For this episode of Why We Collect, we talk with poet and Fungus Books and Records co-owner Ed Steck about two of his collections, books and horror films. He describes how an early interest in horror films drew him into a wider and wilder world of collecting the uncanny, the rare, and the strange.

“The first film that I got sucked into was George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead,” says Steck, “because I grew up in Irwin, Pennsylvania and Monroeville Mall was 10-15-20 minutes down the road. I remember watching Dawn of the Dead and [thinking], ‘that is the mall I go to.’ I was blown away that this other world could exist right where my mom and grandma took me to J.C. Penney’s or Kaufmann’s or whatever.”

We also talk about how collecting feeds into research for his poetry practice. We talk about inspirations for his new book A Place Beyond Shame, which is “a long-form poetic exploration of autobiographical trauma,” published by Wonder Publishing. Then we discuss the current books on his writing desk, which are feeding into a new writing project about UFOs.

The episode ends with Ed reading an excerpt from A Place Beyond Shame that revolves around the Westinghouse Atom Smasher, a now-toppled Van de Graaff generator that saw 21 years of use as part of Westinghouse’s work with “non-weapons applications of nuclear technology.” Read this fascinating article from the Smithsonian for more details on how the atom smasher operated in its heyday.

Catch up with Ed at Fungus Books and Records in the Wilkinsburg neighborhood, just outside of Pittsburgh. And check out Ed’s work from publishers Wonder Publishing and Ugly Duckling Presse.