Interview with RON WHITEHEAD presented by Merritt Waldon

photo by Yunier Ramirez

Poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist Ron Whitehead is the author of 24 books and 34 albums. In 1994 he wrote the poem “Never Give Up” with His Holiness The Dalai Lama. In 1996 he produced the Official Hunter S. Thompson Tribute featuring Hunter, his mother Virginia, his son Juan, Johnny Depp, Warren Zevon, Douglas Brinkley, David Amram, Roxanne Pulitzer, and many more. Ron has produced thousands of events and festivals, including 24 & 48 & 72 & 90 hour non-stop music & poetry Insomniacthons,in Europe and the USA. He has presented thousands of readings, talks, and performances around the world. He has edited and published hundreds of titles including works by President Jimmy Carter, His Holiness The Dalai Lama, Seamus Heaney, Wendell Berry, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Rita Dove, Diane di Prima, Bono, John Updike, Douglas Brinkley, Jim Carroll, Anne Waldman, Joy Harjo, Yoko Ono, Robert Hunter, Amiri Baraka, Hunter S. Thompson, and numerous others. The recipient of many awards, his work has been translated into 20 languages. In 2018 Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer presented Ron with a Lifetime Achievement for Work in The Arts Award. In 2019 Ron was named Kentucky’s Beat Poet Laureate and was also the first U.S. citizen to be named UNESCO’s Tartu City of Literature Writer-in-Residence. He is co-founder and Chief of Poetics for Gonzofest Louisville. Outlaw Poet: The Legend of Ron Whitehead movie will be released by Storm Generation Films/Dark Star TV in 2021. 

 

photo by Clayton Luce

Merritt Waldon: Hello Ron, please tell me about yourself. Who is Ron Whitehead?

Ron Whitehead: Hello Merritt! I’m a wild nature Kentucky farm boy who loves adventuring into the unknown. I’ve been blessed that poetry, my main vehicle of communication, has taken me across the USA and to at least 20 countries around the world. I love to travel to new places and meet new people. I admire and respect all our beautiful differences. And I’m forever searching for and discovering what we have in common. We’re all dirty potatoes floating in the same tub of polluted water and the more we bang into each other by openly honestly sharing the stories of our lives the more we come clean. I love to hear the stories of people’s lives. I have friends everywhere. When I was a boy I learned that to have friends I’ve got to be a friend. If I’m friendly then most other folks will be friendly too. 

 

MW: You lived in Iceland for 2 years. After climbing  The Viking Mountain you wrote “The Storm Generation Manifesto.” What is it like in Iceland? How did you meet Olafur Gunnarsson?

RW:  Iceland is majestic. It’s been 20 years since I lived there. But I’ve returned many times for performances and visits. In May 2008 Olafur Gunnarsson, Iceland’s most respected novelist, and I produced Iceland’s first Beat Generation Festival. We held the festival on his beautiful land, Storra Klopp, Big Rock, several miles outside Reykjavik. It was an amazing event. For 2 weeks I stayed in his guest house. Every time I stepped out my door I looked into the gorgeous valley with the crystal river and then across the valley to the legendary Viking Mountain. Olafur knows more than anyone I’ve ever met about the history of the Vikings, especially their history in Iceland. 3 days after the festival I solo climbed the mountain. When Olafur dropped me off at the base of the mountain he said, “Ron, be careful. I forgot to mention that several people have been blown off the top of the mountain to their deaths.” I stopped, turned and stared at him, then laughed. He said, “I’m serious.” I said, “Thanks for letting me know.” As I walked away light rain started to fall. 

The higher I climbed the harder the rain fell. 

Then the temperature dropped and the wind began to howl. The rain turned to hail. The hail turned to sleet. The sleet turned to thick snow. I continued to climb the now treacherous slope. I reached the summit and was nearly blown off the other side, which was straight down. I was staring down into the abyss the other folks had fallen into and died. I quickly turned and, crawling,  pulled myself down behind a giant boulder. For 15 minutes I had a non-stop series of epiphanies. Then I stood up, faced the howling screaming north wind, uncorked my 1.5 liter bottle of red wine, which is all I had in my backpack, drained half of it, thanked the Norse Gods for finally accepting and embracing me. Then I made my descent. 

Olafur and I had many way into the night conversations and with his inspired help, honoring all the previous cutting edge avant-garde generations and movements, which have helped us be here now, realizing we were being called upon to birth a new generation, “The Storm Generation Manifesto” was born. 

In 2013 I became godfather to amazing Icelandic musicians, Tanya Lind and Marlon Pollock. The pagan ceremony, led by the High Priestess of Icelandic HIgh Paganism, was held way out in nature, at the base of the volcano that shut down all European air traffic in 2010. My partner Jinn Bug and I climbed The Viking Mountain. I did several performances on that trip. A Storm Generation Films crew accompanied us and captured incredible footage, some of which will be included in the Outlaw Poet film. Jinn and I hope to return to Iceland later this year. 

 

MW: I watched the video of The Crystal River World Peace Sand Mandala Ceremony you did on the 2013 Iceland trip. How important to your poetics is the spiritual?

RW: I am spirit. I am matter. I am a spiritual warrior poet. The older I get the more I realize I don’t know anything, no one does. We’re all guessing, feeling our way, grappling for answers. But every day I have encounters with the spirit world. We are all in perpetual motion, in transition, even when we are still, silent, listening. Listening is the greatest art of all. Not-knowing is the fundamental plowed earth of our being, not-knowing. It is our life source. Embrace the wind. Embrace my heart. Born to die, there is no safety, all is demanded. Expose yourself completely. Accept the consequences of your successes, and your failures, as no other dare. Enlightened mind is not special, it is natural. Present yourself as you are, wise fool. Don’t hesitate, embrace mystery paradox uncertainty. Have courage. Through fear, and boredom, have faith. Be compassion. Embrace the wind. Embrace your heart. Not-knowing is the fundamental plowed earth of our being. It is our life source. Not-knowing.

Today ‘Specialization’ is sold on every corner, fed in every home, brainwashed into every student, every young person. We are told that the only way to succeed, here at the beginning of the 21st Century is to put all our time, energy, learning, and focus into one area, one field, one specialty: math, science, computer technology, business, government, the gaining of material wealth, the material world. If we don’t we will fail. We are subtly and forcefully, implicitly and explicitly, encouraged to deny the rest of who we are, our total self, selves, our holistic being. The postmodern brave new world resides inside the computer via The Web with only faint peripheral recognition to the person, the individual - and by extension the real global community, the real human being operating the machine. The idea of and belief in specialization as the only path, only possibility, has sped up the fragmentation, the alienation which began to grow rapidly within the individual, radically reshaping culture, over a century and a half ago with the birth of those Machiavellian revolutions in technology, industry, and war. And with the growing fracturing fragmentation and alienation comes the path – anger, fear, anxiety, angst, ennui, nihilism, depression, despair – that, for the person of action, leads to suicide. Unless, through our paradoxical leap of creative faith we engage ourselves in the belief, which can become a life mission that regardless of the consequences, we can, through our engagement, our actions, our loving life work, make the world a better, safer, friendlier place in which to live. Sound naive? What place does the antinomian voice, the voice that, though trembling, speaks out against The Powers That Be, what place does this Visionary Outsider Voice have in the real violent world in which we are immersed? Are we too desensitized to the violence, to the fact that in the past Century alone we have murdered over 160 million people in one war after another, to even think it worthwhile to consider the possibility of a less violent world? Are we too small, too insignificant to make any kind of difference? The power and greed mongers have control. What difference can one individual life possibly make, possibly matter?

Today the millennial generation is swollen with young people yearning to express the creative energies buried in their hearts, seeping from every pore of their beings. They ache to change to heal the world. Is it still possible? Is it too late? Is there anyone (a group?) left to show the way to be an example? To be a guide? A mentor? James Joyce, King of Modernism, said the idea of the hero was nothing but a damn lie that the primary motivating forces are passion and compassion. As late as 1984 people were laughing at George Orwell. Today, as we finally dwell in an Orwellian culture of simulation life on the screen landscape, can we remember passion and compassion or has the postmodern ironic satyric death in life game laugh killed both sperm and egg? Is there anywhere worth going from here? Is it any wonder that today’s youth have adopted Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, Neal Cassady, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Amiri Baraka, David Amram, Diane di Prima, Bob Dylan, Hunter S. Thompson, Patti Smith, The Clash, and all the other Beat Generation and related poets, writers, artists, musicians as their inspirational, life-affirming antinomian ancestors? These are people who have stood up against unreasoning power/right/might, looked that power in the eyes and said NO I don’t agree with you and this is why. And they have spoken these words, not for money or for fame, but out of life’s deepest convictions, out of the belief that we, each one of us, no matter our skin color our economic status our political religious sexual preferences, all of us have the right to live to dream as we choose rather than as some supposed higher moral authority prescribes for us. I choose to be a spiritual warrior poet.

Can poetry, music, film, dance, art matter? Are they merely a gold exchange for the rich? The crucible of the alchemical arts blends the terrible beauty of the natural world with questions of global social conscience. Poems stories songs films dance photographs art defy categorization. They are authentic original expressions of spirit dwelling in dynamic harmony with nature.

What is involved in the process of artistic creation? And how is that process related to space and time? What makes it possible for a handful of poets, musicians, filmmakers, dancers, artists to maneuver in a molecular universe, where immersion at will into things and being other than self is readily accomplished, rather than the dreary chore of drudging through the thick cellular world? The answers are simply complex and like truth, time and water they constantly slip through fingers away, away but the past recalled becomes present again and in a sense when we look anywhere including back into the past we are looking with some form of anticipation which is an attribute of future time so where are we really? How do how will poets, writers, musicians, artists, filmmakers, photographers, inhabitors of the creative realms of the 21st Century respond to these questions? Some respond with ironic, comic faith, some with passion, with compassion, without which the intelligent sensitive creature will inevitably traverse the Valley of The Shadow of Death encountering Angst, Despair, Ennui, and possibly Suicide. The sensitive individual poet writer musician artist filmmaker photographer prophet, the empath whose natural ability is negative capability, ineluctably chooses the life-game quest of self-creation in the possibly infinite probability of possible realities in the self-contained inter-connected Ocean of Consciousness.

There are no answers, only questions.

My argument for The Ocean of Consciousness reaches back to the early experiential understanding of holy while reaching forward beyond the limits of dialectical gnosticism to an alchemy that also transcends divisions inherent in the alienation the fragmentation of Deep Modernism and the superficial chaos of postmodernism. Even if you are a cryptanalyst and are able to turn into plain text the coded messages of Lacan but also the utterances of French existentialists, deconstructionists, poststructuralists, and all the other sibilant schools that flowed out of postwar France what leads you to believe that the deadly serious egocentric humor of postmodernism where theory is lauded as more important than text (whatever text might be: book, song, painting, film, life, etc) can possibly be the final word? Deconstructing a text does not designify does not make the text less than what it was before you playfully surgically took it apart and, if you’re a good mechanic, put it back together again even if you gave it new features. No matter how much taking apart deconstructing you do there will always remain something, a meaningful essence that cannot be destroyed.

The poet writer musician filmmaker photographer dancer artist deconstructs realism. She employs the innovative technique of intercalation: the juxtaposition of scenes in time. She is Elus Cohen, Elect Priest of Expressionism, Cubism, Modernism, Dadaism, Surrealism, postmodernism but she is more. She is Master Alchemist, Master Magician. Her long slender hand reaches towards me, grabs my throat, and pulls me into the text, the book, the song, the art, the film, the photo, the dance. Manger du Livre indeed! I not only consume the book: the book consumes me. Now I, with her, am Elus Cohen juxtaposing scenes in time and space in her, in me. My original perception, awareness, and senses are fractured, fractalled, and exiting the poem, the song, the film, the dance, the art I find I am rearranged. I now have new perspective, awareness, senses. I look at others. Are their expressions different as they look at me? I must look different. I feel different. I am different. Me. And me now. I,I. Ha. Aha! Now as my hand moves this pen across this page I change. I am transformed. I am never the same. My molecules jump, sway, swoon, dance across the page, giggling, laughing, singing, happy to be new! It’s spring again! They shout Yes Yes Yes!!!

Poetry, music, film, dance, art create new resonant myths. Knowledge, from the inception of Modernism and through postmodernism to The Ocean of Consciousness, is reorganized, redefined through literature, music, art, film, photography. The genres are changing, the canons are exploding, as is culture. The mythopoetic  the privileged sense of sight, of modern, contemporary, avant-garde poets, writers, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, dancers, artists are examples of art forms of a society, a culture, a civilization, a world, in which humanity lives, not securely in cities nor innocently in the country, but on the apocalyptic, simultaneous edge of a new realm of being and understanding. The mythopoet, female and male, returns to the role of prophet-seer by creating myths that resonate in the minds of readers, myths that speak with the authority of the ancient myths, myths that are gifts from the creative realms of being, gifts from the shadow.

MW: What does it mean to be an outlaw poet? 

RW: "To live outside the law you must be honest." 

--Bob Dylan, Outlaw Poet

"An outlaw can be defined as somebody who lives outside the law, beyond the law, not necessarily against it. By the time I wrote Hell's Angels  I was riding with them and it was clear that it was no longer possible for me to go back and live within the law. There were a lot more outlaws than me. I was just a writer. I wasn't trying to be an outlaw writer. I never heard of the term, somebody else made it up. But we were all outside the law, Kerouac, Miller, Burroughs, Ginsberg, Kesey, me. I didn't have a gauge as to who was the worst outlaw. I just recognized my allies, my people." 

--Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Writer 

 

MW: As a Kentucky poet, what was the greatest moment in your life so far?

RW: Every moment of my life has been a gift, a treasure beyond measure. Without any one of those moments I would not be who and where I am today. 

 

MW: If there was one thing you wanted to tell the world what would it be?

RW: Never Give Up

Never give up

 No matter what is going on

 Never give up

Develop the heart

 Too much energy in the world 

is spent developing the mind 

instead of the heart 

Develop the heart 

Be compassionate

 Not just to your friends

 but with everyone

 Be compassionate

Work for peace

 In your heart and in the world

 Work for peace

And I say again

 Never give up

 No matter what is going on around you

 Never give up 

Ron Whitehead & His Holiness The Dalai Lama 

 

LOST ON YOU by LP: Album review by Kevin M. Hibshman

Androgynous singer/songwriter LP (Laura Pergolizzi) has to date released seven albums on various labels and although all are worthy of a listen, Lost On You, their fourth outing, represents an artistic and should-have been commercial peak. 

        At its smokey core, this is really a finely executed pop album with hooks galore and memorable melodies to spare. It retains a unique sophistication due to LP's bluesy, belting vocals and their ability to mesh a variety of incongruent styles into a singularly refined sound. There are hints of electro-pop, folk, gospel, blues and classic rock and roll throughout the album's ten solid tracks.

        The pop finesse of their material comes as no surprise as they have written songs for Cher, Rihanna and Celine Dion, among others. They have become something of a icon and inspiration to LGBTQ youth in several countries. This album went platinum in Italy and France, selling 50,000 and 100,000 copies respectively and double platinum in Poland where it has sold 40,000 copies. The powerful opening track, Muddy Waters, was featured in the closing scene of Netflix's hit, Orange Is The New Black  in 2016 and was heard in the trailer for NBC's Shades Of Blue. They also worked with Morrissey in 2018, contributing background vocals to his cover of Roy Orbison's It's Over. 

        Highlights from the album include the moving piano-based ballad, “Switchblade,”  the irresistible groove of the title track and the closing number,”Long Way To Go To Die” which has an unforced poignancy that lingers on with the listener. This is a fine, under-appreciated effort by a talented maverick that deserves to be heard. I leave you with a lyric from “Strange”... “We are all strange but it ain't never ever ever gonna change.” 

Watch a performance of Lost on You on YouTube.

        

 (Thanks to brother John Patrick Robbins who turned me on to this artist.)

GAS Featured Musicians & Poet: BEAT POET SOCIETY by Matthew Bowers

The Creation from Words and Music:

    In the somehow hectic, crazy year, full of surprises and change, singer Anna-Bella Munter approached Bengt O Björklund (Sweden's Beat Poet Laureate-Lifetime) to collaborate on a new musical project. 

     The idea was to create music around Bengt's poetry that would end up almost mystically bringing together elements of classic rock and alternative music. The Beat Poet Societies' debut release is as comforting and familiar, as it is fresh and alive, building a unique bridge for both seasoned and younger generations alike! A veritable musical unicorn, if you will.

     Right from it's genesis, the elements were brought together in place, and set in motion an environment, and voice, that would go on to create pure magicK. Anna-Bella has had a good career as a singer/ vocalist/ songwriter and met Bengt at one of his readings one day several years ago, whereupon they developed a friendship. Such is the beautiful world of the arts. Anna-Bella would later introduce Bengt to their soon to be guitarist, Mats Wennberg, while Bengt had known the coming keyboardist, Olof Andersson, for several years, as he was the piano teacher for his children.

     A Symphony of Alchemy:  

     

     As soon as the Beat Poet Society sits down to write, groove, or improvise songs, a sense of spiritual synchronicity fills the air. The guitar weaves a tapestry of melodic nuances, with  true classic tones that would make a youthful Keith Richards proud. A guitarist's guitar sound, etched from the fabric of the late Sixties and early Seventies when rock and roll, had a fearlessness, mission, and purpose. 

     The spontaneous jam comes to life, as the keyboards find their way alongside the melody, complimenting and counter pointing the guitar in all the right places. With a semblance of musical narrative and craft, Anna-Bella finds, and flows with a vocal foothold, committing instinctually, the most amazing phrasing of musical interpretation I've heard in a long while! Her voice ranges from wise storyteller to strong political activist, with all of the colorful melancholy siren's bliss.

     The Beat Poet Society is located in Sweden, south of Stockholm. They practice in a beautiful, warm studio, that would be any artist's dream. The cozy feel of the studio is reminiscent of a ski lodge in the alps, rather than what seems to be a working environment, it provides a safe haven of escapism and creativity.

     

Salt and Sulfur:

     The recent release is made up of five tracks. Each of the songs stand out in their own way, and on their own merit. There's Wildflowers, Serious Sisters, Fear, Salt and Sulfur, and the song that really got me hooked, There's a Song. All of the songs are masterfully recorded, wonderfully orchestrated, and perfectly performed.

     A complete album from the Beat Poet Society will drop this summer, while I must anxiously bide my time through the coming months until its arrival. The Beat Poet Society is on Spotify, where I have personally been listening to non-stop. These songs speak to me in a way that music hasn't touched me in years. Track after track, candy for your ears, and depth that nourishes your soul. Perhaps through YouTube, or another social media, The Beat Poet Society will be able to touch greater areas of the world. Collaborative artistic videos made from like minds, gathering together in purpose to reach out, and spread the world of art and music! All and All it could be a real… GAS:

You can hear The Beat Poet Society on YouTube.

Find them on Spotify too!

GAS Featured Poet: Donna Snyder

Snyder founded the Tumblewords Project in 1995 and still organizes its free weekly workshops in the El Paso borderlands.  She has poetry collections published by Chimbarazu, Virgogray, and NeoPoiesis presses.  Her work appears in such journals and anthologies as Setu, Red Fez, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, VEXT Magazine, Mezcla, Original Resistance, Miriam’s Well, and Speak the Language of the Land. Snyder has read her work in Alaska, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, and Texas

Twitty Baroque

 

The world beyond the stucco house is a highway, 

trucks roaring by like early summer tornadoes, 

the sound of commerce passing through.

 

Mama’s fear and anger echoes in the silence

of the fields that surround us on all sides, 

cotton fields my daddy doesn’t own.

 

Books on the shelf next to the front door,

a gift of charity. Their pictures magnetize

my eyes and fingers. Giotto’s

 

golden halos. Ruben’s corpulent god of drink

forbidden by Southern Baptists. Dionisio

lavish and flagrant in his lusts.

 

Robes rich as the wine of Carvaggio’s world,

excess, dissolution unthinkable to church folk,

gathered to sing a few miles away.

 

My fingers trace stained glass, baroque cathedrals’

magnificent spires high above art’s communion

so unlike Baptist austerity and fear of beauty. 

 

El Greco’s lush colors seduce me, an agony of faces.

Strange and lavish glory, adulation too close to idolatry

to be found in a country church.

 

Our austere gathering of convicted souls. Nude walls

devoid of icons yet filled with the hubris of certitude.

The giver of those books escapes my memory.

 

But the incandescent flesh and vivid colors vibrate still

through time. There were also gifts of heavy records,

handed down to this family.

 

Its genial war hero, a beautiful and brilliant young mother,

three daughters so pretty and bookish. Mama played the music

for me while we were home alone.

 

Daddy at work. The big girls at school. A hand-me-down hi-fi.

The relentless ecstasy of Ravel, the subliminal messages

of Rigoletto, Puccini, Tchaikovsky.

 

Thrilling trills shiver the tin roof of a stucco house

owned by the Boss down at the cotton gin, who

owned everything there in the Twitty flats,

 

even the one room store and post office. Outside,

trucks shift gears, maximize profit, minimizing

transport time. Cotton bolls dance

 

tripolets in dirt blown fields. Dust storms steal my air,

leave me breathless as the beauty of imperfect pearls,

a beauty instilled within me

 

an inchoate reverence for sin.

Glossalalia

 

Born of American blues and Yoruban ways

A whole new art form wails from a reed

Fingers pull tripolets from the upright bass 

Wood and hands ricochet off drumheads 

A mad man gurgles wordless song

A jazzman howls a whole new language

 

Between something foreign yet homegrown

language creates itself, a mad excitement

Fire burns through nerves. The jazzman

hurls prayers outside Pentecostal temples 

on the Street of the Crosses, the City of Angels

A gurgle of impenetrable language shouted

 

Fronterizo jazzman channels a love supreme

Touched by holy fire he speaks in tongues 

The laws stop at the border of his lips

Ecstatic utterances scream a tongue’s secrets

Serpents twine flesh/a Lilith born of the desert

flees a cultivated garden/runs for the frenzied border

 

Serpent tongues tattoo lightning across green sky

Meaning flickers from tongue to sax to God’s ear

A Goddess serpent twines around sunbright flesh

The gift of tongues unknown below sin’s heaven

La frontera a bridge between meaning and Babel

The tongue's secrets transmuted into frenzied sound

 

 

 

Heidi Blakeslee’s interview of Thasia Anne Lunger, Producer of the WOMEN OF WORD: WITH A FEW MAN-MADE WORDS, Poetry, Dance, and Music Show

In March 2021, Thasia and her gang of faithful WOW-iers took the stage for year ten at Erie, Pa’s Blasco Library.

Heidi: Where did you get the inspiration for WOW?

Thasia:  It was autumn of 2009.  I was recovering from my fall and subsequent brain injury and had begun hanging out on Friday nights at a local book store. Such a cool atmosphere with a fireplace and welcoming poets.  I had produced a chapbook about domestic violence in the early nineties and used it to help heal other survivors. I was sitting in the bookstore and a tall warrior type gorgeous red haired woman went to the mic and read a poem on domestic violence. I was immediately struck with how her poem spoke to one of mine. 

A couple weeks later someone read a poem on the loss of a child. I have an unpublished collection of poems about the loss of my 26 year old son. Again I was struck with the thought her poem spoke to mine. That was the seed of using poetry to talk about difficult situations. Over the years we have tackled many difficult and upsetting subjects in a calm respectful way that allows the audience to contemplate both sides.  Subjects included: domestic violence, rape, incest, PTSD, death and loss, human trafficking, abortion, poverty, addiction, gun violence and many others.

Heidi: What are some differences between year one and year ten? 

Thasia: Year one was virginal in this whole aspect. I called it Women of Word, and it was only female participants of varying ages. Heidi, you are one of my original Wow-iers.  The event was held in Smith Chapel at Penn State Behrend.   We always start the show with each poet stating a negative word on our yearly theme, and end the show on a positive word. The first year it was feelings about women and our 80-something wonder woman, Marge Wonner, yelled “Slut” in the Chapel!  I knew immediately we needed a more progressive space! By year two, I already felt the need to add some phenomenal male voices to the mix. We have since been known as Women of Word featuring a few Man Made Words. WOW.

Heidi: How many people have been involved over the years?

Thasia: We have showcased close to 40 voices of nearly all ages.  Heidi you have been in all but one. There are two of you with that distinction, you and Marjorie Wonner. I am so proud to include 5 professors, 2 world class dancers, 5 social workers, 1 Poet Laureate, and an adjunct instructor/ teacher. WOW was previously held at 2 Universities, Penn State Behrend and Edinboro University. All of it in a one of a kind show that started right here in Erie County, PA.

Heidi: Are any past WOW performances available for viewing? 

Thasia: In the past they were all videotaped on one camera, which made for a very amateur looking video. This year I received a grant to hire the local CAM media crew, and with three cameras the results are pretty amazing. I also jumped into live performance in 2021 by live streaming. There were so many new aspects this year. We had a new venue with the Erie County Raymond Blasco Library offering up the Hirt Auditorium that will be our new home. Much bigger and brighter. Also to live stream we all needed to have lavalier mics, which was a complicated first. We joined up for the first time with Sovereign ballet, and went from one dancer to four. Another first was Gisele Littrell with two original songs on guitar that fit beautifully.

Heidi: Where do you see WOW going in the future? 

Thasia: With our new venue with triple the seating capacity that we had on the Edinboro University Campus, so many more folks can experience live poetry in a completely different way than they have in the past. Also with the live streaming in its infancy with WOW, I was able to determine by the comments left for us that we reached NYC, Buffalo, LA., Oregon, Orlando, Winter Haven, and Davenport, Fl., Meadville and Erie, PA.

Heidi: What is your favorite aspect of producing WOW? 

Thasia: Seeing the voices in my head become reality. Hearing a song on the radio, and with no dance experience finding someone who can make that happen. How we have represented Erie and been spoken of in other countries such as India, several African countries, and educated so many on such a varied array of subjects.

Heidi: Thasia, thank you so much for speaking with me today!  Women of Word is still going strong and that makes me so happy.  I can’t wait to see what you think up for us next year!

To view WOW 2021, the ten year celebration, you can go online to CAMErie.PA  The edited version will be aired 4/ 9 @ 7pm and 4/10 @ 5pm. If you have any questions or comments, Thasia can be reached at tannetaf@gmail.com 
The CAM schedule changes monthly and Thasia can let you know when to catch WOW on tv.  

Review of Joshua Michael Stewart’s THE BASTARD CHILDREN OF DHARMA BUMS BY Heidi Blakeslee

This book is delightfully twofold.  The first section is 34 pgs of what Stewart calls “sculpted poems.”  The words from each poem are taken from different chapters of Kerouac’s “The Dharma Bums.”  The effort used to extract the beautiful and interesting words from each page is well spent.  The project is a literary experiment that makes me want to try one of my own.  The tone throughout this section is at times disjointed with odd abutments and at other times karmic and smooth.  

8.

Trackless snow along a white farmhouse,

dogs bark through the void.

Li Po getting drunk on God— drinking

a whole new way of living.

I’m sick of civilization.

We can’t drive back home.

Maybe it won’t be so cold tonight.

I’ll light a bonfire by nightfall.

Past adventures bless my boyhood.

Grave eyes cry like birds.

The second part of the work is poetry with subjects pertaining to the hermit life.  Some lines are a mutation of Buddhist nature fantasy; others are lovingly devoted to talking about cats.  Still others speak to a personal history of healing from a difficult childhood.  Each poem is rich, a feast for the mind.

 Something must also be said about the strength of the nature imagery in here.  As a perpetual woods-wanderer growing up in rural western Pa, I can attest to the magic of trees.  To me Stewart’s work came off as an autoethnography of self-isolation and the healing powers of meditation.  Throughout this section Stewart expands upon his style of flash-memoir, (as opposed to flash fiction,) writing paragraphs about his experiences in nature. These paragraphs are juxtaposed next to 3-5 short lines of poetry, some of which are Tanka and haiku.  The combination of those two forms drew me further into the book.  

Above all, every poem is meticulously and tenderly worded.  This isn’t a stream of consciousness writer who goes all willy-nilly in this book.  The Dharma here is the truth of Stewart’s soul laid bare.  Some of the poems, like “To life,” add a layer of depth to the work that feels welcome amidst the other themes.  Hell, if I can spend time reading poems that other people have written about cats, then I will do so.

To Life

To the cat, I’m no more than a stepladder-- a tool for look-

ing out the window. From here on the bed, I see a scribble 

of branches, the occasional flash of bird, and the dusty

underside of drawn-up blinds.  The cat reports on the ground 

activity. His chatters indicate the robin’s return.  His yowls

announce that the calico next-door is all belly and paws in a 

patch of sun. Today, there are no big questions I’ll ask or try 

to answer. Instead, I’ll fold my hands on my chest, and tap a

finger along to my neighbor’s hammer as he pounds some-

thing beautiful and strong to life.

                                             sundown

                                             sunrise

                                             a butterfly

                                             opens and closes

                                             its wings”

In short, Joshua Michael Stewart’s The Bastard Children of Dharma Bums from Human Error Publishing is an exquisite read.  I’m really glad I read it during the first week of spring.

Joshua Michael Stewart has had poems published in the Massachusetts Review, Louisville Review, Rattle, Night Train, Evansville Review, Cold Mountain Review, and many others. His first full-length collection of poems, Break Every String, was published by Hedgerow Books in April 2016. He received his BA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and lives in Ware, Massachusetts. He’s employed as a Teacher/Counselor, working with individuals with special needs. 

Interview with Poet and Publisher of Shivastan Press, Shiv Mirabito

Be: Shiv, you recently came to my attention through mutual friends. I read in an interview that you are American born. What was your journey to acquire the name “Shiv.”  

Shiv: When I first went to India in 1988 - and almost every winter afterward - I studied with the Naga Babas who worship Shiva the god of transformation, yoga, meditation, and nature. I was initiated into the Anand Akhara of Naga Babas and was given the name Shiv Bharati - this is a more studious and scholarly branch of the Das Nami Shiva Babas and I was told to visualize that Saraswati the goddess of wisdom, poetry, and music is constantly sitting on my tongue constantly guiding my communication.

Many people who don't know me think I may be Indian or Nepali with my dark complexion, big beard and six foot long dreadlocks but this is the influence of 33 years of traveling to these places.

I am actually a 3rd generation Sicilian-American from a middle class background born in a small town in upstate NY.

But I do find it offensive when people say "but what's your REAL name?" It's like asking a transgender person what type of genitals they really have. People should accept whatever name (or gender) anyone wishes to use without scrutiny.

 

 Be: You seem to have a real respect and fascination with India. What drew you to India and ultimately to Kathmandu?  Could you find something there you couldn’t find elsewhere? 

Shiv: I studied and lived in Allen Ginsberg's farm in Upstate NY in Cherry Valley - I was introduced to Hinduism and Buddhism there as a teenager. In 1988 I spent a semester studying in India and Nepal through the State University of NY. I've tried to go back every winter since and usually spend 4 months there studying, writing, and publishing every year January through May - last year I was stuck in Kathmandu until October and this year I am not traveling because of the pandemic. In Woodstock NY I have a small bookshop focusing on poetry, Hindu/Buddhist tantra, the occult, art, history, lgbtq studies, my small press, etc.

    I love India and Nepal because of the ancient culture that is based on more pagan concepts of worshipping nature - rocks, trees, rivers, mountains, etc- and the profound respect for poets, poetry, spirituality, and those who are focused on the sacred in all aspects of life. I continue this sense of ubiquitous sacredness in every waking moment and interaction with myself and others - but I do not consider myself "religious" - I am much more of a hippie than a devotee. I feel everything is an illusion - and at the same time a teaching - so why take life so seriously. Life is to enjoy. I also drink, smoke, experiment with psychedelics, and engage in polyamory and sacred sex - like many of the beat poets did and still do.

 

Be: When did you start your Press and what motivated you to do it?

Shiv: I started publishing in Kathmandu on handmade lokta paper with my small press because I wanted to self publish my own poetry. Someone asked me "you have a vanity press?"  and I hate that term so I started offering to publish books and broadsides for other poets as a service to the greater community. I engaged in a wide correspondence with many poets and have published about 70 publications since I started in 1997. I was also inspired by Ira Cohen, Angus and Hetty Maclise who published poetry on handmade paper in Kathmandu in the 1970s.

 

Be: What type of work does Shivastan Press publish?  How do the find your authors?

Shiv: I open the possibilities to any poets & writers - I prefer unusual "beat" or "alternative" poetry but I don't limit the press to any labels. The main requirement is authors must pay for printing and I facilitate all the rest in Kathmandu. The possibilities are endless.

 

Be: Who are some of the well-known poets you have worked with or published?

Shiv: Here is an abbreviated list of some of the fine poets I’ve published.

Shivastan Press {Woodstock~Kathmandu} Limited Edition Chapbooks, Broadsides and Wildflowers Woodstock mountain anthologies, craft-printed with handmade paper in Kathmandu Nepal:

#1, 2001: Ira Cohen, Andy Clausen, Janince King, Phillip Levine, Paul MacMahon, Shiv Mirabito, Dina Pearlman, Ed Sanders, Marilyn Stablein, Christina Starobin, Palmer Shaw, Janine Pommy Vega, Sue Willens.

#6, 2005: Ira Cohen, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Roberta Gould, Hetty Maclise, Robert Kelly, Donald Lev, Richard Livermore, Taylor Mead, Shiv Mirabito, Erik La Prade, Tom Savage, Anne Waldman, Chavisa Woods, Ziska, review of Atlantis Manifesto by Robert Kelly.

Andy Clausen: Festival of Squares, 2002.

Andy Clausen: Songs of Bo Baba, 2004.

Ira Cohen: Whatever You Say May Be Held Against You, 2004.

Enid Dame: Where is the Woman? (Edited by Donald Lev), 2006.

Shiv Mirabito: Transcendental Tyger, 2004.

Ed Sanders: Stanzas for Social Change, 2004.

Janine Pommy Vega: The Walker, 2003.

Anne Waldman: Ceremonies in the Gong World, 2007.

Broadsides:

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Allen Ginsberg Dying, 2005.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti: Pity the Nation, 2008.

Allen Ginsberg: Why Fuzz, 2017.

Allen Ginsberg: A Mountain Outside, 2018.

Ed Sanders: The Bookstores of New York, 2018.

Anne Waldman: Manatee Humanity, 2008.

Anne Waldman: Vatsala Devi, 2018.

I would like to mention that anyone in the area is welcome to visit my groovy little bookshop The Woodstock Shivastan Poetry Ashram Bookshop - we have many open poetry gatherings with a bonfire & vegetarian potluck in a beautiful secret garden + everyone who comes to visit receives free gifts like prints of my collage artworks, books, seashells from the beach in Goa India, etc.

- and please visit my pages on Facebook for information about the bookshop & my small press Shivastan Press (Woodstock-Kathmandu). Publications from Shivastan Press are available on my Etsy page.

Thank you Belinda - peace & love from Woodstock- Shiv