Surf Poetry: Riding the Wild Verse

Surf poetry. An oxymoron, right? Wrong, says Lee Mallory, who will emcee a reading of tubular verse Wednesday in Newport Beach.

Trash the notion of poetry as a purely cerebral experience. Instead, says the Rancho Santiago College English teacher, think of surf poetry as writing that “captures the essence of a union with the forces of nature,” the same union that surfers experience as they ride the wild waves.

Wednesday’s oration, Mallory hopes, “will be a celebration of what poetry and surfing are--not a ‘cerebration,’ which is where you think about something too much, rather than enjoying it.”

Readers at the Alta Coffee & Roasting Co. event have poems contained in “Paper Shredders,” edited by San Clemente poet cum restaurant cook G. Murray Thomas, who published the book on his desktop computer, and Gary Wright, co-owner of a Dana Point surf shop.

In surf lingo, “shredder” refers to a great surfer “who can cut that wave to pieces at the risk of being cut to shreds himself,” Mallory said in a recent phone interview.

The book, he said “is an exploration of the whole surfing lifestyle, from the challenges of a 40-year-old surfer to how a young woman feels surfing is like sex.”

Lawrence Schulz, who lives and surfs in Sunset Beach, writes about “Surfing at 40”:

“While men my age wait for their circle to become complete; I let the waves break over me, lost between this savage baptism of water and blessed forgiveness of rain . . . “

Stephanie Mood’s “Elementary,” expresses her feelings about her surfer lover: “I’ve kissed you, too, because you come in, because our eyes are watering each other and our lives are naked together in the air.”

Mallory, who has staged numerous poetry readings around Orange County, put forth a social and artistic manifesto in 1991 called “omnism.”

“I said in omnism,” he explained, “that poets were walling out readers because the themes they wrote about were so esoteric, and that these themes should be made more pedestrian.”

Then, about a year ago, he heard about Thomas’ efforts to publish “Paper Shredders,” most of whose contributors live in Southern California. And he felt, as Thomas did, that surf poetry could effectively broaden the audience for poetry, particularly here in Southern California.

“It hit me,” Mallory said. “How could anything be more basic” than surfing?

Furthermore, surfing “comes very close” to the writing process, said Mallory, a former surfer.

“For one thing, the feelings of loneliness, excitement and anticipation of waiting at dawn for the big wave are essentially the same as the feelings a writer has facing the blank page. Also, the surfer wonders where the wave is going to take him, while the writer wonders where he’ll be able to take the ideas spinning wildly in his head.”

At Wednesday’s reading, which includes an open-mike portion for readers from the audience, Mallory hopes the surfer-poets “will learn more about poetry, and the audience will learn a lot about surfing. There’s going to be a wonderful communion in that.”

* Poets will read from works in “Paper Shredders,” a surf poetry anthology, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday at Alta Coffee & Roasting Co., 506 31st St., Newport Beach. Free. (714) 675-0233.