Kate Eringer
To be a writer in life and art, Kate Eringer embodies the modern day young writer, making it happen on all fronts.
What are you working on at the moment? Do you have any special projects? And where are you based at this very moment?
As someone who has interest in multiple areas, I am more often than not working on more than one thing at a time. A huge part of what I am working on currently is new magazine DAMAGED/GOODS, of which I am a recent addition to the team. I write for them and work with the team at this stage. An internationally run, LA based magazine has been something I have wanted to be involved in for a long time. It is a high fashion and art editorial magazine, the concept being linked to the title DAMAGED/GOODS, as in, what’s your damage? Everyone has one, so while we are curatorial and high end in our content, we remain relatable and retain a grunge aspect. I can’t talk too much about it but I can tell you that it’s going to be big. I also write poetry and fiction and am currently producing several self-published books/zines to be sold via my website. I have a series of poetry currently published in the C-Heads ‘Lovers’ issue which came out this month. I write for C-Heads regularly but at this point, mostly about music. Also in the Lovers issue I had a feature and essay about the Badlands ‘New Lovers’ erotica series. I am currently working on a weekly instalment of essays on erotica for the new magazine That Gurl Zine, which is now online but by next year we should have the full essays in print.
What is it like to be a poet and fictional writer in LA?
I don’t necessarily consider myself a poet, despite writing and starting (slowly) to publish poetry. I once interviewed someone who gave me a similar answer to a question like this, which was that he isn’t a “Writer” but rather a person who writes, not too dissimilarly than how a person who does construction work couldn’t answer a question, “what is it like to be a construction worker?” At the time I felt his answer to be rude and short, but I feel that I understand him better now. People are never really one thing so I can’t quite say how it is to be just one of the things that I am in the city where I have based myself. Life in LA is really exciting for all creative people or appreciators of the arts right now because there is so much going on and is also a comparatively unchartered space. Everyone here is mumbling about it. We can all feel it.
Can you tell us about one particular work of poems that you have written?
I published a series of poetry in the C-Heads Summer Issue entitle Love Or series. The ‘Love Or’ series deals with the quotidian and the high-impact moments that we race through in our lives, eager to get to the ‘next’ thing. Their short length, and low status subject matter work as a microcosm for attitudes to thinking about life and attempt to slow down the way in which we experience ourselves; both adding importance to the everyday and poking fun at our high drama. Love Or dashes Romance in exchange for Beauty. The beauty of purchasing a cactus with your lover on the morning after a passionate night culminated by a series of intense and life changing dates, and letting it die while watching your phone
in case he calls you. The beauty of loving somebody and not allowing them to love you, not being receptive to the love that they give you. There are a million ways to love and Love Or, tries to see that.
Can you tell us about one piece of fictional writing that you have written?
There is one piece of fiction, which I have never released, which I hope to come back to one day. It deals with the different kinds of love you can feel for a person or persons and the intricacies involved in that. It tries to think about how you can love and act in familiar ways. It is, in many ways, about the disaffected youth or, my disaffected youth. It’s one of the first things that I seriously wrote.