Author of the Lambda Literary Award nominated book The Literary Party: Growing Up Gay and Amish in America (2011) James Schwartz is a Detroit based poet whose credits include Motor City Mix (2022) and his latest Alien Buddha Press poetry chapbook Amish Alchemy.
Q: What inspired your new book?
JS: Amish Alchemy was inspired by many things including the juxtiposition of being gay and Amish. There are poems on Amish life, love sonnets, an autobiographical haiku sequence, a one minute horror play, a look at Swiss / French Amish history and illustrations from the Public Domain Image Archive.
Q: Who are your go-to authors?
JS: I love the South Pacific short stories by W. Somerset Maugham and read a lot of books on Kilauea and volcanoes. Willa Cather, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Paul Bowles and to list more modern authors, Michael Cunningham and Garth Greenwell. I've been reading Dante with Ascend: The Great Books podcast.
Q: How do you stay creative?
JS: Hiking and connecting with both my city and nature. Museums, theater, art, poetry, listening to 90s trance / club music. I recently collaborated with my friend Detroit techno artist Butch Baxter and wrote lyrics for Acceleration (Detroit Mix) which is on all streaming platforms and YouTube! I love Detroit techno so to contribute to the Detroit techno genre was way cool!
Q: Any projects to shout out?
JS: You can find a new poem of mine titled After the Enlightenment (prefaced by a Hemingway quote) in semiosis issue 1 (poetry from poets who express solidarity against the rise of violent authoritarianism) along with poets Robert Kelly, Louis Armand, Dennis Formento, Deborah Tosun Kilday, Jonathan Cant, Marc Olmsted, Larry Goodell, Wang Ping, Ron Whitehead, Strider Marcus Jones, Rita S. Spalding, John Stickney, John Holding, Danny Shot, Richard Modiano, Jay Simpson, Mark Lipman, Eliot Katz, Dan Flore III, R.M. Engelhardt, Randy Barnes, Bernard Pearson, Merritt Waldon, Gabor Gyukics, Terry Wheeler, Dave Boles and Chris Bodor.
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