Newtown Literary contributor: Phil Demise Smith

Writer Phil Demise Smith's work was featured in issue #10 of Newtown Literary. Below, he discusses his workspace, and you can listen to a sample of his music. For more from Phil, check out his website.

Yin Yang Goes the Trolley

I live in a small Jackson Heights pre-war apartment (all apartments are unfortunately pre-war)… My art and music studio is in my bedroom, close to where I dream… My lounge chair in the living room in front of my TV is where I read and write poems… What I read often tinges the voice of what I’m writing (most recently Mark Strand and Jules Supervielle)… From time to time my voice changes slightly like it does in the physical world… And I always depend on doubling and tripling entendres to express both what I intend to mean and, at the same time, the opposite and its middle… This is where I intuitively feel any Truth lies… Yin yang goes the trolley…

I have always wondered what it would be like to be an artist… To express the universal with a swift kick right in a very personal and innocent hindsight; to reach back into the source and grab the meandering incoherence by its tales; to kick its ifs and its ands and its buts into a state of presence that glows along the edges… Art is my toy. It is the child in me that is the artist. It is the artist in me that is my most honest portrayal.