GAS Featured Poet: Thom Woodruff

 

"SPIRIT THOM"  has played and toured with Daevid Allen, Mother Gong, Kangaroo Moon, Invisible Opera Company of Tibet etc. Thom is a co-Founder of AUSTIN INTERNATIONAL POETRY FESTIVAL and can be found on YOUTUBE, ZOOM and SKYPE (Spoken and Heard ) Sunday nights. Thom improvises to the Muse and has  200 books of improvisations available from redking44@gmail.com.
Thom is the TEXAS BEAT POET LAUREATE 2020-2022.

VIBES LEFT BEHIND

BEING A JOHN LENNON DEVOTEE

I went to the Dakota Hotel. It was dark and chill.

No joy, so, around the corner to Strawberry Fields,

where the young were playing 

John Lennon songs continuously. 

Light and spark!

It was Yoko Ono who set up this Memorial Space,

with the single word IMAGINE central to this pocket park.

In Austin, we have a pocket park for Albert Huffstickler,

poet of the people, who from his park bench, 

wrote and gave away poetry in Hyde Park.

Memorials remind us of our shared pasts, 

which is why a statue of YORK,

an enslaved member of the Lewis and Clark expedition 

appeared in a Portland park.

And, in Bristol, a slave-trader statue of Edward Colston 

was dumped in Bristol Harbor,

replaced temporarily by one dedicated to BLM's Jen Reid.

In Texas, hundreds

of Confederate statues are now in Museums.

There are statues of whistleblowers in Berlin,

drawing our attention to their release from prison.

And statues of Saddam were destroyed,

like the statues of Stalin. 

Taliban destroyed Buddhist sculptures,

which were replaced by artists with holograms.

Statues of Hitler melted down.

Native American sculptures rising up.

What we honor, celebrate and respect has changed,

so statuary must adapt. 

I remember Beatles statues 

outside the New Cavern in Liverpool,

but there are no Beatles anymore.

I like what Dolly Parton said,

when they wanted to make a statue of her-

"I am grateful, but I am not dead yet.

Just enjoy the music while I am living!"

AND I AGREE...

See an interview and performance by Thom produced by the National Beat Poetry Foundation in 2020.

GAS Featured Poet and Artist: Michael Rothenberg

photo by Bob Howard

Michael Rothenberg is the co-founder of 100 Thousand Poets for Change (www.100tpc.org), and co-founder of Poets In Need, a non-profit 501(c), assisting poets in crisis.

His most recent books of poetry include Sapodilla (Editions du Cygne-Swan World, Paris, France, 2016), Drawing The Shade (Dos Madres Press, 2016) , Wake Up and Dream (MadHat Press, 2017),The Pillars (Quaranzine Press, 2020) and I Murdered Elvis (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). A bi-lingual edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story was published by Varasek Ediciones, in Madrid, Spain in 2017.  In 2020, Arwiqa Publishers, Cairo, Egypt published an Arabic edition of Indefinite Detention: A Dog Story, trans. by El Habib Louai.

His editorial work includes several volumes in the Penguin Poets series: Overtime by Philip Whalen, As Ever by Joanne Kyger, David’s Copy by David Meltzer, and Way More West by Edward Dorn. Rothenberg is also editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen published by Wesleyan University Press (2007). 

Rothenberg currently lives on Lake Jackson in Tallahassee, Florida where he is Florida State University Libraries Poet in Residence. He frequently performs his poetry in the tradition of Jayne Cortez, Amiri Baraka, Michael McClure, and David Meltzer, with The Ecosound Ensemble, a group created by Rothenberg and composed of some of Tallahassee’s music legends. In 2020 Rothenberg and The Ecosound Ensemble released their first CD on TribalDisorder.com Records, featuring jazz and world music greats Longineu Parsons, Michael Bakan and Brian Hall.

City in Spain

PRO MUSLIM

 

She wants to know if I am pro Muslim

Why not pro Muslim?

Of course, I am pro Muslim!

Hugely pro Muslim

Pro Muslim like my life depends upon it

And while I am at it

I am pro Jew, pro Christian,

pro Buddhist, pro Fish, pro Swan,

pro Rose, pro Daffodil, pro Biotics,

pro Sun, pro Sky, pro Moon,

pro Trout, pro Limpkin

Pro Marmalade, pro Peanut Butter,

pro Volone, pro Cheddar

and pro Poetry!

Have you a got a problem with that?

Panic

OCTOBER BLUE

 

Airboats skim over lily pads

Zebra Longwing butterflies flutter 

in orange lantana

Pine cones bounce off the roof

Spanish moss just hangs there

 

                        Key Lime Pie,

               anecdote to the presidential election

            If you sprinkle toasted coconut on top of it

                        that's not bad either

 

Today, I will hold my nose and vote

One California friend says, 

         "Drink the Kool-Aid! Drink it!”

 

Another California friend tells me,

"Go make Florida blue!"

 

Blue skies

Blue oceans

Blue Herons

Blue Hydrangeas

Blue butterflies

Blue crabs

Blue runners

Blue Stripe Garter Snakes

Bluebells and blue plumbago

Blue!

 

Done!

Black and blue, I voted 

Who would not prefer nature over politics?

I prefer nature 

over politics 

any day.

 

Icicle Hill Totem

See an interview with Michael in GAS:  Poetry, Art and Music 10.

Watch an amazing video by Ian Edward Weir, using poetry by Michael.  Disneyland and The Cops was released as a video from his new CD, Dystopic Relapse from Tribaldisorder.com, the album features Longineu Parsons (trumpet, bass recorder, flugelhorn), Michael Bakan (drums and percussion) and Brian Hall (double bass).

Face and A Lizard

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.