HE HAS SUCH SIGHTS TO SHOW YOU – An interview w/ poet David Mclean, who talks about his new chapbook HELLBOUND -

Epic Rites is a small press dedicated to bringing the best from those who write with blood. It was established in 2008 by Wolfgang Carstens in Alberta, Canada. Each chapbook is printed on high grade paper and represents quality from “its skin down to its guts”

If you’d like to know more visit here: http://epicrites.typepad.com/epicritespress/epic-rites-press-bookstore.html -

For Epic Rites David edits the chapbook series and the ezines written “with a razor and the thin edge of staring” – his latest chapbook HELLBOUND is a tribute to the Hellraiser films and the surrounding mythology. There are at least forty painfully wrought poems in the collection and let me tell you: he has such sights to show you….



1. There are 40 poems in your chapbook which draw on the Hellraiser mythos, what attracted you to the the dark dreamscape of The Cenobites?

1. Originally actually the first three films, and the original Cenobite line-up. I was just attracted to things Pinhead said and to the fact that within the mythology of the films there is basically no "good" power, just Leviathan and his hatred of disorder. Implicitly, he is equivalent to the god of order of the Judaeo-Xian mythos, of the religions of the book. The good figure is actually Pinhead, who stops the Cenobites hurting Tiffany first, since she is innocent and the box is not opened by fingers alone. I originally wrote one and Wolfgang liked it and wanted more.

2. Like The Cenobites your words twist us out of (or into) a certain kind of truth - it felt like not only a dissection/exploration/analysis of the Hellraiser universe but also of humanity - would that be a fair assessment of Hellbound?

2. I think that we are actually a sort of chimp. Chimps aren't very nice. People are motivated by aggression and cruelty much more than they will admit. And also, like Leviathan, we are motivated by a vain desire for order misunderstood as permanence and immutability. Though the untidy disordered desires that the Cenobites punish are what gives life, order and permanence would just give eternal dead entropy.

3. You are a co-editor over at Epic Rites, tell me a bit about how you came to be involved there and what we can expect from them next?

3. I suppose I just submitted to a journal and it developed from there. We are committed to producing underground small press work of the highest physical and poetic quality. Nice card and paper, first rate design by drunken degenerate Pablo Vision, exquisite editing by me, first rate coordiantion and promotion by Wolf Carstens. After hellbound comes Jack Henry's crunked in that series, as well as chapbooks by Puma Perl, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, James Darman, Amanda Boschetto, Jason "Juice" Hardung, Suzy Devere. So confident are we that everything will be good that we have a subscription offer - The Lucky Bastards Club. http://epicrites.typepad.com/epicritespress/epic-rites-press-bookstore.html. Just now there is afeature book out by NY poet Rob Plath, then a collection of stories by Karl Koweski, blood and greasepaint, later a feature by me called laughing at funerals.

4. Your chapbook is inspired by Hellraiser -- are you as much influenced by film than literature?

4. Absolutely, film and popular music. I have a chapbook La morte vivante influenced by the film by Jean Renoir of the same name. Great film too. Especially if you, like everybody else, like lesbian vampires. http://www.shadowarcherpress.com/davidmclean.htm - I think there are copies left, signed too, they mailed me sheets, my X in chicken blood. Or was it biro?

5. Paul Kane once described The Cenobites as having a "Grotesque Glamour" and there is a certain allure to their mutilation - would you agree?

5.Sister Nikoletta (aka Cunthroat) is the obvious one there for me. has her own tribute poem in the chapbook But they are all beautiful, and Pinhead was once voted Japan's number two sex symbol, after Madonna, tellingly enough, though Liza Minelli would have been even creepier.

6. You a tutor in philosophy - what writers/academics/filmmakers fuel your desire to put pen to paper?

6. No, I'm not a tutor. never have been, I just have an MA in the subject. Basically Heidegger and Derrida and Nietzsche play some röle, but, like I say, largely horror films and music. Partly Derrida's idea of poetry as a form of nostalgia for presence that never existed, a way to become in itself-for itself in Sartrean terms. Though Derrida didn't understand Sartre. Among poets, Anne Sexton, Larkin, Auden, a few others. I admire a few modern poets, like Rob Plath and Jack Henry, but we write totally differently, even if on similar subjects very often.

7. If you where planning another chapbook inspired by either a horror novel/play/script what would it be and why?

7. Well, no exact plans, but I have written a little recently about young Mr Voorhees. (Freddie gets on my nerves, too camp, and boring jokes)



Visit my blog at http://mourningabortion.blogspot.com/ and buy a book while you're at it
http://www.epicrites.org/65501/166212.html.