Harley Elliott was born in South Dakota, but has spent most of his life in Kansas. Elliott is an artist and a poet. He’s written ten books of poems including The Mercy of Distance (Hanging Loose Press, 2020) and Animals That Stand in Dreams (Hanging Loose Press, 1977), a children’s book, and a memoir. He earned his B.A. from Kansas Wesleyan University in Salina, and his M.A. from New Mexico Highlands in Las Vegas, New Mexico. He taught art at Marymount college in Salina for many years, until it was closed, and then worked as the coordinator of education at the Salina Art Center. Elliott’s work defies narrow classification. His poems reflect a strong connection to the land and open sky of Kansas, and he is very interested in the true history of people, but he is also the highly imaginative poet who created ‘JoJo the whorehouse monkey,’ the voice of the collection The Monkey of Mulberry Pass.
Hanging Loose Press: What are this past year’s accomplishments that you are most proud of?
Harley Elliott: At 83, and happily on the periphery of modern life, I am most pleased to be ambulatory and modest in ambition.
HLP: Your description of being “modest in ambition” is really singular. The very idea that ambition can be modest is so fresh and new. Are there any particularly difficult experiences/challenges for you this past or current year? And how did you work through them?
HE: In a dream, [last year] I was attacked by a pit bull and rolled out of bed, scraping hell out of my arms in the process. The long period of healing has encouraged me toward deliberation in my actions. Ironically, I love all dogs.
HLP: Sorry to hear about this! How are you faring since this happened to you?
HE: A couple of weeks after that fateful pit bull dream, I had another dream, in which a kid was trying to convince me to adopt a dog. “I dunno,” I said, “What kind of dog is it?” The kid whistled and up loped a big pit bull. Deja vu! But this dog was all love and butter and we hit it off immediately. I take this to mean I’m back on good terms with dogdom. Whew.
HLP: What an absolute transformative dream! It’s gotta be all good omens coming your way!
Can you give us three books you’ve read recently that have made an impression on you?
HE: An Immense World by Ed Young
Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn
The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars by Lixing Sun
HLP: Any upcoming projects?
HE: My current project is a series of art works called ALLIES––moods, thoughts, people histories, myths that appear to be on my side. This is a kind of medicine. Now working on number 172.
HLP: Fantastic! We are looking forward to all of the ALLIES!
