On Witnessing Wonder: A Conversation with Craig Constantine

Some conversations feel less like interviews and more like invitations. In this Q&A with Craig Constantine, you will see him return to ideas of curiosity, presence, and creative endurance. Whether reflecting on storytelling, observation, or the quiet rituals that sustain artistic practice, Craig approaches creativity with both thoughtfulness and openness. In this conversation, he shares insights into process, reflection, and the value of remaining attentive to the world around us.

Q: What does writing make possible for you that other forms of expression don’t? A: Writing is the mother tongue. When I'm talking, I'm trying to translate—badly—the words that are springing to life inside my mind. I take issue with the saying, "A picture is worth a thousand words." Take a single word—beatific— and it takes you back hundreds of years through the mercurial changes of meaning and historical context, through struggles both spiritual and personal. Especially now we are discovering the endless disposability of images. With exceptions like Guernica, the Mona Lisa, or pieces by Basquiat and Banksy, one well-chosen word is worth a thousand, or a bazillion pictures.  

Q: How do you typically enter a piece—through an image, a line, a feeling, or something else?   

A: Prompts from within. I'm either too stubborn or full of things to say—pick one—to respond to external prompts. Poetry isn't improv to me; it's alchemy, reaching way down deep and transfiguring experience with words. 

Q: How do you decide what a piece needs more of, or less of, during revision?  

A: Ha! This is for me—and many others—the hardest thing. There's always more to say, but a better, shorter way to say it. I don't go by clichéd rules of thumb like, "less is more." Or the rote advice of some editors, "You have to kill off your darlings." I'm not killing any darlings, unless I can't do justice to them with words.  There is a time for restraint, and a time to open the floodgates. Whitman, Ginsberg, Plath, Amanda Gorman—some pedantic editors would immediately say, “Too wordy.” A few would pinch themselves and print the poems like now.

Q: Are there questions or tensions you find yourself exploring across multiple pieces?  

A: I once swore I'd never repeat myself—every new piece would have a new voice, structure, rhyme scheme or not. But then I wrote "Persephone," putting the "fabulous Queen of Hell" in my neighborhood in LA, and I became fascinated by casting mythic figures in modern settings. This became my Mythic Trilogy, which reimagines Phaeton as a son in Pacoima who borrows his father's legendary lowrider. "Bullfinch's Pornography" is about the dangerous power of myth, a cursed book that passes from one Victorian gentleman to another.  Pretty weird to spell it out this way!  But I will attach the Trilogy in case you're interested.

Q: How do you approach endings? What tells you a piece has reached its natural conclusion.  

A: Another hard question! You approach with great caution, and humility. The thing is—you can't force them. They either happen naturally and gracefully—inspired or fated—or they don't. I like to think most of my poems have memorable, worthy endings, but that's because I throw a lot out that don't!

Q: What does it mean to you to grow as a writer, and how do you recognize that growth in your own work?   

A: The challenge of never repeating myself, except for the Mythic Trilogy, means I have to remake myself with each new piece, or leave myself in the dust. How do I recognize that growth? Check in with me in a week or two! I'm about to dive into the deepest end of poetry—no prosaic narration at all, just word-clusters from the subconscious and inspiration. Sing, Muse! 

Q: Can you take us inside your piece that you wrote for issue 06 of our magazine?  

A: I've been driving or walking the Great Wall of LA for years now. Sometimes it just blends into the drab urban scenery, sometimes it seems like a passive curio from a distant, better time. That makes me sad. It makes me angry. But at times it wakes up and overwhelms you with what's been lost, and what's possible, now and in the distant future—and that's what I tried to capture: its aliveness and its promise.

Q:  Why are art and its history important?  

A: If news is the first rough draft of history, history itself evolves with who's in power academically and politically and is pretty impotent—see how little we learn from our mistakes. But art is the final draft, and the most powerful, because it's still raw and revelatory with each new generation. As long as it stands—and I hope it’s a thousand years—The Great Wall of LA is going to tell us of an enlightened but imperfect time, the ‘70s and ‘80s, when civil rights were a birthright, tolerance eclipsed hate, and we exposed the atrocities of the past not to shame, but to better ourselves.

Throughout our conversation, Craig reminds us that creativity is not always about certainty or arrival, but about remaining willing to notice, question, and engage. His reflections offer a thoughtful meditation on artmaking as an ongoing practice of attention. We’re grateful to Craig for sharing his time and perspective with us.

View his poem, "Persephone," here: Doom junkie. - 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE