A poet’s tale
Jen Kocher
NLJ Correspondent
The NLJ caught up with journalist and poet Nicholas Trandahl at his poetry reading at the Weston County Library on Nov. 15. What follows are his responses to our reporter’s questions.
Q: Let’s start with the basics: How old are you and where are you from?
I’m 34 years old. I was born in Newcastle, but when I was a baby, my family moved to a suburb of Washington, D.C. We then lived in rural Virginia for several years before finally moving back to Weston County. I graduated from Upton High School in 2002.
Q: Were there any teachers in your life or influential books that set you down the writing path?
I wasn’t the best student in school, preferring to write and draw. My first literary inspirations were Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and short stories and the fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien. Later in my life, when writing became a serious endeavor for me, the writers that most inspired me (and still do) were Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Carver, Leo Tolstoy, Jim Harrison, John Muir, Mary Oliver, Ted Kooser, Henry David Thoreau and Ivan Turgenev.
Q: Did you always want to be a writer and how did growing up in rural Wyoming impact that decision?
I knew I always wanted to be writing, if not a writer; it wasn’t until my mid-20s that I knew I wanted to actually pursue a life as a writer. Growing up in Weston County contributed to that fondness of writing and reading because of the quietude and stillness inherent in northeast Wyoming. I was never a kid that acted out or got into trouble when boredom struck. Literature, art and writing contributed heavily to that, I think.
Q: How did you end up writing for the Upton newspaper?
The Weston County Gazette has been in my family since before I was born. It was owned by my grandparents since the 1970s, and my mother took over as publisher and editor when my grandfather passed. I worked there off and on while I was in college but didn’t come on as a full staff member until after I was discharged from the Army. My mother, knowing I was at a loss as to my next step after the Army and knowing I had an aptitude for writing, asked me to come back to Upton and do typesetting and proofreading for the Gazette. I eventually moved up to a staff writer position and then a reporter for town and county news. Recently, I’ve been promoted to assistant publisher/editor. Ink is in my blood. Being a newspaperman was always in the stars for me, it seems.
Q: You mentioned you began writing fiction and short stories. How old were you and what type of stories did you write?
Some of my earliest memories were writing stories about dogs, ducks, hunting, wars, history, etc. As I got older and was heavily influenced in my teen years by the epic fantasy of Tolkien and the gothic macabre of Poe, I started writing a lot of fantasy fiction.
Q: Your time in the military no doubt left a lasting mark on your life in more ways than one. Why did you decide to join? How old were you? Where were you sent, for how long and how did the experience change your life?
My time in the U.S. Army was the defining pivotal moment in my life, more than any other experience. There was my life before the Army and my life after the Army. I decided to enlist out of good old-fashioned patriotism, adventure and providing for my family. I was floundering in my third year of college in South Dakota; my first wife and I had a young daughter and another on the way, and I was working lackluster jobs to try and provide.
Suddenly, I realized that salvation lay in enlisting in the Army. I was 23 years old, and it was spring 2008. My entrance exam was very high, and I had an array of different career paths in the Army available. I knew I wanted a combat arms job that also took advantage of the high score in my exam, so I settled on a tactical control assistant position in missile defense, operating the PATRIOT Missile System in a close-knit, three-person crew.
I was trained in the 3-47 Infantry Regiment at Fort Benning, Georgia, and several months of missile defense school in Fort Bliss, Texas, where I eventually graduated from my advanced individual training as honor graduate in my class. Immediately after my six months of training, I was placed in a unit in Fort Bliss that was gearing up to deploy to the Middle East.
In the spring of 2009, I was sent with my “battle buddies” to Qatar, a tiny peninsula on the Persian Gulf, across the water from Iran. Though I wasn’t getting shot at in Iraq or Afghanistan, there were several threats and stressors that I don’t want to dig into too deeply. The deployment was responsible for giving me acute anxiety disorder and something called massive depressive disorder and my first marriage also disintegrated during my deployment.
Needless to say, I wasn’t the same man when I finally returned back to the States and eventually got my honorable discharge from the Army. It’s taken a lot of time and effort by me and the professionals at the Fort Meade VA Hospital in Sturgis (South Dakota) to get me back to a good place. However, the deployment and my experiences in the Army also turned me into a writer.
Q: Can you tell me more about how you started writing poetry? I know you were in the military overseas, but can you be specific with details about the moment you took pen to paper and started writing?
When I was deployed, we would sometimes get packages from friends, family, and community members back home. In one package from my sister (I think for my birthday), she sent me a beautiful writing journal of yellow cloth and leather. The stresses of the deployment and my first marriage were at their highest levels at that point, and I remember getting back to my bunk after a particularly stressful 24-hour missile shift and I immediately started writing poetry in the journal. Most of it was grim, dark stuff. Poe would’ve been proud. From that point on, I was writing poetry whenever possible to try and relieve the building pressures within me.
Q: You talk about courage coming in many forms. How does this relate to you and your writing and/or life?
As for writing, I view it as courageous when a writer is willing to lay it all out in their writing: their demons, their insecurities, the past that still haunts. With my poetry, I’ve written extensively about all those things. For me personally, I view it as courageous when I can overcome my anxieties to do my work or socialize with people. I know it sounds like a small thing, but for someone with acute anxiety disorder, even going to eat at a restaurant or going to a store is a nerve-wracking experience. And anxiety for me frequently snowballs into depression. Keeping one’s mental health in check can be an exhausting and courageous task.
Q: I love the poem you read about missing your two daughters in the wake of your divorce. Where are those daughters now and how do you think fatherhood has impacted your writing and life in general?
I’m very happy to say that my two daughters from my first marriage live with me. We have a happy home in Upton and they both go to Upton Elementary/Middle School. I am remarried, and my wife and I were very happy to provide my daughters with a new little baby sister just over a year ago. So, I am the very happy father of three amazing daughters. Fatherhood, I know now, has always been my purpose on this planet. I am thrilled with every minute of it. It has calmed me down and given me peace. As for my writing, fatherhood and the maturity and affection of my second marriage have transformed my poetry from the desperate dark writings from my Army days and the years after to the calm observational writings I am known for now.
Q: It’s a big step to go from writing for yourself to writing for an audience. At what point did you reach out to a publisher and how did you settle for the publisher you have today? Did it take you long to get published?
In 2011, I sent a few of my poems to a small indie press for a poetry anthology they were collecting poems for. It was my first attempt at submitting anything to anybody. My poems were accepted and that began a relationship for several years with Swyers Publishing, who published several of my early novels and stories.
Eventually, however, the staff at Swyers felt they were doing my writing a disservice as they didn’t have the finances or manpower to really market my work, and after discussing it with them, we parted ways, so I could find a larger publishing house.
In my search I was actually approached by the founder of Winter Goose Publishing, a wonderful publisher out of New England, after she saw some of my poetry on social media. Winter Goose encouraged me to submit a poetry manuscript to them during their brief annual submission period. My first manuscript was rejected. I made changes, and the second time it was accepted. In the spring of 2016, I signed a contract with Winter Goose. They released my first poetry collection, “Pulling Words,” in 2017, and a flood of five-star reviews poured in (and continue to pour in) for the book. In the spring of 2018, Winter Goose published my second poetry collection, “Think of Me.”
I continue submitting poetry and short fiction to literary journals (online and print) and am occasionally accepted. My poem “A Wolf I Met” was awarded third place in the 2018 Eugene V. Shea National Poetry Competition hosted by the organization WyoPoets. I am a member of WyoPoets and run the organization’s social media and am also a member of Wyoming Writers and the Bearlodge Writers critique group.
Q: From where do you draw your inspiration for your poetry?
My writing is influenced by the books I read and people I meet. The current Wyoming poet laureate Eugene Gagliano and I frequently go hiking, and I’m in a monthly writing group with the past Wyoming poet laureate Patricia Frolander; my conversations with these two individuals are always inspiring to me.
However, the majority of my poetry finds its roots in the outdoors (hiking, camping and fly-fishing), Wyoming’s beautiful scenery, my memories from childhood and the Army, and also my travels and adventures.
That’s so important for a writer, in my opinion. You have to make time for travel and adventure. A couple times a year I try to go somewhere new and have some adventures and new experiences.
Q: Upcoming release?
I am currently polishing up the final draft for my third poetry collection with Winter Goose Publishing. It’s entitled “Bravery” and is scheduled to hit shelves during National Poetry Month (April) of 2019. It contains plenty of poems about Wyoming, my past, fatherhood, marriage and also my recent travels.