Over the last few weeks, Melbourne’s poet soulster Sean M Whelan has been so crazily busy working the stages with his new poetry-music collaboration, Sean M Whelan and the Interim Lovers, that he’s barely had time to breathe, let alone ease out a pen and paper and scribble a little poetry. Whelan performed for the first time with the Interim Lovers during Overload 2009, and the response was overwhelmingly positive. The Overland Overloaded team finally backed Whelan into a corner and forced him to answer some questions.

Sean M Whelan & the Interim Lovers…
are brand new! Our debut performance was at this years Overload Poetry Festival.
We rock because…
the lead singer doesn’t sing, he speaks.
We sound like…
Mogwai & Dirty Three, a little bit, and like ourselves, a lot.
We came together when…
my previous collaborators The Mime Set disbanded and Andrew Watson, who played guitar and violin in The Mime Set first suggested writing a response piece to Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hunting of the Snark.’ So I came up with the idea of imagining the Snark as a vision of love. A vision worth hunting.
We’re performing…
somewhere close to you in the near future. After our successful debut at Overload we’re looking to do a season of Softly & Suddenly at a soon to be revealed location.
It works because…
The Interim Lovers know that poetry needs light, air and space to breathe in. But also because I know that rock bands have to be let off the leash every now and then too.
I first came to poetry…
when my guitar was stolen when I was 21. I had to choose between a new guitar and a typewriter. No prizes for guessing which one I bought next.
& now I hear poetry when I…
see moments worth saving
and write it…
in those small sacred moments when I can find them.
poetry shits me when…
it’s treated like an angst disposal unit, rather than a craft worthy of respect.
and even more when…
I see good writers mutilate their own work because they don’t know how to read it out loud.
Poetry does with words what…
fish do with bicycles.
and I keep writing cause…
thankfully I keep witnessing moments that are worth saving.
I publish my poems…
with Hit & Miss Press, Small Change Press, Going Down Swinging and whoever else will have me
and…
I can be a little lazy when it comes to sending things off, but I’m trying to be better at that this year.
But what i really want to tell you about poetry is…
it’s a recording machine.
and more to the point…
I don’t always enjoy writing it, but I love the end result (usually).
and most of all…
most of my poems are really love letters.
But the long & short of it is…
poetry is all around you.

Sean M. Whelan is a writer of poetry, prose and works for performance.
In 2009 he was a special guest at the Festival Voix d’Amériques in Montreal, Canada.
His second book of poetry, Tattooing the Surface of the Moon was released in 2008, published by Small Change Press.