Caleb Nichols is gay. It’s literally the name of his website, calebnicholsis.gay. He’s also SLO County’s new poet laureate. Not bad for a Morro Bay High School dropout cum Ph.D. in creative writing from Bangor University in North Wales.
Nichols was born in Washington state but grew up since age 3 in Los Osos. He attended Humboldt State University, then spent a decade playing music with Port O’Brien and other bands, then he went to San Jose State University where he got a degree in library sciences.
He lived in New York for a while, then Atlanta, then he came back to Cal Poly as a librarian and earned a master’s degree in English literature. Then the Ph.D. in Wales. He now lives with his husband in San Luis Obispo, where he teaches writing courses in the Cal Poly English department. Oh, and he’s still playing music and was signed not too long ago to Kill Rock Stars, a super hip indie label.
I spoke to Nichols by the koi pond on the Linnaea’s Café patio.
What does it mean to be poet laureate? Is it just an honorific or does it come with duties and responsibilities?
“My understanding is that it can be whatever you want it to be,” Nichols explained. “I think partly it’s a recognition, like we’re recognizing you for the work you’ve done or the accomplishments you’ve made, and then the other part is it’s a public service. ‘What are you going to do for these two years to bring poetry to the community in whatever way that looks like?’
“[The poet laureate program‘s] been going on here in the county since 1999,” Nichols continued. “So there’s been lots of different poet laureates and they’ve all done different things. A lot of them focused on getting poetry in schools. My focus is definitely going to be bringing readers in and connecting writers in the county because I think there’re a lot of writers here, lots of really well published writers too, that are just hiding out. There’re lots of different writerly communities around, but they’re not connecting that well.”
How can he bring these communities together?
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I mean, I’ve been trying in fits and starts over the past few years to figure that out. I’ve been running this thing called the SLO Book Bike, which is a pop-up bookshop on a tricycle with a cargo box, and we started doing pop-ups, but we also do workshops and readings. We’re doing monthly or bimonthly events at Jan’s Vinyl Bar called Poetry and All That Jazz. We have poets come, and one or two featured poets read while a DJ is spinning, so they’re reading over the music, and it kind of interacts in a way, and then after that we have an open mic. It’s really nice.
“I’m just trying to have more events that connect writers in the community and to bring outside writers in, just trying to foster a poetry community.”
For most people, poetry isn’t a part of their lives. They don’t think it’s essential. They may even see it as elitist or academic, or worse, self-indulgent and impenetrable. Is it possible to show people that poetry doesn’t have to be those things? That it can be accessible and rewarding?
“That’s a good question, and I wouldn’t argue with your characterization of how many people see poetry,” Nichols said, “but some people are interested. I get this a lot: ‘I’m interested in poetry, but I don’t know how to start,’ or ‘I don’t understand poetry. I feel like it’s too intellectual.’
“Especially in the U.S., poetry seems like an academic pursuit, like you have to do a close reading of the poem rather than just experience it. A poem is a really different art form than the kind of art we typically consume these days. It’s not a pop song. It’s not a movie. It’s not a TV show. It’s not a novel. It’s its own thing, and that thing can seem challenging, but the benefit of it is it will give you a different experience of the world and a different way to connect with people, and I think a lot of people, when they find the poems that speak to them, there’s a profound experience that you can’t have through any other mediums.”
How did Nichols get into poetry?
“My own entry point to poetry was just encountering a poem that really spoke to what I was going through at the time,” he recalled. “It was Carl Phillips’ ‘The Strong By Their Stillness.’ I was going through some emotional heartache stuff, and it just really spoke to it. It made me feel like my experience was right there in front of me. That comforted me and gave words to what I was feeling, and what I was feeling was complex and difficult to discern, but this poem did it, and I thought, ‘Oh, wow. That feels good just to read.’ I also thought, as an artist and musician, that a song couldn’t do that.”
Nichols also noted that most of us grew up reading poetry and not thinking it was inaccessible, pointing out the work of Shel Silverstein with books like Where the Sidewalk Ends. Look up Philip Larkin’s “This Be The Verse” and tell me it’s inaccessible.
Poetry can be a hoot.
Take for instance Nichols’ erasure poems, where he took Yelp reviews of Taco Bell on Santa Rosa Street and removed words to create new ideas. His six Taco Bell erasures were published in the U.K.’s Fruit Queer Literary Journal. One titled “Kathryn” reads, “this is honest y order order order ruin.” If that doesn’t sum up Taco Bell, I don’t know what does.
“There’s a famous quote by Audre Lorde, ‘Poetry is not a luxury,'” Nichols said.
He wants everyone who wants poetry to have it, and he plans to spend the next two years making it as accessible as possible.
A poem by Caleb Nichols
STOP SCROLLING
& consider how it feels
to be the lone black seed
in the cool wet sugar
of a seedless watermelon—
to be where you aren’t
meant to be, but still
so sweetly held, in the
red ripe center of things. Δ
Contact Arts Editor Glen Starkey at gstarkey@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Jan 23 – Feb 2, 2025.