Tag Archives: visual poetry

National Poetry Month ~ An evening of “Poetry in Translation” @ SOMOS in Taos, NM

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As part of April as National Poetry Month, here in Taos there have already been many wonderful gatherings, readings, and performances devoted to our love of poetry and local poets here in Taos. There are three more events this week, one workshop and two evenings of poetry readings. I will be presenting something different than I have ever before ~ a cross-pollination between my poetry and my photography, as well as a chance to share a number of my visual poems.

On Saturday evening at 5:30pm at SOMOS (Society of the Muse of the Southwest), I will be joining curator Ariana Kramer and two other poets, Sonja Kravanja and Fiona Sze-Lorrain, to share on a theme of Poetry in Translation. If you are any where in the local area of Taos, New Mexico, please consider joining us! These events are free (a few specific ones are not) and are presented by SOMOS and the Taos Arts Council, along with our amazingly creative curator (and also poet), Ariana Kramer. The latter of the month has another 4 events. See the flyer below for more details.

Screenshot 2018-04-12 16.06.00Screenshot 2018-04-12 16.06.33

Concurrent with these events, I am also participating in “Poetry in Public Places”, where local poets have printed a poem of theirs, which was then placed in a frame and now dons the walls of one of numerous local establishments. My poem, “Brightness Spectrum“, is at Coffee Cats in the John Dunn Shops arcade right near the Taos Plaza. If you go for a visit to read the poems, please thank our hosts, Coffee Cats, for participating in this cultural celebration of poetry and local poets. 🙂

And a final note of mention, since my presentation is in the form of a PowerPoint presentation, I will have it documented and hope to share it here on my blog, in future!

 

SACRED SEED ~ originally self-published in December 1997 ~ Wild Fig Tree Press

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It is the 20th Anniversary of my first book of poetry, Sacred Seed. Here is an image of the original cover art for this limited edition, hand published poetry book or chapbook. I include the table of contents below, as well. I will share some of the poems from this book in following blogposts. Feel free to request a poem via a comment to this post after reading the titles on the contents page below.

Blessings and thank you for helping me celebrate this 20 year marker for Sacred Seed and the sharing of my poetry more widely, starting back in 1997 while I lived in Marshall, California on Tomales Bay. 🙂

Sacred Seed original artwork 1997

Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Sacred Seed ~ poems from 21 October 1996 to 1 May 1997 ~ poetry and original artwork by Janice Sandeen; Wild Fig Tree Press

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So…

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beyond comprehension

This radical

life

is so

simple that

it’s beyond a

comprehension

anchored in work-a-day

To be jobless is radical beyond

comprehension. We say in Perma-

culture that everything farms or works

And isn’t that precisely so such that how

can we use ‘work’ and ‘job’ synonymously

We are blind within What Is by filters of

our own making –own our making

our own making

How many

layers

deep?

What kind

of forest floor

is under your feet?

Will you lay yourself down

On that floor as a radical act

Of awakening to What Is

However prickly of a

bed that is seem-

ingly bereft of

the very

nutrients

(we are that)

that each of us

so thrive on: space

grace listening subtleties

Of being  Being of What Is

Did you ever notice that things

simply grow on their own and thrive?

So what’s this business we conjure up

each and every other moment of

the day today that is simply

the magnificence of life

unfolding as we are?

Comprehend.

You dig?

Let it

Be

Life

Itself

Beyond.

 

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Thank you Shareable. This poem is partly inspired by this interview on jobless living:
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[This poem is #2 in a series dedicated to revisiting poems that were written by me as part of my participation in a collaborative and experimental poetry blog: IMUNURI.blogspot.com. So… was written and first published 3 July 2013.]

Book launch this week ~ 15 March 2016

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I have special news this week to share with you all. Please join in my excitement as I announce that two works of my poetry, a visual poem and a collaborative poem, are included in One Way to Ask, an unusually delightful and innovative book of poetry and art by poet Daniel Ari and his 67 artist collaborators. (Norfolk Press, San Francisco 2016)

One Way To Ask book cover

The innovation in this book is many things, but a prominent and specific one is a new form of poetry created by Daniel called the queron. What is queron, you might ask?

“Queron is a form that emerged from my poetry practice to match the way my creativity dances, curiously and deliberately, with my experience. Querons have seventeen lines grouped into three quintets and a final couplet. The rhyme scheme is ababa bcbca cdcdb dd. I prefer subtle rhyme.” ~ an excerpt on queron from the book

• • •

My collaborative poem (with Daniel Ari) is called “What Experiences” and the “artwork” that accompanies this penned collaboration is a visual poem in its own (w)right: “Where is the line drawn?” Daniel included these works as the end piece, as we delved into a unique level of collaboration, for this book, inspired by our years of writing together on a group blog of Daniel’s called IMUNURI. (I have posted/published many innovative poems on that blog, some of which I have linked to here on Contemplative Fire.)

Kudos, Daniel Ari!

And congrats to all the artists/illustrators included in this unique book of #poetry!

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See a preview of the book or purchase a copy of this cool book for yourself, both on the Norfolk Press website.

Check out One Way to Ask on Facebook to see posts about the launch.

Check out Daniel Ari’s blog: Fights With Poems.

Or if you’d like a special author signed copy, let me know and I’ll put you in touch with Daniel.

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“Reading Daniel Ari‘s poems, juxtaposed with artwork by an impressive roster of talented graphisticators, is like entering a cultural Whirlpool washer. Set to the final spin cycle. Everything comes out clean at the end, but your underwear and your socks may have switched identities.”  -Bill Griffith, creator of Zippy the Pinhead

 

morning sketch

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

14.5″ x 18″, in pencil and filtered light on paper

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

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land cloud earth air water and photography

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slope ridge line light

Photography –a medium I first explored over three decades ago and now find myself coming back to again, is compelling. It is the appearance or illusion of what was seen –not seen by the naked eye but by the camera, as Garry Winogrand so aptly noted as he discussed photography while being filmed himself for a documentary on photography.

We can look at photography in another way, not the way the camera ‘looks’ at the world in that split second aperture opening, but the way the human being and the human eye explores and glances, focusing or not focusing at something. Each photograph I take asks, if it can be said that way, to be looked at differently. In the photo above, for the body/brain there is a gestalt here. There are worlds within worlds in this image in the way I experience it. There is abstract beauty, there is light, dance, majesty, tenderness, softness, a deep relax. I love what seems to me the visitors, the trees high up on the ridge drawing my attention and intersecting the ridge line, riding the slope of this arid mountainside.

I love the scale shift in detail from the foreground to the very distant space of the ridge on into the sky. The feel of the day that drew me out into its changeability is touched here in this photograph, for me. Something breathes more easily within me in the presence of this light and shadow illusion of a land and cloud scape. So where might we say this landscape exists?

As invisible

as an updraft, the eye soars

as the osprey’s flight

Penthouse [and other conversations]

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Penthouse and other conversations

 

This is not a house / but what pretends.

                      I am here nonetheless living / and life and my life fill this space 

Life unfolds through different orders

                      There is tenderness amongst these words,

and I might wonder in the in-between

                      I just was not able to crowd out the thoughts 

where holding, housing seems real.

                      that gruffness in the face of subterfuge, mine or ours.

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Building has made things lie lifeless

                      I’ve been a builder of many things

and what has come to know these?

                      split myself –polarity of material plane

Something feigns to dwell and comes

                      as if one thing is better than another                        

nonetheless as if dwelling here abides.

                      confined within the designs of things.

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Oh, the mis-take of it all. We borrow

                      No mistakes really whenever I see

and borrow such blurring until

                      resting is what is such that

little edge or distinction remains.

                      resting and restless find their joining.

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I rest in the in-dwelling,

                      Yet I cannot be in without out

the in-dwelling needing no arrival.

                      coming and going are the same.

It is the departing, which lays waste

                      This one who departs and does not see –this

and waste again, as unsettling ensues.

                      song is for her to remind and restore her.

•

I dream of simpler forays

                      In the dream there is this dream too

the meeting in directness

                      one cannot be without the other –yet

where the purest movement speaks stillness,

                      their divide is what is not real –breathing

unlike the manipulation of reality taken on

                      now –All is beyond question welcoming

as second nature and even first.

                      the manifest as the poetry of it All.

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I pause, considering ~ the in-dwelling remains

                      Still point / zero point

needing no artifice, climbs without effort

                      welcoming the manifest

and also falls with no aversion.

                      as the poetry of it All.