Q&A with 'Don't Thank God' poet Frank Allison!

Dig deep into Frank's writing process, themes, and more!

We've got a bonus edition of the DPTJ Substack today, and it's one that I am delighted to share with you: An exclusive Q&A with Frank Allison, poet extraordinaire of Don't Thank God, Thank The Crash Test Dummies That Came Before You. I wanted to learn more about Frank's writing process and her inspiration, and to satisfy my lil English major heart by actually asking an author directly to TELL ME EVERYTHING PLEASE I GOTTA KNOW EVERYTHING.

Everyone please show Frank some love by buying Don't Thank God (linked above), snagging some DTG merch, and following Frank on socials (Insta / X).

Elizabeth Blackstock: I am SO excited to have this opportunity to chat with you more in-depth about Don't Thank God — but before I start absolutely geeking out about your debut poetry collection, I was wondering if you could introduce yourself and give us a little summary of your background as it pertains to your writing?

Frank Allison: I’d love to, and thank you so much for your questions and the care you’ve taken with my book! I’ve been writing my entire life, but formally started with a specialized Creative Writing track with a focus in Poetry at the arts school I attended in my teen years. After that, I really leaned into songwriting, and for about eight years that’s all I thought I would ever want to do. I always found the writing side came very naturally, but despite being a musician for a decade, I realized I was no longer enjoying recording or performing music. I never stopped writing, but didn’t have anything to point my efforts towards until Don’t Thank God.

EB: I've spoken to you really briefly about this already, but I was hoping you could go a little more in depth: How did Don't Thank God come into being? And why did you opt to center around motorsport?

FA: It’s actually very funny, because Don’t Thank God came out of overcommitting to the bit. I have a few very dear friends, thanked at the beginning of the book, who I originally met through motorsports fan spaces where the idea for the book came from. One of said friends (Lauren) made a joke about how I talk about Ferrari in a way that would lend well to me writing poetry about them, and I had one of those, “Haha yeah, but like. What if” moments, and I very unintentionally followed through on it. Initially I committed to writing one poem, and then it quickly became a several hour writing session, that turned into a week, to three weeks, and suddenly I had a book 75% of the way finished that I had to figure out what to do with. I don’t think I even told anyone about what I was doing until I reached the 50% mark because I didn’t believe it myself.

EB: Will you walk us through how you approached this project from a conceptual level, and how it evolved?

FA: I didn’t have anything in mind going into it, only my extraordinarily outsized feelings that I needed to exorcise like a demon. Initially it began as one terrifyingly long notesapp document, then the concepts it really centered itself on (terror, glory, blood, wanting to bite a soft tire, etc) really made themselves clear in a way that didn’t feel like it was structured internally to me, more magic-wanded out of my brain and onto the page. It felt like I was more conduit than anything, and it felt as though DTG was an amalgamation of all the things I’ve learned to love about the world in music and film and my own experiences of trials by fire.

EB: On a more specific note, could you talk about your writing process? When I'm writing creative work, I love to start with a general vibe, but I move pretty quickly from there into mapping out the specifics of the project. But I'm a novel person, and you're a poetry person; what does your approach look like?

FA: My process is pretty consistent, and very simple. I like to sit down at my favorite late night coffee shop after work at my day job, write for about 4 hours straight as a sort of stream of consciousness flow in one big document, and then divide out the pieces that naturally form as a result of that. Sometimes that time gets devoted to layout or editing in the later stages of the process, but it’s always me sitting down for hours on end in the same place. There’s also always a playlist for whatever project I’m working on, which serves as a mental reminder of what I’m trying to accomplish with the emotional tone of the overall work, and helps set the tone for going into work mode.

EB: The English major in me craves actually interesting art about Formula 1, but I think this sport kinda lends itself more to analytical, numbers-based deep dives as opposed to anything else, so I'm always excited to find fiction or creative work — and I generally end up disappointed. I was wondering if you dug into any motorsport fiction or films while you were working on DTG and felt similarly, or if you preferred to draw inspiration from other work?

FA: I tend to avoid a lot of motorsports work on the fictional front, most of the novels out there just aren’t for me tonally (I’m not big on self inserts or traditional romance novels.) I found that the things that influenced my work most were things I already enjoyed, like the music I already listened to (which you can get a feel for in the official DTG Playlist) and the art I was already interested in (there was a lot of influence from poet Richard Siken.) I made a point to explore some motorsports art that I felt better aligned with my goals with DTG, which included your book (Racing with Rich Energy) and several films (Ford V. Ferrari, Rush, and Ferrari to name a few)

EB: On a similar note, I think some people might balk at the idea of Formula 1 being the subject of a poetry collection, since the sport is so science and performance based. Where do you see the poetry in the sport?

FA: I can say with complete certainty that I have seen the light leave many men’s eyes when they find out that my motorsports authorship is that of a motorsports poetry book, haha. The best response I’ve seen to DTG has been from people who are already intense, deeply ingrained fans of the sport already, who are looking for another level to connect with it on. The greatest support has been from people who either love motorsport so much that they’ve dedicated their lives to working in service of it, or they are some of the biggest fans of their teams/race series that I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. I see poetry as filling a very specific gap that speaks directly to the part of them that wants to be allowed to feel those strong feelings that they’re already having towards something they love, but in a guided and directed way. Many end up putting that energy and emotion into their work to build something great within the motorsports ecosystem, whether that be a company, fan space, or watch party, which is incredible and yet may still feel they don’t have enough of an outlet for those huge feelings. DTG is the overflow, the “welcome home” for insane fans who don’t know what to do with themselves, like me.

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EB: When people look at F1, there’s usually this emphasis on the physical: The cars, the strength and capabilities of the drivers, the sounds and smells. So much less space is dedicated to interiority and I think that’s what I loved so much about DTG. I think this is less of a question and more me asking if you would share some of your thoughts about motorsport interiority — what drew you to it, what your access point is, what themes you wanted to pursue?

FA: Honestly, a lot of what draws me to interiority is informed by one specific principle: The more niche you go, the wider the pool of people that relate. I knew that if I trusted that and went as deep as I could into writing about what drivers felt and heard and smelled, the people on the other side of the fence from 50 yards away who were having a much different (but still wildly similar) experience of that race would be able to understand. I have no choice but to guess what the drivers could be feeling, but the core of most human emotions has to still be there, despite how often they pretend not to feel them as professionals and as big strong athletes. Much of my work is inspired by the dialectic of that, where the athlete can tell you the famous Michèle Mouton quote, “I don’t feel at all,” and sure, they can mean it with every fiber of their being in that moment. However, in my experience of being human, nobody (even highly trained professional athletes, despite what they tell you) is truly ever able to avoid those difficult emotions of fear, loss, the creeping bodily sensation of anticipation, they just come around differently, and often later, when the person experiencing the emotion is “out of danger.” What the long term impacts of being a racing driver does to the nervous system, I can’t imagine, and a lot of that wondering comes out in DTG.

EB: The collection is structured in sections based on different stages of a race weekend — media day, practice, qualifying, race day, podium, and comedown. What inspired you to use that structure? Was this a structure you had in mind before you started writing, or did you compose your poems and find order for them after? What themes or vibes are you communicating in each section?

FA: Truly I could not possibly tell you what inspired this structure, it does sort of feel handed down from god. I spent about thirty seconds thinking about what structures already innately existed in motorsports (specifically F1), and this was the first and only thing that came to mind. The vibes for each section were very specific though, I wanted to really stay true to the energy of each day with the ramping excitement, the calm before the storm, the breakneck intensity and speed, and then the full collapse of spent energy at the end.

EB: I also really love that you chose to kick off with ‘Forever,’ which stands outside of the weekend structure of the rest of the collection. It feels like it establishes the mindset you're touching on throughout the entire work: that this sport is so dangerous and so demanding and yet there is nothing else in the entire world you'd rather be doing. Was this stand-alone piece something you had planned from the beginning, or did it emerge as a tone-setter during the writing process?

FA: Forever has become everybody’s favorite, which is super interesting to me! I originally left it where it started as one of the first pieces in the process at the top of the document, and then I think when I was physically laying out the pieces on the floor in the full blown layout stage I realized it wasn’t going anywhere. I didn’t feel like Forever fit into the Media Day category, but I did definitely want to set the tone for the entire book knowing that when people picked up an F1 poetry book this wouldn’t be what they’d expected to begin with. I think Forever has done a great job of being the guard at the gates of this book.

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EB: The ‘podium’ section hit me like a ton of bricks. I think we naturally associate podiums with success — you've either won the race or come damn close to it. So following it up with ‘We're Getting a Divorce’ and ‘Winner's Circle’ spread on the very next pages created this really delicious tension where I expected celebration and instead found a sense of exhaustion and painful clarity. What was your thinking behind that decision — to treat the podium less as a triumph and more as a reckoning?

FA: Winning is inherently an ending, and endings are often a demarcation of the switch from full force energy expenditure to instant collapse. The structures maintaining their side of the push and pull have abruptly cut off, the competition is over. Giving your everything to change your circumstance in a race and then being forced to accept the circumstances regardless of your success in doing so is a really powerful emotional whiplash. There’s joy in winning, and there’s the yawning void directly behind it where people are already wondering if you can do it again, if you will next week. All of this isn’t even taking into account the things you had to push down within your own physical experience to get there, or what you had to bear witness to/do to others to make it possible in the first place.

EB: One of my favorite parts of this collection launch is the sustained momentum it's had. You were published in August, and here we are seven months later, and you're still active doing readings, featuring in book clubs, releasing merchandise, and so much more. Do you feel like this ongoing marketing has been effective for you? And do you have any tips for people (myself included!) who shudder at the thought of self-promotion?

FA: I genuinely have no idea how the love for DTG has been so sustained, I’m so thrilled with how it’s gone and I really hope to be able to maintain this fun energy the marketing has taken on lately. I truly think I’m just finally proud of something I’ve made, and I want to show it to everybody! I think a lot of people get in their head about how marketing makes them come across, like “Oh, people will think I’m self centered if I tell them about this thing I did.” The best thing for me in combatting that specific belief was to recognize that, for the most part, nobody knows I exist, and if I want them to know I exist, I have to be the one to tell them. I’m so proud of the work, and there is nobody else who can or will champion it like I can. Also, when I look back on other people’s promotion of their products or books, I think there’s a wide gulf between what I personally consider normal marketing and annoying marketing, and the amount of effort you would have to put in to reach annoying levels is both unaffordable and functionally unattainable for me. Finding new and fun ways to promote DTG has also been key for me, there was a time when I was playing around with the idea of making a perfume sampler for DTG, and in the early stages I did a set of vintage leather driving gloves painted with words from the book that I handed out at the parties for the release. I was told I was not allowed to carve the words into vintage uranium glass ashtrays in reference to the “you glow sea glass green” line in Kingdom Come due to “health and safety hazards” because I would “get radiation poisoning,” which, like, fine, okay.

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EB: What's next for you? Any new projects you're working on, or ideas you're playing with?

FA: I’ve got a second book in the works unrelated to motorsports about the little indignities and violences of trying to love one another at the end of the world, and several other motorsports books in the pipeline that I’ve been working on for quite some time, including a sim racing chapbook that I’ve been super excited about!

EB: Where can people find you online?

FA: I am on every social media known to man at @frankwithaknife