding better, like someone who’d call themselves a fiddler.

I began playing even more, which was right around the time I started writing poems as well as stories. I liked how poems were short and could be about anything, even fiddle music. So, even from the beginning, there were references to the music in the poetry.

Two years after graduating Fairbanks, I was teaching for a year in Sitka as a visiting assistant professor. Part of any teaching job on campus is to offer service. On campus then, once in the fall semester, once in the spring, and once off campus in the town library, I offered literary readings. By then, of the seventy or eighty poems I’d written, more than a dozen mentioned fiddle music, including a few I felt compelled to read: one about washing dishes without running water, one about a banjo-playing friend in Fairbanks who’d recently passed away, one about fiddle music in Kentucky. It felt natural after reading these poems to put the sheet of writing away, pick up the fiddle, and play something that referred back to the poem. The next two years in Nome, I continued writing lots of poems and played lots of fiddle. I felt I really progressed in both crafts, and when I did two or three events each year on campus, I was sure to combine the fiddling with the poetry. I’d also take my fiddle when I visited villages, and even learned to use the fiddle as a prompt for various writing exercises.

Then I got sick, had to quit work, and didn’t play music for almost three years. I did write a lot of poems in that time. Not many about fiddle music, but some, including a poem titled “Old-Time Fiddle Lesson,” and another, “Village Fiddle.” And back in Nome, I’d written poems such as, “Learning Banjo,” “Music Party,” and “Midnight,” which celebrated the music. When I started playing again, it evolved into performance in order to make money. When performing, I strived for unity, so it made sense to consciously decide to read certain poems, which would lend themselves to fiddle tunes. In the early 90’s, I accidentally made up a couple of my own tunes. Later in the decade, after the hiatus, I found myself making up more, including fiddle tunes to go with poems I’d already written, like “A Week in Eek” and “Burnt Down House.”

I played solo the first number of years, occasionally would play publicly with an accompanist, like my pal Woody in Colorado. Once I met Andrea Cooper in 1999, it formalized how the fiddling and poetry could work with other instrumentation. That led to the first CD in 2000, which naturally led to a second, then a third. For the fourth, I’ve made a double-CD: one which continues to combine the fiddling and the poetry, one to show off the fiddle tunes I’ve continued to make up and how they sound with a four or five-piece band. Not so surprisingly, I gave that double-CD the very literal title, All Originals, All Traditionals. Almost simultaneously with that fourth CD, I released a fifth, Fiddling Poets on Parade, a children’s record, which documents some of what I do in schools and for children’s concerts. All the others always had something or other that could be inappropriate for youngsters. That children’s CD was recorded in Chicago with my friend, Jordan Wankoff, and the members of one of the bands he plays with there. Almost a year later, I released a sixth CD, As the World Burns. It’s full of political material and it’s the first project where the CD and the book share the same title. They’re not exactly the same, but it’s also the first one where all the poems recited on the CD aren’t available on the CD—I figure if people want the poems on the page, for this one they can buy the book. I’m still figuring out ways I can stretch the genre and don’t think I’m through with it yet. 

Q. Have you ever thought of getting on A Prairie Home Companion?

--Asked by friends, acquaintances, people I’ve just met after one of my shows

Ken's Answer

Funny you should ask. Back when I was living in Fairbanks, I listened regularly, and enjoyed the show. I haven’t listened as much in recent years, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know that it’s out there, or that I don’t want to get on it. I think it was the poet, Billy Collins, who just a few years ago was the country’s poet laureate who can trace the rise of his popularity to appearing on the show several times.

I figure everybody who asks whether I’d ever thought of getting on the show think that my mix of fiddling, poetry, and talk would be a good fit.

It probably is, but here’s what little I know.

Everybody wants to get on the show, so it’s very very competitive, like most everything else in this business. I think it was 1999 or 2000, when I was still in Anchorage, that I first wrote one of the producers, introducing myself—probably 1999, since I didn’t have a CD out, or a full-length collection poetry collection.

Several months later I received a thank-you, and that they were keeping my information on file.

Now I’ve only performed in the Twin Cities twice, but each time it was at one of the better venues in town, once at The Loft Literary Center, the other time at The Cedar Cultural Center. At the time, A Prairie Home Companion had its offices in the Minnesota Public Radio Building in St. Paul. In town, working gigs, I dutifully found my way to the building, hand-delivered press kits with CDs, letting them know that I knew where they were, I guess, and letting them know I was still interested in being invited sometime.

A couple of years ago I was at a conference, and saw a familiar name on a tag—it was the producer of the program, or, as I found out, the former producer. When I introduced myself, she knew exactly who I was, recalled that I’d dropped off materials, and said they had me in mind for when they’d next do a show in Alaska.

But I’m hardly in Alaska these days and I can do material that’s not specific to the place, I wanted to say, but remembered she’d just told me she was no longer working there, so held the thought.

The past few years I’ve sent letters and e-mails every several months—I’m always reminded whenever someone asks me if I’ve ever thought of appearing. This past February, looking up their website, I saw A Prairie Home Companion was doing an early May show in Mitchell, South Dakota at the Corn Palace there. Interesting, I thought, since I was going to be in South Dakota in March, and late April was in Montana, not exceptionally far away. If there was interest, I could easily appear, and it wasn’t far out of my way.

Maybe I’ll write, I thought, and then did write them a few days later after waking up one morning and making up a sonnet titled “Each Week from the Prairie” which was dedicated to Mr. Garrison Keillor and was about him and the show. A successful poem, I thought, and writing it showed me I must really want to be on the show. Previously, I’d written a sequence of sonnets about writers; now I had one more. I included the poem in the query, and included others in the sequence, just to let them know I wasn’t meaning to be hopelessly fawning by writing it and including it.

A few weeks later I followed up with an e-mail, and received a response that the show had received my materials, and if there was interest, they would contact me. I never heard anything about the South Dakota date, but I did send them some of my clippings from the newspapers there, and let them know I’d read the poem there, and it had gone over well.

A few summers ago, I heard A Prairie Home Companion was taking a cruise to Alaska. Though I queried several times, I never heard back, so I have to assume my Alaska credentials don’t seem sufficient. More recently, I actually met Mr. Keillor briefly in Memphis when we both appeared at the Southern Festival of Books. It was between sessions and he was obviously busy and preoccupied. I don’t believe I made much of an impression.

Will I ever be invited to appear?

I’ve done what I could, and am just going along with my business. Next time I work in Minneapolis or St. Paul, I’ll let the staff of the radio show know.

So, yes, I’ve thought of getting on the show. But that doesn’t mean I’ll ever make it there, no matter how good of a fit it would seem.   

Ken's Answer

It’s all an accident. I’d never have come close to doing this if I hadn’t gotten sick in Nome, which necessitated giving up full-time work for a time. Returning to health, I had poems I thought were worth sharing, and I also had the fiddle. I wouldn’t be doing one without the other. While some people might be comfortable reading poems for an hour, I’m not. The poems are good, I think, but they’re just poems. The fiddling works like a bite of a cracker at a wine-tasting, to clean the palate between sips, or, in my case, as an interlude between poems. Or when I’m performing with an accompanist, the music is a back-up to the poem. But I’m careful that it’s not just any poem. It just happens that I have poems that work with music, so instead of having to face words straight-on, one after another, it becomes sideways, which both lightens and deepens the effect. I’ve had so many people say they’d never have expected it to work, but then they find it not only does, they wonder why more people aren’t doing it. I don’t know why more people don’t; it’s what I’ve learned to do.

I’ve also learned to tell stories—though I never think of it as storytelling (unless someone wants to hire me as one; then, by God, I’m a storyteller). They’re just informal anecdotes to introduce a poem or fiddle tune, but it’s one more thing to vary the pacing. There’s the set language of the poems—and even though my poems are relaxed, I think, they feel pretty tight. Then there’s the improvisational nature of the storytelling. And then there’s the fiddling. As I do this more, I find sometimes it works to read a narrative poem word-by-word, and sometimes it works to begin reading a poem, then interrupt to go into a story, and then return to the poem. Sometimes it works to leave the poem altogether and just tell the story. It depends on a particular setting, as well as my mood. It’s so odd. I’ll try to get a job at some place or other and the presenter will say: what you do will never work; we like our readings straight, without any music. And I have to bite my tongue to say what I really think, which is of course, if you’re going to pay me the budget I know you have, I’m happy to put my fiddle away—I’ll read you nature poems, place poems, family poems, sad poems, happy poems, funny poems, heartbreaking poems, whatever poems you like; no, I don’t need to play fiddle, but I do have it and am happy to play it, and it makes sense to pick it up just because I can and people attending get a kick out of it and then listen to the next poem with renewed attention. But I don’t say any of that, just try to politely point out the obvious, which is that just because I’m a fiddler doesn’t mean I’m not a poet, and, yes, I can put away the fiddle and just read poems if you’d like.

But I’ve wandered from your question.

One thing that’s odd is that I used to think in my thirties that in my fifties I’d be some kind of lecturer or author—sure, call it a visiting artist or a performer—traveling here and there to do events. But I never thought that entailed spending my forties learning how, and dealing with so many professional frustrations en route. I never thought that for a minute. Still, despite the difficulties, in some strange way, every step I’ve taken, this has seemed the easier path to follow. Once I got sick in Nome, I was on a path to get well. That was the hardest part: regaining my health. And to do so, I did what I felt I had to do. The next step was deciding whether to stay in Seattle or return to Alaska. It just seemed easier not to look for a full-time professor job and to continue writing and teaching, to see if my Alaska connections would pay off. They did in a sense, I guess, but never in the way I’d have suspected. Step-by-step I wandered into this field, where I combined writing, performing, teaching, and touring.

I pursued reasonable opportunities that would have allowed me to work where I lived. That was easiest. For whatever reason, they didn’t work out. Next easiest was to pursue opportunities a little further away, which oddly did lead to successes that eluded me close to home. But to take advantage, the easy way was to move, and to keep on moving. I could have done something else, I suppose, and when I was near bankruptcy prior to my plane crash settlement, I thought I might have to wait tables again, like I had in my mid-twenties. It never came to that. Always, it just seemed easiest to continue what I was doing, even if that meant dealing with other kinds of changes, like travel, and making CDs. Now I’m at a point that I’m regularly receiving $1500, $2500, $4000, or more for events. That’s a lot of money, and I’m grateful, but it’s not that much money, since there are weeks, and months, that I have no income. Not only am I not getting rich, but I’m in pretty deep debt. Yet what’s the alternative? Even if I found a job where I was making $50/hour, for a forty hour week, that’s $2000. There’s something to be said for making that same amount in a single day, doing what I enjoy, possibly making a lasting difference in someone’s life.

Am I worth it? $1500, $2500, whatever a day, and I’m underpaid in a country that pays professional athletes and corporate executive obscene wages. But I also know people doing holy work for $10, $20, or $30 per hour, for hour after hour after hour. In spite of the debt, I’m lucky to be doing what I do.

I’m afraid I’m still not answering your question, though maybe I am. Somewhere I ought to admit that, yes, I’m ambitious with all this. I don’t know why; I really don’t. And I don’t know what it means. But that’s a part of it. I’m driven to do this somehow. I have the energy to work all the time. I’d like to make a difference. I’d like people to read the poems, listen to the fiddling, learn a little more about Alaska, admire some of the artistry of what I’ve done. Maybe, too, it’s the legacy of my parents who did what they could. My father, the big shot businessman. My mother, who’d paint, play the piano, and take me to the library. Their awful marriage made growing up around them a messy thing. Maybe I’m doing all this to be noticed, and loved—not that it’s working, mind you, or that it makes any sense in the least. I’m just trying to figure the answer out as I go along. 

Ultimately, every path has difficulties, and though we’d like to think differently, we’re here temporarily, doing what we do. I find the work challenging, fun, and there are so many different aspects to the job that for now anyway I’m still free to do what I want—whether it means roaming the country, or locking myself in to type, or plotting some guerrilla-like promotional campaign that I can quickly effect—when I want. And whenever I do seriously doubt what I’m doing, it seems I get an invitation to appear somewhere wonderful, or someone writes to say I’ve made a difference in their life.

Ken Waldman, 2001

Do you have favorite writers? How about favorite musicians?

--Asked by a student