In every cultural circle, you will find the ‘cornerstone people’ who work tirelessly to promote their craft. When it comes to poetry, Noah Falck comes to mind. Ever since Falck moved to Buffalo in 2012, he has been rallying people to embrace poetry, through live events, readings, pop-ups, discussions, and now, his latest book – Exclusions.
“I started writing the poems that became Exclusions pretty much as soon as we moved to Buffalo back in the fall of 2012. So I guess you can call this a Buffalo book. And I’d be honored to have it on that shelf. So much of Buffalo lives inside of it. The people, the lake, and all the skies that have me pausing every time I go outside,” said Falck.
“In fact I dedicated the book to ‘everyone in the Rust Belt.’ And wrote the one line poem ‘Poem Excluding Rust’ as an additional nod to the Rust Belt, this great region that has struggled to come out of the industrial and economic decline of the 70s & 80s. This region that’s working to reinvent and reimagine who we are and how we move forward. This region so full of hard-working, generous, and caring people. That poem is the motor of my mind attempting to acknowledge all that and what I love most about Buffalo and the Rust Belt — which is the people.”
I caught up with Falck to discuss his poetry, though the discussion ended up transitioning into a live poetry reading. What better way to gauge the passion and merit of a poet than to listen to him or her orate a couple works?
Poet Zach Savich writes “Noah Falck’s Exclusion poems conjure worlds in which what’s missing shows us what matters most. They are remarkable for their combination of whimsy and rumination, of the unsettling and the serene. They are poetry of radiant aftermath and post-industrial magic, of the conversation that remains after ‘all your lines have been cut / and I don’t have a mouth.’ Falck invites us to see with more feeling, to grin with more bearing, to care like it can change us. ‘The heart is the most donated organ,’ he writes; in this book of absences, the heart is never missing.”
Noah Falck moved to Buffalo in 2012 where he took the Education Director position at Just Buffalo Literary Center. Shortly after moving here Falck started the Silo City Reading Series, a poetry & performance series that takes place in the Marine A grain silo. It has featured some of the most prominent poets writing today including Ocean Vuong, Maggie Smith, Morgan Parker, and Hanif Abdurraqib. Falck is the author of Exclusions, Snowmen Losing Weight, and You Are In Nearly Every Future. He co-edited the anthology My Next Heart: New Buffalo Poetry and has been anthologized in Poem-A-Day 365 Poems for Every Occasion.
Pick up a copy of Exclusions at Talking Leaves.
Instagram:www.instagram.com/noahfalck