Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
A show about Weird Stuff, hosted by AP Strange. AP interviews cool weirdos about their work, and invites friends on to discuss second sequels in franchises in a series called "Third Time's the Charm". Other fun surprises await...
Pardon me while I have a strange interlude. But there is nothing else. Life is an obscure oboe bumming a ride on the omnibus of art. Among the misty corridors of pine, and in those corridors I see figures, strange figures. Welcome back, my friends, to the AP Strange Show.
AP Strange:I am your host, AP Strange. This is my show and today's show is brought to you by the Arthur Gordon Pym, Seafarer's Cookbook. Because even if you're low on supplies and have barely anything to eat, dinner should be anything but bland. Go buy Arthur Gordon Pym's book and make sure that your dinner is tasty. So, tonight on the show, we're gonna be talking Poe.
AP Strange:Poe is something I've wanted to talk for a while. Edgar Allan Poe. We have a couple different topics to discuss because I have a wonderful guest. She is an award winning journalist. She writes for local newspapers here, Telegram and Gazette in Worcester and Worcester magazine, and also a poet and a dancer and a singer and the producer of the Poe in Lowell Festival occurring in Lowell, Massachusetts, which I gather is her hometown.
AP Strange:So, welcome to the show, Meg Smith.
Meg Smith:Thank you so much, Matt. Thank you for having me.
AP Strange:Yeah. Well, you've interviewed me a few times for the newspaper talking That's about true. And so I figured it was good to return the favor. And I had been wanting to talk about the poet, novelist, writer, and a genuine weirdo, Edgar Allan Poe. I can see that you're a huge fan.
AP Strange:So, I guess my first question to you would be, why Poe in Lowell? Where did this start?
Meg Smith:Absolutely. And thank you all, for listening to me and, taking the time. So I live in Lowell, Massachusetts. It has become my adopted home. I went to school here and then started my journalism career here actually as a stringer or freelance writer for The Lowell Sun, which is daily paper.
Meg Smith:So why Poe and Lowell? Well in 1848 and 1849 Edgar Allan Poe makes a total of three visits to Lowell. And of course we know this is toward the end of his life and that time frame also overlaps with some visits that he makes to Providence. And so there is a whole interwoven poetic story there. Poe visits when he's invited to present a lecture and in the process of that he does meet a number of people and form friendships, particularly with a woman that we know as Nancy or Annie Richmond.
Meg Smith:And she, among other things will commission one of the famous daguerreotypes of Edgar Allan Poe that we see quite often where he has this sort of haunted look. And so I have been involved certainly in horror literature going back quite a long time. I've been published with short stories and poetry as well in several horror and science fiction and gothic magazine publications over quite a long time and have made quite a lot of wonderful friends in that way. The other piece of it for me though is that to have a writer of the magnitude of Edgar Allan Pope visit Lowell and really leave an impact. This was not an occasion of like a single whistle stop, if you will.
Meg Smith:He actually had relationships with people here and became part of both the history and the folklore of the city. So back in October 1995, while I was actually also working moonlighting if you will, as a witch at Spooky World, the original Spooky World in Berlin, Mass. From one of my nights off I decided, well let's have an Edgar Allan Poe party. And so we did that, it was very off script and it was very spontaneous with a fashion show and music and awards for the best angst and stuff like that. And so every few years I would have another one evening event around Edgar Allan Poe and those include collaborations with my now late husband Lawrence Carradini.
Meg Smith:But as the years went by, I began to think, you know, maybe we could sustain an actual festival, like a two or three day festival around Edgar Allan Poe. Could we do that here in Lowell? I was already very involved with the Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival. Jack Kerouac is Lowell's native son. And although there's no sort of defined or documented evidence of Poe being an influence on Kerouac the way say Joyce was, there are an awful lot of parallels in their lives, a lot of kind of spooky parallels actually, both in terms of being sort of groundbreaking as American writers and some of the sort of tragic details of their lives and their passing.
Meg Smith:So having garnered a lot of that experience and having actually a lot of support from the people of Lowell Celebrates Kerouac, I decided, well, let's go for it. And so the first, the inaugural festival was in October 2024. And so this year will be our third annual Poe and Lowell festival, which is also concurrent with Lowell celebrating its two hundredth anniversary. So it's really cool to have Edgar Allan Poe be a part of that history.
AP Strange:Yeah, absolutely. And that is really cool because, well, I have a point I'm gonna circle back to because I have like a little record scratch moment where I wanna double back to what you were saying. You worked at Spooky World. That's awesome because people that aren't from Massachusetts I guess there was a documentary about it recently, right? Yeah.
Meg Smith:There definitely was. So yes, we should absolutely illuminate that point. And yeah, record scratch. Is like so a spot on Gen X reference that yes. Right.
Meg Smith:I mean, demographic.
AP Strange:Spin it back a little bit.
Meg Smith:I can hear the crackling. So, all right. So Spooky World is credited with being really kind of the first major American horror theme park. And it starts in the town of Berlin, Massachusetts, which is kind of a small, still somewhat rural town in Worcester County. So it is in the same milieu as Worcester Mass, the city of Worcester Mass.
Meg Smith:It was started by a guy who's still a friend of mine, David Bertolino. And what happens with Spooky World is it kind of grows out of this sort of somewhat limited thematic park into a cultural phenomenon. We're similarly themed haunted theme parks start popping up around the country. And what happens at Spooky World is, well, lots of things happen. A lot of movie stars and rock musicians who are very interested in horror or even just part of the horror scene begin showing up as guests and even kind of behind the scene folks, makeup artists and people like that who are responsible for creating the vision that you might see in a horror movie.
Meg Smith:So I was at that time for, and around the entire month of October at that time, right straight through Halloween. So I was a witch there, as I mentioned, which means we were part of the small sort of coven where the whole idea was just to act as cackly and campy and ghoulish as possible, but still be sort of inviting and have an element of hospitality. And a big part of our role consisted in any of these characters that you see at a horror theme park who are dressed up and in character, trying to create a sense of immersion for the people Like who are they really want to feel that they're kind of in a spooky place but a place that is not so spooky that it starts to become unnerving and that it's a place where kids' families will be okay. So there's a balance to be struck. We would have what was known as the haunted hayride, which would stop at these different sort of horror skits.
Meg Smith:And at the end, they would basically get off of the hayride. And if they made it past this one guy who would come out with a blazing chainsaw at them, They might then just make their way over to the witch's station where we would give out bite sized candies, Milky Ways, all those things. Sometimes promotional things like we had little cups of Snapple for a while. Wendy Kaufman, the Snapple lady, some of you might recall, she actually autographed a picture for me saying, Dear Meg, you're the best stuff on earth.
AP Strange:So, right. Yeah, my question was gonna be, because I I just remember the promotions for this were always Elvira was there, like, every year and, like, Tiny Tim was there every year. So did you meet those two?
Meg Smith:So I met Tiny Tim. I'm sorry. I I thought it was actually, answering your question. At least sort of so folks No.
AP Strange:No. You were.
Meg Smith:Context But of No.
AP Strange:That was wonderful, But, yeah, I I am curious if you met
Meg Smith:Tiny Tim as well. Tiny Tim was a Tiny Tim was absolutely lovely and he autographed a it was kind of like a little bubblegum card with his face on it for a friend of mine who was a huge Tiny Tim fan. And yes, so you would spend some time with those folks. The time they would kind of spend with them was somewhat limited because everybody's at work. And as October progresses, it gets increasingly busy.
Meg Smith:And increasingly with that, you have bigger crowds. So you have to really be on your feet and thinking on your feet. And not only the entertaining aspect, but just making sure everybody is okay and safe and happy and healthy and having the good experience that they should have. So if you are part of that, you are really focused on that, you know, most of the time.
AP Strange:Yeah, imagine the logistics around that must have been kind of crazy to figure out because like you said, that really hadn't been done much at the time. There's kind of a new concept of full immersion, seasonal hayride and everything.
Meg Smith:Exactly. Oh yeah. So there was definitely an aspect of it which made it kind of fun to be sort of on the, basically on the launch pad, if you will. And so it was definitely a great experience. So like I said, all of this has kind of been part of my life and I should say part of that, because I want to give actual props to my heritage.
Meg Smith:So I'm first generation Irish American. My mother was from Ireland, immigrated to Boston after nursing school in Dublin. And she met my father actually working at a hospital in Boston. And he was from a very Irish Catholic enclave of Boston at that time, Charlestown. And I always joke to people that this means I could be in central casting for any gangster movie.
AP Strange:Right.
Meg Smith:So, but the one of the great things about that upbringing is that how what we our modern phenomenon of Halloween really traces itself to Scottish and Irish immigrants who came here bringing their observance of Samhain. And I always make clear and I'm always honest with folks, Samhain and other and there's three other sort of major bonfire fest festivals in the Gael calendar are not neo pagan or Wiccan. They are in fact, these are indigenous celebrations of the Gael people. So Scottish, Irish and Manx folks. And these people came and they brought their traditions with them that kind of lay the groundwork for what we now know as Halloween.
Meg Smith:Basically a big night, which could be incredibly scary because spirits are supposed to be crossing over. But if you are Irish, your answer to that is, well let's just throw a party. So
AP Strange:So that's what
Meg Smith:this whole idea of the veil becoming thin and spirits crossing over and ghosts and magic and witchcraft and sort of otherworldly beings just being embedded in your folk heritage. I mean my parents are very modern people and I'm a very modern person. But having that kind of as your backdrop, as your heritage, just really opens the door. It's just a very natural fit that you're going to be drawn to horror and gothic things. And the other thing the Irish gave to the world was Dracula.
Meg Smith:Bram Stoker, original author, an Irishman. So so yeah.
AP Strange:So so Was Poe of was Poe of Irish heritage? I thought I read somewhere that he was.
Meg Smith:Yes. He was on he was of Irish heritage on his father's side. Yes. He was.
AP Strange:Okay. Alright. Yeah. So that makes sense. Because that that brings us neatly back.
AP Strange:Your upbringing in Boston brings us neatly back to where I was gonna be before we we had our little diversion there. So well, it works out nicely. Because Poe is so often associated with Baltimore, but and so people kinda forget that he was born in Boston and kinda spent the early part of his life here, and and Boston was was important to to to Poe. And Lowell is not that far from Boston, so it kinda makes sense that he would later in life come back to Massachusetts and go to a city nearby. Yeah.
AP Strange:I don't know if you have any thoughts about the Boston connection with Poe or yeah.
Meg Smith:So yeah, there's there's a wonderful statue there now first of all Poe in Boston and kind of paying homage to the symbolism of the raven. I think that from a biographical standpoint, I think Poe's going to Lowell probably mainly has to do with the fact that he was invited there and was in effect a paid gig. We sometimes forget, but Edgar Allan Poe was a career writer. He was of course a writer of poetry and short fiction, but he was also a journalist and he'd been a critic, he'd written about poetry and things like that. So he was a career writer and a career journalist.
Meg Smith:This is how he made his living through most of his life. And at that time it was very popular for authors to go on tours and for authors to be invited to give lectures in salons and things like that. It's the mid nineteenth century where there was a lot of momentous change both in society and in literature at the time. So he is living at that time in New York his New York City, with his mother-in-law, His wife, Virginia Clemp has passed away. And so he's really in a place that that's pretty, pretty difficult to put it mildly, both financially and economically, but also a terrible, terrible loss and a great loss of someone who we think was very dear to him.
Meg Smith:And so all of these things sort of overlap, I think. And honestly, I think he received an invitation to give a lecture. He's trying to support his family and so he goes. And that is the beginning of his adventures and his life in Lowell.
AP Strange:Yeah, interesting. Yeah, I mean, well, I was just thinking that like his earliest writing, I think he just didn't use his own name. He just credited it to like the Bostonian poet or something like that. Right? Like the first time he tried to publish Timberland in poems.
AP Strange:Yeah. So yeah. But yeah, Massachusetts, I guess we don't need to like grab too much literary clout. We have a lot of it to go around.
Meg Smith:In Massachusetts, yes, we are so blessed. We have an incredible literary heritage, basically all over the map literally in the state of Massachusetts. And so it's really great in the midst of all that to be producing this festival and sort of being a part of that. And Edgar Allan Poe's place in Lowell is sort of part of that landscape. And I can talk to you a little bit about what's on top for the festival this year and kinda what is really the spirit of of what we're hoping people will come away with from
AP Strange:the festival. Yeah. Sure. Well, let's get into it. What what what because I understand in past years, you've done a movie showing as part of it.
AP Strange:Yeah. You're doing that again. Talked Yeah. About that a
Meg Smith:exactly. So Poe and Lol is definitely a multimedia affair. We have live performance of music, of spoken word. We do a film. So I'll kind of walk you through some of the highlights of the whole weekend, this plan if I can.
Meg Smith:So everything kicks off on October 16, which is Friday. We are going to have what we're calling the Pells Read the Bells, which is myself and two prominent poets Linda Volodica and Claire Conroy, we're going to be doing a relay style reading of the bells to kind of set the tone for the festival. And the following day, Saturday, October 15, Saturday is kind of the fullest day of the festival. Folks can start their day by going to Lowell Cemetery where Richard Howe was our former registered deeds and an historian in the city and gives wonderful tours of this amazing cemetery. Among the folks buried there are Annie Richmond who we were talking about earlier and visiting the cemetery really helps to give a sense of who are the folks, who are the prominent folks in Lowell when Poe sets foot there.
Meg Smith:And in fact we're going to have a great lecture at Lowell National Historical Visitor Center by a couple of historians who have really done a lot of work to understand again Lowell during that time. And also Edgar Allan Poe's visits to Lowell because almost anyone you meet in Lowell knows of that visit, but like so much about Poe, there's also a lot of mystery around that. So we're gonna try to unpack that a little bit for folks. We'll also have a, what we call the Poe and Lowell pop up shop, which really highlights some of our community organizations and our independent writers and publications and makers. Lowell Celebrating Kerouac who is really our literary heritage partner will be there.
Meg Smith:And some of this has started to become codified over the years. On Saturday evening, we'll be having our Dream Within a Dream Saturday soiree. That's happening the evening of October 17 at a great place called the Dragonfly Cafe. And we gonna have a special guest musical performer and we're gonna have a guest poet. And we're also putting together a performance, a poet piece around the dream within a dream.
Meg Smith:And we have raffles or all kinds of like amazing prizes. And Sunday, October, it will be October 18. Yes, we're going to have a showing at the Owl Theater at Middlesex Community College of The Mask of the Red Death. Been working our way through Roger Corman's so called Edgar Allan Poe's cycle of films that he made in the mid 60s with Vincent Price. And these films are are somewhat create.
Meg Smith:There's a lot of creative license in these films but they're just so brilliantly spectacular to watch and and of course, Vincent Price is always marvelous to watch. He just brings that dark magic
AP Strange:to everything Vincent Price. Yeah.
Meg Smith:Yeah. He's so, so great. And it's sponsored by Middlesex Community College. We've had some wonderful support and partnerships from all the major cultural institutions and educational institutions in the city to have the support of the college, have the support of the Lowell National Historical Park, for example, and also our local library. Should add, going have a couple of exhibits that are ongoing through the month of October that are related to the festival.
Meg Smith:One is we're going to have a poetry and pop culture exhibit which will be pop culture items related to posts like Edgar Allan Poe, Living Dead Dolls and things like that. Poems by some of the horror poets that I've met over the years are going to be interspersed with that and those will be on view and we'll have a very informal, since Halloween's on Saturday this year, we'll have a round of our closing reception then, which should be very informal, a time for poetry and treats, two things that go great together. Yeah, and we're also one of our highlights this year is we're having a black cat beauty contest. We've asked folks to send in pictures of their cats. So there's black cats, calico cats, there's everything.
Meg Smith:One of the things we said right out of the gate is folks, the cat doesn't have to be black. It can be any color that your cat happens to be. Just don't bring the cats in person. All you need to do is send us photos. So the photos will be on exhibit at a great place called Lazy Cat Lounge which is a place with that where you could basically pay to have some time to hang out with some cats.
Meg Smith:Yes, we're going to have all the cat pictures on exhibit there and we'll have some awards to give out on also on Sunday, October 18. We'll have a black cat brunch and giving of the awards for most fat. We're still making up the awards. There will be things like most fabulous feline and and folks can get certificates like that. So all in all, it'll be a very well rounded festival and actually a very well rounded October.
AP Strange:Yeah, it sounds like any one of those events or days of the festival sound great or even just going to the the gallery during the time that's up. Mean Yeah. It sounds like time well spent if you're anywhere near Lowell, Massachusetts or anywhere up and down 495.
Meg Smith:Yeah and I should mention too that the reason we call it Lowell's Literary Heritage Corridor is because we do have these major writers associated with Lowell including Jack Kerouac. The Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival actually takes place the weekend prior.
AP Strange:Okay.
Meg Smith:So basically have Lowell Celebrates Kerouac as the weekend prior. It's the holiday weekend prior which again, have all kinds of great concerts. Legendary David Amram will be there. David Amram was part of Jack Kerouac's inner circle of friends and a very amazing and truly legendary, really an American national treasure as a composer, as a writer of movie scores, as a conductor and a performer, as well as just a wonderful person who my late husband and I got to be very good friends with. So he's going to be there, David Ameren is going to be there, he's not to be missed during Lowell Celebrates Care Act.
Meg Smith:And then you'll have a week to get rested up and ready for Poe and Lowell the following Now
AP Strange:I was gonna ask, was Kerouac buried in that cemetery that you were talking about?
Meg Smith:Jack Kerouac is buried in another cemetery called Edson Cemetery in Lowell and his wife Stella is buried there. It is definitely a place of pilgrimage for folks who are very interested and very beloved of Kerouac's life and literature. One of the wonderful things about Lowell is you can come and visit some of the places he talks about in his book. Kerouac wrote five books that were based on or inspired by his mainly his upbringing in Lowell in a French Canadian family. His first language was actually French.
Meg Smith:He didn't actually really speak English fluently until he went to school. And those are like amazing books that really talk about just the the the culture, the language, the the Catholic spirituality, the mysticism, just people going about their lives in Lowell. There are places in Lowell that are mentioned in the books and people will often go there and they'll sort of underline those parts of the book. And so in this way, I would say between Poe and Kerouac, Lowell has really become like a city that's kind of a place of pilgrimage for a lot
AP Strange:of And
Meg Smith:we should also really give props to the fact that Lowell really is a very naturally occurring literary heritage that really that goes all the way back. It certainly goes back to an oral tradition of our indigenous people here and starts to really sort of resonate in the power of the written word. Actually not as much through professors or scholars, although those people there, but really through young women working in the mills who start to organize themselves. And they put out a literary magazine called The Lowell Offering. And we still have copies of it in the Lowell Library.
Meg Smith:So I kind of feel like our sort of spirits go all the way back to them. And Poe and Karowak are folks along the way who have kind of hopped on that. They're kind of like ghost conductors on that train. But the train really got started with the indigenous people of the land and with the young working women who in many ways we owe a lot of our labor rights today to them.
AP Strange:Right, yeah. I mean, was back in those days was kind of a new kind of industrial town, right? Wasn't it sort of a template for how industrial towns could be built up and company towns, I guess?
Meg Smith:Exactly. Lowell really is a planned community. So it's kind of different from some of the other communities around here or small towns that say are themselves playing communities but they're going way back into the 1600s when European settlers first start arriving. Lowell is basically a purpose built city established in 1826. We've been having wonderful bicentennial events throughout the year and so that's why we are sort of folding that theme into Poland Lowell this year.
Meg Smith:And yeah, it definitely it is a paradox because Massachusetts, as we know it, even at that time, is considered one of the most progressive states in the union. There's great groundswell of abolitionist movement even and it is one of the first states in which slavery was abolished mainly through the efforts of enslaved people who had very sharp legal minds and used litigation basically as the tool to end slavery. So all of that is happening, but there is definitely a paradox because our textile mills, they on the one hand represent opportunities, they represent promise, they represent growth. However, they are being fueled by the cotton of enslaved labor in the South. So that is a paradox that in Lowell, you're basically that as in so many places that we wrestle with.
Meg Smith:So a lot of that is sort of also built into the fabric, if you will, of our heritage. But I always give props to the young women and they were young, many of them were in their teens. Of Some them came from the countryside. Lowell has drawn people from many countries, including a large cohort of Irish people. It really is an immigrant built city.
Meg Smith:And that in itself is wonderful thing. So yeah, we have a lot to unpack here when people come to visit. We have a lot to show and we even have trolleys. You can ride on the trolleys and it's a very sweet thing to live in a city where there's old trolleys on that era going back and forth.
AP Strange:I've often thought they should bring that back in Worcester. If we had the trolley in Worcester again, that went down Main Street and over down to Front Street and things like that, that would be pretty cool. Should have built that in when they made the ballpark, but yeah. But, yeah, no, Lowell is cool like that. I I feel like it has, it's sort of an overused word these days, but it has kind of a liminal quality to it, at least for me because it's kind of that middle point of 495 if you're driving all the way up on the interstate to get to like New Hampshire or something.
AP Strange:You have to drive through it. Plus, it's got all the rivers that go through it, that fed the mills It's and got like all these It weird kind of certainly got a spirit, and like you said, it's an old city, but it's really modern in a lot of ways. So Yes, that's Especially compared to a lot of other towns and cities in Massachusetts. Yeah, well, so we were talking about Paradoxes just now, and I think that kind of describes Poe as well. And you also alluded to him being kind of mysterious, and there's a lot of things about him that are debated.
AP Strange:So that that kind of makes him, like, a fun character to keep returning to for me because I feel like a lot of people's opinions of Poe were based on the obituary that was written by one of his rivals when he passed. And there's all these crazy stories about him being like a raving lunatic or a drunk or having died of rabies. But how do you characterize Poe and his life? Or do you think there's dimensions to Poe and he's open to interpretation in some ways?
Meg Smith:I would say when I think about Edgar Allan Poe and really when I think about any life that has been lived. I look at that really through a journalist lens. And yes, you're absolutely right. A lot of Poe's sort of reputation, certainly in the years or decades sort of immediately after his death come down through a rather inflammatory obituary. And I think as time has passed, firstly, as with anything, there's more scholarship, there's more research to look at.
Meg Smith:And even the woman with whom he was briefly engaged from Providence, Sarah Helen Whitman, who became a great literary figure in her own right as a poet, as a critic, even though they have this short and we think somewhat volatile relationship that she basically became one of his first and greatest defenders of writing something that was much more, I would say balanced or in an effort to present a more total picture of a person. And one thing journalism definitely teaches you, I can say, is you are always talking with people at some sort of crossroads in their lives. And you are always engaging with people in the midst of the human condition and the human experience. My sense of Edgar Allan Poe is that firstly, do know that he struggled quite a lot. He had a great deal of loss over the course of his life.
Meg Smith:I mean, really deep and terrible loss from the loss of his mother, certainly the loss of his wife being most famous among them. And also we know he had sort of familial conflicts, he had professional conflicts. And I think also his life was definitely impeded by probably chronic illnesses. People do talk about, say, the use of substances and alcohol, for example. I think it's important to put that in the context of the times that we're talking about.
Meg Smith:It's the mid nineteenth century. There really isn't anything like we have now, like say going to the store to get aspirin or things that have been sort of combed through by a federal regulatory agency. We can have a little bit more faith in those products. The average person at that time, I think, had to be living with chronic pain and chronic illness almost their entire lives, because not everything could be corrected by surgery at that time or physical therapy. Those things were still very, very primitive.
Meg Smith:We know that prenatal care is such, I mean, none of these things that we almost somewhat take for granted now, those things didn't exist in the public health milieu. And so managing pain, think was probably a pretty critical part of the life of the average person, whether you're talking about men, women, children of any socioeconomic class even. And this is where we know a lot of substances come into play where people could develop a dependency and not even realize it.
AP Strange:And
Meg Smith:very simply that was that people needed to manage pain in order to get through life. And so I think in that situation, Poe was probably not unique in that way. That's playing out in a much broader context. The other thing that I will also say, because oftentimes as a journalist, what you encounter in life people who may be carrying those burdens or maybe struggling with something like, say, substance use, what we now call substance use or dealing with mental health issues or even a chronic disability who basically still go on with their lives and still lead productive lives. And I kind of put Poe in that class because my gosh, he was an amazingly productive person in his life in terms of the writing he did, in terms of we don't often think as much about, we think about sort of his byronic poetry and short stories and so forth.
Meg Smith:He also had a very analytical side to him that comes out in sort of his critical writing. He's credited with an ineffective inventing the detective novel, which is in itself a kind of much more analytical type of writing. So what I basically see is a rational, intelligent, and hardworking person who's trying to manage the responsibilities he has as a provider, as the head of a household. And he's doing that even with all of these other things that he has to contend with, the loss in his life, the illness, the physical issues, mental health issues, and almost certainly that perhaps led to a dependency on substances and or alcohol and depression. We know that he did have some suicide ideation that was part of his life.
Meg Smith:So seeing everything that I have seen in my work as a journalist, we recently had the twenty fifth anniversary of September eleventh and the names of families that I talked to who had lost someone from that day, because I was working as a reporter on that day, right up to the twenty fifth anniversary, you just see people who carry burdens that no one else necessarily knows about and they still manage to do good and great and important things in life. And to me, I think that that's always an important lens to see people through, if we are going to assess and evaluate and judge the life of someone, including someone who's no longer here among us.
AP Strange:Right. And that's a very delicate and nuanced thing to have to analyze and parse out, which I think you just, you know, eloquently described. Because, I mean, people have a way of like romanticizing trauma or talking about tortured artists or like saying it comes out of the pain or something like that. But I tend to think that sometimes it happens in spite of, you know, like, and there's a lot of nuance and there's a lot of possibilities there, but, you know, tragedy is a part of life for everyone experiences something, you know, and, yeah, Poe certainly had a lot of loss, I mean, from starting with both of his parents, I believe, because the Allen in his name comes from his adopted family, so, you know, even though legally adopt him, but, you know, they brought him up a little. By
Meg Smith:the way, joining us this year as I prophesied earlier, this is Kirby. He's the youngest of our three cats.
AP Strange:Okay. Not a black cat, but partially black cat.
Meg Smith:He's a tabby. He's a two tabby.
AP Strange:Yeah. I'm surprised mine hasn't. I have a black and white Lucy. Aw. Which is short for Lucifer, and she lives up to her name.
AP Strange:Yeah. So I mean, the other thing about Poe for me that always struck me, he just struck me as kind of a nonconformist. Like, don't think he liked fitting in. But I don't think he could if he wanted to, you know?
Meg Smith:Sense of Poe is, like a lot of folks, I think our human impulse as a species is we want to belong. We want to belong to a group. From an evolutionary standpoint, that improves your chances of survival innumerably than say trying to strike out on your own when there's things like sabers with tigers and flying meters and whatever may have been dealt to our primordial ancestors. So we have that impulse, We want to belong to a group. And I think that almost certainly had to be true of Poe as well.
Meg Smith:I think he wanted to feel that he belonged to some place and that what he was doing mattered to people. But I think there is the phenomenon of someone who basically is their own person still wants to belong and sometimes maybe the frustration of like how do negotiate that? That's a And complicated thing, even a lot of people nowadays feel that way. And if you think, if I could sort of take a page from like the goth lifestyle itself, just as an example, is that folks want to be individuals. We all want to be individuals.
Meg Smith:We all want to be our authentic self. And we know that sometimes in our doing that, that's going to cut against the grain for someone somewhere. The only person who can sort of answer this question is your own self and say, well, does that really matter? And are people ultimately happier if they're living their most authentic life? I think with Poe, one of the things that he seems to run into quite a lot is that in the mid nineteenth century, what was happening in American literature at that time is that there was this sort of new awakening.
Meg Smith:There was the transcendentalist movement, And of we know that again, we had a lot of folks questioning some of the practice that has simply just gone on for centuries in this country, slavery amongst them. The position of women among other things. And there also I think was this sense of like, well Europe is in, because the majority of people that we are talking about are of some kind of European descent at this point, mostly white Protestant European descent. So they're in a very different experience from say the Irish or other folks. They really see Europe as in what we now say the rearview mirror.
Meg Smith:They are looking at new horizons. They're looking at new ways of thinking about religion, for example, or the role of religion, or different types of views about religion from basically the sort of classical Protestant Christianity which was sort of the bedrock for a long time. And here comes Edgar Allan Poe, right? What is he doing? He's writing about castles in Europe, dungeons.
Meg Smith:He's talking about Renaissance party in Italy where there's this guy who's just so angry at his friend, we don't even know why he's angry at him, but he's angry enough to get him down into a wine cellar and get him really inebriated and just brick him up and say good night. We're looking at these sort of dark streets in Paris. And I think some folks, I think his peers in sort of the literary circles are saying, what is he doing? We are trying to move away from that. The people with ruffled lace and the noble men and his sister who have these bizarre plague parties.
Meg Smith:We're really trying to move away from that to do something. So I think he sort of cuts against the crane of a lot
AP Strange:of folks at
Meg Smith:that time.
AP Strange:Yeah. To your point, Poe is actually kinda big in France. Right? Like, I feel like he was a huge influence on Baudelaire and some of the French poets and and things like that, you know.
Meg Smith:Yeah. I think Yeah. I think that well may be true. But I sort of feel like that one thing about Poe and again, if I can step back and sort of refer to Kerouac a little bit, To me, it's so fascinating to have Poe and Kerouac sort of rooted in Lowell, even though, as I said, there's no evidence that Poe was directly an influence on Kerouac, especially Kerouac does not mention that at length versus say other writers like Joyce, for example, that we were talking about. And at the same time, the parallels are pretty incredible in their lives.
Meg Smith:They both die tragically early and for somewhat similar causes, but both with somewhat mysterious circumstances that we still don't fully understand. And they also were in their own time somewhat cutting against the grain of what was going on in American literature at the time. And I think even though we think about Poe as sort of the traditionalist who goes back to the rhyming and stories about these people in the middle ages and with black velvet and lace everywhere and things like that, that are really like very, to your point, sort of entrenched in this kind of gauzy European sort romanticism, which his peers thought were just taking things backward. One thing that Poe and Kerouac both have in common that to me is really important is that they are writers who are chosen by the people. I'm actually taking a, when I say that, I'm actually taking a page from Billy Corrigan of Smashing Pumpkins.
Meg Smith:He was in a documentary about the band Rush and he said the same thing, that this was a band elected by the people. And because this was a band that at least back in their early days, music critics were not so fond of. We know that's different now. But a band that has basically sustained itself on the loyalty of its fans, the brand loyalty. And I think you could say something similar both about Jack Kerouac and Edgar Allan Poe in that people, and not that I'm in the business of sort of comparing writers in this way, but there are writers both during Kerouac's time and during Poe's time who are great writers and to whom we owe a lot in terms of American literature.
Meg Smith:But are not living in people's hearts the way Jack Kerouac does and the way Edgar Allan Poe does. And why is that? To me, I think it's because they simply, a couple of things. One, they were in each in their own way enormously innovative when it came to the English language. They were willing to take risks.
Meg Smith:Poe was not in fact sort of the high bound classicist that we sometimes think of him. Was willing to take risks with the use of sound and onomatopoeia and alliteration, which is why it's so great to read some of his works aloud, know, like The Raven or The Bells. You can sit and read them quietly, but they're also really, you can read them aloud, you can read them in a communal setting where people take, you know parts reading it and it becomes like
AP Strange:Well yeah, they lend themselves well to dramatic interpretation.
Meg Smith:They definitely do. We love to have crazy all out readings of The Raven actually at Poem Law it's becoming one of our signature things where it just gets wilder and louder with every verse because it's the use of sound and rhythm. And Kerouac does something in his own way that's very similar with language. Kerouac is not afraid to take risks with language or sound or meaning or the construction of sentences. And I think that they also, both of them speak to very similar themes.
Meg Smith:Both of those writings, we've actually had events where we've done some side by side readings, you will find very similar themes. Kerouac was haunted his entire life by the death of his older brother Gerard. There are people that he meets and friends that he has and people in his life that he has loved and either loses them through their passing away or they part by other means. And those people just live with him in his writing and his thoughts and his words. He is constantly seeking something in his writing.
Meg Smith:And Poe is very similar and I think one and they also are both very Gothic. Kerouac writes one of the great American Gothic novels, which is Doctor. Saxe, which is about this sort of phantom like being in the city and that sort of haunts the collective imagination of the city. And so they do write a lot about mystery and they write a lot about supernatural things, both of them. And they write about things that are frightening and perhaps sometimes sad.
Meg Smith:But they also, and I think this is sometimes overlooked a lot, they also write about the importance of love in life and how important it is to love people and and to be loved by someone and not only just romantic love, but the love of friendships. And that's not as commented as much, I think, as where Poe is concerned or even Kerouac, but there's something of a great heart in both of those writers and their writings. And I think it's because of that that people literally all over the world read Kerouac and they come here to Lowell to visit the grotto where he prayed the the church the churches where his family went the waterfall which is the site of the sort of mysterious and enigmatic character called the Watermelon Man and why they go to his grave. We don't have quite the same physical sites associated with Poe. It's a little more of a spiritual pilgrimage.
Meg Smith:But both of those writers are speaking to people from all over the world of all different backgrounds of different languages, nationalities, races. And I'm very intentional in illuminating that in the Poe and Lowell programming. This is a festival where everyone is welcomed because Poe spoke to everybody. And so as a writer elected by the people, we work to make it a festival of the people.
AP Strange:Well, that's excellent, yeah. And at the risk of getting onto a whole other tangent, there's a similar festival in Providence, the Necronomicon, I understand you did the talk at. Because as you mentioned, he you know, Providence was important to Poe as well. And do do you feel there's similar connections between he and Lovecraft?
Meg Smith:Yes. Well, we know Lovecraft was I think somewhat I'm not a Lovecraft scholar, but I and in fact, my approach to all of the literature is as a writer by profession, but also a consumer. I I'm both a specialist and a lay person in that regard. Simply an enjoyer and an appreciator of it. My understanding is that yes, Lovecraft was absolutely hugely influenced by Poe.
Meg Smith:We know Lovecraft is sort of the father of cosmic horror these And certainly the fact that Poe was there in Providence, and Providence has its own story to tell about Poe. And it was really great to sit on a panel with some really great writers to sort of explore that a little bit and really talk about Poe's sense of place because whether you're talking about New York or Baltimore or Lowell or Providence or Richmond and other places, Poe in a sense of place just go together. Wherever he goes, he just becomes part of that haunted map. And so that was really fun to explore. And having sort of a native son or daughter in your city is a pretty cool thing.
Meg Smith:Necronomicon is amazing. It's an amazing extravaganza. It is almost like a Homeric epic, that festival. There's so many things going on, so many panels, so many I mean, really have so much love for my friends who put that together. And yes, I was on a panel, we talked about Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman in Providence, as well as in Lowell.
Meg Smith:And then I was part of the two poetry readings. And I think we're just blessed to live in a time and place where we can have events like this, and we can all get together and talk, you know, about writers. And I think for a writer, it definitely gives you that fire of like, yes, this is why I do this. Mean, they never get famous at it, but it doesn't matter. It's mine.
Meg Smith:So I'm going to do it. They did it.
AP Strange:Yeah, that's what it's all about. I mean, like you said, people respond to the heart in the writing. And if you can get enthusiastic about that and enjoy it and especially enjoy it with other people. Mean, I in a way, that's what I hope to do with this show is when we have these, I love having conversations with people that are enthusiastic about things because I feel like my listeners can feel that, you know? And we can all kind of geek out together, so.
Meg Smith:Yeah, well, it's almost like a little hearth that you can gather, you know, around for that story time because that's our human impulse, right? To gather around that place where we can all talk and tell stories and share in that. I did if we could just wanted to, before we wind down spend a couple of minutes talking about the Martian New Year party. Yeah,
AP Strange:I was about to say we could pivot just to that just for a minute because in addition to your your poet your poetic and gothic and and spooky pursuits, you're you're also a science journalist. And we have a an event here in Worcester that's going to be the Martian New Year event, which sadly I can't be part of, but Sure.
Meg Smith:Yeah. But we will make something happen another time, I promise. So I really want to give a shout out to all my friends in Worcester. Worcester is like my home too. It's my home where I work, but it is very much, I'm a person who's blessed to basically have two home cities.
Meg Smith:And Worcester is a city that I absolutely love and am in love with and feel so at home in, and where the community has really embraced me and I feel blessed by that every day. I've been a career journalist a long time now and a lot of that career has actually been spent in the Central Mass area. I mentioned on September 11, was actually a reporter at the Sentinel and Enterprise in Fitchburg.
AP Strange:Oh, okay.
Meg Smith:So in Worcester, I have a couple of different roles. I am principally the content editor of Worcester Magazine, which is the alternative weekly that comes out every Friday. And I gotta give a quick shout out to my colleague and friend Victor Infante, who's so great to work with, along with our great team, Mick Troglobe, Richard Duckett, photographers, Allen Young, everybody, you guys are amazing. So I just, what a privilege it is to work with all of you. And so I do that, which means I manage all departments within, all the content departments within Worcester Magazine.
Meg Smith:And that also includes our video and social media. And I do some event writing like occasionally rock concert reviews and things like that for The Telegram and Gazette, is our daily newspaper partner. And just about a year and a half ago, I started a science column called Woohoo Science, Woo-being for Worcester. Because I actually have done science writing for quite a long time. I really love it.
Meg Smith:My late husband was a scientist in fact. So I wanted to launch some community events and a number of things came together. One this year the centennial of Robert Goddard, Worcester's native son, who it's for the centennial was in March of his first liquid fuel rocket launch. And that was a really amazing thing to be part of as a science journalist. And the other thing that happens this year is I came to be acquainted with the whole phenomenon, the Martian New Year.
Meg Smith:When a friend on my back in November 2024 said, oh, we just had the Martian New Year. So I immediately went to look at the next one. When is the next one? Well, it's 09/30/2026. And this all has to do with the planet Mars meeting a certain point in its orbit around the sun.
Meg Smith:And so I reached out to Worcester Public Library, which is an absolutely amazing resource and amazing community within itself in Worcester. And I said, would you guys be interested in our holding a Martian New Year party there? So that is happening on the Martian New Year, Wednesday, September 30 at 06:30PM. We're gonna have a science panel where we have Charles Slotkin, who is the owner and director of the Goddard House, as well as a nonprofit called The Wonder Mission. Melanie Maydors representing the Aldridge Astronomical Society, and Joanne Adams from the Ecotarium.
Meg Smith:Y'all in Worcester have amazing science and arts resources. We can do just a whole show about that. Truly, a series of shows. So all these amazing people are gonna be on the science panel talking about Mars exploration, talking about Mars and the part that it plays in our science research and our sort of understanding the solar system and the universe. And then we're going to have a pop culture piece where Stephen Sampson, a great writer from the most area, is going be reading from H.
Meg Smith:G. Wells' War of the Worlds. And I'm going to read from The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. One of my favorite books. It's such a wonderful and beautiful and sort of heartbreaking book And to I am just forever haunted.
Meg Smith:I read the whole thing the first time when I was 13. The chapter that just haunted me forever and still does is the second chapter, which is basically about a Martian woman who's in a not very happy marriage, who starts to have what turned out to be telepathic dreams about people coming from earth. And her husband is not happy about this at all. And he sort of goes and finds this person and basically executes him. What's so heartbreaking about that is it basically foreshadows the fate of the Martians when they begin to interact with people from earth, which is they have no resistance to microbial diseases that So the earth folks it's a very intentional parallel between what happens with indigenous folks in this land and sort of a lack of immunity to these diseases being just one of the terrible things that happens.
Meg Smith:So those two novels to me sort of represent bookends about our ideas about Mars in popular culture as invaders or a place that raises a lot of questions about if we have our colony, what are we going to do? Do we even have any right to do that?
AP Strange:Yeah, that's true.
Meg Smith:It's like, do we really have that, what sort of gives us that right? So both of those novels sort of raise those sort of big questions as well as being very entertaining. So we will have a cake, we will have a happy New Year Marchion cake. We're gonna have some trivia prizes and if people wear costumes, it's not a cosplay event as such. People can certainly dress up creatively if they like.
Meg Smith:It's a very family friendly event. Children or students are definitely welcome. The Worcester Public Library has asked that folks register in advance if they can. So if you get on the Worcester Public Library website to register, that sort of helps for them to plan a little bit in terms of how many folks are coming in. They have an event link at mywpl.org.
Meg Smith:So it will be the first, I hope, of several community events that are presented by Wu Science and other community partners. And we hope that earthlings are most welcome and we hope that you
AP Strange:all come out
Meg Smith:and almost ring in the Martian New Year.
AP Strange:Yeah, absolutely.
Meg Smith:Martian is welcome too. You all want to celebrate off planet with us, definitely do that.
AP Strange:I hope that Marvin can make it.
Meg Smith:Marvin Martian. I literally ordered fabric with a Marvin Martian pattern on it so I could make a cushion or something. Because I have a little fabric arts business called Midnight Muse, M E W S. It means we make catnip toys. But yeah, I'm hoping to create a cushion like that that can be one of our trivia prizes.
AP Strange:Excellent, excellent. Well, that sounds great. So, you're a busy bee in the coming weeks and months. Appreciate having you be part of the community as an emissary to Worcester. You know, welcome because, you know, you're talking about having two different home cities, and and I think you fit right in in this town.
Meg Smith:I appreciate that so much. I am really sincere when I said this, love coming to Worcester. I love the work that even that I do virtually. As I said, the community is really just so great. It's a very strong idea.
Meg Smith:This word is overused somewhat, but when you think about like a vibrant and resilient community, Worcester truly is. And people just have enormous reserves of strength and are enormously creative. There's so many great things going on and there are challenges as would befit any community, certainly any urban community. But I met so many people who are dedicated to making life better and making the community stronger every day for everybody. And I see that in Lowell as well.
Meg Smith:And I think that in certainly Fitchburg as well, and to have all those communities be part of my life as well as my career, you know, that is truly a blessing. And I always remember that every day when I show up for work every day.
AP Strange:That's what it's all about. It's the gratitude and the enthusiasm. If you got those two things, life's a lot easier. Okay?
Meg Smith:Absolutely. Yep.
AP Strange:Well, if people want to follow along with with what you're up to, is there any place they can do that or follow along with the Wu Science or the Poet Lowell or the social media?
Meg Smith:Abs yeah. Absolutely. So folks who wanna know more about I'll give you a couple of links for information about Lowell Celebrates Kerouac. We're at lowellcelebratescarouac.org. And we're also, which we sort of shorthand that is LCK.
Meg Smith:So we say LCK is on Facebook. And also I started to manage their Instagram account. You can follow us on there as well lowellcelebratescarewac. Poe and Lowell, again on Instagram or Poe and Lowell and also on Facebook. And we have a Linktree, so it's Linktree slash Poe in Lowell, which is sort of our clearinghouse of social media, the event schedule, everything like that.
Meg Smith:And it is being updated because as we get closer to the festival, we do make frequent updates. So that's happening as well. If you want to learn more about me as a writer, you're welcome to check out magsmithwriter.com. And I'm also on Instagram and Facebook as well at magsmithwriter. Worcester Magazine, worcestermag.com.
Meg Smith:That's us. Telegram is And at telegram. You can find Woo Science on there. And it publishes in the Sunday edition of the Telegram Gazette. We go for like an alternating Sunday pattern, as well as having different types of science related coverage and social media stuff interspersed in between.
Meg Smith:So we always have a lot coming on, come check us out. You will never be bored. And we will always be glad to see you.
AP Strange:Well, well, yeah, excellent. Excellent. Like I said, you certainly keep busy and you keep everybody entertained and with plenty to think about. So I very much appreciate your efforts and I thank you so much for coming on to talk to me.
Meg Smith:Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity to talk about all these things, to talk about Powell and Lowell and Lowell celebrates Kerouac and certainly the Marchant New Year party, which also at its heart is a literary thing. And as well as paying homage to Worcester's native son, Robert Gatard.
Meg Smith:And so we hope you'll be able to come out for these events. And I appreciate the conversation and looking forward to seeing you again in my travels.
AP Strange:Oh, yeah. We will we'll I'm sure we will run into each other again. So alright. Have a great day, Meg.
Meg Smith:Alright. Thank you so much, man. Alright. Take care. Bye bye.