Art Chowder November | December 2017, Issue 12 | Page 26

POET
“I
T IM
G R E E NUP
n high school I was in a metal
band. I was the bass player, which I
liked because I could make mistakes
without ruining the song. Still, there was
a part of me that longed to be a vocalist
and express myself through words. I
thought most heavy metal lyrics were
atrocious and that I could do better, but
I also knew I didn’t have the requisite
scream to be a front man. I started writ-
ing what were essentially heavy metal
lyrics in my school notebooks. There
was darkness, snow, dismemberment,
26
ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE
BY KAREN MOBLEY
demons, torture, anguish, blood—that
kind of stuff—but I never showed them
to anyone,” said Tim Greenup.
“My senior year of high school I took
a creative writing class. My teacher and
classmates were impressed. This was
the rare time when I remember feeling
exceptional at anything academic. I was
not a great student, partially because
I was clinically depressed, partially
because I thought I was going to be a
rock musician for the rest of my life,
and so school was not that important to
me. In hindsight it’s surprising that my
teacher Ms. Reisbeg was so supportive,
because it was only a couple of years
after the Columbine shooting, and I
was writing these really heavy-handed
poems about suicide. Had she given me
an ‘I’m concerned about your well-be-
ing’ talk, I would have felt censored
and probably would have stopped
writing.
This is not to suggest, though, that after