Matt Starr on 'Temu Drake' and his Debut Book 'Mouthful'

At other moments, Starr takes his gaze towards his own love life and his own relationship with writer Mackenzie Thomas. In a series of list-poems where Thomas is referred to as “a girl I like,” he subtly and simply paints a portrait of a person via heartfelt details that illuminate a growing love. Like on “Everything a Girl I Like Did in Bed at Twenty-Three,” where he jots down: “Took phone calls/ Applied for jobs/ Watched YouTube/ Wrote a novel/ Painted her nails/ Cuddled her stuffed animals/ Daydreamed about being interviewed on late night television.” There’s a buzzing rhythm to the lists and a simple sweetness that speaks to Starr’s own unfussy approach to romance and poetry.

Indeed, a childlike openness is how he approaches his poetry and his events, which have become hotly attended, often selling out instantly upon their announcement; his book launch was no different. At Church Street Boxing gym, around 400 people gathered to hear from Starr and celebrate Dream Baby Press’s very first publication. But as this was a Dream Baby Press event, there were just a few, simple additions to the reading. The night kicked off with a performance from the Cobra Center Marching Band, and the readers included the likes of the meme-magician Joan of Arca, forever fav Ivy Wolk and Girls star and Instagram therapist Jemima Kirke, among many other notables including Starr himself.

And who could finish off the show but none other than a Drake impersonator, John Dour, who performed a rousing lipsync of “Hotline Bling”? Starr, who recently found a deep connection with the Canadian crooner booked, the impressionist as a “gift to himself.” But it turns out the odd choice was a gift to the culture writ large.

Soon after the performance, clips of the performance started making the rounds of the internet in a spiraling level of reach. Within a few days, Dour — who was termed “Temu Drake” in reference to the online shopping magnate that’s replete with fake brands — was even reposted by Aubrey Graham himself. “Sometimes you gotta pop out,” real-Drake wrote in his familiar italic font.

It was a surprisingly epic turn to the joyful night, but it was a fitting finish for Starr’s gonzo publicity campaign. Starr has found success, community and a genuine audience by not shying away from his pie-in-the-sky ideas or his utterly heartfelt ethos. As a chronicler of the internet myself, I particularly appreciate Starr’s approach to sharing his work. Too often people think the key to virality is craven nastiness. But Starr’s success demonstrates another model — sometimes online virality is attainable through something simpler: dream it and then do it.

PAPER chatted with Starr after his viral reading to chat about his debut book, shamelessness, Drake and the bewildering internet.

Well, mazel tov on this huge event. How are you feeling about it?

Amazing. I'm still pinching myself. It took me months to put that together. But I'm still like, Oh, that was a launch for a poetry book. You saw the Drake thing?

That it's like the biggest meme on the internet?

So you saw that real Drake reposted it?

Yeah, crazy!

I love Drake, so for me it's the real cherry on top to an already perfect event.

Tell me about the idea behind the Drake impersonator. How did you find him?

I wanted a celebrity impersonator for a long time. I've always been in awe of them. I was just like, What is the Dream Baby Pressversion of a book launch? We've really pushed what a literary reading could be with the types of readers, with the spaces and locations. The one thing that I've always been really chasing after was something that was more theatrical. I've had marching bands in the past, so I knew I wanted a marching band. And they were amazing. My jaw dropped.

But I was going through the list of celebrity impersonators. And I was like, What would I want to see? I love Drake. I'm new to his music. I'm new to the lore, so to me, that was a present to myself. I was talking to the guy who manages [the Drake impersonator], and we were talking about it, and he just seemed perfect. From an angle, he really looked like him. And then in person I think he really looks like him. I was like, It's gonna be fun. “Hotline Bling” in a boxing ring with 400 people? I felt like it fit the vibe.

In general, I want to push what a poetry book launch could be. It took me years to grow Dream Baby Press, to write the book, to physically make it. I didn't want [the launch] to just be in a bar or a bookstore, because I was celebrating something that I've worked harder and longer on than any other project in my life. So I knew I wanted it to be a big event. It far exceeded my expectations.

The people you bring to your events are these amazing internet people. And the events you throw take on such a huge life on the internet. But you don't live and breathe social media how I’d expect you to.

The writers I've been really inspired by are writers that I admire for the way that they can exist on the internet and are still themselves. I'm 35. My phone and social media still feels awkward. [Writer] Mackenzie [Thomas], who I'm dating, can be so effortlessly funny and just be herself, whereas it stresses me out. With the people that we invite, we are able to put on a good show and be entertaining. There's a vocabulary that I see with Joan of Arca, Park Slope Arsonist, Ivy Wolk or Blizzy who are these people who are able to speak to such a large audience and in such an entertaining way, and still be themselves with no restraints. I really admire that. It's on social media, but people are still reading and thinking about these images and things that they do. It's such a talent. I can put an event together. But I can't do that. It’s also they're readers that you wouldn't expect to see live. So to me, the idea of making them real people is really interesting. They experience and understand a side of the internet that I'm only now learning about.

Something your writing shares with all these people is this confessional quality, or even a shamelessness. There's an honesty to it that's very liberating for people to hear about, especially in terms of how you express yourself specifically about sex in your poetry.

I was just listening to the end of [Jemima Kirke’s] speech [at the Mouthful book launch]. She said, this thing that just nails it: “Perhaps the most valuable lesson that we can all learn from Matt Starr’s Mouthful is that shame is fucking hot. Don't run from it or cover it up with oohs and ahhs. Show it to someone and let them fuck it to the high heavens. The best kind of sex eradicates shame like alchemy. It spins it into joy.” And I just think that's so beautiful. I carried so much shame for so long.

I was making TV shows before I really dedicated myself to writing poetry. For me, freedom is shamelessness. And when you're working on a TV show, you're working with at least 20 people, and everybody has a say. For me, with writing poetry, I didn't have to ask permission, and I didn't have somebody to judge me. When I first started writing, it was a way to exercise the shame out of me.

Humor is my Trojan horse. I wasn't going out of my way to try to be funny, but I think my style of writing and how I communicate is through humor. The stuff that I was attracted to reading was in a similar vein, where you could tell they did not hold back, and it was not oblique, and it was just all out there. When I started performing, the thing that people would always say is “I don't like poetry, but I like what you did.” As somebody who'd never performed before except for my high school gospel choir, the idea that I could be a gateway drug to somebody potentially getting into poetry and reading more became the whole ethos of Dream Baby Press. It’s about lowering the barrier of entry. It's not the “Cool Kids Club.”

There's something about the way you write and talk about sex that feels very familiar to me. It’s this very specific Jewish adolescent horniness, for lack of a better term. There's something in this lineage of Jewish male writers, specifically like Philip Roth, or like Larry David, where it’s the desire and frustration and awkwardness all together.

I think that there's a real innocence and naivete to the way I write. When I was writing explosively, I would run around Central Park and take my shirt off. That’s a big deal for me, But I would run around yelling to my phone, and it was so freeing, and I was listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, and all this punk music and Drake. That's why Drake was a big part of this. I find him very funny. At a certain point, I realized I was really working through some shit. And I was really trying to rethink how I thought about sex. And I was really thinking about it from this innocent lens.

I felt like I was starting over, and I was relearning about my own taste and desire. After a while, I was really thinking about it on a base level, and not trying to overcomplicate it, like [sex is just] A plus B equals C, but also there's romance, and there's sensuality. There's innocence and sweetness, but it’s also sucking and fucking.

I was thinking about how I perceived sex as a kid, because I was exposed to it. I was with my neighbor, and he would take me into his grandparents’ closet, and there were hundreds of old porno mags. They were vintage. There was so much pubic hair. And it was so sexy. But I saw that at a really young age. And the internet too. It felt so innocent, because I would go online and I would see a naked, pregnant woman. And it was so beautiful, but it's like, She's still pregnant. And those were some of my first naked adult images.

So there is a linear narrative to this book, where it starts with a lot of childlike poems. And then it kind of evolves or devolves. But when people ask me to describe my poetry. I'm like, “It's erotic and neurotic.” The neurosis just comes from overthinking. And I think that plays out in my poetry.

When you said you're starting over. You mean that you wrote this after a breakup?

I got dumped in March 2020. I moved to the Upper West Side. Most of this book was written on the Upper West Side. I discovered Drake, but I also discovered romcoms and Sex and the City. Sex and the City was my personality. I never embraced that. So I think that a lot of the sweetness also comes from that. I feel like romcoms are really innocent. There's not a lot of sex in romcoms, but there's tension. I like that more than the sex.

I don't think I’ve ever asked you what Sex and the City girl you are?

So I spent years thinking about this. At first I used to think I was Carrie, but I think Carrie is really selfish. I think after a long time I realized I'm Samantha with a splash of Harry for Jewish representation and a little bit of Steve. Samantha has this stereotype as the slut. But to me, Samantha is totally independent. She advocates for her needs and she's a great friend. She shows up for all the girls. Harry is the sweet Jew, and Steve to me is this innocent boy who is passionate about being in love.

What do you think Drake has meant to you? I feel like he has a Jewish neuroses, too.

I'm experiencing a decade of Drake within two years. I don't have a relationship to different eras of him. I'm doing it all out of order. Drake to me is somebody I feel like I went to Jewish camp with. I think what I love about him and his music is that it's really fun. I want my poetry to be fun. Yes, I'm writing for myself, but I want it to be entertaining. That's the poetry I love. And I think that’s highly entertaining. I think it's sweet and horny, and the early stuff felt very romcom-y. He's goofy. Maybe now he takes himself really seriously. But when I go back to older interviews and his older music, there are some really goofy lines in there. There’s a clip where he's totally serious, and he's like, “I study women. I study the way they talk. I study how they move.” And I'm like, What the fuck? He's just funny. If we're not having a good time, what's the point?

Another throughline in the book is these list poems which I find very charming. Have you always kept lists?

As I was getting to know Mackenzie [Thomas], she was describing her life, and it was so beautiful. Those poems [Everything a Girl I Like Stole from CVS, Everything a Girl I Like Licked as a Kid, Every Medication Taken by a Girl I Like in Her Twenties, Everything a Girl I like Did in Bed at Twenty-Three] are about Mackenzie, and I just thought it was such a beautiful way to turn somebody's life and moments into poetry. She was just saying, Here's all the things I've licked, and I just thought it was such a beautiful way to think about somebody.

There have been a lot of copycats. It's funny, and they'll tag me in it. I'll see especially the girl ones. There’s a girl side of the internet. I don't know how else to describe it. But they will take that format and write poems like that. And it's cool. When I put my poems on Tiktok, they went viral. I'd get a lot of girls who would do games with it where they would put the fingers down for the medications they take. I love poems that can break out for a larger audience.

Where does this book fit in the Dream Baby World as a press?

We always knew that my book would be the first, because we needed to learn how to make a book, and we wouldn't try that on someone else's. So this book was really the experiment and guinea pig for the type of book we wanted to make. I mean my sensibility is Dream Baby’s sensibility. This book to me is a perfect example of the type of poetry and excitement that we want around poetry. It's horny and sweet. We don't want to be provocative just to be provocative. We don't want to be loud or ostentatious just for the sake of it. We wanna make sure that it's fun and sweet. We have three or four books lined up after this. We have a lot of things we want to do for Dream Baby, but it's not our full-time job. So we have the freedom to not try to monetize and commodify what we do, and maybe we will eventually. But right now, I love the freedom. Dream Baby can be anything. We don't have a roadmap.

Photography: Anna Maria Lopez