Florida, London, New York. Where next?

"I was actually born in Tallahassee in North Florida, but my family and I later moved down to Southwest Florida. I had a very tight-knit community in both places, complete with lots of barbecues and hikes through the woods. It was so beautiful to wander through the wilderness that surrounded us. My parents and family friends had a deep reverence for the natural world, which I absorbed.

We moved down south to Fort Myers when I was six, before the recession hit. Fort Myers was ground zero for the 2008 housing crisis, so there were tons of abandoned houses with the little orange eviction notices on the doors – and that definitely brought the kids of the neighbourhood together. I grew up playing manhunt in a lot of these abandoned backyards, getting into the houses, climbing on the roofs – we all did. It was different to Tallahassee, though. Fort Myers is more conservative and was more depressed economically. And it was hot – it’s the subtropics down there. I think it was isolating at first for my family, moving down to such a conservative place after being in their little university town bubble, but my parents found friends pretty quickly. 

I’m now living in New York, and here you aren’t as exposed to many middle-of-the-road American people. It’s a different wave of energy here because everyone is busy and trying to pursue life. It’s the same in London – it’s a very fast-paced environment and you don’t get a lot of your desperate idleness as you do in Southern Florida. I miss that slower moving, small-town life. That’s disappearing too these days. The upside is that here in New York, there are people from all over the globe, so it can be enriching to be exposed to that. New York belongs to the world more than it does America."

When talking about his poem, ‘Wretched Bridge,’ Shane lit up. He spoke about it with a wild, infectious excitement – the kind when something is stitched into your heart. Shane relived every mile as we spoke. 

“This takes place on the drive back to Fort Myers from Saint Augustine. I was thinking about how many road trips I’d done with  friends of mine and the irritation that can build up when you’re in the car with someone for around six hours. Florida is a very long state so, if you head North, there’s a lot of driving involved. The further North you go, the more the land changes; it moves from subtropical to marshland and gets hilly, more oaks and less palms, bridge after bridge, over brackish and freshwater rivers. 

This poem is also infused with nostalgia of Florida as a place, but also the South extrapolated out to America in general. I think my poetry moves in this current where I want to say something definitive to do with this place – and to do so, I have to say something based on Florida, and thus, the South. And I think the South is really the heart of America – and if not the heart then at least the heartbeat, which is what I’m trying to mimic in my poetry.”

And how did your sense of ‘home’ – if you can even call it that – change when you moved to London?

“Being outside of my own home helped me to define it as a place that was distinct in nature and accentuated parts of myself that were connected to the place. I was suddenly shocked with this incredible intelligence of a financial capital in London. I was surrounded by all different types of people and made friends who were incredibly helpful and schooled me on what city life can be like. It redefined my relationship to my home, Florida, first off because London doesn’t have access to the beach all the time – and these friends surrounding me hadn’t experienced growing up in that way – growing up naked or at least shirtless for most of your life. There’s a comfort with your own body that comes from this beach culture or water culture generally, I think. My most precious memories of Florida as a child are swimming in the Waulkua river with schools of manatees, and in Fort Myers, I remember kayaking down all of these mangrove tunnels and paddling out to Mound Key in Estero Bay with my brother. It’s a different attention you embody when watching out for water moccasins and rattlesnakes and having this deep awareness of the natural world – all of which are completely unheard of in London.

Choosing London was a classic case of a young boy growing up and wanting to escape the small town, state; the country at large. The city always fascinated me, even though I have a deep admiration for the quiet and calmness of open country. I had studied abroad in Italy in 2018 through my community college and on the way there, I stopped in London. I had family friends from Tallahassee, who had moved to London a few years before my family left for Fort Myers, and so they’d grown up there. One of them was around my age and had recently graduated as an English Major. Needless to say, when we reconnected as adults we instantly fell in deep love. She even stayed in Florida with me for a little while and then we questioned: how are we going to do this? I ended up going over there and staying with her and her folks. 

London had more of an open mic scene, and I met some really talented people. There were also a lot of ticketed gigs, where a very established writer like Zadie Smith or Simon Armitage would be reading. So you could either go to an open mic or pay something like £10 to hear them speak. I made good friends seeing bands like Sorry play at independent venues like The Social and The Shacklewell Arms. Those places and people made me feel at home in the sea of the city. Here in New York, it’s similar. There are constant readings with incredible poets, although the NEA grants pulled by our current administration is threatening a lot of that. Small presses and institutions like St. Mark’s Poetry Project, Poetry Society, and Poets House are under threat, which feels like the least of our worries politically, but it’s important for us, for poets. There’s still a small culture of DIY spaces here; I’m thinking of the poet and publisher Lee Ann Brown’s Poetry Parlor at Torn Page, which is really just her living room. That space is very special, it feels like the last salon environment in New York – and I love it.”