Inspiring Perspectives: A Q&A with Professor and Poet, Chase Dimock
by Christine Nessler
November 7, 2024
Chase Dimock teaches literature and writing in Los Angeles. He is the author of Sentinel Species (Stubborn Mule Press 2020) and the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be Magazine. He holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and his scholarship and reviews in World Literature and LGBT Studies have appeared in College Literature, Western American Literature, Modern American Poetry, The Lambda Literary Review, and several academic anthologies.
Dimock’s poem, “A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets,” is featured in Issue 17.
Tell us about yourself.
Hello! My name is Chase Dimock and I’m an English Professor at College of the Canyons and a writer living in North Hollywood, California. I received a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Illinois and my scholarship focuses on global queer communities in the age of modernism. I am also the Managing Editor of As It Ought To Be online. Dodger, my faithful Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, is both my teaching assistant and most supportive editor.
Your poem, “A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets,” feels like a story of both regret and hope. Regret for a true self resigned to secrecy, but also hope for the young people for which his generation paved the way. What do you think the subject of the poem would tell his younger self if he had a chance to go back in time?
As someone who teaches LGBT history at the college level, one of my biggest points of emphasis is to illuminate what the conditions of being a queer individual were like in any given historical and cultural context. That way, we can understand that the LGBT world we have today is the product of historical and cultural forces driven by creative and brave individuals and communities. Not all the luminaries of queer activism like Harvey Milk and Marsha P Johnson lived long enough to enjoy some of the rights and opportunities that we currently have today, and I hope that inspires our present day queer community to continue to fight for the rights of future queer people.
I see the subject of my poem as both proud of being part of a courageous queer community that made the world safer and more supportive for future generations, but also somewhat melancholic in knowing that he never got to experience this security when he himself was young. While coming of age as a millennial was different (thanks to the internet) than what older generations experienced, I think both he and I would say the same thing to our adolescent selves: You have a place in the future where you can be yourself and be loved. It won’t come right away, but it will happen. If you keep going, other people who know your pain will support you and heal alongside you.
A slower pace of life allows for reflection. Is that the blessing or curse of aging? Why?
I see the process of reflection as we age as a blessing. It can be a reward for a life well lived. Self-reflection is a beautiful process, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it will be happy, or at least happiness defined as smiles and rainbows. However, it can be happy in an existentialist meaning, like the way Camus says we must imagine Sisyphus as happy as he rolls that boulder up a hill, never to reach the top. I think it depends on if you feel content that you did the best that you could to uphold your values given what you had to work with. Self-reflection can also help us connect back to who we were as we fumbled our way toward maturity and allow us to better understand the younger generations who are doing the same.
It’s important to hear the stories of our elders to understand where we have been and where we are going as a society. What story would he tell to those youth sitting under the “shade of trees he planted?”
I think my protagonist would tell the story of whatever it was he did to plant that tree to inspire the present day generation to both appreciate that shade and also inspire them to plant new trees for the future generations. As a millennial, I am eternally appreciative of the previous generations of queer people who stood up during the AIDS crisis of the 80s and refused to see the deaths of their loved ones ignored and their communities degraded. The courage and strength it took to come together, persevere, and fight for rights and basic human dignity in such a devastating time is a testament to the power we can muster as a community united in love. My protagonist would use this to encourage the younger generations to resist the present day blowback against the queer community seen today with anti-trans legislation and book bans targeted at the most vulnerable young LGBT people.
Tell us about your collection of poems in Sentinel Species, your book published in 2020.
My collection of poems in Sentinel Species all engage with our relationships with animals, plants, and the environment as a whole. A sentinel species refers to how an animal’s behavior can alert us to dangers in the environment that humans cannot directly sense. The most famous of these are the canaries that coal miners used before carbon monoxide detectors were invented. When the canary fainted (and usually died) it was time to get out. The poems in the collection are inspired by this same premise. What can my personal relationships with animals and our society’s relationships with animals tell us about what it means to be human and how we can better understand our place in the environment? So, the poems range from reflections on global history to my guilt over having to deny my dog a piece of chocolate, even though he has the cutest puppy dog eyes and really wants it!
Do you primarily write poetry? What other forms of expression are most meaningful to you? Why?
Poems are my primary artistic medium, though I write book reviews and scholarly articles as well. Because my work as a professor of literature runs parallel to my main creative outlet (also literature). I like creative pursuits that engage other senses and are less about expressing ideas as they are about material engagement with the world. I have an obsession with desert plants, and though I wrote about a few in my book, I am most interested in tending to my cactus and succulent collection and photographing them when I walk through the desert.
On a completely different note, I am a huge karaoke enthusiast, and although I have no training, I like to think I bring a lot of passion and showmanship. Singing is certainly an art, and while I wouldn’t call myself a great singer, I love how performing popular songs in public brings people together, supporting each other’s 3.5 minutes as a rock star. In the increasingly digitized world we live in, experiencing art together in moments that cannot be streamed on demand is crucial to accessing what art has always been about: humans connecting with humans.
How has teaching literature and writing at College of the Canyons impacted your own writing?
Teaching at College of the Canyons has made me a better writer. Many of my colleagues are brilliant poets and fiction writers themselves whose work has inspired me. They have been so generous with their time and support, and we’ve collaborated on poetry readings and creative opportunities for our students. I have to give a special shout out to Mary Angelino (an infinitely talented poet herself) who edited Sentinel Species with me over the pandemic and worked with me on a website that features bird poetry written by our students. Teaching what you love can be challenging though because after a full day of talking about literature with colleagues and students, I come home often having exhausted everything I wanted to say with writing. But, that’s a wonderful challenge to have; it means digging even deeper into my creativity to find new ideas to engage in my own poetry.
How have your students inspired you?
My students are a constant source of inspiration. They challenge me to look at writing from fresh and diverse perspectives because they are often reading some of these classics and contemporary pieces for the first time and from backgrounds very different from my own. I’ve been working on a class about food blogging, and the writing they have produced has been outstanding. I was nervous in assigning a few pages of the famous madeleine scene from Proust, but their personal reflections on their own food-related Proustian moments were so sincere and exciting to read. Seeing students connect with a queer French writer from over 100 years ago and being inspired to explore their own food memories was a beautiful confirmation of the valuable work we do as educators.
What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”
When I think of “the good life,” I think similarly to what I said earlier about being existentially fulfilled. There are no guarantees that your life will have any of the common markers of the good life (wealth, health, social status, etc.) but it is always possible to live a good life when you’ve adhered to your values, spread love and support, and cultivated your talents. The good life is a life well-lived, and that can take infinite shapes and forms.
Listen as Chase reads his poem, A Convalescent Home for Retired Prophets…
Thank you, Chase, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A and audio reading. We wish you the best!
