Interview: Paul Case, the author of “Spent”

Paul Case’s Spent is a searing mix of poetry and prose hurled straight at the heart of late capitalism. Navigating the chaos of punk, radical politics, addiction, and mental health, Case captures a world fraying at the edges, where personal demons mirror societal collapse and the line between resistance and self-destruction grows increasingly blurred.

I spoke with Case about the raw inspirations behind Spent, the scene that shaped him, the politics that drive him, and the DIY ethos that threads through both his writing and his life. What emerged is a candid conversation about art on the fringes, gallows humor as survival, and the stubborn spark of hope that refuses to die, even when everything else seems spent.

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“Spent” feels like both a warning and a confession. When you first started writing these pieces, did you imagine them collected together, or did they demand to form a whole?

These pieces have been written over a pretty long period of time. Some date back to as early as 2009, others as recently as 2024. Spent was originally intended to be a shorter pamphlet of newer material. But looking back at my past work I noticed so many uniting themes were bubbling under the surface. A longer collection gives these ideas more dynamism as they jostle against each other.

Your work dances between gallows humor, nightmarish absurdism, and heartbreaking clarity. How do you know when you’ve found the right emotional register for a piece?

I’ve always enjoyed exploring different tones, genres and forms, and for me it’s necessary to keep the work alive and challenging. As a result, the way I approach each piece is quite different, but generally if the mood is resonating with me it’s a good barometer that it’ll resonate with the reader. I definitely need to feel what I’m writing for the process to work, though the true heart of a piece will usually only reveal itself in editing.

The phrase “late capitalist landscape” conjures a crumbling empire. Do you think art has the power to shift anything, or is it more about bearing witness to the collapse?

The political activism I’ve engaged in seems unthinkable without the political art to accompany it. Art and politics are always in a cyclical relationship. It’s entirely natural for art to rise from politics, and for that art to influence someone’s political thought and actions. But it’s not about whether or not art has the power of change anything on its own; it’s about recognising that art does not exist in a vaccum and acts in conjunction with countless other aspects of human culture and expression. 

Spent is, however, much less ‘political’ and more ‘politicised’ – as in, it’s informed by our social, political and economic situation and is responding to that but not with anything too direct. While we certainly live times that require drastic change, Spent is more about expressing uncertainty, fear and instability that exists in all of us, and is, I feel, a neglected voice. I am much more interested in creating impressions on the reader to reflect on than outlining any definite position. 

You’ve performed internationally for years. How does standing on a stage, in the flesh, change the impact of these poems compared to readers encountering them quietly on the page?

You’d probably have to ask my audiences and readers for a fuller answer, but the main difference is that a spoken word piece can be very fleeting, and much more focussed on immediate sound and emotion. As a performer, I have a good degree of control of the audience’s emotional response in the moment. However, a reader can pore over a poem or story as many times as they wish, developing their own relationship with the writing. 

Some of the poems and stories in Spent were written only to be published. They simply wouldn’t work as spoken word pieces – perhaps too oblique, or not too short to take the audience on a journey. Likewise, I’ve written many pieces that are solely for performance and are robbed of their power when read. When something works for both writing and performance, it’s my job to translate its narrative and emotional core for the audience, which is an endlessly exciting thing to navigate.

“Dead White Anarchists” and “Rogues So Banished” suggest a fascination with outsider figures. What draws you to the margins?

Both Dead White Anarchists and Rogues So Banished are solo theatre shows I created to shed light on marginalised histories. Dead White Anarchists covered anarchists in 19^th century Paris; Rogues So Banished focussed on the experience of convicts in the early British colony in Australia. I’m hugely interested in history outside of my creative work and find it can be a great place for inspiration too. 

Researching and telling stories about marginal figures and histories is a kind of rebalancing. We are taught a history that is very imbalanced and heavy on institutional bias. Exposing ourselves to other histories and perspectives helps us develop a healthier, more textured relationship with our past and present. It also helps us understand the patterns that got us to where we are. 

Generally, I am drawn to voices that I feel a lot art ignores. This often means people who are quite damaged or vulnerable. My background in social care work has almost certainly influenced this. The snippets of characters you read in Spent all seem to be under some kind of mental or physical duress. If I resonate with such people, or find them in a part of myself, and can represent them on page or in performance with fidelity, I can help share and humanise that voice. This brings them from the margins to the very forefront of an audience or reader’s world.

Punk’s spirit runs deep in your work, rebellious, defiant, unapologetic. How has punk shaped not just your art, but the way you move through the world?

That’s a huge question. Punk mainly inspired me with its DIY ethic, making me realise that I can just go ahead and create. None of us need permission to put our work out in the public realm, and we don’t need to wait for gatekeepers to unlock the gates.

It opened me up to a world of values that may have otherwise been hidden to me. Punk was definitely a gateway into radical politics. It gave me the rough sketch of critical framework to see injustice and structural problems in the world, and then the inspiration to go on and make that sketch more detailed. Consequently, this sent me on the path to opening up my eyes and ears to the experiences of marginalised groups, and learning from what they have to say.

Punk influenced my art by being so multi-dimensional, embracing all the contradictions and rage and joy of being human in a wrong world. This is the cultural movement which birthed both Blink 182 and Napalm Death and they both have the same roots. This has inspired me to never settle on one format or voice, and constantly explore different ways of creative expression.

Addiction and mental health struggles are rawly present in Spent. Was writing about them a form of catharsis, confrontation, or something else entirely?

Having worked alongside people with mental health and addiction issues, as well as having been through some of those experiences myself, I wanted to present those experiences in a way which is realistic. But I also wanted the reader to inhabit that world and empathise with that world, feel the pain of it, not simply be told how it is. So I married that grime with heightened, vivid, often consciously poetic language. I didn’t have a plan for writing about these struggles, apart from to give those struggles a voice, but I found the process gave shape to those experiences and helped me see them in a new, starker light.

There’s a striking physicality to your writing, pain, intoxication, collapse. How important is the body, as both battleground and witness, in your work?

I find visceral art extremely compelling generally. I love it when a piece of work grabs me by the scruff of the neck and refuses to let go and wanted to bake this sensation into Spent’s world. Drugs and alcohol can make us tactile, they can make us aggressive. A rave is an extremely intense bodily experience. Capitalism has violent impacts on the body. It makes sense to me emphasise the physicality of living in such a world. 

You don’t flinch from ugliness, but you also avoid easy nihilism. In a time when despair feels almost fashionable, how do you resist giving into it completely?

Simply: the other option is unthinkable.

Your poetry carries the energy of someone who has lived every word. Is there a difference, to you, between lived experience and emotional truth in writing?

To write creatively about something is necessarily to make an artificial representation of it. So whether it’s lived experience or something the author hasn’t experienced, both can be equally truthful. What matters is the respect, sensitivity and fidelity to the subject.

You walk a tightrope between the political and the personal. Was it difficult to avoid one overwhelming the other, or do you see them as impossible to separate?

It has certainly been a point of mine to avoid writing explicitly political work for a while now. When I first started out, the poems were highly opinionated and my motivation was to express that opinion in an emotive way. That doesn’t interest me so much any more, though of course it’s great – in fact, necessary – that work like that is still made. How political and social structures impact us psychologically and physically, and how we respond or cope with this, is much more interesting to me the older I get. But I hope that same politicised rage is always there beneath the surface.

Many of your poems read like fragments of a larger epic. Are you drawn to the idea of continuing these narratives, or is Spent a kind of closing chapter?

Really not sure at the moment. I have a few projects to finish and then I’ll think about another collection. But it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the characters and places from Spent turn up elsewhere. We’ll have to see! 

If readers walk away from Spent with one lasting image or feeling, what do you hope it will be?

I’d really like their uncertainty of themselves and the world around us to feel seen.