Tommy Archuleta lives in Santa Fe but still makes his way to Albuquerque three times a week to attend graduate classes and teach creative writing at an Albuquerque high school, Amy Biehl Charter High School. Archuleta, 44, began writing in 2002 after several years as a musician in the bands 27 Devils Joking, 23 More Minutes and Facedown. Now he plays with the bands Angola Farms, Beautiful Stupid Radio and Disasterman.

So what did you do before poetry that led you into the craft? I think being a drummer for … 28 years had a big role in finding another place in poetry — being that it is so infused with music and rhythms. I think that played a role in it, and I think that it was a friend of mine, Ben Zeigler, who I play with now in a band. I sort of accuse him of being responsible for me getting into writing. He turned me onto Raymond Carver’s short stories. What was it about Raymond Carver’s stories that you liked? I just had never read anything like that before. I had no idea that it was realism. I didn’t know anything about literature. Much changed in my life when I got sober in ’97 and so up until then, before Ben came along, the only thing I had read were, you know, fliers for beer sales or cereal boxes. I really didn’t read much at all. So Ben coming into my life, and giving me this gift of literature just opened me (up), and one thing just lead to another and I had bought a Smith-Corona typewriter, which I still have, for $10. I got it worked on and started hammering out what I thought were poems. They were these little narrative pieces mostly about my life in Pecos, N.M., raised by my grandfather — partially raised. And what else did you do then? If it weren’t for getting sober, none of this would have happened. Literally, I was on my way to die. I actually even got the hell out of New Mexico so my folks wouldn’t have to see me. I ended up in Seattle. That was one of the reasons, I believe, Ben gave me Raymond Carver’s books because, as we all know — common knowledge — Raymond enjoyed nine years of sobriety … So when I got sober I started being of service. I was delivering flowers, and one day I had to deliver flowers to an Alzheimer unit. And I walked in there, and it was a secured unit, and I had to take some flowers to some nurse or something, and there were all of these elderly people milling around. I knew a little about Alzheimer’s, and they were obviously mentally ill. I just started having conversations with these people as if I had been having them my whole life. So that was the beginning. I still work with the Alzheimer community, although in the private sector. But that experience opened up the door to a 10-year career as an activity director working in long-term care. What was it about Alzheimer’s patients that compelled you to stay in the field for 10 years? It just didn’t even occur to me, you know? That job, in the way that it picked me, is no different than the way poetry picked me. What do mean that poetry picked you? Well, when I first, first started writing I was writing stories because my first exposure was to people like Carver, Tobias Wolff and Richard Ford. Also. I think what spoke to me more was their ability to transmit an image. The only difference I knew between poetry and fiction writing was the sentence didn’t go all the way to the end of the page. So all I did was start doing that. And so when I got my typewriter, the next thing I did, I got my first library card and I would go into the poetry section. I didn’t know who the hell was up there, so I would just randomly take books home and look at them. I didn’t understand why they weren’t just coming out and just saying what the hell was going on in the damn poem like the stories were. I didn’t really realize that there’s a whole history of understatement and suggestion in poetry. I didn’t f-ing know any of that. I was just doing it. So even if poetry picked you, why did you decide to embrace it? On a practical basis, you aren’t going to get any money from poetry, man. It’s not even about that. That’s why I like it — I have an ego. The less my ego is in the classroom, the less my ego is in my work; the less my ego is in relationships, personal or otherwise, the better things seem to go. If there’s no money in it, f-ing fine, that’s cool with me. I know for a fact Plato didn’t write for money or chicks or whatever, for crying out loud.