Eden: My name is Eden Pela, and I'm joined today by my co-interviewer and editor of the magazine, Adeeb Chowdhury.

Adeeb: Hi everyone, my name is Adeeb. I'm the fiction and nonfiction editor of the Vagabonds Verse, and I'm super excited to be here today.

Eden: We're excited to conduct this interview as a part of the Writers' Cut. The Writers' Cut is a new initiative on the Vagabonds Verse where we talk and interview writers and artists about their lives, inspirations, and their creative journeys.

Adeeb: And today, we are honored to be in the presence of a compelling rising figure in the art world, someone whose work challenges convention, encourages critical thought, and touches on the role of artistic expression in our modern culture.

Eden: But before we bring him in, we just want to take a moment to read a bit of Mr. Gladstone's very profound background. August Gladstone is a 24-year-old Los Angeles-based writer, poet, clown, and troubadour. He's used his theatrical upbringing on Broadway at age six to craft absurd comedies, placing him in numerous screenwriting competitions and performing across the country under various forms of media including an appearance in the 2024 Netflix Is a Joke Comedy Festival. He is also an award-winning poet. He has been published by Winged Moon, Vine Leaves Press, Pluto's, Hare's Paw Literary Journal, and more. As a lyricist, he's written for the members of Supertramp, Crowded House, and Ringo's All Stars. August is currently preparing a publication for his debut poetry collection, Ivy, represented by three arts entertainment. And with that, we welcome August.

August: Thank you guys so much for having me! You flattered me significantly with your kind introduction, and in the more modern iterations of that bio, Vagabond's verse is listed forthright among those publications.

Eden: Yeah, absolutely. We're so glad to even be able to, honestly, publish your work. So we had you submit a few interview notes for today, and in those, you mentioned that your greatest success is having a fluid and multifaceted portfolio, which we certainly agree with. So I'm just curious, since you've been acting at a very young age, at age six. How have these art forms shaped your childhood and your creative identity? And how has it informed your other artistic expressions, including writing?

August: It's very good question. It's one that I have tried to answer with my therapist quite a bit. Both of my parents were actors. They're independent theater makers. My mom runs a dance theater company, and my dad was just the artistic director of our local theater back home. So I grew up around the creative act, and I feel like I'm kind of a nepo baby in a lot of ways, where I just feel like it's kind of a family business, right? I just, it was what I grew up doing, and what I grew up being around. And so I feel like I've always sort of had that compulsion towards the creative act. And it's gone through a number of different iterations throughout my life. I was a child actor, as I said, and then I was pretty successful doing that. And then I...I wanted to be a normal kid for a while, which I think was the right call. And then I went to college and rediscovered a passion for filmmaking and for writing. So I went to Emerson College, and I studied writing for film and television, and I got a minor in comedy. And I was in a sketch comedy troupe there for several years where I wrote a lot, performed a lot, and I wrote on several Emersonian TV shows and just sort of tried to develop my comedic voice there. And ever since I've graduated, I've really fallen more into the world of verse and poetry and lyricism and music. It's been a complex process of sort of reckoning with who I want to be and the person that I've been trying to define myself as, because I feel like in today's day and age, people's attention spans are so limited that things need to be presented very succinctly for them. But I ultimately disagree with that as a concept. I wish that were not the case. And I think that artists, but more so than artists, just people in general should not let themselves be defined by a single act, by a single moment in their lives, by a single desire, by a job, by family, whatever it is. I think that we can all excel at what we want to excel at. I'm, you know, I'm of the mindset that everybody is good at everything. And if you are excited about doing something, you should go do it. So I try to just follow that mindset with my own work and just go towards whatever's exciting.

Adeeb: And speaking of that mission to do what's exciting and to pursue what makes you happy, in one of your previous interviews, you talked about the responsibility you feel to elevate the cultural presence of poetry in those words. How would you characterize the presence of poetry in our modern culture today, and what do you think are the ways that you can enhance that presence?

August: I think poetry today is so undervalued and so underserved, and this has been a trend in the poetic space for a long time. And I think that it's a symptom of the way that we teach it in schools. I think it's a symptom of the way that we view it as a society. I think that we're stuck in this sort of exclusive exclusionary mindset where people who are not necessarily into poetry, who don't read it, who aren't poets or writers themselves view it as either this sort of impossible to parse through old school 1800s intellectual shit that people can't really understand, so why would they read it? Or it's viewed conversely as this sort of sort of solipsistic, self-involved, like, wine convention, for lack of a better term. And, you know, there are a lot of contributing factors for making people believe those things. But I think poetry at its core is one of the most pivotal art forms that humanity has ever come up with. It has been with humans since it was proto-linguistic. It was like we were gathered around a fire with an oral tradition of storytelling, and the way that we told those stories and remember those things that we could pass along throughout this world that had no interconnectivity was through rhyme, through rhythm, through these metered verses. So I want to try and return poetry to a form of storytelling and a form of excitement that is not just meant to have somebody sit in silence and really try to dig through what this word could possibly mean. I want it to be accessible, and I want it to be folksy, and I want it to be colloquial in its language, while still combining the elements of traditional poetry, formal poetry, meter poetry, and almost hiding the medicine of academic poetry in a more community-driven way. And I think that is primarily during this. I try to do it through taking a sort of two-pronged approach, using the tack of either taking a feeling, an experience, or an emotion that is universal, that everybody goes with, everybody feels, putting a sort of linguistically quirky spin on it. So it is something that people can read and feel compelled to read, not just, you know, sort of drown in and ultimately realize that they are relating to it. So, the other way that I'm doing it, that I like to do things, is by taking something that is a very personal, unique thing that could be my own, that any poet writes about, these important, hyper-personal moments. And a lot of times those can be exclusionary for a reader, but if you're able to present them in a way that is exciting, that is strange, that is new, that is a little bit. That's vulnerable not in the fact that you're telling something about yourself, but vulnerable in the way that you're presenting it. I think that's a very important way to get people to sort of involve themselves in the work when they, because the most beautiful thing about poetry is that it's a form of connection. It's a way that people can experience themselves and other people. And it's the closest thing that I've ever felt to church is going to these poetry readings and just feeling an entire room experiencing the same thing at the same time, then it's someone's hyper-personal lived experience. I think a lot of, to get back to the main question at hand, the way that I want to elevate poetry's presence is by adding an element of lash and relatability back to it. I think that by utilizing film as a medium, or traditional print, but in a way that is accessible. We can sort of bring people back into poetry and allow them to find their own way through it and experience these poets that are a little more experimental or are more, you know, rigid and hard to parse through, which is still a wonderful form of poetry, but it's just harder to get into for an entry-level reader. So I just, ultimately, I want to make work that is accessible.

Eden: I honestly feel like you genuinely answered our follow-up question. Yeah, so I'm just gonna skim over to the next one. So, in your advice to artists, you mentioned that artists should create for themselves. And every writer has their own standard of what they want their work to look like or to resemble, either for public interest or for themselves, yeah? So what are the standards for you? Like, who are the artists that you look at and say, this is it, like, this is what I want my work to look like?

August: I'm a lyricist at heart. A lot of my poetry is very sort of musical, very buoyant in that way. So I really model my own work after a lot of songwriters. And ultimately, with my work, I feel like I'm doing right by myself and by the people that I look up to, if I write a poem that could just as easily be slipped into a song or a song that could just as easily be a poem. I want every song that I write to have a measure of poetry to it, and I want every poem that I write to have a level of musicality to it. So the people that I look up to, know, Leonard Cohen is my biggest inspiration. And I think he really transcends the bounds of poet and songwriter in a really interesting way. Because if you read his books of poetry, even in his free verse and even in his work that is not metered and it's not rhyming or rhythmic, you have a level of expression, like vocal expression to it. So I want to make sure that my work is on the page commensurate with how it is spoken. Because ultimately, as I said before, in oral tradition, everybody sits around the fire telling stories. I like a little mouthfeel. I like a little something that sounds funny. It sounds funky. So I look at Leonard Cohen. I look up to Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Frank O'Hara. As far as like written poetry goes, I'm a huge fan of Emily Dickinson. I think she does formal poetry in a way that is so mysterious while still being, you know, hits that target that I was talking about, being something that is personal while also being strange and inviting. I love Emily Dickinson. Read a lot of Haiku. I really like Hanshan. I'm going through Cold Mountain right now. I love the beats. Big fan of beat poets. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Coney Island of the Mind is probably my favorite book of poetry ever. Yeah, I can go all day if you want.

Adeeb: So you mentioned Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and some other artists you look up to. And Bob Dylan, especially because I'm more familiar with his work. Every single one of his albums has a profound reflection of who Bob Dylan was at the time that he made that album. The kind of society he found himself in, the kind of journey that he was going through at the time. And it's very difficult, some would say impossible, for an artist to make art without putting a little bit of themselves in it. So in your work, how do you see yourself being reflected? Would you say there's a creative persona that often comes up when you're making art? To what extent are we seeing the real August Gladstone, who you are, whatever that real August is, to what extent are we seeing that in your work?

August: I'm still trying to figure out who the real August Gladstone is. I don't really, I don't know. He surprises me every day with not knowing what the fuck he's talking about. There are a lot of personas that I go through, and I think I kind of cycle through them, and when I'm writing poetry, I'm usually writing as a character of some kind, whether it's August, who's a cowboy, or August, who's like a real city slicker. August, who's an expert love maker, anything like that? These are all different sides of myself that I like to think of myself as. And I...right in a way that is kind of, it's not dishonest, but it is elevated and it is brash and it is, I like to be, I want to be a bit of a, you know? I like to live evocatively as much as I can. And I like to try my best to sync my written life up with my personal life. Ultimately, yeah, every day you're lost a little bit more, and you just gotta try to find yourself. And I think writing is the most incredible way that anybody can do that.

Eden: That's absolutely awesome. First of all, we want to congratulate you in advance on your debut poetry book, Ivy, which is coming out pretty soon. We're not sure when, so we're going to ask you. To give our listeners a little sneak peek, you mentioned that the book explores the peaks and valleys of young love. In what ways does this collection reflect your journey as a creative and as a human being? If you're alright with sharing, what experiences, ideas, and identities are yours that are encapsulated in the book? Yeah, absolutely.

August: It's been a long process, writing, writing, and editing and refining and, you know, going out for rounds, rounds of notes to different publishers and getting rejections and working from there. And I have evolved a lot as a writer throughout that time, and the themes that I like to explore and the stuff I want to talk about. Ivy is a love story. The poetry is very romantic, and it's about love and it's about heartbreak and it's about everything in between. And I started writing it because I was in a destructive situationship as everybody is at some time or another. And I wrote poetry to process that. So ultimately, the book itself sort of details that relationship, and I recognize that that is not, that is nothing new. Is someone talking about a relationship? Is someone talking about love? Is someone telling that story? I don't think it's a new story. I don't think it's a unique story. But I do think it's a relatable story. And that sort of circles back to my point about making poetry accessible, is that, as I look at Ivy from my perspective now, where I think, you know, I have moved on to, to in many ways, different styles of poetry. I'm still able to look back at it and read it and get taken back to that place. And a lot of the other people who have read copies of it are like, yeah, I've been there too. I know exactly what you're talking about. And I'm proud of it for that reason. I was inspired by it for that reason, because anytime somebody reads it, they'd be like, yeah, that put words to what I went through as well. And it is something that anybody can go through. Anybody of any identity anywhere in the world gets their heart broken and falls in love. I like the way that I did it. I like the poems that I wrote for it. I think that they have a level of musicality to them, and I'm happy with my voice in it. So I think that's what a debut is supposed to be. It's supposed to be a place for people to...dip their toes in to the water and hopefully grow from there. And if it is able to provide comfort to people who are also young and confused about how to separate themselves from their beating heart, that's fantastic. Cause like a lot of books of poetry helped me get through that rocky situationship. you know, like it's, it's, it's like embarrassing to talk about. It's like a little bit, it's like, oh, you wrote about love. But I think there's nothing wrong with writing about love, with talking about things that are nice and talking about things that are sad. And so much of poetry and so much of the reason why I think people are turned away from poetry is that it's always trying to take itself to this next higher level of abstraction, metaphorical, of climbing this metaphorical ladder to the point where it gets so cloudy and so muddy that people don't even know what you're talking about. So what I'm happy about with Ivy...is that I feel like it takes itself back to a very centered and grounded and relatable place for a lot of people to hopefully tap into.

Adeeb: That's wonderful. And speaking of the artistic growth that you were talking about, a big part of the creative process is revision. Everyone approaches revision differently. Famously, William Faulkner only revised As I Lay Dying once, and now 100 years later, we still study it in college classrooms. What does revision look like for you? When you revisit your old work, when you make adjustments, when you update it to fit your current creative outlook, what does that process look like for you?

August: It's a battle of ego. It's entirely...kind of fighting with myself and being like, hey, is this vomit that I put out there that works for me in my head because it takes me back to this time I wrote it? Does this matter to anybody else? And one of the first, like, one of the first big rejections with feedback that I got on Ivy was like, the voice is there. Like, it's very raw. Like, I understand exactly what he's talking about. But like, as a book of poetry, he has no fucking idea what poetry is. And, you know, I take issue with that on many levels, but ultimately...It's...I was upset. I was very upset when I got that response because I was like, what the hell are you talking about? This is me. This is my shit. But no, I look back at that early version. It's awful. It's like not, yeah, like the core ideas remain the same. But the execution has just changed so much. And that execution wouldn't have changed. And I would never have grown with the book if I hadn't consistently spent time you know, every couple of weeks sitting down and saying, all right, I know I edited this poem last week. How does it look to me now? I think space is critical in revisions because you change as a poet, you grow. Maybe you read someone else's poem that really inspires you and you say, oh, I like how they use an exclamation point in that poem. Now I should add an exclamation point in line. You know, there's it's all about knowing if you're on to something and if you're on to something, follow through with it and make sure that make sure that you are cement that ability to to actually have something great. You know, Faulkner revising once. It's incredible. Most people are going to have that level of luck or skill or talent. So it's really making, you kind of got to make a ritual.

Eden: About your poetry book. So this question might be a little bit funny, but considering the state of our country's affairs right now, I don't think it's too far off. But considering your book, and you mentioned that it's about all these themes of love and everything, if your book were to be banned in seven states in the US, what would you want the reason to be?

August: Uh, too beautiful. No, kidding. Um, what I want the reason to be. It's a good question. Um, you know, I think the book itself, very unproblematic. I would like the reason to be something that I, in my personal life, that August, as the writer, as the person has done, that is so egregious and so offensive to our current administration that they go through great lengths to silence anything that I would do. I would want it to be an entire spiritual blacklist of anything that I could possibly come up with. Or it could be bad because my rhyme schemes are too predictable. One of the two.

Adeeb: Great answer. So for our listeners, if you don't already know, August was one of our first, he submitted one of the first pieces that we published within the first month of starting this magazine. It was his visual poem, Max and Nista. He also has another poem which we will be publishing in our first issue this summer. So look out for that. We wanted to know what was the process behind Maxxinista. So talk us through the creative journey that led you to creating this? That's a good question. It's somewhat funny story. I was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles and I saw a billboard for DJ Maxx and I said, who gives a shit? Nobody cares about the Maxxinista anymore. And that was the first line of the poem. And then I was like, how can we, what else don't we care about? Why don't we care about these things? What is it about being a Maxxinista? What does that stand for beyond just some corporate slang? It's like, no, it's someone who wants to go and experience a very simple pleasure. wants to go and buy a candle? Who wants to get some popcorn? Who wants to have a nice little shopping day where you can buy toys, you buy pajamas, you can buy whatever you want. And it's about society sort of moving past simplicity, moving past things that are nice and quaint and easy and favor of in favor of complexity, in favor of all these difficult things that our world is moving towards. And in terms of the actual production of it, I got out of work one day and I said, I am going to go to the TJ Maxx and see what is interesting there. And I just recorded a bunch of stuff on my phone and there's a couple shots of me in the parking lot, hanging my head in my hands. I had to do a bunch of takes of those because cars kept driving and giving me the stank eye. But it was a lot of fun and I'm trying to do more of that stuff. Like I have another poem out called Ouk Dreams, which is sort of just a video of me playing basketball and talking about the getting over one's own dreams as they grow up. And that was a lot of fun to make too. And I think that is sort of touching back on the elevating the presence of poetry is that if we're able to poems and things that have these deeper levels of meaning into them and present them in a way that people are actually going to see, whether that be TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or whatever, whatever the kids are watching nowadays, they will see that and hopefully see it as an independent piece of art, but also be able to go into that rabbit hole a little bit and say, oh, I like this. What is poetry? That made me feel something presented to me in this way. Now let me go to my local bookstore and buy a book. And hopefully more people will do that. And I think that would be a very good thing. Making content that is not brain rot, but the opposite, that is very thought provoking. I have a lot of issues with the digital landscape right now and how it fosters just garbage and how we are playing into this inherently inhuman means of connection with one another. So if we're sort of able to infiltrate that algorithm a little bit with stuff that is poignant and meaningful and artistic and humanistic and naturalistic, then I think we are blowing up the Death Star from within a little

Eden: Well, honestly, August, your responses so far have been absolutely amazing. Just to finish off this interview with us, what is one thing that you would want to leave readers with? Like, what is something you would want readers to have after reading your work? And what is like a question that you wish people would ask about your work?

August: A question that I wish people would ask is one that you did already, which is how much of you is in this? How much of the real version of you? And that's a question that I try to answer myself. And I think it's always going to be thought provoking when any artist has asked that question. And the easy answer is all of me. But that's often not the honest answer. What would I like people to be left with after reading my work? Inspiration. Not in the fact that like, oh, oh wow, that was such an inspiring piece. No, I want people to go out and do their own. Like I want people to see my shit and maybe be like, oh, I can do that better. And go out and try to best me. And I hope you will and you probably will. Because I think that poetry is so important and it cuts through so much of the negativity and the inhumanity that we're faced with today. And the more people that are doing poetry and doing work that is so personal and so new and so entirely human, it can only be good for the world. It can, I think, is one of the few things that can still heal the world.

Eden: Okay. Well, thank you so much, August for doing this interview with us. We definitely agree that art and literature and poetry should reflect that kind of humanity. It's like that we should learn how to be more human through our art, which we definitely agree that you do. So yeah, thank you for joining us today.

Adeeb: This was absolutely wonderful. Honestly, we're happy to...even see you in the issue this summer, which is getting released this summer, you’ll will be our first issue. As well as your book, Ivy. When did you say that was getting released again?

August: Uh, 2026, 2027. It's a ways out, but we'll keep posting about it like crazy.

Adeeb: Oh boy, alright.

August: Thank you guys so much for having me and for making a really cool publication that I'm really excited to watch grow, and I hope that I can…be a long-time contributor, because I really like your mission statement and everything that you guys are trying to do. I think it's the type of flashy and fun poetry that can bring people back into it. So, thank you guys for doing what you're doing.

Adeeb: Thank you for a fantastic conversation!