Former Flame Fridays - Jerome Berglund
1/3/25
Welcome to 2025,
You were featured in volume 3, what has happened since?
I was just rereading that brilliant issue, truly Troublemaker curates such wonderful work and how artfully, what a joy and honor it was to be a part! Since I’ve been staying busy, with many happy events creatively amidst some unprecedented and challenging life difficulties am still embroiled in navigating thoughtfully. In response to personal and global challenges I’ve definitely been leaning into the troublemaking inclinations, channeling frustrations and discontent positively toward doing my best to contribute to various good fights, been trying to amplify underrepresented perspectives and support marginalized voices in Nun Prophet Press and Heterodox Haiku Journal which aspire to provide inclusive opportunities and celebrate work in less appreciated styles and champion social justice oriented and environmentalist themes and showcase the admirable elements of fellowship and internationalism which make the global haikai poetry realm so exciting and meaningful! Also had the great joy and privilege of participating in a group poem (a kasen, the intriguing and involved form from which hokku originated) in solidarity with the struggling populations of Gaza which appeared recently in Prune Juice, transmitted directly to region by one of the authors who was traveling on mission of humanitarian ambassadorship. Our small press also brought to print a very powerful collection of short form poetry and artwork “Four Horse Parable” by John Hawkhead condemning bloodshed and atrocity and encouraging peace and understanding, something am very proud to have assisted with, a volume I think will be long remembered in the annals of what these traditions can be applied towards raising awareness and compellingly impacting hearts and minds!
What/who inspired Five Haiku? How does it fit into your style/body of work?
being kind as
adaptive behavior
oxygen masks
Our plane is crashing, the question is whether individualism and ‘trickle-down’ economics is the favored remedy for society’s ills. I would argue empathy, compassion, intersectional intentions are far more fruitful and transformative in possibilities, we learn from the mistakes of our parents and grandparents, and the truth gradually comes into focus…
eat them quick
aren’t going to be around for long
organic bananas
Matsuo Basho, haiku’s greatest legend, takes his name from the tree planted outside his iconic residences. He was also an enthusiastic admirer of gentlemen, a fact many of the form’s more repressive and bigoted authorities frequently omit to acknowledge…
forgot to crack the shades
plants shriek for aid
but can't hear them
Nature poetry provides many potent opportunities for allegory, representation of personal concerns in proxy contexts, whether that constitutes senryu or not is something to be debated.
people can live
with all kinds of things
under the weather
Again kigo and phrase allows wonderful opportunities to move inward exploratively, this piece is also not dissimilar with the sort of meditative examination one finds in tanka by modern masters such as Tachi Tamara whose Salad Anniversary continues to impact the literary world profoundly!
flowers stretch out
reclaim the path
who am I to stop them
Karumi, ‘lightness’, is an optimistic integral component to haiku and senryu versification, and one finds no shortage of encouraging parallels across nature to our efforts to renovate and reinvent our flawed and bottoming generation! :D
Why Troublemaker Firestarter? What compels you to submit your work? Why be a writer at the end of the world?
We’re probably fucked. But still, that idea of ‘doomerism’ (disinformation phenom @DuendeenF has commented on this amazingly at length) and its nihilist offshoots, tendencies are some of the most dangerous elements explicitly exploited to generate apathy and surrender by the world’s caring populace. We each cope as best we can depending on our personal circumstances (definitely not writing this in a whiskey blackout) but throwing in the towel, permitting and tacitly encouraging a very real and foreseeable apocalypse is not a course of action I am comfortable with sanctioning. We have the technology and know-how to fix our deeply compromised society and civilization, it’s well within our garbage species’ power to create a sustainable future, or even a fully automated luxury gay space communism if they are feeling ambitious. That’s going to involve some improvement and sacrifice from within that insular, advantaged billionaire class if they don’t want their heirs to be ruling a planet on fire or underwater from bunkers. I hope they get it together asap, empowering forces not ushering in end times would be more optimal. Meanwhile as Bayard Rustin said, “We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” Without guerrilla theater, disruption and education, organizing, concerted agitation humanity is legitimately doomed. Rioting, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, is the language of the unheard. I highly recommend friends peruse an iconic article about “The Economic Case for Riots in Ferguson”, unfortunate as loss of profit’s ancillary costs are, that seems to be the only verbiage the powers that be listen to. Our city got very close to abolishing ‘slave catchers’, and I pray follows through to create a more caring and equitable approach to regulating subjects, without lethal force and coercion.
Who are your current favorite writers?
I’ve been particularly enamored with the incendiary work of Elena Ferrante this year, really need to get HBO again to see how the final entry in seminal Neapolitan series ("My Brilliant Friend") is adapted for the screen!! Poetry wise I always also can’t get enough of the outstanding work of Inger Christensen, for fiction this annum I’ve been addicted to this unusual and fascinating book the Ship of Theseus by Doug Dorst and J. J. Abrams, which is sort of in the vein of David Lynch, Thomas Pynchon, David Foster Wallace, but with echoes of countless other fascinating influences… <3
Are you a troublemaker, a firestarter, a heartbreaker, a lucky duck, a devil, a terror, or sad and horny?
As a Minneapolis resident, figuratively and literally I am quite sympathetic! Will never forget the selfies my mom sent after our local gas station was torched, I was outside that nearby precinct waving a sign in frustration before our city ruled against its standing, that’s still a smoldering barb-wired wreck years later after all the abuse and unlawful corruption led to its immolating. Populism can be a cleansing thing, but it’s also important to be very aware of the influence of agent provocateurs (there’s a documentary about a national convention here, devilish undercover Rasputins steering impressionable youths toward unfortunate scenarios with entrapment and grooming, “Better This World” essential viewing) in that conversation, I see the Auto Zone where Umbrella Man, whoever he was, struck iconically in my neighborhood, met at protests the people who videotaped and chased him off from harming our local small businesses, very much consistent with the way fascism in Germany utilized hired rioters to legitimize and get the middle class to sign off on authoritarian police state and its jackboots, the fact that the twin cities are in a perpetual crime wave just as they’re trying to gain citizens’ approval to build new police station, arm and accept unnerving waiving of rights, is no coincidence! <_< Still, I'll always concur with Che that the
“life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”
Where can people find you?
That’s absolutely an apropos and prescient question which has been on my mind often recently. When I give interviews like this, there are certain ‘fans’ I hope I can elude as long as possible! xD But I may be coming to a mobile home, slum, or isolated cottage near you soon interestingly, exploring a lot of captivating options at present! X I’ve been most active on social media wise, but being so compromised and steered by disturbing reactionary forces will probably be more focused on Instagram in coming months! Please follow our press Nun Prophet on Twitter too, hoping to usher a few new extraordinary collections from all corners of world of haiku/senryu and related forms like haibun to print in next couple months, really excited about wonderful talents and incredible material in pipeline! ^^
What would you want the lovely readers of Substack to do?
Break a window? Start a fire? Blow a whistle? Unionize your workplace? MeToo someone powerful? Boycott most things, invest in sustainability, locally and with great care? Open your minds to the fact that most anyone with power and influence is absolutely consciously evil, leaders especially, and electoral politics will do almost nothing to save us, both parties and every operative willingly participating in them are atrocious criminals, until new ones are accepted (through realigning elections, whether of third parties or splinters from existing monopolists) and empowered the same travesty will prevail in ways increasingly detrimental to you personally.
Do you have any questions for me?
Is the Worst of the Net going to become an annual tradition? So hope it does, hilarious but conscientious self-critique is definitely essential for leading by shining example as you and so many respectful and exemplary good operators on this scene demonstrate daily, I think the idea of peer moderation on various electronic platforms (e.g. flagging down unacceptable gig postings on Craig’s List) is one of the most interesting and valuable aspects of the digital era and hope it continues to expand and be harnessed towards righteous purposes! :D