Russ Takeall Interview
Kamila Kinyon

Kamila Kinyon: Could you talk about the background and inspirations for your writing?
Russ Takeall: Its half Pre-Renaissance period and half current day. Shakespeare, Chaucer, George Orwell, Nietzsche, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and a lot of rap music. Just being able to voice your ideas. You could list authors forever who have done that.

When did you start writing poetry and what themes are important in your writing?
I started writing poetry in fifth or sixth grade. Mainly what I want to get out of my writing is some type of activism and change as well as educating people.

What have been some of the subjects of your activism?
I remember the LA riots happening when we were younger, and we had a lot of police brutality in New York which affected me and was a good way for me to get my voice out. Once you get into some of these different writers, such as Douglass, you dont want to mimic their format, but you want to adopt their style, being concise with what you say and having a strong vocabulary.

What writers would you say influenced your style?
Rakim, Naz, Frantz Fanons Wretched of the Earththat was pretty movingThen there was Orwells 1984, and Animal Farm. You cant come out directly with your message; otherwise you will sound like a broken record. Its kind of like painting the picture that everyone else sees, but you want to paint the best possible picture.

What do you consider your best pieces?
I dont really have a favorite. I try to continuously revise and not become stale. After I do one thing, I want to read something else, and I can integrate it into the next thing I write. And I just keep going with that formula, so Im writing and rewriting at the same time.

What is your revision process like?
I revise and then I bring it to other people to help me revise. I cant bring out too many things in one piece, because I dont want to bore the reader. Vocabulary is important. I try not to use the same words. I try to, I guess, spice it up a bit, and then, once Im done, Ill probably leave it. Sometimes I take two poems, and then I take stuff from each of them to make one poem.

Could you tell me a bit about the pieces that you read at the Social Justice Open-Mic Night?
I read DayMare, and that to me was kind of a reflection on everyday life. Its different here than in the east, where its definitely more confrontational. But mainly its just how it happened, not how it was written, because to the victor go the spoils, historys pretty much a jaded view. Then I read The Military and the Monetary by Gil Scott-Heron who is an influential poet who contrasts how the military and money have always gone together. Then I read the lyrics to Casualties of War by Eric B. and Rakim which is contrasting the Gulf War.

What other social justice-directed poetry have you written?
I have a lot, mostly in notebooks. I didnt get a computer till I was in eleventh grade. I have "Life," "Ghetto Vietnam," and a lot that just remain untitled. Mainly I just try to expand my ideas about social justice. Sometimes I write about myself, but not too much, because I dont want the person who is listening to focus on that. Mainly I just try to expand my views of social justice. I want them to get my message.

How do you make choices about poetic form when you are writing?
Its tough because I always have something in my head all day long, and I can hear it in my head, and its a race to get it down before it leaves my head. Sometimes I have really great rhymes, but they dont fit the format. Or they dont fit with the wording, and you wonder, Where did that come from? You want to use everything, but you really cant. I try to keep my format down. I make sure that the stanzas are right. Its pretty important because if you break the stanzas, you might ruin the whole flow. I try to keep the stanzas on point and the message on point. And I try not to be excessively repetitive with my vocabulary. If I used only a few words, Id be like the main stream rappers today who only use fifteen words or so for a song.

What other genres do you work in?
Short stories sometimes, longer stories too. Mainly, I get frustrated because it takes such a long time to write one. Poetry usually takes me between two and four hours, and then thats it, and then I can revise. I like to write book reviews and investigative reports. Im definitely a fan of writing research papers and possibly proving or disproving points that people might not have looked at before, which is huge to me because I plan eventually to get a doctorate.

What are some of your current projects?
Poetry mostly. I havent had a research paper to do for a while. Last quarter I wrote about economic heterodoxy, which George DiMartino in the school of International Studies wrote a book about. It goes through Neoclassical thought and Neoclassical theory. The idea is that you have to believe in the theory for it to work. The book elaborates upon other ways in which we could measure life opportunity besides that of the typical rhetoric we usually get by defining life by wealth. I cant say I really believe in the nonsense of globalization whole heartedly when more of my money goes into a CEO pockets than toward the indigenous peoples that make most of what we wear. Kind of like low salary slavery, 21 century share cropping. I also dont believe that almost a half millennia of world degradation poverty can be ended by an economic system such as capitalism, in which major players will never give up power or affluence to achieve a better status quo for other people, and that its up to the people themselves to help each other rectify this situation than to wait upon the idle slow moving hands of bureaucracy. We dont need to have our dependence on oil. There are tons of other alternative fuels that are out there that we could use and choose not to use. And, just reading in the newspapers about record losses, they still maintain profit. Its just not the same amount of revenue from the year before. Its not like theyre operating in the red, which I think is key in companies like Exxon, General Motors etc. Thats discussed in the book Natural Capitalism which PhD Kevin Archer assigned GSIS last quarter in Contemporary Issues in Global Economy. My current project I guess would be what I hope to be a focus the rest of my life -- educating others and myself to strengthen our communities and a strong dedication to finding solutions that will produce better ways of life.

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