I am beyond thrilled to have had the opportunity to catch up with Punk Poet Scott Laudati. Scott\’s books Hawaiian Shirts in the Electric Chair and Play the Devil are both available on Amazon. Now, let\’s see what Scott has to say on a number of different subjects – shall we?!

RMMW: As a published author/poet — what advice would you give to emerging poets?

 
SL: Write all the time in the beginning. Don’t bother showing your friends or your boyfriend/girlfriend your writing because they won’t get it and they won’t care and it’ll only discourage you. Once you’re happy with your words start submitting to every website you can find. Do it while you’re sitting on the couch watching Game Of Thrones. If the poems are good someone out there will want them. There’s a publisher for everyone. You just have to find each other.

SL: I usually just put it off as long as I can until it literally hurts. If something starts cooking I’ll procrastinate until it begins to make me angry. I usually write in marathon sessions of, like, 18 straight hours. You need to have a lot of hate in your heart to fight for 18 hours. Anger is a fuel and so far it’s the only thing that has worked for me. 

SL: I usually do early drafts on a typewriter. It’s my grandfather’s old Underwood and I got it when he died. He never supported anything I did and when he died I found out he thought I was a complete loser and destined to be a bum. It was a really dark moment of my life because he was someone I really respected and wanted to like me. He didn’t even give me the typewriter, my aunt thought I’d get the most use out of it. So now, when I have a great idea, I type it on the Underwood and I think of him. It’s kind of a payback to him. Like, “see, I’m not a total idiot”.

 

 

SL: Endless books on Mexican drug cartels, NAFTA, and heroin in the US. Charles Bowden was the premier writer on the subject. I became obsessed with these things because all my friends were dying and going to jail because of heroin/oxys. I started to wonder why? Where did all of this heroin suddenly come from? I found the answers but we could have a whole other interview on that. What really matters is that my little cousins od’d. This amazing kid who was hilarious and so young. And I thought about these drugs that were grown in some dirt in Mexico and then transported up by a cartel and then brought over the border by the CIA and then shipped to New Jersey in an 18-wheeler while cops were paid off to look the other way and politicians were paid off to never do anything about it and it landed in my little cousin who never had a legal drink in his life and now never will. It was this crazy sobering moment of “wow, we’re all involved in this ‘thing’”, and then, “wow, we’re all doomed”. 

SL: Yes I’ve had a bad review. It was written by a woman 
named Ashley for a punk magazine. Here’s an excerpt: He does not sing the body electric but rather passively bemoans his failed encounters with the opposite sex. He does not measure his life out in coffee spoons but rather in lines of coke.

Please feel free to follow Scott on social media via Twitter and Instagram.