GAS Featured Artist: Karla Van Vliet by Sylvia Van Nooten

Karla Van Vliet’s newest book Fluency: A Collection of Asemic Writings has just been released from Shanti Arts. She Speaks in Tongues, a collection of poems and asemic writings which is forthcoming from Anhinga Press, Fall 2021.

Karla is the author of From the Book of Remembrance and The River From My Mouth, collections of poetry and paintings, published by Shanti Arts, and a poem length chapbook, Fragments: From the Lost Book of the Bird Spirit, published by Folded Word. She is an Edna St. Vincent Millay Poetry Prize finalist, and a three-time Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. Her poems have appeared in Acumen, Poet Lore, The Tishman Review, Green Mountains Review, Crannog Magazine and others.

Karla’s paintings have been featured in Women Asemic Writers, UTSANGA.IT, Still Point Art Quarterly, Stone Voices Magazine, Champlain’s Lake Rediscovered, and Gate Posts with No Gate: The Leg Paint Project. She is a member of WAAVe Global (Women Asemic Artists & Visual Poets) and Asemic Writing: The New Post-Literate.

Karla is a co-founder and editor of deLuge Journal. She is an Integrative Dreamwork analyst, artist and administrator of the New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread Loaf, Middlebury College. Karla lives in Vermont, USA.  www.vanvlietarts.comwww.vanvlietgallery.com  Instagram: karlavanvliet

Karla Van Vliet’s work contains poetry within its movement and flow.  At first the pieces struck me as lovely and simple, but this is deceptive as they are deeply moving vignettes of emotion with the layers of words over clarifying color creating a conversation.  With Karla, asemic language becomes a truly unique expression of a self that expands to allow others to experience her voice. 

1)What is behind your artistic vision?  (Why do you do art?)

 

My first art was dance, I started to move in gesture before I could speak, before I had that skill. But I moved to what moved me, my father playing Mozart on the piano, or shady grove on the banjo. I came late to language. Yet I had so much in me to express. I thought I was a strange and awkward person due to trauma, and in a way that may be true, but I’ve come to believe that I was born an artist, someone who sees the world in a unique way. I’m just coming to terms with that now, although I have lived a full life of following my artistic path. First a dancer, then a painter, then a poet and now both writer and painter. I once lamented to my daughter that I was sorry I didn’t have the funds to buy her all the things she desired (we had been out school shopping), that perhaps I should have taken a job at the bank instead of being an artist. Then she spoke truth to me. “Mom”, she said, “but you have to paint, it’s who you are. If there was no more paper in all the world, I would give you my wall to paint on.” She was right, of course. 

 

I’m not sure all artists work to express some truth in themselves, to discover that truth. Perhaps they do. But I do. When I started writing poems, I wrote to express in code (poems are perfect for this) what I could not say straight. When I paint, I believe I’m tapping into what wants to be expressed before it has come into words, or what is there that wants expressing without words. I started asemic work when I had a dream of asemic script over the moon. I have had this dream image over and over, the dream insisting on the image. I hadn’t really been aware of asemic writing before that dream. I am a dreamwork analyst and have worked with my own dreams since 1991. I have built my life on the truth and the path that comes from dreams and I understood it was an imperative that I paint that image. All of my asemic work has followed from that dream.

 

I often define asemic work as the gesture of writing, that it kept my hand in the practice of writing when I had no words. I’m thinking now that I have been emphasizing the wrong word, writing, but it is gesture that is at the heart of it. Gesture, writing, painting, dancing, I was born to create gesture in expression of what moves me. 

2) How does being an artist help you communicate with the world? 

 

And does that gesture help me to communicate with the world? I’m not sure it does. I’m not sure I care if it does. Of course, I want people to like what I put out there.  I love it when people are touched by my images and words. But would I stop if they were not? I think I could not stop. First and foremost, my work is a communication with myself. Perhaps that is selfish. Perhaps it sounds like I only care for myself. But I care deeply for people in the world, I would give you the shirt off my back in an instant if you needed it. I listen to people’s feelings and experiences with compassion and non-judgement, and strangers often tell me their deepest secrets and traumas. But does my art help me to communicate with the world? Looked at in another way, perhaps it does. Perhaps it shares who I am, or an aspect of who I am, that otherwise would not be shared. I am a private person but I have never locked up my poems or paintings in the drawer of my desk. I have spread them far and wide. People have called me brave for doing so. I’ve never seen it that way. It seems the safest way to share myself with the world. A blessing for that.

3) Have you built or joined a community of artists around the world? How did you do this?

 

I live in a very rural area of the world. Given that, I know a lot of artists, Vermont is full of artists, musicians and writers. But it is also limited in many ways, no large cities, few galleries, or museums and none really that are cutting edge. The community of artists that I have connected with through the asemic groups and other artist and writing groups on fb have been a godsend. I am inspired by the work I see every day, encouraged by the response to my own work but also to the work of others. Encouraged that there are so many out there interested in art and writing, pouring themselves into their own work, sharing their work, connecting and supporting each other. It’s brilliant. Like an artistic diaspora come home.

GAS Featured Poet: Cristina M. R. Norcross

 Cristina M. R. Norcross is the author of 8 poetry collections and the founding editor of Blue Heron Review.  Her latest book is Beauty in the Broken Places (Kelsay Books, 2019).  Her forthcoming title, The Sound of a Collective Pulse, will be released Fall 2021 (Kelsay Books).  Cristina’s work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.  She has led art/poetry projects, workshops, and open mic readings.  Co-founder of Random Acts of Poetry & Art Day.  www.cristinanorcross.com

The Salt That Remains

 

It lasts longer than braided leather.

It endures beyond the lifespan

of the oldest oak—

the way our broken, human selves connect

and live on in one another.

 

From one moment to the next,

we pass the baton of memory.

We seek the seed.

We go back to the beginning.

We hold sacred each and every word,

like pearls in the palm, 

like notes on the piano,

floating and finding a home 

in the hope chest of the heart.

 

Long after the wood on the house 

becomes weathered

and the driveway needs repaving,

I will remember the way you 

sanded a single plank after cutting it down

to size, just so the deck would be sturdy.

 

Long after the pretzels are gone 

from the bag,

and the salt blows away in the wind,

I will remember the way your laughter

became high-pitched 

in between telling colorful jokes—

punctuated by salty bites.

 

Long after the netting has frayed

and the white lines need to be repainted,

again and again,

I will remember you teaching my

insecure, 13-year-old self 

how to throw a basketball 

before gym class the next day.

 

Long after my oldest is off at college,

and the Baldwin piano goes silent,

I will remember hearing your bold chords 

from the old living room in New Jersey.

 

Long after wood becomes dust,

long after stone becomes rubble,

my memories of you remain

in the outline of every setting sun.

There Is More Than One Vase

 

I pour myself into this vase of hope,

a liquid caramel smooth,

let myself feel roundness,

aching joints.

I take up space,

filling my lungs,

the expansiveness providing a lightheaded joy

that only acceptance brings.

Instead of shrinking to fit

an imagined ideal,

I see beauty in every imperfect inch,

every wrinkle, like rivers on a map,

every part of me that feels tired

or elated.  

Maybe this vase wasn’t meant for forever.

Maybe for the next unknown decade,

there will be a new vase waiting for me.

I will take up residence

in my true self,

the self made of fuchsia-colored glass

and aqua drips on terra cotta.

I will take off my shoes,

dig naked toes deep into the earth,

root myself to every connected, 

underground pathway, 

knowing that I come from 

both stardust and equator.

Once my vase is emptied,

I will expand and fill the sky,

a million little lights and sighs.

 

GAS Featured Artist: Lawrence Barrett, presented by Sylvia Van Nooten

Lawrence Barrett’s work is a geometric work of color and line, planes that stretch out and circles that embrace. To me there is a depth in each piece that releases something in the viewer, like reading a poem that speaks directly to the heart yet not with written language. His poetry and art are amazing meditations and a place to contemplate quietly. Sylvia Van Nooten

Q: What is behind your artistic vision?

A: The interplay of shapes and colors, space and textures, positive feelings, emotions and ideas, happening simultaneously. Art for me is a meditation. I like to think that I am creating/experiencing layers upon layers upon layers of flow and integration emanating from some superconscious moment. It’s as if each piece is like a therapy session washing/cleansing me in color. It’s very personal, but public; like a confession.

Q: How does being an artist help you communicate with the world?

A: My art levels me on a plane of positivity with zero anxiety; and that’s how I begin my adventure with every piece; that’s the place from which my art speaks.

Q: Have you built or joined a community of artists around the world?

A: I have obviously contributed my art on Face- Book. I have helped to create local drum circles and bands. I have participated in numerous poetry readings. I like performing on the local stage. I like watching art live as it happens. I think being in a collective of artists, local or virtual, encourages and spurs artistic growth. All feedback is good.

 Hear Laurence read on GAS video show #3.

Barrett, a retired U.S. Army and Iraqi war veteran, as well as a native Marylander and transplant El Pasoan, is the author of five self-published works:  Radical Jazz, Love Poems for the End of The World Threads of Latitude; Drum Song; and Theory of Stealing Bicycles. He has an MA in Human Resources from Webster University and has resided in El Paso for the last twenty years. Lawrence has been published in El Paso Magazine (Nov 2008), Mezcla:  Art & Writing from the Tumble Words Poetry Project (2009), Calaveras Fronterizas (2009), Dining and Fun (2010): An Anthology of Beat Texas Writing (2016); and online at the Newspaper Tree.  He has been interviewed by Paperback Swap; and three of his books have been reviewed by Unlikely Stories. Lawrence Barrett has been a featured reader at the Barbed Wire Readings hosted by Border Senses. He has presented poetry workshops for the El Paso Writer’s League and the Tumble Words Poetry Project. He has had the honor of reading his poetry twice on the Monica Gomez “State of the Arts” Radio Program. His works are available at Amazon.com

A review of John Burroughs’ RATTLE AND NUMB by Heidi Blakeslee

Rattle & Numb is one of those poetry books that you can’t read straight through.  I mean, it’s possible, but I couldn’t.  Lines and rhymes and doubletalk and triple meaning got my brain working like a Rubik’s cube.  This guy is the writer equivalent of Michael Jordan in the ‘90s.  But somehow more nimble.  He’s the Kristi Yamaguchi of the ‘90s.  For sure.  Triple axel is definitely an applicable term to use for some of these stanzas.  

If you would, please partake of a sample from “Identity Crisis” on page 19:

“I don’t want to live in vain

I want to be like Steven B. Smith

Maybe Salinger

A .44 Magnum

Not just a Derringer

Johnny Cash, Johnny Carson, Gary Larsen

Tearing down Bergen-Belsen, Washington D.C.

Garfield and Odie, O.D., and Oh Die

I want to give Peace a chance

But be able to accept that War

Is her partner in the cosmic dance

Accept that both are lies

That nothing in this universe is left to chance”

Now you know what I’m talking about.  I’m thinking about one meaning, then another, and they open and stretch my mind a bit.  After reading some of these heavy-hitting phonetic logjammers, I like to take a break.  I let the language challenge me and tickle my brain.

I also couldn’t help but think of the radical feminist theologian Mary Daly, (1928-2010,) and her “Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism” (1978).  She was a thinker who actually made an entire universe of words with double meanings, more effective meanings, and a middle finger up to the patriarchy.  Check out her “Webster’s First New Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language” if you’re curious.

In any case, “Rattle & Numb” is also filled with the manic exuberance of pure genius.  You can tell that some of the poems were lightning bolts that wrote themselves, while others had to have taken many hours to perfect.  He is not shy about his sexuality or challenges he has faced.  Deaths, loves unrequited and very-quited. (See what I did there?)  Trippy, philosophical binges of fancy and self-flagellation appear frequently.  The book is complex.  It’s worth a close reading if you’d like a fascinating foray into the mind of a modern day beat poet.  This one will stick with me.

Rattle and Numb is available through bookshop.org 

Listen to an interview with John on GAS.

John B. Burroughs serves as the Ohio Beat Poet Laureate (2019-21) and his most recent book is Rattle & Numb: Selected and New Poems, 1992-2019 [2019, Venetian Spider Press]. Burroughs moderates the Cleveland Poetics blog and online Northeast Ohio Literary Calendar at clevelandpoetry.com. Since 2008, he has served as the founding editor of Crisis Chronicles Press.

Chelsea Wolfe: More Than Queen Of The Goths by Kevin M. Hibshman

The darkly enigmatic singer/songwriter Chelsea Wolfe has been gaining more and more interest from music fans across the globe. She is a captivating presence whether on stage or appearing in any of her innovative videos. She has released six albums, beginning with The Grime and The Glow, in 2010. It serves as a fine introduction to the ever-evolving artist's musical capabilities and fierce imagination.

The material ranges from tuneful neo-folk:“Cousins Of The Antichrist” to distorted, electronically enhanced dirges: “Moses” to songs that defy easy description because they genre-hop within themselves. Wolfe creates her own musical language much the same way Kate Bush and Robert Smith (The Cure) do. Her voice can be subdued, almost like a hushed whisper one moment and soar into piercing soprano wails the next. She employs reverb and odd guitar tunings frequently to great effect, enhancing the haunted atmosphere of the songs.

        Wolfe's 2013 release, Pain is Beauty is her most pop-friendly album thus far, although her lyrics retain the usual subject matter: heartache, survival, and

torment. Synthesizers and sequenced beats augment her already wide stylistic approach. I find, to date, her most engaging album to be 2017's Hiss Spun. It was recorded, appropriately, in Salem, Massachusetts and features guest appearances from members of Queens Of The Stone Age, Isis, and Converge. These players helped Wolfe to actualize her first foray into dark metal/noise rock. The lyrics were inspired by health problems she has suffered including sleep paralysis and  chronic insomnia. She also delves into her family's often troubled past and romantic relationships that ended bitterly. Wolfe has often talked about how her numbing stage fright kept her from wanting to perform for years. She performed early gigs with a black scarf covering her face. 

      

Wolfe's latest offering 2019's Birth Of Violence, is a return to her folk roots and features mostly acoustic instrumentation. There are videos for a few tracks, including “Deranged For Rock and Roll” and “The Mother Road” both of which are steeped in pagan imagery. She has cited Aliyah, Nick Cave, Suicide, Hank Williams, Fleetwood Mac and Townes Van Zandt as musical influences and Sylvia Plath, Marcel Proust and Louis Ferdinand-Celine as her literary heroes. From blistering sonic dissonance to haunting acoustic folk ballads, Chelsea Wolfe is more than just Queen Of The Goths, she is a singular artist sharing a unique vision with whoever wishes to enter her lair. I urge you to do so.

Birth of Violence is on Bandcamp.

Blood Memory by Gail Newman, reviewed by Belinda Subraman

Blood Memory begins with a brief and solemn, “Prayer to Remember” and sets the tone with reverence and appreciation. It is above all a connection of the poet to her family, who were caught up in the Holocaust. Gail herself was born in a displaced person’s camp just after the war where her parents met and married.

The first section shows us what the world was like for Gail’s parents and multitudes of others when cruel manipulation of humanity, through politics, was extreme and fear reigned. There was fear of being labeled, abused, treated like cattle or killed for no valid reason and there was fear to say the leaders were wrong, inhumane and must be stopped. From Breath: …They looked away. They said later they did not see—/in open daylight, at the news stand, /in front of the café—  In My Mother in the Łód ́z Ghetto Gail tells us how bodies littered the ground. Some were children. They had been pushed/to the side or into the gutter, where my mother/stepped around or over them—/their bodies cold, blue, finished/with God.

What can you do when it seems the world has turned against you?  There’s always something. In My Mother Remembers /Hafsstadt Labor Camp: Piece by piece, bending our heads down to the work, we put the wrong part in the wrong hole,/so the guns would not fire. 

Gratitude reigns in section II, Lost language.  After the war, life was beautiful in comparison. From I Came Into the World: People were singing. The floor shook with dance./I came into a house where I was a stranger/and was made welcome./My mother gave me her body, my father/ his voice. I stood between them, faltering./The walls of the house rose up around us. From A Short Engagement:…everything after the war/was beautiful. This was not home,/ but it was somewhere.  Not long after the marriage Gail was born. Her mother works while her Aunt tends her.  The doctor tells her mother her breasts are not giving enough milk. From Everything: It is too soon after the war, and my parents want so much right away./ Everything they own is in my body.”  Gratitude for simple things continues in Braiding…guiding the fabric between his hands,/ the needle dipping in and out like a bee/ inside the honey of a flower. 

In Part III, Living with the Dead, Gail speaks about her father in Elegy: His shoes are still in his closet,/lined up like sentries to guard the past.  When visiting Mount Sinai Jewish Cemetery and she is asked about her own burial plans it is easy to understand her words:  I’ll take the good earth, a simple pine box, dressed in white, barefoot, face scrubbed, my blood intact in my veins—as I am.// …and we will go together,/not led like harnessed horses/ or leashed dogs// but streaming forward like the sun/ when it settles on the fields in summer. 

On Valentine’s Day her heart swells while visiting her mother. …how when I stand before the mirror combing my hair, I see my mother’s eyes, and happiness wells up like a wave without warning. //…She speaks of the weather,/today being only itself./Her time is reeling in, a line cast/from shore. But how she loves/ the sea, the horizon, the flaming sun! 

The last lines to the last poem in Blood Memory are:  I stood at the gravesites, feet soaked in mugged earth./ I lay down my body in wet leaves./I remembered them. This book is a testament to our never ending connection to history, acknowledgement in the present, and a projection of love, and lessons, into the future. 

Blood Memory is available from the publisher, Marsh Hawk Press and Amazon and bookstores everywhere.

Hear Gail read a few poems and a brief interview with her in GAS: Poetry, Art and Music video show. (Interview starts at 22 seconds).

Gail Newman has worked as an arts administrator, museum educator at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, and CalPoets poet-teacher and San Francisco Coordinator. She was co-founder of Room, A Women's Literary Journal and has edited two books of children's poetry: C is for California and Dear Earth. A collection of her poetry, One World, was published by Moon Tide Press.

A Look Back At Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics by Kevin M. Hibshman

Those who loved Wendy O. Williams and those who hated her did so for the same reasons. She eternally defines the image of punk rock rebellion from a female perspective. She ceaselessly courted controversy and refused to bow to anyone's standards but her own.

She left home at age sixteen and supported herself by working as a lifeguard, stripper and macrobiotic cook before traveling to Europe, ending up in New York City by 1976. She performed in Rod Swenson's live sex shows there until they decided to form a band that would break all the rules. 

Debuting at punk mecca, C.B.G.B's in the late 70's. The Plasmatics' live shows were a mix of self-described “Wreck and Roll” with the sole aim of shocking audiences out of complacency. Television sets were bludgeoned with sledgehammers. Guitars were sawed in half. Eventually, cars would be blown up as all while Wendy cavorted, sometimes topless, covered in whipped cream. The Plasmatics' early music was simple proto-punk, like a sped up, much more threatening version of The Ramones. The lyrics attacked consumerism, sexism and conformity. The songs had equally provocative titles: “Butcher Baby,” “Sex Junkie,” and “Black Leather Monster” among them. Their third release, Metal Priestess, featured a budding new hybrid of punk and heavy metal with Wendy's androgynous vocals growing from grunts to a more melodic singing style. In 1981, Wendy was arrested on obscenity charges following a performance in Milwaukee. She was reportedly thrown to the ground and kicked in the face, requiring stitches. Rod Swenson was beaten unconscious when he tried to intervene. She was acquitted of all charges. She was arrested in Cleveland on the same charge but was again acquitted. The band wrote a song about the

incident, “A Pig Is A Pig” which appears on their second album, Beyond The Valley Of 1984.

The group made several unforgettable appearances on television on shows such as “Fridays” where Wendy was the first woman to appear on national television with a mohawk. She was also the first woman to be featured on the cover of metal magazine, Kerrang!” in 1984. She made the cover of Vegetarian Times magazine also in 1984. She did a pictorial for Playboy, skydiving nude, in1986.

Ever ahead of their time, their fourth album, Coup d'Etat, was recorded in Germany by Scorpions producer, Dieter Dierks who gave them a more metallic edge. This album included their cover of Motorhead's “No Class.” and demonstrated once and for all that the band could truly deliver their doomsday messages with competent musicianship. This album is also where Wendy's vocals became much more intense and she 's recorded some of the most unrelenting screams from any rock vocalist I've ever heard, male or female, which was, of course, her goal. After each recording session, she had to travel to Cologne to be treated against permanently damaging her vocal chords. Coup d'Etat failed to sell even with a video, 'The Damned” receiving some play on MTV and Capitol Records dropped the band in 1983. This would be the last Plasmatic's record until a reunion in 1987 produced the thrash punk concept album, Maggots:The Record.

Wendy released her first solo effort “W.O.W.” in 1984. Gene Simmons of Kiss produced it and members of Kiss played on several songs. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance in 1985. Kommander Of Kaos  followed in 1986 and a rock-based rap album, Deffest and Baddest credited to Wendy O. Williams' Ultra Fly and The Hometown Girls, would be her final release in 1988. She starred in the camp film, Reform School Girls in 1986 and made an appearance on the popular TV show, MacGyver” in 1990. She then disappeared to Storrs, Connecticut to live with Swenson in the geodesic home he had designed. During this time, she worked at a food co-op and as a wildlife rehabilitator. She'd been a staunch vegetarian since 1996. Sadly, she took her own life in 1998 but left behind a legacy that has been highly influential. To quote writer John Patrick Robbins: “She was a bad ass. She lived at a hundred miles per hour.”