GAS Members Interview Poet and Artist, Belinda Subraman

Recent photo from Beyond Van Goph

 

GAS: What life event drew you into poetry? 

BELINDA: I was dyslexic and had a hard time learning to read. I finally learned to put my finger under the letters and pronounce each one. Even today I hear myself read each word inside my head. It was in the 6th grade that I became excited by poetry. I don’t remember what prompted me to read books of poetry.  Maybe it was my teacher, Mrs. Woodruff.  I remember writing poems in the 7th grade.  They were often humorous and classmates enjoyed them and passed them around. I can say poetry has been an important part of my life since around eleven years old.

GAS: Are you a musician? 

BELINDA: I don’t think so but I can make some cool sounds on steel tongue drums and I took African drumming lessens for years. Sample:

GAS:  Regarding the visual arts, are you taught or self taught? 

BELINDA: Self taught, but I read books, see videos, go to museums, etc. All those things tigger excitement to try new things. Only recently do I feel like I’m finding my own voice.

Inside a Combination Lock.  Mixed Media.

GAS: How is the place you live reflected in your creative work?  

BELINDA: I live in the desert. Cacti seems to pop up in a lot of my paintings and I grew up playing in a forest so trees often appear.  However, mostly I paint abstracts. As for poetry (and art), everything thing I’ve experienced plays into it as well as the places I’ve lived. One time I wrote down all the places I’ve lived and it came to about 25. I’ve lived in a lot of states, lived in Germany for six years and traveled to many countries.

My Desert. Mixed media.

GAS: How did GAS: Poetry Art and Music come about?

BELINDA: I’ll try to make a long story short. I started appearing in small magazines under different names in the 70s (Belinda Bumgarner, Mary Eldreth, Belinda Subramanian).

Some of my chapbooks from last century, before Print On Demand.

I started a magazine in 1984 called Gypsy, mostly because we were moving every couple of years or so. 1994 was the last regular publication of Gypsy and Vergin' Press for a long while.  In the early 2000s I did one more print issue called Loose Leaf Gypsy. It had hand-colored drawings, poems and photos on 100 lb. paper.  The poetry was bound in the middle of a folder and the side pockets held art that you could frame. That was way too expensive so the next Gypsy was online.  I did three issues online back when personal computers were still fairly new.  I didn’t know how to code and used a Flash program that not everyone could see. Somewhere in all this time I went through a divorce, went to nursing school and became a hospice nurse (as well as producing a weekly interview show and being politically active). Around 2007 I did a blog called Gypsy Art Show and did articles about poetry, art and music. A couple of people contributed reviews and essays from time to time.  After a few years I bought the domain name but when it came time to renew the name I could never do it. There was no way.  I kept going in circles.  I lost the blog and “they” tried to sell my name back to me for $5,000.  Heck with that.  In 2020 I started GAS: Poetry, Art and Music which you are reading right now.   I also started a video component to GAS which you can click on from this site. Example:

 Cover art by Jocelyne Desforges. 

Poetry, art and music by to Andy Clausen, Doug Adamz, Dan Nielsen, Jack Albert, Tony Hansen, Karla Van Vliet, Joshua Michael Stewart, Christopher Ethan Burton, Beat Poet Society (Bengt O Björklund, Anna-Bella Munter) Mark Saba, Amy Randolph, Nathan D. Horowitz, Jose Varela, Emocat (Heidi R Blakeslee), Henry Stanton and Ken Clinger.

GAS:  Are you able to discuss the concept of ”success” in the arts?

BELINDA: That would be different for each artist.  I have created things all my life but only recently was able to call myself an artist. I only started showing my paintings on the internet about 4 years ago.  The first one I showed several people asked if it was for sale. I was amazed and stunned and just said I’d never thought about it. But I gave a price and someone came to pick it up. I continued to post new paintings and requests to buy came in nearly every time. It took awhile to part with more paintings and to figure out what they were worth, or rather what price it would take for me to part with them.  Somewhere around this time I started considering myself an artist. I always thought of an artist as a sort of magician and finally decided I was making magic too.

Brambles. Mixed Media. Lucky Trifecta:  Cover art of EPOCH  (Scotland) and Chrysalis (El Paso) and 2nd place winner in the Sun Bowl Exhibit 2022, longest running art show in the Southwest.

GAS: Do you find more inspiration, re:subject matter, from outside or inside yourself?

I don’t think I can make a distinction like that because everything we witness goes through our own filters and forms our unique interpretations based on our knowledge and experience or lack of them.  I guess the answer is both.  I do tend to be more philosophical now so sometimes my writing is more about ideas but that came from a lifetime of synthesizing experiences.

My Amazon Author page

Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

Whitehead, Amram and Messina

Ron Whitehead, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate, Frank Messina and David Amram, Music Artist and Beat (2020-Lifetime) Award from the National Beat Poetry Foundation, have come together to share their talent and souls with us. They recite story poems with the accomplished musical backing by David Amram. Every track is moving and beautiful in its own way but I'll just mention some of them in hopes you'll listen to them yourselves.

Amram starts the album with deep reflection in Old Man in the Mirror.  In Track 3, Whitehead tells of his deep love for his roots in Kentucky Bound. Then, in The Bottoms, he tells about working hard, farming in his homeland. You can hear his pride and excitement in helping his father tame the land. In Track 6, Mrs. Brickman, Messina reminds us that everything we do leaves a lasting impression.  On Track 9, Playing for the Mets, Messina relays an exciting story of playing baseball with his friends, age 10, with a couple of real NY Mets players watching and encouraging them. Track 10, Mama, is one of the most moving pieces, taking us back to Ron's childhood watching his mom kill chickens by popping their heads off or shooting a chicken off a high roost, also shooting a tree down for Christmas! On Track 12, Daddy Screamed in the Night, Whitehead tells of his father's nightmares after a long day's work and how he would sometimes yell out his name and made him realize his Dad really loved him. Track 14, Emotional Frostbite, Messina tells of a long period of depression but how he recovered through the love of his son. On Track 14, My Heart Swells for You, Messina tells the story of a deep love for a woman, a child they had together and the tragedy of her death/departure.

This album also features the excellent music of Owen Reynolds on on bass and Teddy Owens (Director/Conductor of The Louisville Symphony Orchestra). on clarinet and beautiful, moving vocals of Robin Whitehead Tichenor. David Amaram plays piano, French horn, flute(s), & percussion. He plays at least one instrument, and often more, on every track.

 Mama Gave Me the World by Ron Whitehead from Never Too Many Sunsets: Three Generations, Whitehead, Amram and Messina.

Available on Amazon, Apple music  

 

Listen FREE on Spotify!  

NEVER TOO MANY SUNSETS CD and many other titles by Ron Whitehead & Jinn Bug are available from Trancemission Press 

You can also find this album on Pandora and other online venues. 

SMALL PRESS HISTORY 11: Dave Oliphant and Prickly Pear Press 1973-1999

Dave Oliphant was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned his BA from Lamar University, his MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD from Northern Illinois University. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry including Maria’s Poems (1987), which won an Austin Book Award; Memories of Texas Towns & Cities (2000); Backtracking (2004); KD a Jazz Biography (2012), a book entirely in rhyming quatrains; The Pilgrimage: Selected Poems, 1962-2012 (2013); The Cowtown Circle (2014); and Maria's Book (2016).

Oliphant has translated Chilean poets such as Enrique Lihn, Oliver Welden, and Nicanor Parra. His work as a translator includes Lihn’s Figures of Speech (1999; revised and expanded 2016); Love Hound (2006), his version of Welden's Perro de amor, which won the 2007 New York Book Festival poetry award; and Parra's Discursos de sobremesa, as After-Dinner Declarations (2011), which won the Texas Institute of Letters' Soeurette Diehl Fraser Translation Book Award.

He has edited three anthologies of Texas poets, including a bilingual English-Spanish anthology, Washing the Cow's Skull / Lavando la calavera de vaca(1981). His critical writings have been collected in two volumes: On a High Horse (1983) and Generations of Texas Poets (2015). Oliphant is also author of three studies of jazz: Texan Jazz (1996); The Early Swing Era, 1930 to 1941(2002); and Jazz Mavericks of the Lone Star State (2007).

Oliphant worked at the University of Texas at Austin in various roles for 30 years until his retirement in 2006.

Be:  Did your press/authors win any awards for the books you published?

DO:  My own book, Maria's Poems, won the Austin Book Award in 1987. Washing the Cow's Skull anthology won a Border Regional Library Association award in 1981. Charles Behlen won a Dobie Paisano award but that was not for a specific book. William Barney had won two Texas Institute of Letters awards for poetry in the 1950s, before Prickly Pear published his Selected Poems, The Killdeer Crying. That book did win a book design award from Texas Books in Review in 1977. I got grants from the Texas Commission for the Arts for quite a few of the books, as well as for the tape recordings. The last book was Roundup: An Anthology of Texas Poets From 1973 to 1998 (1999). 

Be:  Any interesting stories about the press?

DO:  In 1973 when I published The New Breed, I collated the pages of the 200-page anthology in the basement of our rented duplex in Malta, Illinois, and I finished the collation and moved the 200 copies of the unbound book to the ground floor. The next night a tornado hit the town and knocked out the power. In the morning we discovered that the basement was flooded because the sump pump could not come on and keep out the ground water. Had I not finished the collation and moved the books to the ground floor, the anthology would not have survived and I was too poor as a grad student to have started over. The anthology represented a new generation of Texas poets and had the effect of introducing the poets to one another and to a beginning readership for native and longtime resident Texas poets. 

Be: How did you choose your authors?

DO: My aim all along was to support the state's new poets, but in the two subsequent anthologies I included the older generation of Barney, Vassar Miller, William Burford, et al. I was interested also in finding the new ethnic voices, like Ray Gonzalez of El Paso, Rebecca Gonzales, Harriette Mullen, and Naomi Shihab Nye. I tended to publish poets' first books, but also did a second book of Joseph Colin Murphey and a mini-anthology of three poets whose work I had already published in book form: Behlen, Murphey, and Sandra Lynn. I was particularly proud of the bilingual anthology, which was purchased by the U.S. State Department and distributed in the libraries in Latin America. Recently I heard from two poets in Chile who at the time had obtained copies of the book through the U.S. Embassy.

Be: How do you feel about the state of publishing today?

DO:   I read stuff online that has cost the writers no real effort whatsoever. They have not paid their dues by reading widely and deeply in works that challenge their minds and hearts. Their writing is totally egocentric. I am proud of the poets published by Prickly Pear because their work had first appeared in reputable magazines and had impressed and moved me over time. For me and others it continues to please and reward with each rereading.

SMALL PRESS HISTORY 10: Chuck Taylor and Slough Press, 1973-Present

^{Chuck Taylor, PhD, won the Austin Book Award for his work, What Do You Want, Blood? He worked as a poet--in-residence for the City of Salt Lake, in the poets-in-the schools program, and was a part-owner of Paperback Plus in Austin, operated Slough Press since 1973, and taught creative writing at Texas A&M/College Station, serving as its coordinator. He has published novels, books of poetry, story collections and memoirs. His two most recent books are a memoir called I tried to Be Free, and Being Beat, a book of poems, both from Hercules Press in Albuquerque, New Mexico. You can see some of his artwork here.}

^{Be: There was a strong Chicano movement going on around the time you started the press and you seemed to concentrate on publishing Chicano and ethic literature.  Did you start the press to specifically promote the under-represented?}

^{CT: Yes I wanted to publish the marginalized, but in Texas but I found it hard to do.  I didn't have a car, was raising kids, and was broke much of the time I had the press.  Thank the muses later for grants from the Texas Arts Commission and from the Austin Book Award. Those institutions made it possible for me to publish books but what they liked was more middle ground. The Chicano movement, its first phase, was beginning to fade by 1975, in terms of media coverage. I read a lot of the writers and taught them in my classes at Angelo State from 1969-73.} 

^{Be: Slough started out as a magazine but after two issues you went to books only.  What was the deciding factor to do only books?}

^{CT:  Magazines have a short shelf life. They are time based. Books have a much longer shelf life.  Yet it takes just as much work to do a magazine as a book.} 

^{Be: Makes sense. Plus you can sometimes get grants for books?}

^{CT:  Yes, it is much harder to get grants for magazines.  I don't think the Texas Arts Commission is giving out money for books anymore. The Austin Book Award is gone. I tried for an NEA once. When I didn't get it the writers were pissed at me, even though I told them publishing depends on a grant.}

 ^{Be:  I gather the press name continues because of others but I was wondering when you stopped being part of it. Also, does the press actively look for people to publish?  Is Chris Carmona actively in charge now?}

^{CT:  Chris assures me he will be doing books soon. The last book I put out was in 2015. I am 78 now and plan to focus my remaining years on my own work.}

^{Be: What were some of the accomplishments of the press that you’re most proud of?}

^{CT: Pat Littledog’s Afoot in a Field of Men won the Austin Book Award in 1981. Later it was picked up by Atlantic Monthly and received a review in Time Magazine. Slough Press republished it in 2015. Pat got her MA in creative writing from UTEP, received an NEA Fellowship and was a Dobie-Paisano fellow.}

^{I got a grant to publish Marion Winik's Boy Crazy, her first fiction title. Her second book, a memoir called Telling, is the book that brought her fame.  (}Marion Winik is a journalist and author, best known for her work on NPR's All Things Considered.)

A few others we published: Sheryl St. Germaine, from Lousiana, Ken Fontenot also from Louisiana, Octavio Quintaanilla (who was San Antonio poet laureate), Jerry Craven. Fred Asnes and Dan Durham and of course Ricardo Sanchez have passed away. About 50 books total.

^{Be:  Do you have any stories to relay about Ricardo Sanchez?  He was brought to my house when I was working on the El Paso Literary Festival, early 90s.  Not long after that I heard he had stomach cancer. (}The poet Maya Angelou described his work: “Ricardo Sanchez is like any great poet. He’s at once a preacher, a teacher, a priest, a rabbi. He’s a guru, he’s a master...”)

Ricardo Sanchez

^{CT:  Ricardo and I hung out a lot.  By accident, he was in El Paso when I was in El Paso, and then he was in Salt Lake City when I was in Salt Lake, and then he was in Austin when I was in Austin. When he was really down and out Ricardo and his family lived in the basement of our bookstore, Paperbacks Plus. Later, he opened with our main supporter Paperbacks Y Mas in San Antonio. I also published Jose Montalvo, who sadly died of cancer. One writer I published killed himself.  Ricardo and I got to know each other's families.  I hung with him some in bars.  The first time I met him was at an artistic bar in downtown El Paso called Tire Biters.  He came in to read with maybe eight Brown Berets with him.  Since Slough Press is now mostly located in the valley it has published more Latinx texts, thanks to Chris Carmona.}

^{Be: Any comments on the state of publishing today?}  

CT:  For independent presses focusing on the literary, it has never been easy. Thanks to POD, better looking books that may include photographs can be done well and inexpensively. Thanks to POD, one does not have to pay state, local, and federal taxes on unsold inventory because there isn't any. Slough Press is the oldest operating small press in Texas. Writers you publish often become friends. Publishing brings unexpected gifts to treasure a lifetime. I'll never forget when a check came from B. Dalton Books (now gone) that allowed me to pay my overdue rent. We had great celebratory parties, one in Kern Place in El Paso for collating, another on N. Oregon at Hal Marcus' gallery-home to sell copies.

SMALL PRESS HISTORY 9: Cheryl A. Townsend/Impetus/Implosion Press 1984-2004

BE:  Best I can recall, circa 1984, I received a chapbook from Planet Detroit with a sexy pic of you on the cover.  (Not too long after Planet Detroit did one of me.)  That was was my introduction to you and your poetry.  Seems like Impetus mag started around the same time as Gypsy and we exchanged mags on a regular basis.  When did you start publishing  and what was the “impetus” to do it?  How long did the mag and Implosion Press operate?

 

CAT: I started September of 1984 with a desire to give voice to those of us not appreciated in the academic presses, ..those like myself, who had an ax to grind on inequities. I liked what I was reading in so many micro-publications that I wanted to add to that voice with my own soapbox. I invited those that I enjoyed/admired and asked the zines I was trading with to start sending poets over that would fit my mission. It came into play so fast and easy that I was soon adding issues, broadsides and chapbooks. I started publishing a chapbook or broadside to go with each issue. Then I had to do special issues (Erotic-ah, Female only, Male only, Shorts In The Winter, The Impugn) We had a nice 20 year run and threw in a Best of Impetus anthology of the first 10 years. I started to slow down on the publishing when I opened my bookstore, but I did have a newsletter with an exquisite corpse added in. I was still working 35 hours at my paying job and 40-50 hours at the bookstore. It was a lot, but loved damn near every minute of it. 

 

 

BE:  What were some of the highlights of your mag/press days?  Who were some of the people you published, names we might recognize?  Roughly about how many issues of Impetus and how many chapbooks did you publish?

 

CAT: Nothing beats being told "You were the first person to ever publish me!" One such instance was when I went to hear Sherman Alexie talk at nearby Oberlin college and after he was done, he allowed people to come up to the stage for book signings. I handed him a couple Impetus that he was in and he looked at me, smiled wide, then stood up and announced to the audience "This is the first person to ever publish me!" 

I published 41 issues of Impetus, 50 chapbooks, dozen or so broadsides and the anthology. I also published a full-length book of fiction by Terry Persun and let a local author use Implosion Press as the source of his full-length book of poetry.

 

 

BE:  Seems like you had some theme issues, at least for chapbooks.  What were some of those?  Were some of them to raise money or awareness for causes?  If so, what were they?

 

CAT: I did 4 erotica issues, 6 female only and 3 male only issues. I did one impugn and one short story. I also did an issue on violence against women while volunteering at the local Rape Crisis Center, with 100% going to a local battered womens shelter. One Christmas at the bookstore, I had the local members of W.A.R.M. (the Women's Art Recognition Movement I started with KSU's Dr. Molly Merryman, head of Women's Studies) give me recipes/directions for something they enjoyed, whether cookies or a craft, that I published and again, donated all the money to a local shelter, (BTW, W.A.R.M. held fundraiser art exhibits that also donated proceeds to local shelters.) 

 

BE:  How did publishing impact your life?  I’m sure you made a lot of great friends and I heard you had a bookstore for awhile.

CAT: I've made so many long-lasting friendships through Impetus that I continue to be blessed by it. It showed me that the word is still a very mighty weapon to yield. The readings I was part of or hosted added in. (For a span there, I was hosting a poetry reading every Friday of the month at various locations, starting with Borders Books and Music, where I was blessed to host Rita Dove and Jack Micheline, amongst the many other talents.) 

Cheryl in her bookstore

Yes, the bookstore was the icing on the literary cake for me. I wanted a space that showcased small press publications and that's what I strived for. I had it just under 5 years before the city decided it wanted to be less grass-roots and demolished my block to put in franchise shit. It was the best time of my life. People stopping in, talking books, hosting readings and art openings. Bliss! One special moment was when I just arrived to open after working my morning job and saw someone walking towards me.. I immediately recognized him as Ed Sanders. He told me "I heard about your bookstore and wanted to check it out for myself." WOW! I also had Diane di Prima in for a visit while she was in town. Jack Micheline read there. Book signings were fun, but the readings always brought in the most people. Some of the bands that played there also did good, but nothing beat the readings. I did one offsite at a coffeehouse that brought them in from around the country. The ones at my bookstore did well, too. Kind of an East meets West at cat's. I had a backroom area that had a frig, stocked with beer and such, a table with chairs, a typewriter with paper (usually) and roaming space where the poets would gather to talk and get high. I've had them sleeping on the floor when too drunk/stoned to go elsewhere. 

One funny art opening I have to mention... we had a series of art nights, where several models would pose nude for a group of artists and photographers, and then we held an art opening of their favorite pieces. On one of the openings, two of the models stripped naked and went the rest of the night as such. 

The bookstore was in an alleyway that was fronted with a barbershop, then seamstress, cat's Books, then a hand carwash. Above the barbershop was an apartment housing a couple artists that later was rented by a local band. It was always entertaining.

 

BE:  Any musings or advice on poetry publishing today?  Do you still write and submit?

CAT: I'm happy to see some of the ones from our era still putting the issues out (Abbey, Slipstream, for instance) and some starting back up again. I'm so tempted to start the gears grinding again myself, but too involved in gardening to go there again. But still, when I go to a reading a hear an exceptional poem, I always think...Damn, I want to publish that!

Advice? Don't do it for the money. Don't do it for the names. Don't do it for your own vanity.

Do I still write? Not often enough. Several long-term poetry pals keep at me to do so and maybe I will, soon. I have sent out a few of what I have written and it's always a rush to see one's name in print somewhere, but I've gone a different route than the one that started me off. I'm just as pissed at the inequities, but think there is a gentler way to address them. I hope that's maturity and not laissez faire. I've found peace in my own backyard and like staying there. Hermitage has infused my soul and I seldom venture far.

I miss going to readings and will start attending once I feel safe enough to be in a crowd again. This pandemic has really made it too easy for me to become reclusive, so I have to force myself to attend things. I don't like idle chitchat and the political division has made that a potential Pandora's Box. Still, I miss it. I do have a monthly bookclub of women who meet here at my house and we even get around to discussing the book, tho usually not for long. Life is volatile enough, it doesn't need my angst.