Creativity in storytelling and poetry isn’t always about fantasy world-building and ornate, complex language. Sometimes it can be blunt, visceral, and deeply real, like the work of OKC-based author and poet Kim Bastian.
Her brand new poetry collection “Raw” offers a strikingly candid set of verbal snapshots, rapid-fire poems of frank honesty and naked emotion, picking up right where her previous collection – 2024’s “Idiot” – left off, shunning pretense and structural formality in a style more akin to Kerouac and Richard Brautigan than to Keats or Byron.
Her only goals, she says, are to write quickly, speak honestly, and to keep her readers on their toes.
Kim Bastian: I feel like there's an element of mystery in poetry, where you'll read one and you think you know what they're talking about, but then you read the next one, and it's totally different.
My poetry is more blunt and in your face. You expect poetry to be so flowery and intricate like that, and just to put it in simple terms, I don't know, there's something about that.
Brett Fieldcamp: Bastian’s first foray into published writing, however, wasn’t poetry at all, but was no less raw, real, or spontaneous.
Her debut release was actually the whirlwind road trip memoir “Forever Elko,” the true-life story of an impromptu desert excursion that she sought to write fresh and to publish on a gamble.
Kim Bastian: That was a tricky one, because every rule says not to do that. Every rule says not to write a memoir right out the gate.
I just feel like I needed to tell that story. It was after a mental health crisis. It was a wild road trip with a buddy. I had quit my job, I had moved out of my apartment and left everything behind and hit the road and went out on this wild trip through the desert. And then when I came back, I said, I need to write this. And so I sat down and just wrote until it was done, all at once.
I just wanted to tell my story and hope that maybe somebody out there would read it and see there's another way out. Sometimes, when you're feeling like everything's kind of closing in on you, one of the best things you can do is go hit the road and see something else and get a little bit of perspective.
Brett Fieldcamp: Following “Elko,” Bastian began to narrow her narrative focus even further, from stories of road trips and relationships to attempting to capture brief, fleeting thoughts and emotions as they passed through her in urgent, direct, and often rhythmic poetry.
Kim Bastian: I feel like I just get a rhythm in my head, and then I need somewhere to put thoughts or feelings, and it just comes out in kind of this meter.
I think it's kind of like journaling, in a way, that you get your feelings out, you get your emotions out, but it just it has that rhythm to it.
And I love music. I'm always around music, so I feel like just that rhythm and the words and letters and just how things look on the page. And that's something that attracts me.
Brett Fieldcamp: It’s that same attraction to stark visuals and energetic music that’s taken Bastian down a simultaneous and unexpected professional path of photography and videography, a separate set of disciplines that she says helps her to view and capture that same real-life urgency in new ways, and helps to feed back into and inspire the writing.
Kim Bastian: It took me a while to find my way. I feel like I'm a late bloomer. I've always been a writer, I always knew I wanted to do that, but some of the other things that I do now, like the photography and videography, I didn't expect.
I feel like when you go out and you're kind of being creative, it's just a circle. So you're going out and you're practicing a medium, you're painting, and then you write a song afterwards, or you're taking a photo and then you're writing a poem afterwards. I feel like your environment inspires you.
So I think they're related.
Brett Fieldcamp: But for Bastian, all of those external inspirations and influences are just invitations to reflect and to incorporate those ideas into her own personal experiences, even if committing to being so personal, so blunt, and so spontaneously emotional in her poetry can come with some risks.
Kim Bastian: It is hard to put something out there that is so personal and also at the risk of hurting somebody's feelings, because a lot of these are about love and romance and stuff like that.
So I feel like I come with a disclaimer as a person of like, “don't fall in love with me because I might write a poem about you,” and that is a risk, and it is something that I think about a lot. But that's a decision that I had to make and say, “Hey, I'm an artist. You either respect that and you're okay with it, or you might just not want to tango with me, because this is going to happen,” you know?
Brett Fieldcamp: “Raw,” the newest collection of poetry from Kim Bastian is available now at online retailers and at local bookstores soon, with a release event planned for September 6th at 39th Street Records in OKC.
For more, including links to all of her books and to view her photography and videography work, visit kimbastian.net.
———————————
KGOU relies on voluntary contributions from readers and listeners to further its mission of public service with arts and culture reporting for Oklahoma and beyond. To contribute to our efforts, make your donation online, or contact our Membership department.
