Announcing my newest book of poetry Threading the Gold: poems written as artist-in-residence at Westminster Church

 

Threading the Gold: contemplative poems

I am thrilled to announce my book of spiritual poetry Threading the Gold is now available through BookBaby : https://tinyurl.com/bdd7s6rj

and for pre-order on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/c8zkv4x8

This poetry collection takes us on a journey from Advent to Lent during a time of conflict and chaos on the global stage and an increase in those who are in dire circumstances, through reflections and responses to what was heard and experienced while attending worship services and adult education classes as artist-in-residence at Westminster Presbyterian Church. These poems consider the balance between a mystical path of inner contemplation and a heartfelt desire toward activism. They ask how do we align with Divine Love and what is our responsibility to our neighbors, even when those neighbors are in a country across the globe? What does it mean to be broken and whole at the same time and who do we turn to when we feel devastated by loss and outrage? Where do we find the Divine in difficult times and what do these ancient stories have to teach us? These poems include imagining several Biblical figures and their choices and decisions, and what we might learn from them. They reflect on loss and grief and grace. They take us through a portal to witness the holy in the ordinary and the power of prayer to uplift our consciousness. They pay attention to sorrow and joy and the dance between repose and ecstasy. They are grounded in spiritual practice and inquiry that lead to healing and transformation. From the weariness of Santa trying to find the homes of those who do not have a home to the joy of finding connection and community, these poems illuminate the gold of spiritual awareness threaded through all circumstances.

Quieting the Left Brain Critic

When I facilitate writing workshops, I use poetry as a way to enter the intuitive mind. I believe poetry opens the door to the subconscious. The difference between the left brain and the right brain is that the left brain tends to put things in order, to make sense of things, and the right brain makes leaps of associations, what is similar and what is different, according to the senses. In this way, right brain thinking can be more visual, visceral, emotional, and imaginative. It doesn't care if things fit together, it cares that there is a pattern, symmetry, memory and new connections. 

Our left brain is also where our inner critic lives and pokes at us when we are being creative, telling us we are not doing it right, we aren't good enough and we don't deserve to play.

By putting the pen to paper and keeping it moving without listening to the voice saying we aren't choosing the perfect word or right word, we dive beneath the surface. 

The benefits of using poetry as a jump start for writing:

Poetry provides a cultural context and expressive model that supports openness and emotional honesty.

It connects us to our intuitive imagination.

Reading and writing poetry is a natural process for people in pain.

Poetry provides a private experience where an individual can control the outcome.

Writing poetry is joyful and self-affirming even if the topic is painful.

It is a skill that we can continue to access.

It is a way of connecting with others through reading and publishing.

(excerpted from Writing with At-Risk Youth: the PONGO Teen Writing Method) 

Here is a poem and promt I use often in my workshops. The poem has humor and also the specific details: the red dress, the onion rings, the carnival ride. We read the poem and then I suggest the prompt. We don't analyze the poem as it returns us to the left brain. Sometimes the images in the poem trigger our own memories and sometimes they are a catalyst to give ourselves permission to write what we have not dared to speak, or even think.  

Antilamentation

by Dorianne Laux

 Regret nothing. Not the cruel novels you read

to the end just to find out who killed the cook, not
the insipid movies that made you cry in the dark,
in spite of your intelligence, your sophistication, not
the lover you left quivering in a hotel parking lot,
the one you beat to the punch line, the door or the one
who left you in your red dress and shoes, the ones
that crimped your toes, don't regret those.

Prompt: what I regret and what I don't regret

Cultivating Resiliency part 2

How can we cultivate resiliency? What is resiliency and is it a muscle we can strengthen? How does being resilient change our lives and the ways we cope with crisis?

Resilience is defined by the ability to bounce back after trauma, to cope with or to heal after a crisis. Resilience is not only coping or bouncing back or healing but change, growth, and transformation. 

The love of my life, Michael, was wild—gregarious, funny, warm-hearted, affectionate, honest—and he lived his life in a creative fury. But when his mood changed to unrelenting depression, he was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. The next eight years were a roller-coaster of manic highs where he stayed up all night, disappeared out of state, and spent recklessly, and lows that sucked the air out of the room, when he spent all day in bed, unable to change clothes. I lived in constant fear after he told me he wanted to die. During this time I joined two writing groups, one a women’s poetry group and the other Write Action, a writing support group led by poet Joan Logghe. These would cushion my grief when he took his life.
     Michael’s death released me from the weight of care-giving and my own depression. A burst of creative inspiration uplifted me. My poetry group held our first public reading during Day of the Dead to honor those we had lost. I wanted to share a poem about Michael but felt too emotional to read it off the page. I needed the audience to support me, so I memorized it. The connection was gratifying as I shared my grief honestly in public. I opened hearts, and mine was comforted.
         I decided to memorize all of my poems. I self-produced a poetry CD, had a launch party, traveled to promote it, and honed my performance style, creating a career as a performance poet.

But tragedy struck, one I was not anticipating. When my younger son died, also by suicide, my life shattered. I was filled with anger--at myself, at him, at God, and a burden of guilt—that I hadn’t seen it coming, that I hadn’t tried to stop it. My voice was strangled. I was unable to pray or write. The spiritual practices that had guided me through mourning Michael were now silenced. At the memorial services, one in Minneapolis where he lived, and one in Santa Fe where friends gathered, I fell into dark despair.

As Thanksgiving approached, I wanted quiet—I didn’t think I could put on a façade for friends. However, I didn’t want to be alone and I decided to go to Christ in the Desert Monastery. The monastery is thirteen miles up a dirt road by the Chama River. I didn’t have a car, I don’t drive, and I didn’t have money for a retreat, but I contacted the guest master and asked for prayer. He replied that the monks would pray for me.

            Then, a small miracle happened. A friend had gone back to Mexico but slipped over the border and drove me out to the monastery. (Little did I know that here Thanksgiving was celebrated with a turkey feast with wine and the vows of silence lifted for the evening meal!)

            The next day the Abbot read the preface from the book The Thorn Birds: “There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life …it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale…For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain. …Or so says the legend.”

                As a poet without words, this seemed hand-picked for me.

                 I walked to the river where we scattered Sam’s ashes. I had chosen this spot because we camped here when I was pregnant with him and when he was a teen.  I hiked back through autumn leaves to the beach. At Earthwalks for Health retreats, we learned from the indigenous people how to listen to the river, the rocks, and the drum. I thought, The river wants to give me a gift, and walked to the water’s edge. Was it a special rock, a feather? Then I heard a voice saying, “You have all the pieces of the puzzle. Take all the pieces of your life and put them together. You must sing again.”

This visit to the monastery was a turning point. I came home to write on my own for the first time, recording my experiences of the week-end.

WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT RESILIENCY: ASK FOR HELP

We live in a culture that demands we be strong and self-sufficient. Asking for help is a seen as a sign of weakness; asking for charity makes us dependent on others. But what I learned is that to ask for help is being resilient. After I learned of Sam’s death, I asked friends to make phone calls so I wouldn’t have to. I remembered from Michael’s transition how draining that had been. My friends threw fund-raisers. I asked for rides to the grief counselor, to pick up groceries, to the writing group. I asked the monks to pray for me. I had support from professional counseling, a grief support group, and a women’s group. People helped move possessions to second hand stores or storage. A friend took me camping. Another friend cooked meals. Alejandro escorted me on the plane from Minneapolis back to Santa Fe, I felt incapable of doing it alone. People gave me places to land, kept me connected.

Question to ask yourself: Where can you go for help? Is it professional: a therapist, counselor, or coach? Physical therapist, yoga class,  hot tub? Is it a support group or workshop or spiritual community? Is it family and friends: a listening ear or just company; an invitation to dinner; transportation: errands, to the doctor, to support group; a walk in nature together; help with de-cluttering or getting rid of things; or prayers, healing energy, and positive affirmation?  

     Sam's altar at the Santa Fe memorial gathering.

Winds of Change: Split This Rock poetry festival

During the ’60s, I was uplifted by the wind of change. As a teen, I had become disillusioned by the institutions that were meant to guide me: school, church, the US political process. I awakened to injustice and desired to bring the world into balance; I protested, marched, leafletted, debated, wore a black armband, fasted, prayed. Then, we all grew up and moved on, some of us to continue the battle for equality, some of us to deepen our spiritual practice so we could change within, some of us to work towards wealth and security, some of us to raise families and make compromises as necessary. Split This Rock poetry festival reawakened my belief in the collective voice and the possibility of transformation throughout society.

At Split This Rock, we were all welcomed and valued. Emerging and beginning poets mingled with established poets, young voices were heard and older voices honored. The readings were dynamic, powerful and inspiring. We heard heart-wrenching stories of black mothers who have lost their sons to police violence and the loss of homeland by Syrian refugees. Perils a person of color encounters in daily living. Censorship and erasure of people of color. Asian women who work in dangerous, toxic environments in Silicon Valley.

But they were also filled with a spirit of hope, energy, compassion, connection, pride, purpose. It was as though the idealistic beliefs of the ’60s had found a new voice, a voice tempered in practicalities. Outrage turned into words and actions. A rededication. A relentless pursuit of speaking truth to power.

At the Poet’s Forum: How Political Engagement Affects the Writing Process presented by the Poetry Foundation and POETRY Magazine, Ocean Vuong said that poetry is an act of activism, that poetry opens our minds and hearts so we are less inclined to accept the popular culture's narrative. The next panel I attended consisted of contributors to an anthology of protest against Arizona’s censorship law that racially profiles authors called Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Justice. One panelist said, “It’s not enough to write poetry, we also need to march.” The panel discussed the necessity of writing poetry as witness, as a means of calling out and taking action against racially motivated crimes.

We march in different ways, I think. My days of holding hands and singing “We shall overcome” are over, not only because it is too hard for me to stand for hours without pain, but because it is not enough. Change has to come from within myself, my attitudes, beliefs, and judgments. Change has to occur within the places where I work and play through the work I love to do, treating others with respect, offering a different point of view, and using the skills I have to create dialogue or raise awareness.

At Split This Rock, I felt the winds of change blowing once again: insistent and unstoppable. Do we have the right to tell someone else’s story if we are not from their culture? What is cultural appropriation and who has privilege? Can we who are from white culture listen without bias or preconceived ideas? Can we listen to rage and not turn away because it is loud, not our style? Can we respond without defensiveness but with self-reflection and ask ourselves the hard questions of how do I contribute to the dominant culture’s narrative and how can I be an ally and a partner in the quest for true justice? Can I let go of my prejudiced views and open to new ways of thinking and interacting? Can I be the change I want to see and surrender my expectations? Can I envision change with my words and my art as well as my life? Can I speak up and do I know when to be quiet and let others speak their truth?

At Split This Rock, we are the voice of change. It was energizing and invigorating, but most of all, it was validating to a woman who began her poetic journey wanting change, wanting the invisible and ignored and forgotten to have a voice and a place. It was like the poetic answer to a Rainbow gathering where you are greeted with a big hug and “Welcome home, sister.” I felt welcomed home. I felt anything is possible.

www.splitthisrock.org

Coming Home to Joy

Eight years ago if you had told me that I would be able to survive, I would have looked at you in disbelief. If you had predicted that I would find ways to heal, I would have been astonished. After my son's death, I could only put one foot in front of the other, day by day. I had tremendous love from friends and family and support from colleagues and counseling and yet, I was in such a state of shock that I was operating on instincts, not rational, not able to foresee any future at all.

My instincts told me to go back to work, that it was better than the agony of my own turbulent guilt, and I did until the wheel of fortune took me to Mexico and Alejandro. My instincts told me to hold onto Alejandro, who was both a distraction and a refuge. He knew how to live on a pendulum between deep denial and enjoying life's sensual pleasures. I knew he would not pity me, but in fact, one of the last straws between us was the way he demanded I show up to work at the gallery when I had dengue fever and should have been in bed recuperating, with a kind hand bringing me cool drinks and Tylenol.

Seven years ago when I moved to Minneapolis, if you had told me that I would find ways to meld my gift with my passion to be of service, I would not have believed you, even though my hunger for poetry had come back. Coming to Minneapolis was another turn of the wheel of fortune: my son asked for my help with childcare. I used to claim I would never live in such a cold place. Here I still am, 7 years later.

That first winter, I attended a poetry reading at The Loft for the publication release of Songs Along the Way. I remember it because the temperature was 20 below and I asked my daughter-in-law to give me a ride. I assumed there would be a small turn out. I was still disoriented, in an altered state, and raw with grief that felt like my skin of my heart had peeled away. I was surprised to watch the auditorium fill up but despite standing room only, the seat next to me remained vacant. Was it Sam's spirit come to comfort me? I left that reading to go home and write my first poem since leaving Mexico.

Five years ago if you had predicted that I would create a life I love, I would have seen a small glimmer through the fog. I would have considered the Twin Cities writer's community as a place to begin. I created brochures and sent out proposals, showed up for open mics and asked questions, attended every reading I could get to. Won a McKnight grant, published a book of poetry.

Three years ago if you had told me that I would feel joy, astounding joy that permeates my entire being, the joy of doing what I am meant to do, of  using my gift and my desire and my vision, that I would heal, I would have been astonished. I would not have been able to imagine it. But joy has been gifted me, I feel blessed.

Sam's death is not something I got over or ever forget. If I choose to hold the moment of getting the phone call in my mind, or seeing his body at the funeral home, or the afternoon at the Chama where we scattered his ashes, the visceral reaction is as potent as ever. Sharp unbearable pain shoots through my heart. In the poem I wrote a description of my grandson, "When he smiles, it is enough to crack the scotch-taped fissures of my heart back into shards. It is your smile, carbon copy family trait." These memories are enough to crack all the fissures back into shards. The fissures that I have spent the last seven years filling in with gold lacquer, painstakingly matching each surface to the other to resemble the whole.

Poetry performances for Dia de los Muertos where I shared my anguish, poetry performance at Patrick's Cabaret where I told the story also healed me as I realized that death comes for all, death is part of the cycle of life. Death is natural. Sam's death was a choice he made and I can choose the way I mourn, publically and privately.

What I learned as a writing instructor/facilitator is that when I write, there are two paths. One will take me deeper and deeper into the story: what happened to me and what I feel about it. There is no end to that branch of the story. I can tell it over and over, because the emotional pull is powerful. Or I can choose another branch: what it means, what patterns I see, where it leads me, what has been the lesson, and how I can change and transform because of it. And as the writer responsible for the circle, I deliberately choose that branch. That is what I write about and share. When I led workshops under the funding of the grant, writing with battered women and homeless youth and heart patients and care-givers, I was writing weekly or twice weekly and choosing that path over and over again. What does it mean to me, what did I learn, where do I find inner courage and strength, what do I still have, what are my blessings? And I began to heal, not only enough to keep going, not only enough to be engaged with laughter and friendship and love and curiosity and pleasure, but real joy. An inner knowing that I am where I am meant to be, that I am living my dreams, that I am connected to others in deep ways and that I love my life. I am blessed. I am grateful.

If you had told me even last year, that I would be overwhelmed with ecstatic bliss, that I would dance again under the Mexican moon, that I would be filled with Presence of Spirit and that I would be overcome with love, I would have been incredulous. This joy is beyond any previous experience I have ever had. Beyond when I fell in love, when I gave birth, when I sat in a Spanish cafe and listened to flamenco, when I celebrated with friends, when I held my first book in my hands, when I spoke my truth on stage and was held in the arms of my audience. This joy is a state of being. I have come home to myself after long years of wandering. Like Dorothy clicking together her ruby slippers and saying No place like home. It is the center towards which I have been traveling all my life. While I am here, I know I can always return. Whenever grief or disappointment or frustration or longing knock me off-kilter, I know it is here, waiting for me, invincible, mine.

There's the Light (Writing Circles for Healing workshop participant)

                                        There's the Light from My Grandbaby

                  There's the light from her smile that greets me each time she enters the room.

                  The light of morning that moves on her face like invisible eyes blinking.

                  The light from her eyes as blue as the ribbon tied in a bow around her white face.

                  There's the light from her laugh that makes me a child after she wails and cries then

                  stops as if she was saying, I fooled you again.

                  There's the light from Van Gogh and Cezanne so perfectly arranged it moves my

                  blood to boil in my heart and sends little bubbles up my spine                                                                                                

                  and stimulates my mind for creations that I create.

                  The light from the moon that spreads in holy halos from its edge.

                  There's the light vanilla smell that emanates from her cheek against mine as we 

                  wrestle for the toys. 

                  There's the heat within the sun like the heat from her hands as she hugs my neck.

                  

                  There's the light through the shattered windshield after the wreck.

                  The light of winter’s skies, gray and still as the casket’s canopy.

                  There's the light reflections off my broom faced wrinkles as they gather as my mind

                  grows old and holes perforate my brain and block the memories of her.

                  There's the red light from a cat’s eye the in middle of the night Edgar Allen Poe.

                   There's the absence of light below the earth where the bugs and spiders clean the bones.

                   There's the empty light without her, without god, without soul, just an animal waiting for death.

                   There's the holy light of belief that relieves me as I lay down for my last sleep.

                Also, there's the light of god seen through the tunnel 
 that beckons me to her and to heaven 
 and to all my missing relatives and friends 

 that fly together on wings

 of wind to a better dimension of time and space.

Mark's statement: In '98 I contracted a serious case of colon cancer so I moved back here to be with my family.  After many months of treatment, the cancer went into remission; there has not been any since. In 2001 I was accidentally shot with a large caliber rifle and spent  months in the hospital near death many times. It has taken me 50 operations and 7 to 8 years pulling myself back together fighting chronic pain and infections. It is a story in itself of fighting through physical and mental trauma. I was always an artist ever since I was 5 or 6 when my brother and I started to draw to escape an alcoholic father and poverty.  I was always the best artist in the class and was chosen to do murals and art projects for the class. Through the years I've spent my time painting and writing poetry and short stories

 Mark East was a participant in Writing Circles for Healing presented by Wendy Brown-Baez and held at the Wellstone Center in St Paul. Wendy Brown-Báez is a fiscal year 2012 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is funded, in part, by the Minnesota State Legislature from the State’s art and cultural heritage fund with money from the vote of the  people of Minnesota on Nov, 4, 2008

  

Ann Fisher-Wirth: Ecopoetry to Honor the Earth

After a successful National Poetry Month of interviews and guest blogging to bring poets together via cyberspace, Upper Rubber Boots is hosting Intermittent Visitors. To read more interviews: http://www.upperrubberboot.com/

I interviewed Ann Fisher-Wirth who writes deeply about nature. We live at opposite ends of the Mississippi River, living waters that connect us. Her poetry reminds us all that we are connected and sustained via our beautiful Home, Planet Earth.

Ann Fisher-Wirth's interest in ecopoetry began while living on a 600-acre farm and is rooted in her awareness of the fragile and damaged state of the planet. Ann Fisher-Wirth’s fourth book of poems, Dream Cabinet, was published by Wings Press in 2012. Her other books of poems are Carta Marina, Blue Window, and Five Terraces; also she has published the chapbook Slide Shows. She is coediting Ecopoetry: A Contemporary American Anthology, forthcoming from Trinity University Press in February 2013. Her poems appear widely and have received numerous awards. She has had senior Fulbrights to Switzerland and Sweden, and has served as President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. She teaches at the University of Mississippi, where she also directs the minor in Environmental Studies. And she teaches yoga at Southern Star Yoga Studio in Oxford, MS.

Her latest book Dream Cabinet has been described as “poetry of great beauty and searing honesty, poetry responsive to compelling personal, political, and environmental issues of our times, and--aware of the evanescence, the ‘dream cabinet’ quality, of all mortal experience.”

Q: How much is your poetry influenced by the Mississippi River?

Ann: I live sixty miles from the Mississippi River, in the North Mississippi hill country. I can’t say the river affects my writing, but Mississippi itself certainly does. The prose poems I’m working on now are part of a collection called “First, Earth”; many of them are set in Mississippi and are a kind of vexed homage to the beauty and rigors of this place. We live in a wonderful old house with a lot of soul but no central heat or air conditioning. Though we live in the center of Oxford, there’s a little forest behind our house with deer, raccoons, opossums, squirrels, snakes, and all sorts of insects and birds. It’s a tough and teeming climate—especially in the summer, which is hot and humid. Living here has taught me a lot about human embodiment and fleshly vulnerability in an other-than-human world.

Q: How does poetry impact your own life…yours and others that you love: your time, your family, your social networks, your journey spiritually or politically?

Ann: I’ve always read and loved poetry, and I’ve written it seriously for the past twenty years. I teach in the MFA program at the University of Mississippi, so poetry is right at the center of my professional life. It’s prominent in my family life, as well. My husband teaches English, including various poetry courses, at the University of Mississippi, and he knows about 1000 poems by heart. One of my daughters is a poet whose second book has just been published, and one of my sons sometimes writes poems too. I’d say that poetry both affects and is affected by my spiritual and political concerns; all three—poetry, politics, spiritual concerns (which, for me, are primarily expressed through my practice and teaching of yoga)—are intertwined modes of awareness. Poetry is so much a part of my life, and has been for so long, that the strands would be impossible to separate and tease out.

Q: How can your poetry help us to make better choices in caring for Mother Earth?

Ann: William Carlos Williams writes in Spring and All, “Poetry does not tamper with the world, but moves it.” This is how poetry, including my own, can teach us to care for the earth. It can break through our dulled disregard, our carelessness, our despair, reawakening our sense of the vitality and beauty of nature. With that awareness, we are more likely to take actions that will preserve it. 

Q: What advice can you give about editing poems? How do you know when a poem is finished?
Ann: I don’t always know when a poem is finished, but luckily I am in a terrific online workshop, the members of which give me good—and sometimes repeated—feedback as I write and revise. I also have colleagues and sometimes family members or students who read what I write and respond to it helpfully. I do not, of course, always take any given advice. Sometimes, poems never get finished; sometimes they come easily—but I do know that if I can read one of my poems aloud, repeatedly, in front of an audience, and assent to it intellectually and imaginatively every time, it is probably as good as I can make it.

Here is my advice about editing poems: 1) Learn to love to cut and revise; 2) Don’t confuse yourself with your poem, getting your ego tied up with it; 3) Sometimes the editing process will continue for years; 4) The real joy of writing comes in the act of writing, the process of discovery and rediscovery; 5) Absolutely every element of a poem is important.

Q: Do you write in other genres as well?

Ann: I have been writing prose poems recently, for a manuscript called “First, Earth” that I am working on. Also I’ve been working on some short essays which will be introductory material for The Ecopoetry Anthology, forthcoming early in 2013, on which I’ve been working as a coeditor for the past five years. I used to write academic literary criticism; my first book was a critical book, William Carlos Williams and Autobiography: The Woods of His Own Nature, and I’ve written numerous essays on other writers. But mostly I focus on poetry.

Q: What are your thoughts about epublishing and on-line journals?

Ann: I have become increasingly fond of online poetry journals during the past few years, as the quality of some of them has vastly improved. My publisher, Bryce Milligan at Wings Press, likes for me to be reviewed in online journals because then the reviews are easily disseminated via the internet. But I am also still in love with print journals and definitely with books. I deplore the fact that they are in danger.

Q: Can you share a favorite poem from your new book Dream Cabinet?

Ann: You asked me about the role that poetry plays in my life. I think this poem from Dream Cabinet will speak to that.

Rain Stick

                                   I have watched you,

first in the sunny room in Charlottesville

as you were learning Yeats’s “Long-Legged Fly,”

and I have lain beside you as you stilled

to remember just how a line turned, the actual adjective.

I’ve touched your hip as you said me “Tintern Abbey”

or Hardy’s “Afterwards,” in the dark I’ve felt that joy,

seen that hedgehog, those white moths.

When I sprained my knee, trying to learn to ski,

I tossed in the bottom bunk of our hut

as your voice at three a.m. floated down above me,

murmuring “Fern Hill,” the horses “walking warm

out of the whinnying green stable,”

because I begged you, “Tell me something beautiful.”

I slept on our wedding night

as you drove for hours through the Blue Ridge Mountains,

waked and slept again, hypnotized by your tenderness

as you said me the whole Rubaiyyat—

one of the thousand poems you know by heart.

For more than twenty years,

I have heard your husky voice reciting poetry.

*

We were talking on the phone, I in California,  

you back home in Mississippi.

You said, “The poems we love are vanishing.”

I had nothing to reply. Then after some moments

you brought the rain stick to the phone,

the gourd we bought at a concert long ago,

when Robin Williamson played thirty-five instruments—

the lute, the rebeck, the psaltery, and the harp—

and sang and recited Bardic tales and mysteries.

You tipped the gourd so I could hear

the hidden seeds running down its length,

still making the sound of rain.

© Ann Fisher-Wirth

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Weaving Words, an interview with Ned Haggard

My last spring blossom as part of Couplets: to read other interview and guest blogs during National Poetry Month go to http://www.upperrubberboot.com

I met Ned Haggard at an amazing event held to celebrate National Poetry Month in Chicago where 150 poets read in two and a half hours at the Harold Washington Library. Our friendship has enabled us to tap into the inspiration of our poetry communities  (Chicago for me and Minneapolis for him), proving that poets are a tribe, one to which we belong no matter our location, philosophy or style.

 

Ned Haggard is a prizewinning poet whose work has appeared in numerous literary journals; among them, Potomac Review, Santa Barbara Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Bohemian Chronicle, Kaleidoscope, Maryland Review, Ebbing Tide, Small Pond, and Grasslands Review. His most recent published work, an excerpt from a mystery-in-progress, The Slaughterhouse of Lambs, appeared in a scars.tv publication. His work has been included in the anthologies: Off the Cuffs! (Soft Skull Press: New York City) and The Best of Chicago Poetry 2006 (chicagopoetry.com).  He has a collection of poems in print The Weave of the Sea (EbonyEnergy Publishing: Chicago) with another forthcoming, Soft-Shoe Shuffle and a novel The Companion in Dreams. He is developing a memoir that celebrates the people and events that have informed his life rather than emphasizing personal autobiography. He makes his home in the metropolitan Chicago area and has previously been a resident of New York City.

Q: Do you have a warm-up writing practice?
Not formally, I sometimes write off of paintings at galleries and art museums having initially considered that my practice exercise. However, I liked some of the work realized that way so much that I no longer consider the exercise a practice so much as simply another vehicle for inspiration.

Q: What feeds you as a poet?
It sounds trite and glib but, "Life," in a "L'Chaim" sort of way. Being interested in politics, I am drawn toward political poetry, which is often time dated but done well, can have a transcendent quality. Politics or more precisely political sensitivity, awareness and currently, deep concern, feeds my poetry often.

Q: What other arts do you enjoy?
Music and the visual arts, painting and photography. Music is an extension of literature for me in that I generally gain images from the listening to pure music although I have never tried writing from it the way I sometimes do paintings.

Q: What is the importance of poetry for you personally, and for the world?
Personally, pleasure and release, emotionally but also as a way of sorting matters, whatever those matters happen to be. I find dimension and breath in letters and words and the life within, behind, in front of and around them. Writing is a joy even when the subject at hand is heartbreaking. For the world, different strokes for different cultures, I suspect. I consider poetry the music of the soul, in particular and generally. I believe that is a universally viable statement. If so, that certainly says volumes for the essential place of poetry whether recognized or not.

Q: Have you always written poetry and what inspired you to begin?
Always? No. What inspired me to begin? I don't know, I just liked the intrigue of poetry and wanted to try my hand at it. I surely was not inspired by the classroom experience of poetry. Poetry in the classroom always seemed like a butcher attempting delicate brain surgery; the teacher being the butcher and the students encouraged to mime the practice making a bloody, fatal mess. Although, I completed the then only program in the writing of poetry at Harvard some years back and that was a worthwhile exception but then, it was a writing program, not a poetry survey course. By the way, I understand that program has since been expanded. But returning to your question of inspiration to begin, I think the Beats, especially Allen Ginsberg opened the door more for me than anything else; there was a young person's sense of curiosity; an "oh wow, nitty gritty more 'real' than what I've experienced" attraction that was inspired by, "I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness...." and it took off from there and ultimately, it drew me back into earlier modern poets. I was ultimately most inspired by Charles Reznikoff. Before poetry, I wrote fiction and Reznikoff showed me ways of combining poetry and narrative. I am not a lyric poet and I am not a formalist poet. I am an objectivist-imagist poet. I actually consider myself a painter with words.

Q: How do you envision the role of e-books?

I believe there will always be both physical and electronic books but I think electronic books will become more prevalent and cheaper. There is a legal case coming up about publishers rigging the prices of electronic books. I just read an article, as I recall it said the ramification will likely be far less cost for e-books. In fact, I believe the case revolves around publishers insisting on, i.e., fixing higher prices for e-books so the market for physical books would not be dynamically eroded. It may well be that eventually physical books will be a novelty. In short, I think physical books will continue but e-books will gain far greater prevalence.

INSULAR REFLECTIONS

After, "Woman before an aquarium, 1921-23" Henri Matisse

Contemplating, eyes wide,

settled on the water globe

world of gold fish, the

woman's arms folded

beneath

her propped chin

sees? Sees what? The swim

of foreign life, the

soothing of fin

fanned water gently

swirling, all but

motionless? Wondering;

their lives and hers?

Mystery swims in her

face, quietly

fascinated

                       -----Ned Haggard © 2012

Ojibway Poet Heid Erdrich and the Craft of Writing

Couplets: part of the National Poetry Month celebration at www.upperrubberboot.com

The first time I heard Heid Erdrich read, I felt her quiet centeredness contained a powerhouse of energy and emotion. Her poems speak of the natural landscapes of the earth and our own bodies to widen our awareness of the intricate ways we are connected and that that connection has been severed by lack of reverence. Poetry, I believe, is one way to reweave that connection again. 

A member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibway, Heid Erdrich grew up in Wahpeton, North Dakota. She earned degrees from Dartmouth College and The Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. A recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board fellowships, awards from The Loft Literary Center, the Archibald Bush Foundation and elsewhere, Heid E. Erdrich is author of four poetry collections, most recently Cell Traffic: New and Selected Poems from University of Arizona Press. National Monuments from Michigan State University Press won the 2009 Minnesota Book Award. Heid directs Wiigwaas Press, an Ojibwe language publisher. Heid teaches writing workshops and has one coming up in May on Madeline Island

(www.madelineartschool.com )

that will focus on the similarities between fine craft, such as beadwork, embroidery, quillwork, sewing, and the craft of writing.

To read more about Heid, including her reading her poems: www.heiderdrich.com

How does your heritage influence your poetry? Did you grow up with poetry?

My parents were both teachers so they valued writing, and both encouraged art of all kinds.  Dad would memorize poems and encourage us to do so as well.  I loved acting things out and putting on plays with my younger sister.  I think my poetry came from those early childhood experiences and from being a reader for Catholic Mass for many, many years. My Ojibwe grandfather was a great storyteller, so I had some of that influence as well.

Can you talk about the intersection between art and poetry?

It is all intersection these days--visual art, dance, poetry, music.  But I am not a painter, musician, dancer or other type of artist other than a writer, so I can only script these things. Collaboration is where I live now and I am so thrilled to be working on a large project with lots of artists who have influenced me.  Yes, there will be films.

Can you share how you will interweave crafting and the craft of writing?

Confession of a failed crafter: I am lousy with a needle.  My interest in handwork is in the way picking up a design is like poetry or good prose.  At some point the artist forgets the plan and goes the direction the materials take her.  I think this happens with writing, too. 

What makes your style of teaching unique?

Well, I do not take anything too seriously and I ask the participants to lead.  I'm open to change of plans and I make sure we move around, eat, do goofy exercises and otherwise appreciate one another as humans who do something other than write most days.

What is your greatest joy in mentoring other writers and are there any surprises?

There are always surprises, yes! Working with writers in an intense week-long setting is like mother love.  I am intensely drawn to each person, curious, motivated, determined to see where each one's work is headed. But then it is over.  A few folks stay in my life, but the vividness of each encounter fades quickly. Only the meaningfulness remains.

What is your next project?

Right now I am working on Artifact Traffic, a multi-disciplinary show that arises from collaboration with visual artists, film makers, poets, dancers, the whole shebang.  And I am writing a cook book from indigenous foods activists.  And I am starting a new book of poems on technology.  Happy times!

Last Snow

Dumped wet and momentary on a dull ground

that’s been clear but clearly sleeping, for days.

Last snow melts as it falls, piles up slush, runs in first light

making a music in the streets we wish we could keep.

Last snow. That’s what we’ll think for weeks to come.

Close sun sets up a glare that smarts like a good cry.

We could head north and north and never let this season go.

Stubborn beast, the body reads the past in the change of light,

knows the blow of grief in the time of trees’ tight-fisted leaves.

Stubborn calendar of bone. Last snow. Now it must always be so.
                             ---from The Mother's Tongue (c) 2005 Heid Erdrich 

Tomorrow's Interview for Couplets

Tomorrow stop here for an interview with Asian-American poet Bryan Thao Worra as part of the Couplets celebration of National Poetry Month. Later, I will be interviewing Diane Lockward and host guest blogger Iris Dunkle.

Bryan Thao Worra was born in 1973 in Laos during the Laotian civil war. He came to the US at the age of six months old, adopted by a civilian pilot flying in Laos. Today, Bryan Thao Worra works actively on issues of community development, refugee resettlement and the arts. In 2003, Thao Worra reunited with his biological family during his first return to Laos. A poet, short story writer, playwright and essayist, he is a prolific writer.  He has a unique impact on contemporary art and literature within the Lao, Hmong, Asian American and transcultural adoptee communities, particularly in the Midwest. Thao Worra curated numerous readings and exhibits of Lao and Hmong American art including Emerging Voices (2002), The 5 Senses Show (2002), Lao’d and Clear (2003), Giant Lizard Theater (2005), Re:Generations (2005), and The Un-Named Series (2007).

For more interviews and guest poets on our blogs: http://www.upperrubberboot.com/

National Poetry Month

National Poetry Month has arrived with all the glory of spring. Here is the first event:

Eve’s Daughters:  An exhibition of paintings by Ashley Dull 

and poem scrolls by Wendy Brown-Báez

April 6 – 14th

Tarnish and Gold Gallery

349 13th St Ave NE

The Foundry Building MPLS 55413

Opening and artist reception

Friday April 6 7-10:00 pm

Poetry reading

Saturday April 14 at 4:00 pm

Gallery hours Fri and Sat 12- 6 or by appointment

http://www.tarnishandgold.wordpress.com

Eve’s Daughters interweaves the poetic form with the serenity and resilience of nature. Paintings of light-infused natural settings illuminate the displayed poems to produce a feeling of quietude. We celebrate our strength as women, the power of nature, and the intuition that comes from connecting to the earth and to a deeper inner truth.  Poem scrolls will accompany the paintings, giving a rare opportunity to highlight writing as a visual art.

For more info: www.wendybrownbaez.com
www.artbyashleydull.com

But stayed tuned! I have exciting news about blogging and poetry blog touring. This month I am participating in a unique event called couplets. Poets will be paired to interview, review or guest blog on each other’s blogs. Upper Rubber Boot Books is coordinating this book blog tour to help promote poetry and poets for National Poetry Month.
http://www.upperrubberboot.com/couplets-a-multi-author-poetry-blog-tour/
I will inform you via blogger, fb, twitter and my email list when the first interview is up on my blog.

And that's not all! I returned from the AWP conference in Chicago to receive the good news that my grant proposal was accepted by the Minnesota State Arts Board. The grant enables me to take Writing Circles for Healing workshops into 12 non-profits during the year May '12 - '13. This project has been a dream of mine for years. I am very excited, thrilled and grateful that I can contact some of the non-profits I feel are doing important work in the community to offer them a 4 week workshop. I will partner with them to use writing as a tool for self-reflection, healing and transformation.

So, celebrate with me! Poetry and poets are blossoming.

Celebrating the Publication of transparencies of light

transparencies of light by Wendy Brown-Bàez transparencies of light articulates a woman’s point of view: from the pueblo or the big city, in troubled places or in quiet solitude, she speaks up with passion and courage. transparencies embraces the terrors and joys of ordinary life and the challenge to live in dignity despite extraordinary circumstances. These women are survivors. From the birth of their children to the birth of themselves, they remove the veils of invisibility to voice their stories and to reveal their destinies.

"I want to be / the one to find the message” Wendy Brown-Báez writes, and in transparencies of light she unfolds a quilt of messages from a host of voices, voices of women imploring or demanding, sorrowing or rejoicing. What impresses me most about this work is its sincerity—its conviction that poetry can reach beyond and broaden our lives, can be made of “rose petals or ash” and yet break stone. --Lightsey Darst, author of Find the Girl

Wendy Brown-Báez is a writer, teacher, performance poet and installation artist. In 2009, Brown-Báez’s full length collection of poems Ceremonies of the Spirit debuted when she featured at the Green Mill Jazz Club in Chicago. Her prose and poetry have appeared in dozens of literary magazines. In 2008 and 2009 she received McKnight grants to teach writing workshops for at risk youth which developed into an art installation In the Shelter of Words. To find out more: http://www.wendybrownbaez.com/