Ann Bracken | Poet. Author. Creator of Possibilities.

Interview with Patricia VanAmburg

I met Patricia in the early 2000s when we were both teaching at Howard Community College. We’ve since shared many lovely days together and often share our poems with each other. Hope you enjoy this interview with my dear friend. Contact Patricia through her blog if you’d like to purchase one of her books. https://wrenhousepress.online/books/

Ann Bracken (AB): Congratulations on your lovely new poetry collection, Refuge Heart: A Verse Memoir. I love the way you’ve woven stories together around the themes of loss and family. Tell me how the book came together for you.

Patricia VanAmburg (PVA): Thank you Ann. The book actually came together in a number of ways. One of those was a mention by two of my friends of the Trebus Project—a study of elderly dementia patients in Great Britain. One surprise outcome of this study was that so many patients with short term memory loss retained vivid memories of earlier life on poor farms. This information certainly caught my attention because my mother so often mentioned the American poor house circa 1830-1930.

AB: Those of us who had parents of a certain age will remember them referring to the poor house, but many readers may not be familiar with the history and purpose of poor houses. Tell me about where the idea for your poem, “My Mother Goes to The Poor House”, came from and give a bit of background on the poor house you researched.

PVA: In the last decade of her life, my mother refused to discuss her dwindling finances. She would reply to any of my attempts at such a conversation with an angry “Just send me to the poor house.” Usually, I remained silent in order to avoid further confrontation, but one day I said to her “You know there isn’t any poor house.” She responded “Oh really” in a voice I knew she saved for lunatics and liars. More frustrated than usual, I soon typed “poor house” into a Google search—adding “Berrien County Michigan” because that is where my mother grew up. To my great surprise, I uncovered a treasure trove of information including a roster of poor house residents; several poor house census reports listing nationality/race and occupation; notes from the poor house infirmary; and several local newspaper articles written about the poor house residents who were called “inmates.” How could I ignore such a treasure? I began to write poems—beginning with my mother’s poor house obsession.

AB: “Peaches in Poor Weather” is as much a lament for crop loss as it is a bit of significant history. What was your process in writing that poem?

PVA: Along with all the specific poor house information, I uncovered an early history of Berrien County chronicling European colonization, native American conflict, and agricultural development. I wanted to know more about why the poor house was built because, to this day, Berrien County remains a Michigan fruit basket. I remember well the delicious peaches of my own childhood. I let peaches become emblematic for the agricultural economy of southwestern Michigan and found a helpful article from 1993 by William John Armstrong titled “Berrien County’s Great Peach Boom.” Armstrong’s work helped me understand how Michigan’s fluctuating temperatures combined with peach production in warmer climates, and the rail age, to cause problems for the Michigan peach industry which had previously enjoyed a kind of privileged position in midwestern fruit production. I also understood how a competitive fruit market combined with an influx of European farm labor—caused loss of farm ownership and the necessity for county poor houses throughout Michigan and the rural United States.

AB: “James Hewitt’s Nose” tells the story of cancer that used to be commonplace, but due to modern treatments, rarely happens in our country now. How did you come upon this story?

PVA: “James Hewitt’s Nose” came from two sources— one was my possession of the poor house infirmary notes which gave me a broad perspective on all of the resident health problems and diseases. The second was the trove of period newspaper articles I mentioned earlier. One of them told the story of resident James Hewitt age 63 who had a form of cancer that had eaten away his nose. The story went on to mention that a worker at the poor farm had met a Miss Hewitt who remembered that her father had a spot on his nose years earlier when he disappeared. At the end of the article father and daughter are reunited—my poem takes a bit of poetic license with that reunion.

AB: The second part of your book deals with your family members who came to the United States from Croatia. How were you able to reconstruct their stories in such detail?

PVA: Yes, the second half of my book goes in a new direction at the suggestion of Maryland Poet Laureate Grace Cavalieri who thought I might want to write about “something a little different than but related to” the poor house and its refugees. About that time through DNA testing, I became aware of and met several new cousins from my father’s side of the family. Eventually, two of my cousins invited me to go to Croatia with them. Their grandmother was a sister to my grandfather, and we were all searching for our grandparents’ journey to the United States during the Croatian diaspora which straddled two World Wars. So, the second half of the book retells my grandparent’s life as refugees and my search to uncover it.

AB: I love the playfulness in the poem “Departure 1950.” You capture so much of the innocence and charm of the two cousins getting into mischief. Say more about the poem and your cousin.

PVA: As refugees, my paternal grandparents had a pretty hard life including my grandpa’s first job as a copper miner in upper Michigan and my grandma’s loss of several children before they reached adulthood. Eventually they had to leave their grape farm in southern Michigan when neither of their adult sons wanted to stay and work. Still, I enjoyed visiting the house they moved to in a small town—especially when my two cousins were there. Departure 1950 recalls one of my earliest memories of my six-year-old cousin and I “driving” my grandpa’s antiquated Chrysler through the wall of my grandma’s chicken coop. We actually popped it into gear and drifted through the wall. Though the memory might have some tragic elements, I remember it as being quite wondrous with light streaming through the gapped wall alive with chicken feathers and dust motes. Even at age three and a half, I knew as soon as we crawled unharmed out of the car through broken glass and timber that we probably weren’t going to get in trouble for our little trip.

AB: Patricia, I really enjoyed reading “Refugee Heart.” Do you have a favorite poem in the collection? What do you hope readers take away from this book?

PVA:

I think I have a favorite poem from each of the halves.

From the poor house poems, I would have to choose the very simple little poem, “Samuel Ray Steps Out”, which tells the story of an 80-year-old resident who wanders away for a few precious hours. I took most of the poem’s visuals from my own childhood memories of the small southern Michigan town of my mother’s youth, but the voice is purely Samuel Ray. In this poem and the others that I wrote from the articles, I often thought I could hear the featured subjects telling stories in their own words.

From part two, I would have to choose my cousins’ unanimous favorite, “Two Mladens Walk in Lokve”, which describes all that my grandparents left behind: lichen covered rocks in the virgin forests; fish with mottled skin swimming in a river that flows through the bottom of a deep cave; smokey mist rising against dark green mountains; and the beautiful hilltop cemetery full of vigil candles and pine cones.

And thank you for your mention of the title poem, “Refugee Heart”, Ann. Even before I finished it, I knew it had less to do with either poor house refugees or my grandparents than it does with worldwide refugees today. May they find new lives and peace. May we all help. That is the message.

Bio: Patricia Vanamburg retired emerta from Howard Community College where she taught literature and creative writing. She was also affiliated with the Little Patuxent Review literary journal.

Interview with Naomi Thiers

March 18, 2022March 14, 2022amusingpoetLeave a comment

Ann Bracken (AB): I’ve enjoyed reading Made of Air, your latest poetry collection. The poems explore many facets and experiences of contemporary women, from motherhood to homelessness, abuse, and even murder. How did this collection come about?

Naomi Thiers (NT): Only half the poems in this book are centered on women’s experiences. The other half of the poems center around the weirdness of getting older, and other types of vulnerability, but mainly the adventure of aging—which, as Bette Davis said, isn’t for sissies! More about those poems later.

To say how the section focused on women came about— I’ll go back to the book I published five years ago, She Was a Cathedral. As I was choosing which poems to gather into a chapbook manuscript, trying to find a theme, I realized I’ve written a lot of poems centered around an individual woman, known or unknown to me—her experience, her life. So, I put about 25 of those together into that chapbook. Years later, I added some new woman-centered poems to the ones in Cathedral to make this section of Made of Air. As you say, they’re about a multitude of different kinds of women— from various countries, diverse situations, some average some extreme.

I think I’m just extremely interested in females and their experiences. I admire women’s resilience, their resourcefulness, their joy in life, their intelligent and sensitive take on the world—and I think I would even if I wasn’t a feminist. So, I write about them! I mean, I tend to write about people and their lives— but I probably write more poems about individual women and their experiences than about men. I love writing about women I know, my friends—to honor them.

AB: The poem “Lions” speaks powerfully about the challenges of standing up to an authoritarian government and being disappeared. What inspired you to write this poem?

NT: That poem came when I encountered a quote from a woman whose daughter had been—as thousands were—“disappeared” by the Argentine military in the 1970’s. She was one of the mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who marched in the Plaza in Buenos Aires every week holding signs with pictures of their grown children, demanding for them to be released or to know their whereabouts. The quote from this anonymous woman—who probably wasn’t an activist, but who rose up when her child was taken—was on an Amnesty International brochure: “It is as if lions grow inside of me, and I am not afraid.” I started trying to imagine her thoughts, how she might speak to herself, and the poem just unfolded. It needed very little working.

AB: You employ such evocative images in your poems. I was particularly struck by the way you use bread to open and close the poem “Refugee, 15.” Additional strong images are “rockslide of grief” and “face a lace of cuts.” How do those images serve the story of that poem?

NT: I love how you’re asking about very specific images, Ann! I’ll say a bit about how I came to those images. I feel some poems just kind of flow out, they seem to want to be written, and others you have to push out little by little, because you have a line or an idea and really want to write the thing. “Refugee, 15” was one of those I had to push out. I was thinking a lot about Syrian refugees and wanted to challenge myself to write about a person in that situation. I felt led to focus on a teenage girl and write part of it in her voice—likely because it’s such a vulnerable time of life. What came to me first was that idea of having to push yourself to survive, to force yourself even to eat, when you feel in every fiber like giving up, paralyzed by grief or fear – so: “Fear is in your bread/ and you must choke it down.” Then I just kept putting words down, and it was slow going, trying to come up with images of what her experience would be like as well as describe her emotions. And of course, some feeling and questioning—Do I have a right to try to describe the inner life of someone going through something I never will? I tried to imagine what things about her home she’d be thinking of and missing, and looked up some details about Syria, so I could put in the name of the Khabur River, for instance.

Refugee, 15

Fear is in your bread

and you must choke it down.

To think of home—

the courtyard with its red filigreed rug,

the peel-paint walls, how the breeze with its tang

of the Khabur River touched your just cut hair

as you curled up, writing in your diary—

starts the rockslide of grief, the thundering

that blocks out sound, pulls

a knife across each breath until

you drag across your body like a sack,

walking with others

toward the border.

But something rises up,

wants to live:

I won’t be that man sitting

on his burned porch, face a lace of cuts,

waiting in rain for death.

Shut away now the images of home,

like your diary with its leather straps.

Preserve your young life.

Eat your bread.

To put her emotions into words, I reached for the very physical sensations that come with extreme emotion—feeling like rocks are cutting into your chest and your stomach plummeting. . .not feeling your own body, its vibrance. The image of a man sitting in front of his bombed home, face a lace of cuts just came to me. I was glad the detail of a diary came in at the beginning, because that something many teenage girls do, so it may help the reader feel some connection, that this person—in a situation so more dreadful and fearful than those of us who haven’t had our country ripped apart are likely to know—is like a girl they know, isn’t news copy. Then at the end, locking the diary—she shuts and locks away herself, her previous self, to survive. Back to sheer survival, so back to bread. But by the end, she’s exerted her will to eat no matter what; she’s choosing life.

AB I love the interplay of the young and old women you describe in the poem “Striding.” Can you talk a bit about how those two women in the poem evoked an image of your friend who died at 48 years?

NT: That poem has something special behind it. I had a great friend, Patty Bertheaud Summerhays, whom I met in my MFA program at George Mason in the late 80s. Several friends I made in that program I‘m still in touch with, even still exchanging writing with—like Ramola Dharmaraj, Jane Schapiro, Perry Epes—but Patty I was closest to. She was one of those warm, open people who helps everybody feel relaxed and welcome—and also a stellar poet. We went to grad school together, constantly gave each other feedback on poetry, partied together, gossiped about other poets, went to Mexico together and worked in a shelter. We had our babies the same year, raised our kids together and were very bonded. Then she got colon cancer and they hadn‘t caught it soon enough–she died within two years. I think about Patty every day—she meant so much to my life.

A few years after Patty died, I was waiting in my car at a light. A young woman happened to cross the street and just as she reached the other side, an older, elegant woman crossed behind her. Sitting there I felt I was watching my past younger self go by, then my future older self—I was between them. And I instantly thought of Patty, “frozen in mid stride/ you will never cross/ with dignity to the end of a long life.”

The last lines of that poem are how I think about Patty’s spirit after death:

I see you coaxing

a smile from the legless beggar in Juarez,

standing up to a coach who shamed your son.

I see you stunned, fighting, blasted by chemo.

Your shade towers in the middle of this intersection,

but for you, the wheel will not turn.

Patty, I hope

that wherever you are –

for with your fierceness

I know you are somewhere –

you are striding.

AB: Longing seems to be a theme in several of your poems, particularly “All is Calm.“

Can you talk about how the novel The Giver and the image of a padded world play into that theme?

Loss and longing are so connected—you can’t feel longing if you still have something, if you’re just rocking along with it still jingling in your pocket. So, let’s say that something is youth. It was sneaky, there wasn’t any bright line to it. But recently I realized I really really wasn’t young anymore… I don’t have that youth thing that always carried in my pocket as I went along. This made me think carefully about what experiences do you really have less of after, whatever–50, 55? You lose people (though their spirit can come back so strongly, like Patty), you lose physical capacity, but I’ve also found a big one is I no longer have the intense emotional ups and downs, the storms, the anguish, the day long fizzy highs. I’m so, so emotional, and have been roiling so much of my life that there’s a good side to that. But it is a loss, that evening out as you get your older.

In The Giver, everyone in the speculative society described—except for one or two people whose role is secret—has muted emotions and lives quite a bit in their heads; even the awareness of extreme joyful events or traumatic ones, any overwhelming emotion just isn’t present. So, they live in a padded way. The Giver him/herself, one person, feels everything the rest of the community can’t It’s a fantastic book.

There’s a good side to not being roiled by emotion. But I’ve found I need to find a new way to feel and to keep plunging into experiences, not settling. I wrote “All is Calm” when I was wishing even the awful, hard emotions were still accessible. (Incidentally, I love that I could use the word capsaicin naturally in the poem!). I’ve made peace with that aspect of aging now. I’ve read there’s a correlation between being older and happier, more content–and I believe that is mostly true.

AB: Has the pandemic affected your writing practice? How has it either helped or hindered your creative spark?

NT: Oddly, I don’t feel it has made much difference to how much I want to write, how much I do write, or what I write about, poetry-wise. Like for everyone, it’s made a big difference in my life, 9- 10 months of everything near surreal in 2020, etc.. I’m an introvert who needs to be shaken out of it, so that lockdown period was tough—but I didn’t feel more or less of a spark for poetry. I don’t write every day by ANY means. But if I feel uninspired and am going too long with nothing—I try some kind of form. That always brings back poetry for me.

BIO

Naomi Thiers grew up in California and Pittsburgh, but her chosen home is Washington-DC/Northern Virginia. She is author of four poetry collections: Only The Raw Hands Are Heaven (WWPH), In Yolo County, and She Was a Cathedral (Finishing Line Press) and Made of Air (Kelsay Books). Her poems, book reviews, and essays have been published in Virginia Quarterly Review, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Grist, Sojourners, and many other magazines and anthologies. Former editor of the journal Phoebe, she works as a magazine editor and lives on the banks of Four Mile Run in Arlington, Virginia. Her latest book Made of Air can be ordered from Kelsay Press at https://kelsaybooks.com/collections/all. If you’d like access to her earlier books, message her on Facebook.

Interview with Ginny Crawford

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Ann Bracken (AB): Ginny, congratulations on your wonderful poetry collection questions for water. Your poems greet the reader like open arms, inviting them in to the world you’ve created. Tell me about the title poem and say a little about your stylistic choice to use lower case letters throughout the book.

Ginny Crawford (GC): The title poem came about through an invitation to participate in an ekphrastic show at the Hamilton Gallery in Baltimore. I fell in love with a painting (mostly blue/turquoise and white). It also had pieces of torn paper glued to the surface which suggested mountains and a few other things. I saw a single person in a small boat approaching a literal piece of rusted barbed wire hung across the bottom of the painting. I immediately thought about immigration and the horrifying images we were seeing from our southern border. And my own grandfather who came from Italy – I’ve always wanted to write something about him but hadn’t yet. And the daily emotional, physical, financial struggle far too many Americans face not because they don’t work, but because of the poverty wages they are paid. As well as a tragic story a Russian woman told me about her coming to America. And my grandmother who came from Crisfield, MD where opportunities were very limited. And I could go on. The painting gave me the opportunity to write all of that in a single poem.

I’ve always been captivated by water and its abilities, the way it is essential and deadly at the same time. I tried to replicate the repetitive rocking motion of being at sea in the repetition throughout the poem. The repetitions act as a kind of mental break for readers as well as a bridge to the next part of the poem. It also reflects the day-in and day-out struggles many Americans have and continue to live with.

The choice not to use standard capitalization and punctuation was to reflect the way punctuation provides artificial boundaries-just as thoughts of nationality or heritage are artificial. Sure people from different cultures celebrate different holidays and have different languages etc, but in the end we’re all humans. We all want food and shelter and love. We all want to see our children succeed. While we may speak different languages, these differences are superficial.

Not using punctuation was a way to say no, we’re not different; we’re not separate from each other. We cannot place a period here and turn our backs on what might come next. Often we try to and do, but it’s artificial. We are not separate but deeply connected. American individualism, “ownership society” says we are successful or not based on our value to society, our job. If you’re not financially successful you must be doing something wrong. Too bad for you. This kind of thinking is deeply flawed and harmful. Not using punctuation is a way of saying no, people cannot be neatly categorized, divided and labeled. That is an illusion.

AB: I immediately recognized the speaker’s response to the young homeless man in the poem “baltimore.” Tell me what inspired that poem.

GC: I’ve done a variety of unusual jobs in my life, and many of them showed me how vulnerable we are as humans. And I saw people begging on the street everywhere. They are humans who are suffering and need help. This particular interaction was difficult in part because he appeared young, maybe in his 20’s. And when he took the orange, he was so exhausted, worn out, he told me what he really wanted. His hands also alarmed me. They were swollen, cracked, dirty. Quite obviously painful and delicate. They were so cracked I thought they would bleed at any moment. The combination of his relative youth, the state of his skin, his directness and the thing he wanted, hot food, …I’ll always remember him. I started keeping snacks in my car to give away. It’s painful to see so many people begging for help on medians and at stop lights. This is supposedly the wealthiest country on the planet.

AB: In “thoughts on making soup and war,” you lead us through the dailyness of making soup and then muse about a homeless veteran and a neighbor whose son enlisted. Talk a little about how you chose your images to convey the tone and feeling in the poem. (onions, overflowing trash can, lined up empty boots)

GC: Great question, but it’s hard to answer. Somewhere my mind connected the common-ness of potatoes with the way soldiers are used by governments. We don’t usually think of potatoes individually – there are just so many of them, and they’re inexpensive. That seems to reflect our government’s opinion of sending soldiers into unnecessary conflict and wars. There are always more. And if there aren’t, we’ll demand your sons. Yes, we need to defend ourselves, but soldiers should be used only when absolutely necessary. Absolutely necessary. Not because someone wants to be re-elected or to maintain the surprisingly low cost of our oil and gas compared to other countries.

When I was in college one of my friends was terrified he’d be drafted for Desert Storm. It was scary and bizarre to think that he could be plucked from his life and commanded to fight for an unjust war. Decades later I saw a good friend at the installation of the boots on the Hopkins University campus. It was an art exhibit that travelled around the country. Her middle son really signed up and served several tours. He came back, but she says he’s never been himself since. It’s simply terrifying to know someone you love is going into that kind of danger and the terrifying things they may be asked to do. The contrast of my over-flowing trash can and the hungry veterans on the streets. It’s just horrific that we have a population called “hungry and homeless vets.” It’s shameful that they are not taken care of. They beg on the street while I have more than I can eat. To be honest, I’m not always consciously choosing images. I don’t necessarily think, I need an image that represents X. I can’t say how it happens. It just comes to me.

AB: I was deeply moved by the scenes you create in the poem “how to live. for alice herz sommers” The music in the poem seems to play a pivotal role. How did that piece all come together and who inspired it?

GC: Alice Herz Sommers. A real human and survivor of the Holocaust. It may have been a YouTube clip posted to Facebook. She spoke about her own experiences and how she survived. I watched it over and over, mesmerized by her and her courage. I also found a book her son wrote, but I’ve been too afraid to read it. The Garden of Eden in Hell. I’m delighted that you find the poem musical, but I don’t have an answer beyond this. I was moved by her and how she lived and wanted to honor her in some way.

AB: I appreciate your courage in writing “feared loss.” In tackling the often-ignored issue of grieving after miscarriage, you manage to make the reader feel what the speaker feels in these lines “then years of crying/imagined childless birthday parties/ useless concerns about school day care/ what your father would think” Have you gotten many responses to that poem?

GC: Yes and no. It was published in The Baltimore Review more than 20 years ago, and on a visit to Bill Jones’ high school class, he asked me to read it aloud three times in a row. That was very difficult emotionally. It touches people, but it’s also deeply personal. For each person. No, it’s usually not something people want to discuss. But it’s my experience, and I write about it.

AB: What was the most difficult poem for you to write? How did you overcome the challenges?

GC: Probably the title poem, and american mom, and travelling south. All of them are wide-ranging in terms of topics. All of them include fears I have about what my children might experience. All of them include historical and ongoing tragedies that I worry will not be corrected in their lifetimes. american mom is a 9/11 poem even though what inspired it takes place 20 years after 9/11. 9/11 and the threat of retaliation after the killing of Iranian General Soleimani are bookends of the poem. My daughter was 6 months old when 9/11 happened. This recent threat came at what is a very vulnerable place for me as a parent. My daughter, a young adult, visits friends in different cities on her own including New York. While I believe there will always be more people who want to help you rather than hurt you, there are those few looking for vulnerable young people. And there’s always the possibility of stupid bad luck.

So, there I was wondering if something like 9/11 might happen knowing my daughter was in New York near the 20th anniversary and unable to protect her. travelling south also presents troubling real-life situations, and even though my son was still with me, I had no idea how to talk about these horrific things. I could not make it better or fix any of these problems. They were happening, my son was aware, and I couldn’t make it better. When your child is young, you can often do things – they drop a lollipop, you give them a new one or at least wash it off. The poem shows that moment when your child becomes aware of injustices happening all around and realizes that Mommy can’t do anything about it. questions for water is my longest poem and includes many situations Mommy can’t fix. Sometimes she can’t even figure out how to start a conversation. The poem includes current and historical injustices. It was very hard to write, but I just made myself keep going. I wanted to get it to the point of sharing it with others. It was hard and it was work, but it was work I love doing so it wasn’t work at all.

One of my most important sources of support for my writing is my tiny writing group. It’s my husband (who’s also a poet), myself, and one mutual friend who is both an excellent writer and an excellent editor. She can look at something and see very quickly where a poem needs help or is working well. I’m a little in awe of that. She was also a tremendous help in arranging the order of the whole book. I had redone it multiple times thinking I was getting closer but still not feeling right (and not having any idea why), and she can see the whole thing and suggest – you do it like this. And I go – oh! That’s how it goes! It’s a skill she has. So my tiny writers’ group is extremely important to me. I trust both of the others and will ask for suggestions on this, that and everything. I don’t always take their advice, and sometimes they advise different things, but I know they will help me make the poems the best they can be.

AB: Thank you, Ginny, for taking the time to talk with me about your work. In addition to your teaching, what projects do you have underway currently?

GC: I’m feeling pretty unsettled to be honest. I’ve been tutoring children individually; it can be very rewarding and horrifying from one minute to the next. For example, I’m working with a 4th grader who can’t read or do math. A 4th grader! His parents love him, but the school system has completely failed him. He’s fallen into “the cracks” and no one is doing anything or even noticing. It’s heartbreaking. He’s lovely; his parents work long hours including night shifts, and they’ve hired me. But it’s impossible to supply 5 years worth of learning in a few months. So I’ve been juggling individual students and several other part-time jobs, and now it looks like I will soon have a full time teaching position, but then there’s the worry of omicron. I have more teaching jobs than I can do, and I’m trying to figure out which are the best (and safest) choices to keep. Fall has been quite a whirlwind of running from job to job, so I’m hoping to figure out how to focus on just a few of them. And still have some time and energy for poetry.

I recently became the host of the Maryland Writers’ Alliance First Friday series. That’s been great. In Jan we have Naomi Shihab Nye, in Feb Bruce Jacobs, and in March we get to hear from your new book. I’m looking forward to that and hearing about your experiences that inspired it.

Thanks for these questions. I’ve enjoyed them.

Purchase Ginny’s book here: https://bookshop.org/books/questions-for-water/9781627203258

Bio: Virginia Crawford is a long-time teaching artist with the Maryland State Arts Council. In April 2021, Apprentice House Press published her full-length collection of poetry, questions for water. One reviewer said, “her work mines the seam between the personal and the political. Crawford brings her lyrical voice and intimate perspective to the challenges faced by twenty-first century families, America, and the world.” Previously her chapbook Touch was published by Finishing Line Press. She has co-edited two anthologies: Poetry Baltimore, poems about a city, and Voices Fly, An Anthology of Exercises and Poems from the Maryland State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program. She has appeared at the CityLit Fest, the Baltimore Book Festival, The Gaithersburg Book Festival and others. She earned degrees in Creative Writing from Emerson College, Boston, and The University of St. Andrews, Scotland. She lives and writes in Baltimore, Maryland. You can find out more at www.virginiacrawford.com.

Patti Ross: St Paul Street Provocations

October 23, 2021September 26, 2021amusingpoetLeave a comment

Pattie Ross is a force to be reckoned with in the poetry world. She speaks her mind with a gentle humor and then serves up her message with gut punch of humor mixed with outrage. Patti hosts Author Talks at the Baltimore County Arts Guild in Catonsville and serves as an ambassador for poetry everywhere she goes. Here’s an interview about her first poetry chapbook, St. Paul Street Provocations. I hope you’ll enjoy meeting Patti and buy a copy of her lovely book.

Ann Bracken (AB): Congratulations on your new book St. Paul Street Provocations. Such an intriguing title. Tell me the story behind the collection.

Patti Ross (PR): The backstory is that I was living at the intersection of St. Paul Street and Lafayette Streets in Baltimore from 2010 to about 2012. I then moved to Park Avenue, an area in the Bolton Hill district. These two areas are very distinct. Most of the poems began on St. Paul Street with my observations from living on the corner slightly above the sidewalk. The cover has a mural of muralist Jessie and Katey (http://www.jessieandkatey.com/) that they painted on the ground of the little dilapidated park across the street from my building. I watched them work from my main room window. The mural is titled “Walk the Line” and that is what was necessary in the neighborhood if you were going to remain there in peace.

AB: In the poem “Home/Less” you describe your encounter with a homeless man you call “D”. Give me a bit of his story and describe what it was about him that made you decide to stop and talk with him.

PR: On my morning commute down MLK Blvd, I would run in to “D” asking for money/help during the stop light transitions. At times I might have to wait through two lights, and so we began a friendship. I sometimes offered up a dollar or two, sometimes just a hello, and sometimes a brief conversation. At some point “D” disappeared for several weeks. When he returned, I could see that he had been physically assaulted, and he no longer had his backpack of belongs. He was worse than before. I stopped this time, and we talked for a bit. He told me he had been beaten up one night over the rights to the corner and his belongings taken. He said to me “Patti, I gotta deal with the demons in my head, and the demon’s at night.” When he said that it stuck with me. No one chooses to be homeless – there is so much more to their plight.

AB: Letters are so powerful, even when they’re imaginary. Tell me about your decision to write an imaginary letter to “George Perry Floyd in Heaven.”

PR: The murder of George Floyd was incredible. He lost his life over the suspicion of something, not the proof of something. I want people to see him as more than the poster child for a “modern day lynching.” I want people to remember that he was a good son and a good high school athlete. I want people to remember that “but for the grace of God – there goes I.” Often times it is letters that set the record straight years after something happens. We find a letter that tells the true story.

AB: You describe yourself as a spoken word poet and use the name “little pi” when you preform. What were some of the challenges in moving between spoken word and written poetry in your book?

PR: Great question. There is a challenge to take what is performed (staged) to what is written (page). I often remind my audience that what they hear me say may not be what they read fully. I tend to read my poems in a narrative way or as if in conversation, such as in the poem “Indemnity”. I don’t change all the words but for emphasis in performance, I may change a word or omit one or add an expletive because I originally wrote the poem in response to something that “pissed me off” as they say. ‘little pi’ is the voice that allows me to perform the words without apology. It is the voice of my great-great-grandmother, who from what I am told, was an independent woman who said what she felt, lived on an island away from town, and fished standing on river rocks amid rapids and men.

Cover art for *St Paul Street Provocation*

AB: You’re very active in the Maryland writing community with running Maryland Writer’s Association First Friday Reading Series and now starting an open mic night and an author talk-back series at the Baltimore County Arts Guild in Catonsville. Describe those programs and your hopes for the literary scene in Baltimore.

PR: The First Fridays program came out of my desire to continue the EC Poetry & Prose Sunday Salon Series once the Pandemic took over. It was also a way to highlight the poets who were members of MWA but perhaps also wrote other genres. The series was a way to keep the writing and more specifically the poetry community engaged during a time that sucked up so much of our emotion. As writers, we spend much time alone and the First Fridays series allowed us to reunite and share our works-in-progress in a safe, non-judgmental environment. This month culminated my time as host of First Fridays. I am happy that the program I created will continue with the organization. It’s a nice legacy.

The literary scene in the city of Baltimore is good. I am not sure there is much I can do there. However, I did see a void in the spoken word community in the suburbs of the city and I wanted to bring what I was enjoying within the city of Baltimore to the counties. Poetry has been with me from a very early age. I attended The Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts, so taking my words from the page to the stage seemed natural to me. The history of spoken poetry comes from the Chinese well before 500BC and was picked up in subsequent Dynasties as both a historical and social accounting of the times and recited for various social occasions. This practice has continued and we can look at some of our modernist like T.S. Elliott and see the tradition or recitation being cultivated among the new generation of poets to give deeper meaning to the text. The visual combined with the audible is wonderous in the brain.

AB: What’s next on your agenda? Are you working on a new collection?

PR: Thank you for asking. Yes. I am currently working on a collection of poems about women. I am so doing other things. I have a couple of collaborations going on. Someone suggested I do a podcast. I have a friend, and we have literary debates from time to time about issues that writers often face when putting their thoughts on paper. There is a quote from Oscar Wilde that I keep on my desktop that reads: “Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.” I believe that, and I am thankful that others do also. It makes for great community when we share openly and honestly with each other. My thoughts are always around the EC Poetry & Prose credo “Peace Poetry Truth”. (EC Poetry & Prose is the online presence that I created a while back when I started hosting the open mics at Syriana’s. ECP&P continues today under the direction of myself and Terri Simon. We are working hard to continue to bring poetry to those that embrace it and live it aloud.)

Bio:

Patti Ross graduated from Washington, DC’s Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts and The American University. After graduation several of her journalistic pieces were published in the Washington Times and the Rural America newspapers. Retiring from a career in technology, Patti has rediscovered her love of writing and shares her voice as the spoken word artist “little pi.” Her poems are published in the Pen In Hand Journal, PoetryXHunger website and Oyster River Pages: Composite Dreams Issue. Her debut chapbook, St. Paul Street Provocations, was released in July 2021 by Yellow Arrow Publishing.

Follow her blog at: https://littlepisuniverse.com

It Takes a Village

October 9, 2021October 4, 2021amusingpoetLeave a comment

People often say that it takes a village to raise a child…and the same is true of putting out a book of poetry. I’d like to thank just a few of the people in my “village” who helped me to write, complete, and publish Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration.

Patricia Van Amburg~I’m so grateful for her unfailing keen eye when critiquing my work. She helped me to shape many of my poems.

Grace Cavalieri~Grace was there every step of the way with her support and thoughtful comments on my work. She offered to host my launch reading with her inimitable style.

Brian Potts~My son, who did the headshot for the cover.

Christella Potts~My daughter, who designed the logo for my imprint.

Betty May~An author, playwright, and all around force of nature who inspired me to work in the prisons.

Linda Moghadam~My partner for three years and the person most responsible for my work in the prisons.

Thank you, everyone, for your kindness and support. Blessings to all of you!

A Book Can be a Pressure Point

October 2, 2021October 1, 2021amusingpoetLeave a comment

In a few days, I’ll begin readings from my third poetry collection Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration. I’ve been thinking a lot about the trajectory of my three books and how they each reveal an aspect of something I care deeply about.

Use this link to preregister, and you’ll be sent a Zoom link the day of the reading. https://sites.google.com/view/annbrackenbooklaunch/home

The Altar of Innocence, my first collection, deals with my experiences growing up in a home where my mother struggled with depression and alcohol abuse and then my own journey through depression and chronic pain which opened the portal to leaving my abusive husband. My second collection, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, takes a deep-dive into the lives of teachers and children who are navigating the pitfalls and whirlpools of the current education system. Shorthand for themes: abuse, emotional distress, and education challenges.

Those themes of abuse, emotional distress, and education challenges coalesce in my third book Once You’re Inside: Poems Exploring Incarceration. Here’s what one of the counselors told me about the general state of the current prison population:

“Most incarcerated people have a number of factors in common—abuse, for one. Sexual, verbal, physical, emotional— add in hearty helpings of neglect, abandonment, illiteracy, and dropping out of school.” Suffering inflicted at the hands of caregivers. Pain and rage stored deep inside, erupting in every direction. “A lot of folks struggle mightily over how to live in the world without earning money illegally. Some report anxiety attacks thinking about how they can be in the world without pimping and selling drugs.”

So there’s the connection. I guess you could say I recognized the pain that the incarcerated people carry because I’ve been around that kind of pain since I was a child. All three books are my attempt to tell the stories that need to be told. The depressed mother who can’t cope. The child who’s frightened because she doesn’t know how to help her mother. The student who’s very bright, but struggles to learn to read. The teen who’s despondent because of all the pain he lives with. The incarcerated person who feels abandoned.

There are many ways to bring about change in society–many pressure points, as I like to call them–legislation, demonstrations, articles, plays, novels, and poems. Most especially poems because they carry to weight of powerful emotions and stories in concentrated form.

Here’s the title poem. I hope you’ll find the poems in the collection both moving and informative. Maybe you’ll even be moved to find a pressure point where you can take some action.

Hope on Hold

Once you’re inside

ignore the wreckage of time,

the lined faces of men gray with age, 

the once-cagey 16-year-old,

the disorganized shuffle of papers, of rules, of feet. 

The torpor of boredom

 thick as dreams of honey on toast.

 Once you’re inside every smile is suspect, 

every glance a risk. 

Even hope tucks into a corner

when these doors groan closed.

Join me for my launch reading on October 6th at 7pm.

It’s my hope that by sharing stories about the men and women I met in prison, I can help to create a dialog among my readers to reimagine how we treat people who break the law. After working in the prisons for awhile, I could see that what the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative Bryan Stevenson says is well worth all of us remembering:

“Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

Use this link to preregister, and you’ll be sent a Zoom link the day of the reading. https://sites.google.com/view/annbrackenbooklaunch/home

Interview with Kristin Kowalski Ferragut

September 10, 2021September 7, 2021amusingpoetLeave a comment

I met Kristin several years ago at a Miller Cabin reading when she was just getting her feet wet with poetry. In this interview, Kristin gives us the lowdown on her work as a poet. Enjoy!

Kristin Kowalski Ferragut (KKF): Thanks, Ann! I’m grateful to Loving Healing Press and Kelsay for publishing the books and am glad they’re out. I guess I expected to be more ecstatic but it’s a quiet brand of satisfaction I feel. And while it makes perfect sense that publicizing poetry is a very different skill than writing, I’m surprised by how big that job is or would be if I did it better. Although, look at me now! I appreciate your help in letting people know of my work.

Ann Bracken (AB): Congratulations on your two new books that came out this year—Escape Velocity and Becoming the Enchantress. It’s very exciting to premiere one book, so two must be amazing. What’s been the most surprising about putting out new books?

AB: Becoming the Enchantress is a beautifully illustrated and gentle introduction to the idea of a transgender person transitioning. What have you heard from your readers? OR Who are your primary readers and what’s been their response?

KKF: Thank you, Ann. I love the illustrations too. I think most readers are in agreement that it’s a necessary and thus important book. It was written in that spirit, a needed tool to explain a transgender parent to a child. I’m trying to publicize it but that doesn’t come so naturally to me and I think at this point most readers have been friends who have reviewed it well. Although with that said, when I was seeking blurbs for the cover, I had a couple of friends that did not want to comment on it, so it doesn’t seem a story embraced across the board. Sweet and worthwhile though it may be, it was crafted to be a vehicle to provide context and understanding on a theme, less than emerging from artistic inspiration. That may be reflected in the writing. Also transgender is obviously still a controversial issue. The discrimination against transgender individuals in this country is shocking and heart breaking! I anticipate if The Enchantress does come to enjoy some wider appeal, it’ll be subject to some hate and I rather dread that. I’ve only felt a little of that so far.

My “getting it out there” felt more like a public service announcement than an artistic labor of love. Of course that changed when my daughter, Coley, added the illustrations. I absolutely love her drawings and believe they add significant artistic value to the story.

AB: Do you have a follow-up book in mind, or perhaps a series about the Enchantress to explore other issues related to transgender parents?

KKF: I suspect when it comes to children’s stories, I may be a one-hit wonder. Who knows? As long as I can continue to carve out time, I plan to keep writing and remembering what it’s like to be a child is one of my wowpows. So maybe one day I’ll take on more tales exploring children’s perspectives. I don’t imagine I’ll write more children’s stories on the transgender theme though. I’m happy that the book served its purpose and I have a natural bent to uplift especially those struggling in what I often consider an oppressive society, the “tyranny of the majority” and all that. But it’s more peripheral to themes I want to devote study to than central at this point.

AB: Your poetry book, Escape Velocity, also addresses the issue of a transgender parent/spouse and what’s it’s like for the spouse who remains. Tell me about “Transgender Ex at Son’s Birthday Party.”

KKF: It’s all fiction, right? But that was one of my more autobiographical pieces, I mean, with things moved around. It was at a different party that my Ex lifted her foot to a chair to rest a guitar on her knee, in a short dress and electric blue underwear. That left an impression, incited many thoughts and conflicting feelings that I felt compelled to explore it in poetry.

Girls learn so many subtle lessons in behavior to become socially acceptable women, lessons an adult new to womanhood may have missed. That’s all sorts of interesting, sad, and endearing. And having two Gen Z kids in a pretty liberal area, gender fluidity is a common topic around our dinner table. It’s a steep learning curve for me. I see most things in shades of grey and find comfort in the few things I think I can take for granted. For years one of those things was a man being a man and a woman being a woman. I mean, I’m kind of old and was raised with all sorts of wrong notions. It’s taking me time to adjust my view but I admire this generation for getting it more right.

You know how sometimes you start a poem not knowing where it’s going to lead? Well, that was the case with this one and I was grateful that that poem turned into a love poem, a song of a parent’s love for a child but more, of a parent loving anyone who shows love to her child. Because, well, that’s something I still take for granted, that in all of this, Love.

AB: Your poems contain so many wonderful images and phrases. I was particularly struck by the line “There ought to be a word for psychosomatic hope…” Can you talk about what that concept might look like?

KKF: Oh, that’s a great question, Ann! A good line to pick out. The idea of psychosomatic ailments is deep in my understanding of how people often perceive and treat themselves, having witnessed family members suffer them from a young age. And I have a complicated relationship with the concept of hope. On one level, there’s always hope, so always possibility and potential. That’s all good. On another level, I think dashed hope has broken my heart more than any other single element. So in my life I think hope can be very dangerous, as much as it can spur one to better things. Given that awareness, I think I mute my hopes — hope with an eye roll, somewhat guarded, which is barely hope at all. But perhaps it’s psychosomatic hope. I believe but also believe it’s probably not real. That line tries to capture that sentiment, although having laid it down, it could mean something entirely different, indeed many other things, to a reader.

AB: Loss seems to be a recurring theme in your poetry, and I love the idea of “favorite lost things.” Say more about that poem.

KKF: Oh, that is a wistful one! It’s funny and often unpredictable who and what we fall in love with, at least for me. I’ve found that I often find one’s faults as endearing as one’s strengths. And sometimes it’s hard to take stock of all the things I love about someone until at some late hour, weeks later, I become aware of missing something like how one exhales a certain way, or uses a particular phrase, stammers, scratches his chin, or turns to leave a room. So many little details to love in a person!

-a name of staccato syllables rich in consonants that blend

sexy in print, all the lines and curves dancing side-by-side

-a wink from across a room -landscapes of profiles

-a rich voice that sounds of music, whether in speech or song.

I don’t know if a handful of those little traits is enough to build a relationship on but when I wrote that I was thinking, Why not?

AB: People are always interested in a writer’s process. How do you come to poetry and where do you think your poems come from?

KKF: I think I have a lot of areas to grow as a poet. Recently I wrote a poem about the news story of the baby handed over the barbed wire to the Marines in Afghanistan. It seemed to work and I’d like to do that more — reflect global circumstance in my poetry. I’d also like to write more short stories. I’ve written several, but haven’t yet edited one to my satisfaction. I’m also writing songs these days. For the last one I composed both the music and the lyrics, which was incredibly challenging, since I’m a barely capable guitarist yet, but rewarding.

Usually my poems come from something I want to explore, to work out, maybe a form of therapy or meditation, often starting with an image. I love to write first thing in the morning when barely awake, still close to my subconscious where less expected connections seem easier to draw. I also love to write in nature. That works anytime — everything’s so magical and dreamlike in the woods.

I go back and forth on whether devoting time to my art is selfish or generous. I mean, time in my Nook or Writing Fort is time I’m not caring for my children, the house, doing work… It requires a peculiar brand of faith to be a writer. I just need to trust that what I’m compelled to say is worth saying. Sometimes it comes so easy, as though through divine intervention, and sometimes it’s painstaking and laborious. I’m getting better at knowing when to give up the ghost when it’s the latter or keep struggling through. I still have much to learn!

AB: If you could go back and talk to your younger self, what would you like her to know?

KKF: Oh, little Kristin, life will be weirder and harder and more wonderful than you can imagine! I’d let my single-digit-aged self know that. I’d tell my 20’s self to stick with the process and edit. I wrote a lot but rarely finished anything in those days, partially because… Well, I’d also tell me to be careful who you let critique your work. I’m better at knowing who to listen to now and knowing when to care less about feedback. The artistic process can be fragile and can be stymied before a work is even permitted to fully form. I think there are probably millions of could-have-been-brilliant artists who were shut down early. Heck, that’s probably everything! So many individuals could be so much (scientists, musicians, historians…) if given the freedom and support to Be Them! Talk about the theme of loss. I think we lose so much to poverty and oppression every day. Anyway, I’m glad I have the circumstance, support of my children, and welcoming poetry community to enjoy space to create now. So I guess I wouldn’t suggest I change much.

Ann, thank you so much for your questions and space to think some of this through! Your reading at the Joaquin Miller series back in 2015 and your words of encouragement were significant catalysts for my re-commitment to poetry. I love your work. And your support. Thank you!

Cover artist: Coley Dolmance Ferragut’s Link Tree to Social Media Art: https://linktr.ee/Dolmance.works

Kristin’s bio: Kristin Kowalski Ferragut teaches, plays guitar, hikes, supports her children in becoming who they are meant to be, and enjoys the vibrant writing community in the DMV. She is author of the full-length poetry collection Escape Velocity (Kelsay Books, 2021) and the children’s book Becoming the Enchantress: A Magical Transgender Tale (Loving Healing Press, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in Beltway Quarterly, Nightingale and Sparrow, Bourgeon, Mojave He[Art] Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Fledgling Rag, and Little Patuxent Review among others. For more information see her website: https://www.kristinskiferragut.com/

Take a Poetry Break with Jane Satterfield and Ned Balbo

May 14, 2021May 13, 2021amusingpoetLeave a comment

One of the many hats I wear is as a co-facilitator for Wilde Readings Poetry Series in Columbia, Maryland. This week, I acted as host for a husband and wife poetry duo who are also well-known authors and literature professors–Ned Balbo and Jane Satterfield. Their work compliments each other in that they both write about nature, but Ned prefers formal poetry and Jane is more comfortable in free-verse. I’ve chosen two poems to showcase their work, both with a nature theme-but of course, there’s more hidden in the lines. If you’re inclined to settle in for a longer visit, take a look at the video of their reading. You’ll be glad you stayed!

Portuguese Man o’ War by Jane Satterfield

Full sail, a feat

of stylized rigging,

armed frigate, eating machine

whose armadas blow ashore

through warming currents,

to cooler coasts off Amagansett,

up the Atlantic as far north as the Bay of Fundy,

The Isle of Man—and I

who envisioned your technicolor

rays only in Our Amazing World’s

slick pages, centerpiece of

danger and display—how you swim

up unbidden, struck chord

like the wail of sirens, the warning

and the all-clear, the stark list

of grocery stash guaranteeing

post-atomic household survival. So you drop

that fine-spun glass pane

at the first sign of surface threat

to submerge or travel dark, lucent pools—

O blue bottle, spilled ink—

Even dead you deliver a sting.

The bees: A fable

by Ned Balbo

January 22, 2021

“Tiny bees found in woman’s eye, feeding off tears” (CNN, April 10,
2019): “She thinks the insects blew into her eye at a relative’s grave
site when she visited it with her family.” Known as sweat bees, they
are attracted to the salt in human sweat.

Stranger than it appears,
four bees living off her tears
sought brief shelter in her eye
where they stayed, impossibly.

Before whose grave did she kneel?
What discomfort did she feel?
Specks of dirt she’d brushed away
seemed to linger stubbornly.

In the dark beneath the lid
four bees fed on tears and hid,
stinging her with constant pain—
flecks of ash or burning rain.

Still, she knelt and cleared the weeds,
swept the grave site, planted seeds
in remembrance of the dead—
tears withheld and tears shed.

It’s said the eye swelled up—
Through the slit lamp’s microscope,
a doctor, shocked, could see
small legs wriggling to be free:

bees behind the eye, half trapped . . .
One by one, the doctor slipped
each one out; the four bees hovered,
caged in labs. Their host recovered.

There are others who insist
she got used to them at last;
that the bees live in her eye,
sheltered, to this very day,

nourished by her tears, their sting
milder than the pain we bring
to each loss we hold inside—
tears we cannot shed or hide.

Using Poetry to Explore the Prison Experience

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This essay originally appeared in the Currere Exchange, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2020.

While I’m no longer able to volunteer inside of a prison, I’m continuing my advocacy work by mentoring a writer who is incarcerated in a Maryland prison. If you’re interested, check out the Justice Arts Coalition’s pARTner Project for more details.

In 2015, my editor at Little Patuxent Review gave me an assignment I wanted to refuse; she asked me to interview a professor who ran a writing group—in a prison—and then to visit the prison and interview the men. The woman who ran the group—Professor M., a sociology professor at a major research institution who’d volunteered in the prison for seven years—spoke very positively about the men who participated in her group. Near the end of our interview, she shared a program with me for a literary day of the arts where the men had performed their original poems, stories, and songs. Their faces looked young and happy, which was a complete surprise to me. Professor M. assured me that I’d like the men, and her parting words were especially compelling: “There’s no one else that I’d rather spend a few hours with in a discussion.” I was intrigued, but frightened to go into a prison. My mind buzzed with all of the common middle-class stereotypes about “those people” behind bars and how they might act. “Those people”: school drop outs, drug dealers, hustlers, maybe even murderers. At that time, I had driven by the prison only once and never had the slightest desire to volunteer there. Several of my writer colleagues worked in prisons, and while I admired them, I had kept my distance, partly out of fear and partly because my protective shell had begun to crack as I learned about the prison industrial complex and the school-to-prison pipeline.

Many of my former high school students had brushes with the juvenile justice system, but none of them were especially “bad” kids. Instead, they were kids who had tough home lives or who had made really poor, impulsive decisions or who’d been unfairly targeted by a biased system that landed them in the lap of the law. Deep down, my spirit realized that, if I were to go into a prison and meet the men, I’d probably form a bond with them. Up to that moment, I’d walled myself off from that possibility, but my interview with Professor M. had piqued my curiosity.

Once my security clearance came through, I accompanied Professor M. to meet her writing group. Along with a lone pad of paper and a single pen, I’d brought a copy of my first poetry book, The Altar of Innocence, for the men to read and share. I thought they could relate to my story about drug and alcohol abuse, depression, and divorce. Ninety minutes were allotted to interview five men, so I’d prepared questions about something that I wanted to know and understand better: Who were you when you came here? and Who are you now? I wasn’t allowed to have a recording device and couldn’t take any pictures, so I wrote notes on everything I experienced in order to capture the look and feel of the prison. My hastily scribbled sentences contained every detail that I could observe—the yellow X on the elevator floor designating the spot where no one could stand for fear of stalling the elevator, the insulation peeling off of the pipes in the hallway, the black metal peeking through chipped paint on the bars, the smell of bleach in the hallway outside the school, the song-like Baltimore and foreign dialects of the guards—and most of all, the men in the writing group.

Each one of them greeted me with a smile and shook my hand to welcome me to the group. Professor M. had told them why I was coming and then gave them a bit of my background—college lecturer, writer, and former high school teacher.

After about 15 minutes of introductions and chatting, we got started with the business of the interviews. The men sat around a large, rectangular table, each with a black and white composition book that held his writing. I didn’t think we’d have time for sharing, but it was good to see that they’d come prepared. I made notes about the physical condition of the room and copied down the quote written in neat cursive on wide yellow bulletin board paper that served as the backdrop on the stage. “Education is a passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it.”

I was impressed by the men’s good manners and calm demeanors. They laughed and joked with one another and shared stories with Professor M. and me. I felt much more relaxed than I’d imagined, and I was totally enthralled with all that the men had to share about their lives.

Here is a sample of what they told me. All of the men’s names throughout the manuscript have been changed to preserve their anonymity.

“I was misguided. I had no sense of self-worth. I grew up without any guidance. I’d say I was a lost individual. I was only reading at about the 7th grade level. I did some dumb things. I’ve been here since I was 15, and now I’m 28. Who I am now is a happy individual. I’m striving to be a better person—educated, moral, all that. I’m working on my character. I meditate, pray, work on my attitude. I want to contribute in a positive way. Part of what helps me is reading. When I read words, and I didn’t know what they meant, I went and got a dictionary. The idea that I could learn on my own was a spark.”~ Ryan, from East Baltimore

Read the rest of the story on the Currere Exchange website.

A Conversation About Poetry

August 17, 2020August 15, 2020amusingpoetLeave a comment

Grace Cavalieri, Maryland’s Poet Laureate, interviewed me for her long-running radio podcast called The Poet and the Poem. Sharing the voices of Maryland’s poets is one of Grace’s goals for her work as our state’s laureate. I’ve known Grace for over ten years and feel blessed to call her a friend. Her generosity of spirit shies through in this broadcast where she kindly invited me to share my work.