O&S 2009 Pushcart Nominations

Alan King for "The Meek"
Daryl Rogers for "Visiting Hour Dream"
Michelle McEwen for "Sucker"
Sean Patrick Hill for "When This Rose Parade Burns"
Tony Trigilio for "Sunday Morning"
Bob Hicok for "self-portrait of a self-portrait"

December O&S now online

Read it in full online by clicking here.

November O&S now online

Open publication - Free publishing - More poets

the Self-Portrait issue is now online

Open publication - Free publishing - More poets

stop by www.poetsandartists.com

Poets and Artists (O&S 2.5)

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Photo shoot for the next O&S Summer Issue (coming out August 2009)

VIMBY - Robert Standish

Michelle McEwen will be reviewing your poetry journal/zine soon!

Please email didimenendez at hotmail dot com a link to your online poetry zine.

If your journal/magazine is available in print please send to:

O&S (Poets and Artists)
c/o Michelle McEwen
5 Brookdale Avenue
Bloomfield, CT 06002

This call if for poetry publishers only. If you have a chapbook or full-length poetry book you would like to have considered, please send to one of our other reviewers. Stop by "behind the scenes" link found at www.poetsandartists.com.

The Summer Sizzles with another issue of O&S

Open publication - Free publishing - More poets

new O&S

Open publication - Free publishing - More poets

The Self-Portrait Issue of O&S

DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 1, 2009

Guidelines for Poets: Send in up to three new poems for consideration. The poem should be a self portrait piece about you. Send along with a short bio and web site address.

Guidelines for Artists: Paint/draw a new portrait of yourself (any medium is fine). The portrait must have been made specifically for this issue. If your medium is photography, then a photograph is fine. The photograph must have been taken specifically for this issue. Send in a short bio and web site address.

Please do not post your submitted work online until after the issue is live. Then you may link to your work in the issue as well.

Everyone is invited to submit regardless if they have been featured recently. Staff may also submit. Max page spread per contributor for this huge issue will be one to two page max. We may or may not have the issue available in print depending on costs. The issue will be available in full online.

Send your submissions to didimenendez at hotmail dot com. Place on subject line: The Self-Portrait Issue

For further information on O&S (Poets and Artists), please stop by http://www.poetsandartists.com. A publication of GOSS183 (www.mipoesias.com).

O&S (April 2009)

Open publication - Free publishing - More poets

Revisiting a Classic: Emily Dickinson and Final Harvest

I own the collection compiled by the eminent Dickinson scholar, Thomas H. Johnson. It is titled Final Harvest: Emily Dickinson’s Poems. Of the 1,775 poems she wrote, Johnson chose a mere 576 to include in this volume. Emily Dickinson’s poetry is a treasure once you become accustomed to her style.

I wonder how many people neglect to read Dickinson, thinking that she is or her writings are nothing but niceties, preciousness, and womanly stuff. Sure she wrote about nature, like her peers of her time. But Dickinson had an edge; she was an existentialist in an era of transcendentalism. She tackles concepts of humanity’s injustices and broken relationships, be them with men, the church, and/or with God. In a true sense, she was a feminist before its time.

What I sense most in her poetry is a yearning to find her place in society. It’s a yearning that is so strong it nearly explodes from her short, syncopated phrases and lines. In the poems, "Myself was formed a Carpenter;" "A loss something ever felt I;" and "Bind me I can still sing," I see Dickinson creating a matriarchal voice that fellow women can hear, understand and appreciate. If writers look back to great figurehead that represents the wellspring of lyrical genealogy, Dickinson would be that figurehead of women writers.

In the poem "A loss something ever felt I," Dickinson seems to realize that she has no place of origin and that, possibly, because she is a woman and a poet, she is cast out from society. This is why she explained herself "As one bemoaning a Dominion / Itself the only Prince cast out;" and admitted "I find myself still softly searching/For my Delinquent Palaces."

In her search for her own place of acceptance, Dickinson writes: "And a Suspicion, like a Finger/Touches my Forehead now and then/That I am looking oppositely/For the site of the Kingdom of Heaven." She seems to suggest that her conscience is pricking her, telling her that she is going contrary to society (whether that be masculine or religious establishments) and its set role for women.

In her short poem "Bind me I can still sing," I sense a strong will to not only find a physical place, but to keep hold of her inner-place (her heart and soul). The strength of her inner will is rivaled only by the strength of the poem’s alliteration and it’s content.

Bind me – I still can sing

Banish – my mandolin

Strikes true within –

Slay – and my

Soul shall rise

Chanting to Paradise –

Still thine.

Her message seems to be pointed towards the male society and their tactics of oppression. Consider the violent images present in the words bind, banish, strike, and slay. The power of her message lies in the meaning that whoever or whatever tries to bind her, banish her, strike her, or even slay her, she will have the final victory because she owns her voice and heart–that can never be taken from her. The caged bird has often been an image representing women in an oppressive situation. This poem seems to have that image in mind. But moreover, Dickinson focuses on freedom despite being compelled to be silent, hurt, or slain. Consider the lines "I still can sing," "my mandolin strikes true within," and "my soul shall rise."

In the poem "Myself was formed a Carpenter, I see Dickinson as the Carpenter who is building that place for women. When the builder comes, she writes that she toils "against the man." She states at the beginning of stanza three that "My tools took Human Faces." If toiling "against the man" represents fighting against male domination, her tools may represent women– the tools are her words; and they are toiling to build a place for themselves in society.

"We Temples Build" she writes in the last line reveals her purpose. Dickinson suggests that she, along with her tools, are building their own place, a safe place, a sacred place, all from the confinements of male society. Words such as Temples and Carpenter and Builder give the poem a sacred, even religious element. If the Builder is God, the Carpenter Christ, and Temples the Houses of God, then maybe Dickinson is trying to create a Mother-land. And she, because of this intent, being the Carpenter, establishes her as the Matriarch of feminine poetry.

Some personal favorites from Emily Dickinson's collection:

Page 3: The Gentian weaves her fringes....
Page 12: Bring me the sunset in a cup....
Page 12: To fight aloud is very brave...
Page 13: These are the days when birds come back....
Page 20: "Faith" is a fine invention.....
Page 26: Savior I’ve no one else to tell.....
Page 34: "Hope" is the thing with feathers....
Page 297: The bible is an antique volume....
Page 307: A word made flesh is seldom....
Page 314: My life closed twice before its close.....
Page 427: Tell the truth but tell it slant/The truth must dazzle gradually/or every man be blind

Becoming Billie Holiday

Becoming Billie Holiday by Carole Boston Weatherford
Art by Floyd Cooper
Wordsong Press, 2008. 116 pages
Review by Melissa "Missy" McEwen

Becoming Billie Holiday, a verse memoir, written by Carole Boston Weatherford and illustrated by Floyd Cooper, is geared toward young adults, but readers of all ages will enjoy it.

While some might argue that Billie Holiday (a trouble-ridden jazz singer) is not a suitable subject for young readers, they cannot say that Becoming Billie Holiday is not a suitable poetry book for them.

Narrated by a "young [Billie Holiday] before heroin and hard living took their toll," the poems in Becoming Billie Holiday are undemanding, coming across, sometimes, as creatively written diary entries or rhythmical answers to an interviewer's questions. Not to say that the poems in this book are not bona fide poems; on the contrary, this book is full of them:

"Harlem.../was a sea of black folks...
flowing through clubs and churches,
grooving on jazz and Jesus." -- from "Love for Sale"

"I toted my songs
like a satchel..." -- from "Trav'lin' Light"

"I fancied hotheaded hustlers
in pinstripe suits and wingtip shoes--
men I had no business fooling with:
Burley, the amateur boxer;
Penny, the piano player;
Charley, who ran a poolroom..." -- from "No Good Man: I'm a Fool to Want You"

"'Cause teenagers flocked to the carnival in July
for rides, cotton candy, and sideshows./'Cause Clarence
had rested his banjo for the evening.../'Cause he and Sadie
bumped into each other/at the hot-dog stand and shimmied
all night long..." -- from "Why Was I Born?"

The book is full, too, of art work worthy of frames. And it is the illustrations in (and the construction of) Becoming Billie Holiday that makes this book transcend age. A Billie Holiday fan (like myself, who collects pins of Billie Holiday and loads up my iPod with Billie Holiday's songs), will consider this book a must-have, a collector's item. A music teacher wanting to cover Billie Holiday in class should invest in this book. A jazz loving father who wants to introduce his children to (and share his love of Billie Holiday with) his children, needs this book.

With that said, Becoming Billie Holiday is a great book, not only for young adults, but for old adults as well.

Matthew Hittinger and Further Discoveries in Language and Art

Matthew Hittinger in this his second book of poetry (see PEAR SLIP) seems content to focus on a single thought or idea or object or myth or mood and explore it so fully that the reader of his collections of artfully graceful poems feels invited to become more visually and emotionally and verbally receptive to the many facets of the world that surrounds us, a world too frequently lost in the busy-ness of life as we lead it.

The very title of this brief but magical collection - NARCISSUS RESISTS - suggests more than the initial response indicates. In this collection of fourteen 'sections' of one long poem about the mythical Narcissus who fell in love with his own reflection in the water, Hittinger provides five breathing spaces (Metamorphosis of Narcissus I - V apparently 'meditations on Salvador Dali's 1937 oil painting METAMORPHOSIS OF NARCISSUS) in the manner that visual artists use jade or resin resists to coat a surface with a substance that protects certain areas of a work from holding pigment or image, a delicate technique that results in seemingly multiple layers of visual information. OR the poet may simply be offering us fourteen manners in which the narcissist hero approaches verges of temptation and seduction and encounters with the strange new world of now so different from the world and time of Narcissus' origin and time.

Hittinger opens his collection with questions: 'Am I the favor seeker, or the favor sought? Why seek at all, when all that I desire is mine already?' He then weaves this confident muse through challenges to his ownership of beauty - in movie houses, clubs, websites, brawls and wonderful plays on words and ideas from mythology. In 'Clubbing' our hero of sorts experiences '...A quiet/ night at the Inn, the air clear, prismatic,/ dance floor empty save for a reflection/ caught in a mirror. His eye knew beauty,/ knew his body but not his body, the face/ that lasts as long as one spun lozenge.' Or in 'Cover Story', 'Water cut a deal with the tabloids:/ catch those cheekbones, parted lips,/ the ice blue star in each eye, a simple/ first assignment. Narcissus never/ showed, so Water froze a faux snap-/ shot, afraid of editorial wrath.'

Exactly what Matthew Hittinger intends with this multilayered and timeless survey of Narcissus may elude us all. But what does pour out of these pages is poetry of biting satire of our preoccupation with surface beauty or self or delusions of other's perception. And beneath the graceful humor and multiple layers of meaning lies the secure 'verbal resist' of an eloquent poet's mastery of his medium. Hittinger grows in importance with each new publication of his work. Highly recommended.

Grady Harp, February 09

Andrew Demcak's 672 HOURS reviewed by Grady Harp

This brief but pungent collection of five poems may be an isolated work reflecting the thoughts experienced in 672 hours (or 28 days) the standard course of drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Or it may be an excerpt from a yet to be released larger collection of poems by American poet Andrew Demcak. And again, it may be reportage from the author’s personal experience or simply another crown in the intuitive mind of one of our most interesting poets writing today. But here it is, 672 HOURS, as a chapbook and to attempt to ignore the power and depth of involvement in these poems is impossible.

Demcak’s alchemy with words is present in everything he writes and he seems at his best when writing about topics or situations or submerged feelings/prior pains few other poets dare touch. And Demcak has the courage to make these danger zones like personal revelations. Reading the five works here creates the sense of beginning with the psychotic delusions or mind alterations of the admitted patient still imaging strange visual input stimulated by toxins and ending with a suggestion of incipient recovery. In the first poem there are descriptions of ordinary things turned extraordinary and yet he ends that poem with the insight ‘I have no time, nor acquaintance with health.’

In the second poem our observer shares his perception of his cellmate, blurred with the realities of detoxification. By the third poem we are beginning to see his pre-morbid state that began his descent into rehab.

‘He threw me out like wine glasses flying.
Now, my sad jacket hangs there on a hook,
a fine silver corkscrew in its pocket.
We drank waist-deep, handed our fat livers,
the coronation of local drunkards
with daily liquors…..’

And in poem IV memory begins to focus:

‘A blazing kiss, my lover who put me here.
My tidy partner
Who revisits his checkbook,….’

Until in the last poem the harsh reality of our patient’s place suggests acceptance and insight:

‘Alcoholics collected, made public,
a display of bottled fetuses.’

Once again Andrew Demcak, with the briefest, almost haiku amount of space, manages to sweep us away to places strange yet familiar. Whether reporting or imagining, these poems are electrifying and offer further proof that Andrew Demcak is an artist of importance.

Review by Grady Harp

Jill Alexander-Essbaum reads her poems...

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Click on the pages to listen...

Interview with artist Joy Argento

Artist Statement: I have been doing artwork since I was a small child. That gives me about 43 years of experience. I majored in art in high school and took a few college art courses as well as an intensive airbrush class taught by Dru Blair. Most of my work is done in oils these days, but I also work in pencil, pastel, and color pencil I also have several DVDs for sale teaching the some of the art techniques that I use. More DVDs are in the works, including some with guess artists. I have been selling my art for the last 25 years and have had my work featured on trading cards, prints and in magazines. I have sold in galleries and to private collectors from all around the world. I live in Western New York with my three kids, three cats, one dog and the love of my life. It is definitely a full house. I try to create art at least 5 days a week.



What drew you to become an artist?

I don't think it was any one thing. I started drawing when I was a small child and had great satisfaction from completing a piece of art and having it look like my intention.

What is your inspiration?

I am inspired by anything I find beautiful and brings a smile to my face. I am also greatly inspired by other artists work.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

I think my favorite theme that I revisit is anything that brings back childhood memories.

What is your preferred medium?

I really like the feel and look of oil paints.



Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

I don't have any shows or galleries right now, but looking for a gallery.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

I really liked Salvador Doli's stuff when I was in high school. I was fascinated by the way he made things look so real, and unreal at the same time.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Neil Hollingsworth is amazing. I check out his blog on a regular basis and I am always blown away by his paintings. My goal is to be as good as he is one day.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

I would have Steve Hanks paint my portrait. I love the way he uses light in his paintings. I would trust him to make me look flattering.

What is your next painting going to be?

My next painting is going to be what I call "Life Boards". Basically it is a painting of a bulletin board, and on the bulletin board are several things representing the life (often the childhood) of a person. There are such items "tacked" to the board such as photos, pages from favorite picture books, playing cards, keys, baby pacifiers, anything that my customer wants to include to represent someone's life.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

I think the little bit of formal training has help me greatly. But I would have to say that after learning the basics formally, I have refined my skills by studying on my own the works of artists I admire.



What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

No one can take away what I choose to think about. I think everything else can be temporary. It is truly the only thing I have total control over. That is why I try to keep my thoughts positive and upbeat, although it isn't always an easy task.

new O&S now online

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Interview with artist Pauline Aubey

Pauline Aubey is a French self-taught portrait artist. She developed a very early interest in drawing people but had to wait until 2006 (and being 28 years old!) to draw on a regular basis. She started with celebrity portraits before choosing to draw more personal works with a more specific mood. Attracted by opposite feelings, her main goal is to depict beauty in a strange unexpected way. Her works are displayed on her online gallery: www.paulineaubey.deviantart.com


Interview:

How do you feel about formal training?

I actually never had a formal training but I feel quite ambivalent about it: I basically always thought I would have been better quicker with a formal training. As a self-taught artist, I committed many technical mistakes before being able to produce correct artworks. Besides, it is quite a long process to “learn to see” when you lack an academic method. I also think that I would be able to draw more types of subjects instead of dwelling into portrait exclusively.
On the other way, many talented self-taught artists are able to produce quite personal, eye-catching artwork. I think that my art is quite personal as well: as I didn’t learn what was right or wrong, I developed my own rules and chose to focus on 3D and texture mainly.

Do you have a ritual or specific process you follow when creating art?

Yes, I always start with the facial skintones and wait to get them right before starting the features (my fist step makes the face look like a mask). Besides, I use a painting method with my pastel pencils: I work by layers which I gradually blend.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

It was Salvador Dali: besides the surrealistic aspect which I thought mesmerizing, I really fancied the textures and colors he created, they looked so full and creamy. I think that I always like it when non-realistic subjects are colored in a very realistic way...



How does your environment influence your work?

I basically find my reference pictures on the internet (Deviantart website), so I guess my virtual environment has quite an influence on my work... on this website I can find various ref pictures that suit my personal aesthetics quite well: I am a doll collector... and like my portraits look a bit like dolls, with this very specific smooth skin dolls have. I also find very artistic pictures with an interesting ambiguous mood on it.

Have any of your mistakes become a success? (if yes tell us what it was and what it became).

Oh well, not really... I always knew when I did mistakes and it seems that people did as well...

Interview with artist Cindy Revell

Cindy Revell received her training as a graphic designer and worked as a designer and illustrator eventually going on to become an award winning freelance illustrator. Her work has been used on billboards, wine bottles, books, magazines, calendars, furniture, and children’s books all over North America. She was nominated in 2001 for a Governor General’s award for children’s book illustration (Mallory and the Power Boy). Some of the clients Cindy has worked with are Adobe, L.A. Times, Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, Better Homes and Gardens, Cornell University, Penguin Putnam, Harcourt, and Scholastic.

In addition to being an illustrator she is also an oil painter. Several years of regular oil painting classes with Pro’s Art, provincial and international workshops (Gregg Kreutz and Timothy Tyler), traveling to view and learn from the old masters as well as her design and illustration training have helped her develop as a traditional realist.

Cindy finds great beauty in humble and ordinary subjects. The simplicity of a pile of tomatoes, a burning barrel or a single pear are all subjects that inspire her to paint. She loves the work of the Flemish painters and Luis Melendez while her illustration has been inspired by folk, medieval, and eastern art. Her oil painting and illustration are vastly different from one another with the exception of her use of colour which is always rich and lush.

Cindy is represented by illustration agent Deborah Wolfe Ltd., as well as the Candler Art Gallery in Camrose. She is a member of the Oil Painters of America, Federation of Canadian Artists, and International Guild of Realism.

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

I started drawing and painting as a child and it has been a part of my life ever since. It was just assumed that I would grow up to be an artist.



What is your inspiration?

I find beauty everywhere and in nearly everything. The way the light rests on a person, an object, a landscape. The way shape, colour, texture and light interact is certainly an inspiration. It can be something as simple as a piece of plastic caught up on a fence post and blowing in the wind, or the produce from my garden. Being an artist has caused me to notice more of my daily life and I see so much more beauty than ever before, every time I see something that is striking to me I want to paint it. I'm inspired by much more than I will ever have time to paint. With illustration it's the colours and patterns around the world, especially the Asian countries.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

In oil painting it's light and what it does to the subject, primarily still life. In illustration it's pattern that I love to play with. I'm also hugely drawn to warm colours whether it's in my oil painting or illustration. I rarely paint anything with cool colours.

What is your preferred medium?

Oils

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Johnson Gallery, Edmonton, Alberta
Candler Art Gallery, Camrose, Alberta
Trudy Labell Fine Arts, Naples, Florida
Mima at the Bay, Vancouver, British Columbia


Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

The wacky illustrations in the Dr. Suess books and the descriptive ones in the Laura Ingalls Wilder books when I was a kid.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

There are too many to count, Rose Franzen, Richard Schmid, Nancy Guzik, David Leffel, Clyde Aspevig

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Johannes Vermeer

What is your next painting going to be?

A study of a white mug on yellow with a bright red background, this painting will be all about reflected colour.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Both. Training in oil painting and drawing have helped me become more technically proficient and greatly improved my ability to see/notice. The ability to really observe and notice is greatly overlooked but is hugely important in painting, it helps you decide what to put in and what to leave out in a painting. If you can't notice something you won't know what to do with it. This is something that comes both with training and lots of practice. With illustration I rely more on my imagination and actually worked backwards, going from a realistic style to a very naive and stylized one. I'm self taught with acrylics which has helped me to develop a unique illustration style.

What is the one thing they can't take away from you?

I'd fight pretty hard to keep my spotted Cheetah print Italian boots.

Oranges & Sardines Pushcart Nominations

Nominated by David Krump:

Bob Hicok: "Critique with Possible Fracture"
Graeme Mullen: "Landfill Currency"
Stephanie Dickinson: "Lust Series (2)"
James Iredell: "Shooting Bunnies"
Ricky Garni: "TV Guide..."
Matthew Hittinger: "Somersault Precedes Transformation"

www.poetsandartists.com

Interview with Dr. Grady Harp

#19 (from War Songs)

Yes I protest the war!

I protest the rotting blood in Michael's eyes
I protest the muscular legs I sterilely removed
I protest the pain of torn flesh
and the heavier pain of choking sobs
that crushed tenuous lessons of virility
on the wards
in the dark.

I will not carry homegrown signs
to visibly march in the Commons,
but I will sit behind my window
and remembering,
protest.


Grady Harp is a recognized as a champion of Representational Art in the roles of curator, lecturer, panelist, writer of art essays, poetry, critical reviews of literature, art and music, and as a gallerist. He has presented premiere artists throughout the world for such exhibitions as WADE REYNOLDS: Full Circle Retrospective, BODY LANGUAGE: Current Figurative Painters, INDOMITABLE SPIRITS: The Figure at the End of the Century and MEMENTO MORI: Contemporary Still Life. He has produced exhibitions for the Arnot Art Museum in New York, Fresno Museum of Art, Nevada Museum of Art, National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, and Cleveland State University Art Gallery and has served as a contributing artistic advisor for universities and colleges throughout California, in Berlin, the Centro Cultural de Conde Duque in Madrid, and in Oslo. From 1996 - 1998 his collaborative exhibition, WAR SONGS: Metaphors in Clay and Poetry from the Vietnam Experience toured the United States. Harp is a frequent contributor to books on fine art, associated with the Ivy Press LTD in England.


Interview

Please tell our readers the process for putting together your book "War Songs...".

I think my foreword and essay in the book says it pretty well. But to add: The poems were my private diary while I was a Battalion Surgeon in Vietnam assigned to the Marine Corps. Writing them helped me to flush out the horrors of the day by writing my thoughts in poetic form - a therapeutic manner of concentrating on the poem structure rather than the trauma. I had no intention of publishing them until some years after I returned from the Vietnam conflict I shared them with some people who were having Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (we called it 'Battle Rattle' in those days). The poems seem to be helpful to families and victims, especially one of sculptor Stephen Freedman's assistants, who began talking, after being mute since the war, when he read the poems.

Stephen and I decided to make the poems visual by incorporating them onto and into clay vessels - not unlike the containers the Vietnamese used to save the ashes of their dead, hoping that would make the poems more accessible to a larger audience. The finished product was a large body of work that toured the country coast to coast. I accompanied the tour to the museums and gave seminars to Veterans on how to release much of their angst by writing memories in poetic form. It proved to be a very healing experience to them...and to me.


What are some of your current projects?

I still write poetry for my own enjoyment. But most of the writing I do is for museum catalogues - essays to accompany traveling exhibitions. I also review (poetry, books, music, art, films) for about twelve sources.

Do you like being known as Amazon's Top #6 Reviewer?

I used to before all of the negative comments came from a small group of unhappy people who can't stand seeing someone rise in the ranks of anything! Notoriety has its ugly side. I love the reviewing process as it brings closure to the circle that connects me to the creator of the work. Now I devote most of my reading and reviewing to new poets, writers, artists - the mutual feedback is enormously satisfying.

Which poets and artists would you like to feature in future O & S issues?

John Valadez (we've spoken about him before) and some of the other Chicano artists of Los Angeles - I helped get that movement recognized in my art gallery in the early 1980s. Wes Hempel, Sally Warner - a charcoal artist of luminous contemplative landscapes whose eyesight affected by lupus forced her to change her career to writing children's books. More will come to mind.

Do you have a poetic statement to leave with us?

Art in all of its myriad forms - visual, written, performed as music and dance, filmed - is the glue that binds us as humans and allows a window for complete communication in a world growing increasingly noisy with chaos and isolation. It historically is what endures from civilizations and we must consider our role in that commitment to the memory of who we are and have been.

War songs: Metaphors in clay and poetry from the Vietnam experience...available from Amazon

Interview with poet Emma Trelles

Emma Trelles is the author of Little Spells, a chapbook of poems published by GOSS 183 press. She is a a Pushcart Prize nominee for poetry and an arts and culture journalist. Most recently she was the art critic at the Sun-Sentinel for three years. Her poems and essays have appeared in publications such as Gulf Stream, OCHO, New Millennium Writings, the Miami Herald, Newsday, and Latina magazine. She was the editor of MiPOesias Magazine's American Cuban issue and a series editor for the Tigertail poetry annuals. She teaches creative writing at the Art Center of South Florida and lives near the ocean with Mark Zolezzi and their diva cat Mimi.

Interview


Your first book of poems Little Spells was just published by my press. I am curious why you picked a painting by a mentally ill artist for the cover?

There are many reasons, and one is that I own this painting. It hangs in our bedroom and is one of the last things I see before closing my eyes to sleep. I love its palette and grooved brushwork as much as I do the gender-based lore behind it, how woman have been justly and unjustly linked to magic: Eve and the apple, fairytale witches, martyred saints and such. I'm always interested in re-considering traditional takes on women and power. Also, I have a huge interest in the work of self-taught artists, also called outsider artists, probably because I've always felt like a bit of an odd bird myself.

The painter, Eric Holmes, had his own reasons for painting this piece, and I doubt they had anything to do with mine. But I find his work compelling, and was introduced to it when I wrote a story about National Art Exhibitions by the Mentally Ill (NAEMI). The organization was founded by Cuban-born photographer and poet Juan Martin, a lovely man devoted to art and to its role in serving artists diagnosed with mental illness. Many of their paintings are childlike, in the best possible sense, and that purity and utter disregard for fame or status appeals to me.

How many years of work is this collection based on?

The oldest poem in this book, "Hunger," was written in my first year of grad school, some time in the mid 90s I imagine. The newest was written a few weeks before the book was published. So I suppose I worked for ten years on this collection, but not continuously. Far from it.

What is the correlation between your heritage and the "spells"?

There is an abundance of prayer and ritual within the Cuban culture, and a lot of it is tied to both Catholicism and the African-based faith known as Yoruba. It's not uncommon to find small altars in Cuban households; while growing up, I saw them in my own and in the homes of my friends and family. Even today I have a few tucked around the corners of our house. Some Cubans light candles for luck, or we offer coins or incense to la Santa Barbara for protection. I don't even consider any of this all that religious anymore. To me it's an ongoing part of my heritage.

Have any of your poems been inspired from a painting?

Not yet, although I find, as of late, that artists' names and motifs are sneaking into my work. Marc Chagal found his way into the ending of "From the Shorecrest" as I was rewriting it. I can say, though, that working as a full time art critic was a great source of inspiration in terms of creating. How can a poet not be energized while standing in front of a canvas by Georgia O'Keeffe? Or the jewel-like woodblock prints made by Hiroshige? I was constantly seeing masterful works by all sorts of artists, reading and writing about them too. In the middle of the work day, you could often find me drifting through some gallery scribbling in my notebook. I suspect that a lot of what I saw and wrote about will seep its way into my poems. I'm looking forward to that.

Which artist would you consider illustrating your poetry?

If I could summon the dead, I would say Frida Kahlo, or I would love to have Diane Arbus photograph portraits that would correlate with my work. It would be pretty cool to see what she would come up with for "Chicken Lady" ! If I was restricted to living artists, I picture Elizabeth Peyton, Eric Drooker, Raymond Pettibon, Craig Kucia, Beatrice Monteavaro, Mark Ryden - to name but a brief few. I think my poems would shore up nicely against the figurative and story-telling spirit of these artists. Not sure if they'd feel the same way, but hey, you asked...

Leave us with your poetic statement.

Read as many poems as you can. Every day. Write down all lines and words that float through your skull. You must record them when they arrive because they are ghosts and will disappear into the ether unless pinned down to the page. Send out your poems. Sulk briefly about rejections and then send out some more. Be curious about everything. Listen to music. Look at art. Ride your bicycle through weedy lots and back alleys. Read the newspaper, read novels old and new, read magazines devoted to culture and trash. Find yourself a human to love. Live your life of letters, but remember to live your life outside of them too. All of it will boil down into your poems. No one knows how this happens, but it does. Keep faith. Keep writing.

Interview with artist Janelle McKain

Janelle McKain (born April 4, 1958) in North Platte, Nebraska, USA, is a traditional pencil artist working in a surreal style. Her portfolio includes watercolor and acrylic painting, but she is best known for her pencil and pen & ink drawings. Janelle attained her Bachelor’s degree in K-12 Art Education with an endorsement in Gifted Education in Dec 79, from Kearney State College. In 1980 she began her teaching career, and has taught art education the past 28 years at all levels (elementary, middle school, and high school) in various public schools across the state of Nebraska. Presently, she is Department Chair, and teaches Drawing and Advanced Drawing at Millard South High School, Omaha, NE. She has over 36 post graduate study hours at various universities.

Collaborative drawings with numerous international artists have become a source of inspiration for McKain in the past two years and she actively participates in The Exquisite Corpse and The Antipodes Project. When not in the classroom, Janelle is found in her studio at home exploring the passion for her own work. Her desire to create has become overwhelming in the past several years.

Exhibits:
Hot Shops Art Center / Omaha, NE – Aug 2009
NATA Juried Art Educator Exhibit / Concordia University / Oct 2008

Publications:
Local newspaper/West O Connection, feature article – July 2008
Art XX magazine – Summer/Fall 2008 issue, page 71
VAIN magazine – Fall 2008 issue

Interview

How does your environment influence your work?

My environment has very little to do with my work. I try to escape reality through my drawing. My work provides a window into my subconscious. As I begin a new piece - I see images appear on the paper, and I tend to elaborate and flourish what appears (foregoing all rational thought and reason.) I believe this to be a form of automatism, but certainly not in its purest form. Nearly all of my drawings are unplanned, unscripted. I begin as I feel inspired, and let the images and shapes come forth. I enjoy the freedom in drawing without constraints. What is happening in my environment often triggers me to escape from it… As a child, I experienced very colorful and vivid dreams. Ghosts came to my room and sat on my bed until age 15. I was fearful of going to sleep at night. Images, memories, and dreams that were so very unsettling as a youngster have a way of appearing in various forms in my work today.

Which artist do you admire or has the biggest influence on your work?

I deeply admire the work of Zdzislaw Beksinski, a Polish artist whose drawings are intricate, and demonstrate obsessive rendering skills. Beksinski’s drawings are intensely haunting and mysterious, somewhat nightmarish, and surreal.



What is your preferred medium?

Presently using graphite, micron tech pen, and colored pencil. Though, I have a passion for watercolor as well.

Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

I have no use for live models. Most everything I need to see is behind my eyes when I close them. If I need a finger, or an eye, or leg, I just look in the mirror or use deviant art stock photos of various models. If I need an animal image or such, I also use stock images from deviant art.

Interview with visual artist Sami Miranda

Sami Miranda is a poet, visual artist and teacher residing in Washington, DC. His poetry has been published in MiPOesias, The Chiron Review, Beltway and other print and online journals. He has read at venues that include, The Kennedy Center, The Smithsonian Museum of American Art and GALA Theater. Sami is a founding member of the Tres Raices Arts Collective and is currently creating in collaboration and conversation with artists whose work makes him want to listen, look and linger.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

There is a definite correlation between poets and artists. The creation of art whether it is the written word, a visual manifestation or movement is a process, through that process we are all seeking to create questions for the viewer, the reader or ourselves. Some may be creating questions that are purely about aesthetics while others are looking to cause us to question our roles, purpose and the path we are on. Being a visual artist and a poet I realize that regardless of the art-form I choose to work in, the work is forcing me to see and not just look. It is causing me to try and define what I see and figure out what my relationship with it should be.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

A lot of my poetry in the last year has been in conversation with the visual work of Washington, DC artists. These artists include, Lazaro Batista (painter) and Francisco Rosario (photographer) whose art is about narrating stories of survival and work. I have also had a chance to develop poems in conversation with work hanging in the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, pieces such as Pepon Osorio¹s El Chandelier and Jesus Moroles¹ Granite Weaving. The opportunity to read these poems alongside musicians added another layer to the conversation as words allowed bass, guitar, drums and turntables to improvise their own interpretation of the artwork, often
in a setting where listeners were viewing the work itself.


If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

If I were to pick an artist to represent my work it would have to be an artist who would participate in a conversation where both our work would be influenced by the process. That being said many of the artists I would choose are in the DC metropolitan area or nearby urban centers such as Baltimore and Philadelphia, and include artists like sculptors Wilfredo Valladares and Jong Sun ³Jay² Lee, video artists Zulma Aguiar and Alberto Roblest, electronica musician Yoko K. and painter Roger Chavez.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

Considering the extent to which the internet has become an often much more accessible vehicle than print I would say that each has its appeal. I enjoy the way online publications allow for the possibility of a multimedia presentation of the work and also always look forward to holding a book or journal that I can physically flip through.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I would definitely submit to a publisher who was using a blog for their publication. Blogs have become an important way to communicate ideas and create conversations between the blogger, the subject matter featured on the blog and the reader. I see blogs as an avenue that would allow for a greater audience as well as an opportunity for the author to see the interactions that others are having with his/her work through the comments posted.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

As a visual artist aesthetics are important to me, and a publisher¹s aesthetic is something I would take into consideration, but I would then have to balance that with circulation and the quality of work published. It¹s nice to be pretty but if you've got no substance, so people just look and keep walking, what¹s it really matter.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

There have been a few poems in the last year that have made me wish I had written them, and they came from one of three places; Tim Seibles, Aracelis Girmay or young people in writing workshops between the ages of 10 and 17.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

I am currently working a manuscript that is a collection of poems in conversation with music, photographs and paintings by artists and musicians residing in the Washington, DC metropolitan area as well as those musicians whose music are part of a history that ties me to Puerto Rico and the Bronx.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

I would love to see folks like Kyle Dargan, Fred Joiner, Naomi Ayala and Ernesto Mercer featured in Oranges and Sardines, they are strong voices and show what DC has to share with the rest of the country.

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Oranges & Sardines Issue 3, Winter 2008

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Interview with poet Ricky Garni

Ricky Garni is a writer and illustrator living in Carrboro, North Carolina. He has many illustrations and poems available online as well as his compilation MAKE IT WAVY. Recently when he went to the dentist, the dentist said, “Whoa Doggie!” when Mr. Garni opened his mouth. Dentists in the south often say “Whoa Doggie” when their patients open their mouths.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I have two pieces that I recently finished: MY FIFTEEN FAVORITE PRESIDENTS. I devote about one paragraph per President and they are just little ditties that discuss things like the wispy hair of John Tyler and James Polk’s wife’s funny middle name. I tried to avoid the obvious Presidents but I ended up having to include Lincoln, but decided that I would make that one a little more serious than the other ones: Lincoln is turning over in bed and wondering if anyone will ever give him a real kiss again. That one was perhaps more real than the rest.

The other piece is called CHRISTINE, and that’s a 74 line prose poem (over 74 pages) that regards the death of Christine Chubbuck–the television journalist who shot herself on camera during a newscast in Sarasota, Florida during the 1970’s. I was obsessed with her for a short while and wanted to write something–looking at the only available clip of her on air (it lasts less than 10 seconds) and reading her story, she projected a great confidence and beauty and intelligence. But she was 29 years old, had never had a boyfriend, and was exceedingly lonely. I imagine that she is not that different from many other people (other than perhaps how she chose to end her unhappiness) but that is always why I found her so heartbreaking. Certainly, no one expected her to do what she did or somebody would have stopped her, somehow (although is that possible?) – still, I think that many people feel that level of despair all the time, and it travels with them on their shoulders like a heavy ghost.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

More often I am inspired by ancient advertising or even more often by advertising or illustration from the years of my childhood (late ‘50’s, early ‘60’s) or obsolete products or jargon, like KELP-A-MALT (don’t ask!) or the TOSHIBA PORTA-CORDER. It was a matter both of style and content. Old NOXZEMA and UNIROYAL ads, WRANGER JEANS and SMIRNOFF VODKA, along with ‘50’s POPULAR MECHANICS magazines and TRUE ROMANCES from the 1920’s–they are all so wonderful. And old TV GUIDES. Did you know that it used to give plot descriptions of cartoons back in the ‘50’s?

As for paintings, usually I am inspired by paintings I like, not love. In fact, when I write about paintings, I tend to avoid ones of great pathos that move me in a deeply emotional way. I find it too demanding, or perhaps more honestly, too tiny a perch to stand on or leap from or fall down off of–much in the same way that I rarely write about death, or children, or illness, at least overtly–too difficult.

Shortly after my father died, for example, I thought I should write about it, and I ended up writing two poems: one about a boy scout lighting himself on fire and another about a painting of a woman admired by the Mafia. Nothing about Dad. After my mother died, I wrote an entire little book on my clothes, including a nice passage about my Hawaiian shirt and a polka dot bow tie and for some reason a chihuahua-but nothing about my mother or her clothes. I think that my parents would have like these pieces, but they weren’t about them. I can’t seem to do it. Maybe I can’t write about them, but I can write about things that they might have enjoyed reading.

As for paintings, perhaps I can only write about paintings that I want to love more than I do. And so I tend to look for works that simply have an element I can focus upon, or perhaps at times an element that shouldn’t be there in the first place, or perhaps even a detail that just seems terribly wrong and jiggly or something that is just plain curious. If I am lucky, I will land upon an entire work that is out of place with itself, and then, of course, the sky’s the limit, if I am feeling happy and excited about doing something.

I will give you an example of a few works that I have written about: Paul Klee’s SENECIO, Yves Klein’s 1KB79, Gustave Courbet’s BONJOUR MONSIEUR COURBET (although I almost LOVE this one – even the title! Imagine naming a poem BONJOUR MONSIEUR GARNI if you, the author, were Monsieur Garni!) But something like GUERNICA, or Goya’s MARIA TERESA or the woodcuts of Gustave Doré? Oh no, I could never.

No way.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I have had to change my response to this question many times. I believe I misunderstood it at first, perhaps intentionally. My initial response was a catalogue of all the artists I adore: Henry Darger, David McKean, Margaret Kilgallen, Peter Ciccariello (his collages, for a cover perhaps), Jason Sho Green (who is young, I think, but seems capable of doing almost anything) and Jack Kirby / Gene Colan (who first drew the Silver Surfer and Daredevil, respectively)–imagine that.

The problem is that most of these artists are really amazing don’t seem to have much to do with the kind of stuff I do and most of them are gone now. And frankly, I would be too embarrassed to ask, at least in person. I would love to ask Ernest H. Shepard, who illustrated WINNIE THE POOH, in my prayers. I am not sure if anyone draws like him anymore, but I would love to find someone who does.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

A little bit. Well: sometimes. And I will stop myself if I realize that I am barking up a terribly wrong tree. And sometimes I won’t, just because I am somewhat immature. And many times I cannot resist a publication’s name. In fact, if I have to keep being honest, I will say that the publications that I submit to relentlessly (meaning, regardless of their consistent disinterest in what I write) are those with wonderful names: SHAMPOO, MALLEABLE JANGLE, XAXX, CAN WE HAVE OUR BALL BACK?, ZAFUSY, SWINK, SUGAR MULE, and of course, ORANGES AND SARDINES!

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication?

Yep.

And if so, why?

I once submitted a sweet little sort of ode or appreciation of my sweet elderly neighbors to the now defunct THE QUARTERLY, Gordon Lish, publisher. When it was accepted I told my neighbors–unfortunately before I spoke with The Q. When I did, I asked them about their notations on my piece. I remember saying, “I can’t quite understand these edits – it almost looks like you want me to cut out all but the first two and final lines of this 33 line poem.” When they told me that I was correct, I asked them: “But what if I don’t want to do that?” And they replied, “Well, you don’t HAVE to be published in The Quarterly.” And so I caved in. I wanted to be published by THE QUARTERLY. (Since then, though, I have discovered that my Gordon Lish story was rather tame and mild, at least compared to some people–Carole Maso comes right to mind.)

When the poem came out I was too embarrassed to mention it to my neighbors. I just kind of dropped the whole thing.

Here’s the Quarterly poem:

greetings from the black forest and the bavarian alps!
writes ed, and his wife, missy, from germany, lüftpost.
welcome home, ed

It’s missing some nice things about wasser and schwarzwaldgrüß and kinder and a few other things in the ghost passages this way. There was also a publication in the ‘80’s that claimed that they could tell that I was a gentleman escort to the poetry stars by the style of my work, a comment which I found really amazing and pretty depressing, too. I was about 19 at the time. They didn’t use the term ‘gentleman escort’ though. They weren’t nice, and it was pretty mean, and I think that most of their stuff was vaguely Communisty and none of mine was at all, besides being not very good to boot and very naïve at the time.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

I always hate going to the barber because it means looking at yourself at the mirror for a long time. I don’t think that I would want someone standing at my tombstone for very long for the same reason – I guess I don’t enjoy looking at myself, and so I definitely don’t want anyone else to do it (for very long.) And so, a full poem is fine: it would just have to be a short one. Or, if I were afraid of being lonely, I would ask that something like THE ODYSSEY be put on my tombstone, so I would have company for a long time, or at least people who would keep coming back. If I were less selfish, I think I would like to leave just a short thought that made the passerby feel a little better for being there. I haven’t thought about this very much, but maybe something like this one, by James Tate?

Goodtime Jesus

Jesus got up one day a little later than usual. He had been dreaming
so deep there was nothing left in his head. What was it?
A nightmare, dead bodies walking all around him, eyes rolled
back, skin falling off. But he wasn’t afraid of that. It was a beautiful
day. How ‘bout some coffee? Don’t mind if I do. Take a little
ride on my donkey, I love that donkey. Hell, I love everybody.

What is your poetic statement?

The inventor of the Ramen Noodle, Momofuku Ando, once said: “Mankind is Noodlekind.” I think that pretty much reflects my poetic aesthetic.

Would you record one of your poems and send it in to me (mp3)?

I did, Didi! Well, actually, I didn’t. I tried to do it from a golf resort (I don’t play) in Marietta, Georgia using a digital recorder and my son recited the piece (he was 8 at the time so I had to spell a few words like for him phonetically.) Unfortunately, golf resorts can be really loud and so we tried to record it in the closet and we failed and so I never did. But your very kind MIPOESIAS people recorded it for me, which I appreciate very much. Still, if you would like for me to try again, I would love to.

What question would you ask yourself in this interview?

“Why do you do it?”

I think that would be the question I would want to ask everybody. I don’t mean for it to sound pompous–it’s just something that interests me, and I don’t think I have ever read a satisfactory answer yet. I am not even sure that there is one, really, but it’s nice to keep looking for them.

Interview with artist Austin Maloney

Austin Maloney classically trained artist living and working in the Pacific Northwest. After learning the basics from Judy Morris; He spent two years studying classical academic methods with Semyon Bilmes of the Ashland Academy of Art , then continued refining his style and technique on His own. He paints exclusively in Oils and uses Alla Prima painting techniques.

Interview

Why did you become an artist?

I began drawing and painting as a form of recreation. As I've grown and matured as an artist my work has become more of a creative expression. The lines have become less important and the brushstrokes have increased in importance.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Although I paint still lifes and landscape, I will always be captivated by the human face. The forms, expresssions, and subtleties just beg to be captured in paint.

What is your preferred medium?

I began with pencil, hten moved to watercolor, then gouache; But when I discovered Oil Paint I was hooked. Oil is the only medium for me.
Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Not Currently, All of my sales are direct.

If you had a gallery, besides your own work, which artist/s would you have displayed?

Mick Mcginty, Dave Darrow, Todd Bonita, David Kilpatrick, and Karin Jurick are all favorites of mine and I would love to have their work in my gallery.

Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

I have nothing but problems, finding models to pose for me.

What have you noticed has been the biggest change in the art scene in the last five years?

The resurgence of realism comes to mind, And I couldn't be happier. I feel it occupies an important place in art, and it's neglect for years was quite a shame.

Besides your art, whose art should collectors keep an eye out for?

Mick Mcginty. He's not extremely well known but his work is wonderful and I feel he is going places.

What is your secret weapon?

Robert Simmons Titanium flats, I use them for practically everything.

Interview with poet Donora Hillard

Donora Hillard is the author of Romance (Maverick Duck Press, 2008), Bone Cages (BlazeVox [books], 2007), and Parapherna (dancing girl press, 2006). Her fiction, lyric memoir, and poetry have appeared in NANO Fiction, Pebble Lake Review, Segue, and elsewhere. She recently completed a poetry manuscript called Theology of the Body, a sample of which is available from Gold Wake Press as an e-book entitled Exhibition.

Interview:

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I'm currently polishing a poetry collection entitled Theology of the Body, which is a feminist response to the lectures of Pope John Paul II. I'm also collaborating on a one-act with my Sean Kilpatrick, whose tongue touches his teeth when he laughs.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Actually, my entire M.F.A. thesis was partly based on Rene Magritte's The Six Elements, which I first saw at the Philadelphia Museum of Art along with Marcel Duchamp's Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas. The Magritte painting is divided into six sections, one of which encases a female body. The Duchamp installation includes a nude female form lying on a bed of twigs with a gas lamp in her hand and a waterfall in the distance. It's the most beautiful work of art I've ever seen. My thesis was a lyric memoir entitled Bone Cages; BlazeVox [books] released it as an e-book early last year. It was composed of interlocking vignettes --similar to the layout of the Magritte -- and dealt with the female body as well. I structured it that way to express that even as we try to break our lives into segments, everything eventually bleeds over.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I would probably pick the conceptual artist Jenny Holzer to represent one of my poems. Her work mainly focuses on the use of ideas and words in public spaces. One of her Truisms, PROTECT ME FROM WHAT I WANT, appeared on a massive LED billboard in Times Square in 1982 (when I was born). It’s tattooed across my right shoulder blade.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

I absolutely consider the aesthetics of a publisher -- I don't see how anyone couldn't -- but I don’t forcibly alter my work prior to submitting expressly to fit a publication’s needs.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

I've never regretted submitting to a specific publication, but I do wince at some of what I put out there when I was eighteen or nineteen. I often think that many young writers submit their work before they’re ready, though "ready" differs for everyone.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

I once saw another Holzer piece that was ten lines inscribed on what I believe was a real tombstone. I'm calling it a poem. It read:

I DON’T WAIT

I WON’T ASK YOU

I CAN’T TELL YOU

I LIE

I AM CRYING HARD

THERE WAS BLOOD

NO ONE TOLD ME

NO ONE KNEW

MY MOTHER KNOWS

I FORGET YOUR NAME


What is your poetic statement?

I’m opposed to the idea that individuals should pledge allegiance to any one thing, but I know I’m not alone or special in that regard. My poetic statement changes according to what I'm working on. Theology of the Body, for instance, contains poems made of lines taken from other sources and rearranged to show the ludicrousness of certain institutions.

What question would you ask yourself in this interview?

Which artist would you leave your husband for?

What is the answer?

The filmmaker and writer Catherine Breillat.

Interview with artist Karen Yee

Interview

Why did you become an artist?

I have always been an artist. I have always had the need to create something, whether in drawing, crafting, needlework or painting.

When I was a child, I watched my mother paint with oils, and wanted to do so myself, but somehow never got around to trying, until 2003. At that time I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and felt my looming mortality. I wanted to leave a legacy of myself to my two daughters, and felt that the time was now or never. I took a painting workshop through the local parks and recreations department. I was hooked, as they say. After that I painted at my kitchen table for a few years, until I renovated the girls' outgrown playhouse (A free standing structure in our backyard with a foundation, insulation and electricity) into a working studio.

p.s. I am now 5 years cancer free, and still painting!

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

I would say there are recurring themes in my work, including a love of music, my children and family, and animals.

What is your preferred medium?

These days I paint with oils and acrylics, usually on canvas.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

I attend many summer art fairs and festivals, and right now I have artwork in the Walker Gallery at the Palos Verdes Art Center. Next year my art will be on display at The Distinctive Edge Gallery in San Pedro, in addition to revolving exhibits at the El Segundo Public Library and the Torrance Art Museum.

If you had a gallery, besides your own work, which artist/s would you have displayed?

If I had my own gallery, I would love to carry work from Richard Yee (my husband - a marvelous photographer), Paul Mellender, Bart McCoy, Christopher Pew, and too many others to list.


Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

I use my two daughters frequently as my models. I have also used their friends, and other family members, so at this time I would have to say no.

What is your secret weapon?

I try to capture something universal in my portraits, something that will strike a chord in the viewer, even if the person I've painted is unknown to them.

Karen Yee was born into an artistic environment. Her mother painted with oils when Karen was a small child, and through her mother's passion, was surrounded by fine art. Karen has explored several types of artistic expression, but she didn't discover the joy of painting with oils herself until much later in life, now one of her favorite mediums, along with acrylics. Her art has won many awards at juried exhibitions, and she is garnering recognition and acclaim. The main themes of her art focus on the joy of her family and her love of music, yet her style is ever developing.

Ms. Yee lives in El Segundo with her husband and two daughters. She is a member of the El Segundo Art Association , the Palos Verdes Art Center, the Redondo Beach Art Group and a board member for the Torrance Artists' Guild.

Interview with poet Barry Schwabsky

Barry Schwabsky is an American poet and art critic living in London. His criticism appears regularly in Artforum, The Nation, and other publications. His book Opera: Poems 1981-2002 is published by Meritage Press, and a new collection of poems, Book Left Open in the Rain, is forthcoming from Black Square Editions.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

My current project has the working title “The Abandoned Poems.” I have asked a number of poets whose work I admire to give me poems that they have not completed, that they have given up on, that they have abandoned, and I am working to finish them. It’s been kind of mind-blowing. So far I’ve done poems by Kasey Mohammad, Eileen Tabios, Geoffrey Young, Amy King, Catherine Wagner, Kevin Killian, Simon Smith, and Richard Hell, but there are more to go including further poems by some of the same people.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Despite or because of the fact that I am an art critic, very few. In the mid-‘80s I wrote a poem called “Archie’s Parlor” in reaction to a painting by Archie Rand called Parlor, which in fact hung in my parlor. More recently I wrote a poem inspired by Howard Hodgkin painting but I won’t say which poem. Of course, I’ve done a number of collaborations with painters on limited edition livres d’artiste and the like, and those have been inspiring but it’s a different sort of inspiration, I think, from what you are asking about, though the closest would probably be a book—not a limited edition but something very simple and straightforward—with the Italian painter Maria Morganti. The book showed a sequences of photographs documenting the changes a small painting went through day by day as she worked on it, and this led me to write a poem in several parts with the conceit that each section was a revision of the previous one—“Diary of a Poem.” In a different way, the “Abandoned Poems” I mentioned before was inspired by the Israeli painter Tsibi Geva. One of the paintings he showed me was one that had been on a canvas that the painter in the studio next door was throwing away because the painting hadn’t worked out. Tsibi asked her if he could take it and she agreed. He made it into a painting of his own, of course, but something of hers was still visible in it as well. When I heard this story, something clicked in my mind: It suggested a solution to a problem I’d been dwelling on for some time.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

No one represents them in a way that more closely resembles my thought than is already the case, so any artist who wanted to represent them would be free to do so in his or her own way. I wouldn’t choose any one as the closest to my thought—not even my wife, Carol Szymanski, who is an artist and is the constant pole star of that thought.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Of course! The two essential things about a press are their “list”—the company you’d be keeping by being published there—and the aesthetics of their presentation. That’s why I’m so happy my new collection, Book Left Open in the Rain, is being published by Black Square Editions. They are tops on both counts.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

I’ve regretting submitting my work to some publications that, in my view, turned out not to treat the work with respect. At the most elementary level, there have been publications that did not even respond, despite being supplied with the proverbial SASE. Shameful. But I’m not naming names.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

I hope to have no tombstone.

What is your poetic statement?

My poems are to the listener. You know who you are.

What question would you ask yourself in this interview?

There are so many questions I’d like to ask the poets. One would be, “Which poem is the poem? That is, which poem represents the ideal type to which all other poems more or less aspire?”

What is the answer?

“They flee from me that some time did me seek” by Sir Thomas Wyatt.

Interview with artist Duane Kirby Jensen

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

I have always been an artist—someone with the need to create. Other things over the years have tired to lure and seduce me, but in the end it is all about painting and writing. I am either painting something tangible or I am paint images within the readers mind.

It also helped to grow up in an artistic family. My grandmother painted as did my great aunt. My great uncle was a master carver and scratch board artist. My mother is a photographer/painter/instillationist/multi-meadeist. Creativity is in my blood.

What is your inspiration?

Truth. Truth of the moment. Truth of feeling. I want to capture an individuals moment the way a filmmaker would. I think of my paintings as cinematic stills. With each brush stroke, I am creating one frame of a biographical film. Within my mind I create a whole back-story about my subject that gives richness to their life that I try to evoke in each painting. I want people to view the subjects, as if they were eaves dropping on a moment of inner dialogue. My primary tool is body language. I love the angles of people’s bodies, the sharp lines of noses, necks, jaw line and the flow of hair as it cascades. It reveals everything about a character. As I paint, I think in terms of film. The core of the image I am painting is what the camera lens sees. I then tilt the lens to whatever angle will enhance the particular mood I am trying to capture.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

"The Beauty of Loss and Longing." I am the voyeur who captures people’s inner moments, those quiet times when they do not believe that anyone is watching. I strip away the mask to see their inner soul. I want to touch each of the emotions which reside there. To feel the turmoil, understand the agony, loose myself within the isolation, become excited as my flesh burns from desire, have my eyes filled with tears from the sensation of sheer joy, or fall to my knees under the weight of heart break. I look inside the true mind where sexuality is allowed to run wild, unchained by puritan morals and social repression. Then, I step back and see how it emerges through the filters of societal guilt. I relish lush color that can cohabit with the darkness within a subject. An intimate dance between bright light, and deep darkness, which creates a sense of perspective that, may tilt out of time and space.

Even when I paint groups of people, each subject possesses a sense of isolation. In my pursuit of isolation and the individuals interaction with it, I feel a kinship with my favorite artist, Edward Hopper.

I rarely paint happiness, because ‘happy’ just is. In pursuing loss, which includes the desire to have what one has never possessed, real individual emotions can be tasted. The viewer can tap into their own sense-memory and relive those times that bring an ache into their physical being—thus adding a further dimension to a painting.

What is your preferred medium?

Ink. More precisely FW Acrylic Artists’ Ink. I like how they flow off my brush. I am in sync with ink, as if we were dance partners.

Earlier this year, while painting four large canvas, I did take a break from inks. For those paintings I used Golden Acrylics. They have a lush and cream texture that create a different tactile experience. The difference between inks and other pigments is best described by another dance metaphor. My dance with inks is kin to dancing with Martha Graham. With acrylics and other mediums, a waltz.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Not at this time. My art does not have a Northwest flavor that makes gallery owns leap up and say "Let me give you a show."

The advantage of the internet is that it allows artists who are locked out, or in the very long gallery lines to get their work into public view. In the past few years I have had a good many sales. All arising from people who viewed my work on my myspace site (Myspace.com/threefrogsswimming).

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

There are a number of artists whose work I am always eager to see: Lois Silver (Seattle, WA), Maria De Compos (France), and Luna Hal (Italy). There work never fails to captivate me.

What is your next painting going to be?

Each time I sit down before a pad of watercolor paper or canvas, a thousand possible ideas slip through my mind. Each one screaming to be next.

Since June I have been exploring two different lines of thought. The "What if" and "Unbound" series. During the previous three years, I would characterize my paintings as tight—tight in the way that helped capture the tension of a person looking inward. The subjects were also geometrically tight, each subjects that I sketched was spot on.

I began the ‘Unbound Series’ after I had been ill for three weeks, unable to paint. I needed to let loose with broad strokes—hence the used of unbound in the title. Each starts as a charcoal drawing, a medium I had not used in twenty years. I felt invigorated by the use of a dozen or so strong lines. Then I added inks, watched how they interacted with the charcoal. These paintings are looser stylistically and emotionally. They also use a larger brush as opposed to the 1/8th angled brush I used on most of my older paintings.

The "What If..." series is my environmentalist statement. These painting look at the world as the water fades away or when it has finally disappeared. All that is left is emptiness. These paintings have little to no sketching—just a free flow of pigments covering the landscape.

There is also the possibility of a new project stealing time from the others. I have been planing on tearing up one of my paintings into small pieces then incorporating them into a new painting with a collage element. Ideas for this project have been percolating for months. Its birth could happen tomorrow or a dozen weeks from now. With each day that passes, the broader the project might become.

What is your secret weapon?

Fearlessness. I am not hemmed in by cultural or religious restraints. I trust my brush to speak the language of my imagination.

Duane Kirby Jensen lives in Everett Washington. He has a degree in Political Science. In the 1990’s he published Everett Independent Voice and Mill Town Poetry Magazine, owned and operated a art gallery and coordinated the Milltown Poets Open-mic. In 2000’s he has focused on painting and poetry. His work can be viewed on his web page: myspace.com/threefrogsswimming

Interview with poet Lori Williams

Lori Williams lives and works in NYC. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and anthologies, including Snow Monkey, Big City Lit, The Avatar Review, The New Zoo Poetry Review, The Smoking Poet, Melic Review, Antipatico, Miller's Pond, Wicked Alice and The Toronto Quarterly. She hopes to publish a book of her poetry one day soon.




Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

Well, I am working on reading in public! I just did my first reading last week, and afterwards I kicked myself for not doing it years ago. I had, or thought I had, stage fright, but I did great (no shaking hands!) and felt pretty comfortable up there. Got many great reactions after, and I am being featured for the Bowery Poetry Club in October. So.. my project is reading much more and eventually working on a book.

Have any of your poems been inspired by a painting?

Yes, several. Most of the time I write something and then find a painting to go with it. But I wrote "Never Mind Monet" after seeing a painting of Monet's water lilies, my favorite flower. I remembered being in a canoe on Lake Luzurne as a child and being amazed at those lilies. The poem just wrote itself.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

It would be Joy Frangiosa, a good friend who I met on myspace. She is a photographer, sculptor, and does something called "assemblages", which I never saw before I met her. It's hard to explain in words what an assemblage is. An eclectic grouping of artifacts that make a statement, maybe? You have to check it out yourself at her website: www.myspace.com/joyfrangiosaartist

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes. I always read previous issues and take a long look around before deciding to submit. We are judged by the friends we keep (or something like that), and I would not want to have my poems anywhere I'd be ashamed of.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

Not really. Maybe years ago, submitting to very picky journals like Rattle, knowing they wouldn't take my work, but hoping anyway. Gave me the impetus to learn more and write better poems.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

Oh, definitely it would be a this:

Elegy For The Not Famous Poet
"someone, I tell you, will remember us" - Sappho

As we reduce to root and rock,
we speak there, still -- recite with dusty breath
food for worms, old lovers, the syncrony
in death
look up! at the tree above the stone,
see green turn to brown in a blink,
then blink again, watch peaches grow.
The sun once a sword that flamed our belly
now leaves us to bone. Don't cry,
listen for the poppies that burst
through the earth. You can remember us,
what we meant. You have that.

What is your poetic statement?

I don't think I am an accompished enough poet to answer that. I just write because I have no choice.

Interview with artist Jason Rudolph Pena

Born and raised in the Valley of the Sun, this self taught artist and Phoenix native made a name for himself across Arizona with his live performance paintings at local clubs, concerts, galleries, private parties, and warehouses. Inspired by grace, beauty, music and film, jasonrudolphpena's style has been labeled by art critics as Urban Noir Romanticism. A perfect description for his modern-styled portraiture.

Interview

Why did you become an artist?

It's my therapy. Life becomes beautiful when I'm painting. My aggresion and sadness seems to disappear when I'm creating. All my anxiety and fears don't exist when I paint. It's the only time I feel normal.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Yes. Women are the one recurring theme. There's nothing more beautiful or graceful than a woman.

What is your preferred medium?

I prefer to work with acrylics because the fast drying time allows me to create a lot of pieces in a short amount of time.


Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Yes. I have over 40 pieces available in the Kollectiv gallery out of Phoenix, AZ.
Kollectiv
815 N 2nd St.
Phoenix, AZ 85004

If you had a gallery, besides your own work which artist/s would you have displayed?

Glen Alen. He is the most under rated artist today. He is ahead of his time. You'd be a fool not to own any of his work.

Moises. He is the most original, creative and versatile Chicano artist out there today. Eveything he creates is fun to look at and fun to absorb.

Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

No, I don't have a problem finding models. In fact, my inbox is flooded with volunteers who desperately want to be the subject of the next painting. I tend to avoid painting people who want me to choose them. It usually turns into a big uncomfortable disaster and I hate being put in that position. I like to choose my models, I don't like when they choose me.

What is your secret weapon?

Water. A lot of people ask me what kind of medium I mix with my paints to make them look the way they do. I use water. Nature's medium.

Interview with artist Chris Leavens

A Pennsylvania native, Chris Leavens attended and graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a degree in Film and Video. In the late 90s, Chris moved to the Los Angeles area and began working as a graphic designer for both video and print. His work has appeared in commercials, on television, and in motion pictures (one of which, the award-winning documentary I Don’t Know Jack, he also directed). More recently, Chris has been focusing on illustration and design for print, creating his own artwork and working on educational books and materials for elementary-school children. He currently lives with his wife, Adriana, in Burbank, CA.

More information and artwork: www.chrisleavens.com

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

Ever since I was a kid, I've loved drawing. Good grades came pretty easy for me, so in my downtime, I doodled. As long as I got A's, no one seemed to care. I didn't think I was that good until I went to college and took a couple art classes. I always thought of real art as something very serious, but nearly everything I wanted to do was heavily tinged with humor. My teachers loved my work and encouraged me to follow my instincts. I remember telling a high-school friend of mine, "Hey, you know all that stuff we're into? It's considered art!?" It really knocked down a barrier for me.

What is your inspiration?

I guess I just feel better when I'm creating something -- anything. Being idle has a tendency to push me into a depressive funk. Also, I've got a pretty wild imagination and I think exercising it is what's best for everyone within a five-mile radius of me.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Anthropomorphism, birds, buildings, mountains, monsters, and hapless destruction. I guess that's more than one. Maybe I should have just answered, "No."

What is your preferred medium?

Vector art using Adobe Illustrator. I've also been painting a little with acrylics lately, but I think I'm a much better digital artist than I am a traditional artist.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Yep. My work's on display at the Flintridge Bookstore in La Canada, California.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

Commander Mark AKA Mark Kistler. When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my older brother, Matt and I stumbled upon a PBS television show called "Secret City." It was a mere fifteen minutes long and where we grew up in rural east-central Pennsylvania, it seemed to air sporadically. The show consisted of Commander Mark teaching art lessons with a sci-fi flavor, which really appealed to Matt and me because we loved anything with robots or spaceships involved. There are a few drawing habits I picked up from Commander Mark that stick with me to this day. He's awesome.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Tim Biskup. I love his use of color and the way he melds modernist illustration with more serious art. My wife and I were lucky enough to meet him once and we were please to discover that he's not only a great artist, but a nice guy as well.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

René Magritte. I'd have to go back in time and I'm sure he'd abstract me or put a giant piece of food where my head was supposed to be. I wouldn't want it any other way.

What is your next painting going to be?

Not sure about a painting, but my next vector art piece is going to incorporate an anthropomorphic mountain and a celestial body that doubles as a lamp. I'm not sure if it'll be a sun or a moon, but it'll definitely have one of those pull-string on/off switches.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

I didn't have any real formal training, just a few classes. I've got mixed feelings on formal training. On one hand, I think it can really breed cynicism and wear you down, while on the other hand, I think regular practice and training in classic methods can only make an artist stronger. I know a lot of horribly jaded artists who studied art, though, and I'm really glad I'm not like them.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

My wife, but she's not really a thing (she's more properly classified as a person). She's extraordinarily supportive and helpful. She's also my biggest fan.

As for a real "thing," I'd have to say my glasses and contact lenses. My vision sucks and I need corrective lenses of some variety. If the world as we know it ended tomorrow, I'd be kicking myself for not getting the laser-eye surgery.

Interview with poet Evie Shockley

Evie Shockley is the author of a half-red sea (2006) and two chapbooks, The Gorgon Goddess (2001) and 31 words * prose poems (2007). She is currently co-guest-editing jubilat (with Cathy Park Hong). She teaches African American literature and creative writing at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, but is currently on a research leave supported by the ACLS.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project/s you are currently working on.

I'm hard at work on a critical book that looks at the intersection between race and formal innovation in African American poetry. It's an attempt to reconsider the concept of "black aesthetics" popularized in the 1960s and 1970s, during the Black Arts Movement -- both to account for other kinds of black aesthetics that have operated throughout the 20th century and to reckon with the ongoing, but under acknowledged influence of the versions of black aesthetics that have been most closely associated with the Movement. On other fronts, I'm working on a series of 31-word prose poems. They've been coming to me for a couple years now.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Definitely. I've written poems in response to paintings by Romare Beardon, Frederick Brown, and André Fougeron, among others. In fact, I'm happy to say that one of my ekphrastic poems, "Riven," which responds to Frida Kahlo's "Broken Column," was recently nominated for inclusion in this year's Best of the Net Anthology by a journal called The Dead Mule. (Thank you, Mule, and thank you, Frida Kahlo!)

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I think I might pick different artists depending upon the specific poem. But the greatest honor and thrill I could imagine, in terms of having a living artist represent my poetry in a visual medium? That artist would have to be Elizabeth Catlett. If any of your readers are unfamiliar with her powerful engravings, sculptures, and prints, they should start googling now. Start with one of her best-known pieces: "The Sharecropper."

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Absolutely. In terms of the publisher's visual aesthetics, the layout, color schemes, readability, size, paper quality or screen graphics, etc., etc., matter to me a great deal – in books/chapbooks more than journals/anthologies, perhaps, but those elements are important in any case. In terms of the publisher's literary aesthetics, I try to be efficient about submissions, which means thinking about which of my poems might be a good fit for a particular publication. Not only does that effort increase my chances of getting an acceptance, but it means that the poems will be more likely to find their "ideal readers." Still, I must admit that sometimes I like to see if I can push a publication's boundaries, precisely in hopes of reaching readers who normally wouldn't be exposed to some of the kinds of work I do!

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

Once or twice. In one case I can think of, the problem related to the above question – the publication was not able to accommodate the formatting of a poem, with the result that the poem was incomprehensible. In another case, the publication held a few of my poems for a number of years while it languished for lack of funding, editorial transitions, and lack of support generally.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

I'm not planning on having a tombstone. But at the party celebrating my transition, I hope someone will read Lucille Clifton's fabulous (untitled) poem that ends: "come celebrate / with me that everyday / something has tried to kill me / and has failed."

What is your poetic statement?

In my poems, I try to live up to what Audre Lorde said about poetry – she called it (this is deeply paraphrased) the language in which we can think things that haven't been thought. I work with juxtaposition, ambiguity, images, sound, allusion, etymology, intertextuality, culture, history, and biography – with the micro and macro elements of language – to enable imagination and intellect to express ideas and emotions in ways that might generate new thinking. I also love to make space for pleasure in my poems – often even in the poems that deal with hard, miserable, enraging issues. Poetry should make room for growth and change – in knowledge, understanding, social conditions, personal relations, individual behavior, societal structure, capacity for empathy, consciousness . . . Growth and change, with pleasure.

Interview with artist Cedar Lee

Cedar Lee has been a painter all her life. She studied art at Goucher College in Baltimore, MD, graduating in 2005 with highest honors. Her paintings have been purchased by collectors and featured in solo and group exhibitions since she was a teenager. She sold her first painting at age twelve and now has work in private collections throughout the United States. She is represented by several art galleries.

Cedar is the oldest of five children and currently lives with her husband Kevan and their pets in Baltimore, MD. She runs her art studio from her home, where she paints vivid, dramatic landscapes and art on commission. She is actively involved in the art scene in Baltimore and the surrounding region.

Cedar's hobbies include organic gardening, reading, contra dancing, world travel, and hiking in the great outdoors. For more information about Cedar and her work, visit the artist's website: www.ArtByCedar.com

Interview

Why did you become an artist?

That question implies that there was once a time that I wasn't an artist. I have made art for as long as I can remember, so it's really been a part of my core identity my whole life.

I decided to become a professional artist because I felt such a strong calling to try it that I felt I had no choice but to put all reservations aside and dive in. Luckily, I realized at a young enough age that it was possible to find people who would pay me to make art, which is something I'd be doing anyway.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

I think there are several. There are the obvious themes which include trees, mountains, flowers, the sky, animals and people.

Then there are more abstract themes that are born of my intentions for my work and my outlook on life. I would like to think that in all of my paintings, regardless of the subject, there is a thread of happiness, wildness, and a sense of celebration or reverence for life and nature.

I sometimes get random emails from people around the world who have seen my website. I got one from France recently that said "You make me fly with these paintings." I know this is vague, but that's the recurring theme I'm going for. That elusive thing that makes people fly. (Figuratively of course.)

What is your preferred medium?

It's really a tie between oils and acrylics. I like them both equally for different reasons. Oil paint has such a nice smooth goopy texture and the colors have a unique luminescence. And acrylic paint, because of its fast drying time, allows me to work quickly and freely.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Yes, I have my work in 4 galleries right now in Maryland, North Carolina, and New Jersey. I will be expanding to galleries in other regions soon. You can see a list of galleries that sell my work here: http://artbycedar.com/representation.php

I also sell my art directly from my studio. Everything I currently have available for purchase is listed here.

If you had a gallery, besides your own work which artist/s would you have displayed?

Oh, so many. Emily Carr, J. M. W. Turner, Georgia O'Keeffe, Modigliani, Chagall, and of course Van Gogh. There are also at least 20 contemporary artists who I'm friends with online and in person who would make the cut.

Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

The only time I've actually painted live models was in art classes in college, so this doesn't really apply to me. (My portraits are done from photos.) However, if I ever wanted models to pose for me, I'm sure I have some friends who would be willing.

What is your secret weapon?

A combination of audacity, enthusiasm, and stick-to-it-iveness.

Interview with poet Andrew Demcak

Andrew Demcak is an award-winning poet who has been widely published and anthologized both in print and on-line. His latest book of poetry, Catching Tigers in Red Weather (Three Candles Press, 2007), won the Three Candles Press Open Book Award. His poems, including Young Man With iPod (Poetry Midwest, #13), are taught at Ohio State University as part of both its English 110.02 class, “The Genius and the Madman,” and in its “American Poetry Since 1945” class. His work has appeared recently in The Pebble Lake Review, Court Green, the American Poetry Journal, Juked!, and Pearl Magazine. Visit Andrew at: www.andrewdemcak.com.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Absolutely- my whole graduate thesis was based on an idea of Piet Mondrian’s: to find the pure, plastic medium, one that is endlessly recyclable, moldable. He chose pigment; I chose poetry, more specifically: the nature of the poetic “voice.” Why is it that “voice” is the only thing which can be translated from one language to another when none of the “poetry” remains? That investigation into linguistics is how I got my first Master’s degree (my second is in Library and Information Science.)

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes. In my very first book of poetry when I was 22, The Psalms (1991, Big 23 Press) the first poem is called “Les Deux Péniches.” It is based on the painting of the same name by André Dérain from 1906, which I encountered in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, LACMA. I describe 2 péniches, which are boats or barges, crossing alongside one another on the canvas in the autumn, mid-afternoon, leaf-tinted light. It is completely a sexual/emotional relationship metaphor. Such is a poem of a 22 year old.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Mondrian, without hesitation I choose him. I essentialized my work to the bare elements of language through the use of OULIPO cut-up: word and line. He essentialized painting to its primary elements, color and line.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

At first I wondered who read online publications. Then I familiarized myself with what was out there and I made a concerted effort to establish a web presence a few years back. It has paid off. I am now in the Wikipedia (someone in New Castle, UK put me in there!) and the last Google search of my name I did turned up 5,150 hits. So I have infiltrated the web and published quite a bit there. More people will see work online than will ever see the printed versions.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I have several blogs myself, but I like blogs as news disseminating tools, not publication spaces. A real website is nicer for publishing than a linear blog.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Absolutely, and no. Sometimes I send out blindly (most of the time) and when I know the person/people behind a publication and his/her/their aesthetics I send there too. For example: the American Poetry Journal. I met the editor, J. P. Dancing Bear, when he asked me to be on his radio talk show @ 91.5 KKUP to promote my book, Catching Tigers in Red Weather, which he really loved. I didn’t know anything about his publication, but because I got to meet him for the show and now I really admire his work- I submitted some poems to him and had 2 of them accepted.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I can’t remember the most recent one, but the very first poem I wish I wrote is “The Black Snake” by Mary Oliver. When I met Ms. Oliver for the first time years ago, I told her how much I loved that poem. She didn’t even talk to me about the work- she wanted to talk about when she found that black snake “looped and useless” in the road. Wait, I know, the most recent poem that I wish I wrote is “Broken Girl” by the fabulous Joan Larkin. I love this poem. It is from her second collection, A Long Sound. What a gorgeous poem about Recovery.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes. My new collection of poems is currently titled “Map of the World Largely Eaten by Mice,” which is a quote from Philip Pullman’s Golden Compass (or Northern Lights, its UK title.) I love the idea of something winnowed away almost to the point of uselessness, but with some meaning or universal truth remaining. I liked the title because my new poems are even smaller, more haiku-esque, than the pervious 12 line syllabic ones. I am also simultaneously working to complete my novel, Limboville, which I have been writing for the past 2 ½ years. Will Sally Moon ever get out of the Underworld?

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Kaya Oakes, Joan Larkin, John Vick (of Shy Fag & Adroitly Placed Word), Steve Mueske (Three Candles Press), my buddy, Richard Siken, and of course, I wouldn’t mind it.

Interview with artist Miro Sinovcic

As an artist, an art director and an architect, Miro Sinovcic has received numerous international awards, including "The Best of Show" from the Rizzoli in Milan, Italy. He is also the two-time recipient of the most prestigious Croatian art award and the Bronze Medal winner at the world's biggest book fair, in Frankfurt, Germany.

In 1985 he emigrated to the United States, where he became one of the most-sought after artists in publishing, advertising and motion pictures. His art has appeared on more than a thousand book covers, and his innovative techniques helped transform the traditional look of book illustrations into more modern treatments of color and atmosphere.

As a fine artist, Miro believes that art, at its best, is seeing life in new and exciting ways, not as rote formula. His paintings are bursting with life, energy, color and constant change. "Just a wonderful mess and a beautiful noise", as he puts it.

He has held 28 one-man exhibitions and participated in more than a hundred group exhibitions. His paintings of New York can be found in many private art collections throughout the world, and he counts many corporate clients among the Fortune 500 companies.

Art commissioned by CBS, Dow Jones, The New York Times, GM, BMW, Volvo, IBM, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, 7UP, Mountain Dew, Seagram's, Bradford Exchange, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Ballantine Books, Berkley Books, Doubleday, Harper Collins, Pocket Books, Random House.

Galleries

Anne Irwin Fine Art
Atlanta, GA

Chase Galleries
Richmond, Va
Charlotte, NC

Peter McPhee Fine Arts
Stone Harbor, NJ

Timmons Galleries
Rancho Santa Fe, CA

Wynne/Falconer Gallery
Chatam, MA

The Art Group
London, England

Galerie Mensing
Berlin, Germany

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

There is no clear answer. It is not like one morning I woke up and decided to be an artist. It has to be something bigger and deeper.

What is your inspiration?

Everything I can see with my eyes and what can touch my soul, can be inspirational. Mostly the things which are the products of humans activities: art, architecture, poetry, acting, singing...

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Cityscapes-the results of thousands years of intelligent activity.

What is your preferred medium?

Oil on canvas

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Several galleries in USA are showing my art. For the gallery list, check my blog:
http://nyframeofmind.blogspot.com/

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

As a very young talent for drawing, my dream was to be a comic artist (I even published several comics). So the most popular Croatian comic artist, Zarko Beker, had the very first influence on my art beginning.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Not only socks, but blow my head off: Sergei Bongart (died 1985), Russian-American artist



If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Salma Hayek (in the makeup of Frida Kahlo)

What is your next painting going to be?

New York City (no surprise here)

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

By education, I am an architect. Formal training in not necessary, but the problem could be the waste of too much time to find out the things in art which have been discovered centuries ago. Much easier to pick it up through formal training.


What is the one thing they can't take away from you?

My experience. Today, I know a thing or two I didn't know 40 years ago.

Interview with poet Robert Lee Brewer

Robert Lee Brewer is the editor of Writer's Market and sole contributor to the Poetic Asides blog. His poetry has been published in several print and online journals, including MEAT, Words Dance, Otoliths, and MiPOesias (Cafe Cafe Edition). He recently married poet Tammy F. Trendle (now Brewer) and has 1 stepson, 2 sons, and another little boy on the way.

Interview Questions

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I'm currently working on a lot of cool "techie" things for WritersMarket.com actually. A huge database project and a huge community add-on to the existing WritersMarket.com site. Fun stuff. Also, things are always hopping at the Poetic Asides blog. As far as my actual poetry writing, I'm always writing-writing-writing. I'm even getting a little more disciplined as far as submitting with a few acceptances recently from Otoliths (in Australia) and Barn Owl Review (in Ohio). Oh yeah, I'm also in the beginning phase of relocating to Atlanta, Georgia, after a lifetime spent in Southwestern Ohio.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Quite a few of my poems have been inspired by paintings, though none of my published poems have been. Not sure if correlation or causation is at work in that statistic. In fact, I love picking up those TASCHEN artist bio books and reading about the artists, looking at the paintings, and eventually writing like crazy. I think that goes back to when I used to spend half my Junior and Senior years in high school hanging out in art class.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I guess it would depend upon the poem, since I still write in a wide range of styles. Among my favorite all-time artists, though, are Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Frida Kahlo, Francisco Goya, and Salvador Dali. There are many, many others, though these are definitely the heavy hitters.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

I do consider the aesthetics, but this is a skill that I'm still developing. After years of reading and submitting to journals, I think I am getting better at matching up my poems with the right publications. Even the rejections are getting much nicer now than when I first start submitting.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

I try not to regret too much. Instead, I try to identify past mistakes and learn from them. If I had one, my main regret in submitting to publications is that I don't do a good enough job of matching up my poems--or that I send out poems before they're really ready. But, then again, there's usually no better motivation to revise a poem or poems than to receive a rejection.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones, which poem would go on yours?

Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself." What a gigantic tombstone that would be!

What is your poetic statement?

My poems search. And at their best, my poems play.

Interview with artist Marcus Kwame Anderson

Marcus Kwame Anderson was born in 1976 in Kingston, Jamaica and began creating art at an early age. He lives in the Albany region of upstate New York, where he teaches art, paints, draws, makes comics, and writes poetry and music. Marcus has a lot to say and art is how he is most comfortable communicating.

Interview

Why did you become an artist?

I felt compelled to do it from a young age. Compelled to express myself visually. Creating art is very therapeutic for me.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Music and musicians are themes that appear in a lot of my work. I draw a lot of inspiration from jazz, blues, reggae and hip-hop.

What is your preferred medium?

Acrylic paint on canvas.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Yes. My work is available at Kismet Gallery in Troy NY, Carmen's Cafe in Troy and Silver Birch Trading Post in Albany, NY.


If you had a gallery, besides your own work which artist/s would you have displayed?

Kara Walker, Justin Bua, Romare Bearden, and local artists Dwell and One Unit. Of course, there would be many others, but those are the ones that come to mind right now.

Do you have any problems finding models to pose for you?

Not too much. I usually use people that I know and take photographs so they don't have to pose for a long time.

What is your secret weapon?

My honesty and willingness to address social issues.

Interview with artist Mary Hillier

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

I went back to college when I was 34 years old...it became my lifeline after divorce. The plan was to get a two-year degree in liberal arts, but when I took the required art elective that put me in the art department and my new life began. The degree I earned became a visual arts degree with a specialty in painting - I’ve been working ever since.

What is your inspiration?

The unreal inspires me. Creating an artwork fulfills the part of me that sees and feels the stuff that isn’t really there. I truly am intuitive and sometimes am shocked at the prophetic aspects of what I bring to light.

Drawing and painting in the blank spots of a figure, face, or animal transforms the imagined. Unless I am working under commission, everything I do is from my head...I simply draw the shape with pencil, charcoal or wash and fill it in with lots of color... there isn’t a lot of preparation.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Woman and her creatures - specially large birds and big dawgs.

What is your preferred medium?

Acrylics on canvas or paper.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

A large body of work is now on display at Magnolia Creek & Co in Encinitas, California.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Though he is lately deceased I love Reginald Pollack’s paintings. I live with one of his black birds in my office. The fact that he is dead and has left behind a large body of work that still must be placed correctly intrigues me – makes me think of all that I will leave behind one day.

What is your next painting going to be?

Probably a Greyhound Dawg from the series of retired racers that I have been selling since 2003.

What is your secret weapon?

Patience...or perhaps I should say that I am a student-in-training, hoping to acquire it.

Born in a tiny cajun village in Louisiana, Mary Hillier graduated from an all-girl’s catholic school in Lake Charles, La. She married early, but divorced in her early 30’s. At that time she found art and her visual arts degree is from McNeese State University, also in Lake Charles.

She lived Illinois and participated in art competitions and showed in many galleries. Now, she is back in Louisiana, working hard from her home studio surrounded by art dogs...three miniature dachshunds that follow her from task to task. Her days are filled with painting, listing her art online, writing poetry and packing and shipping the sold artworks.

She calls this a perfect life.

Interview with poet Nicole Mauro

Nicole Mauro has published poetry and criticism in numerous journals. She is the author of Odes (Sardines, 2003), Dispatch (co-authored with Marci Nelligan, Dusie, 2006), and The Contortions (Dusie, 2006); and is the co-editor of an interdisciplinary book about sidewalks titled Intersection: Sidewalks and Public Space (with Marci Nelligan, Chain Arts, 2008). Her first full-length poetry collection Devoid of Ulteriors is due out from Dusie (2009.) She teaches rhetoric and writing at the University of San Francisco, and lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Patrick, and daughters Nina and Faye.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I'm working on a full-length poetry collection titled Devoid of Ulteriors(Dusie, 2009) about loss-created motive, and the obsessive rituals we undergo to "get over" it. It features lots of swearing and OCD-type behavior. I think the two are connected.

Have any of your poems ever been in spired by a painting?

Frida Kahlo's miniatures are especially haunting. She's microscopic in her portraitures of pain. She's not afraid of pain, or herself in pain--an important distinction there, though I'm unsure how to articulate it. She's all about reflection, not subjection, is totally balls-out (pardon me, Mr. Rivera) there, every piece of her, in every painting. Beautiful, wicked stuff.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

David Byrne. He's most notably the front-man of the Talking Heads, but he's also something of a multi-media impressario, working in visual, digital and performance arts. He just paired up with choreographer Twyla Tharp and they both created this post-post-modern ballet--The Catherine Wheel, I think. It's insane--in the best way. I like to think on my best days my poetry pales in comparsion (which is to say it might, for a second, be comparable).

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Poetically, yes always. Visually, it depends of certain variables. Generally, I look for quality, liberty, and a friendly face. The first two characteristics are standard. As to the last, well, if I recognize someone I know or whose work I know in a journal I'm more likely to approach it, and so, based solely on social-association (i.e. I know this person and like their work, and I know this person knows me and likes my work), send. This by-association/incestuous thinking is not fool-proof, but it does help narrow the field. It might produce the occasional mutant, but then poetry is mutation--not sure of what, but at the top of the list is linear thinking.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

Just to the ones that never respond. I wish I had a soothsayer to tell me when a publication is about to belly-up. I hate sending my stuff out to some place only to never hear anything--not a peep--ever. I'm less inclined to submit to print mags. for this reason. In my experience they tend to dry-up more often and without warning, so I'm warier of their survival. Online's where it's at.

If full poems could be placed on your tombstone which poem would go on yours?

I think Stein's "Breakfast" would work, esp. the line "A sudden slice changes the whole plate," but you'd need a whole fleet of guys to chisel the rest on the tombstone, and the possessors of her, or my, estate might object, in which case "I'll Let You Know if I Find Duende" would suffice, with props to Lorca.

What is your poetic statement?

poetry is thought "from which a compromise sound..." (Aristotle, Poetics).

Interview with poet Anny Ballardini

Anny Ballardini lives in Bolzano, Italy. She grew up in New York, lived in New Orleans, Buenos Aires, Florence. A poet, translator and interpreter (simultaneous interpreter for English, French, Italian), she teaches high school; edits Poets' Corner Fieralingue, an online poetry site; and writes a blog: Narcissus Works. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from UNO, University of New Orleans. Besides various full length publications of translations on the market, to be mentioned is her collection of poems, Opening and Closing Numbers published by Moria Editions, 2005.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I am working on several projects at the same time, as I am reading several books, while I am repainting my apartment, and looking for a publisher for my latest collection. This has been my way of living since ever. I simply try to follow my numerous lists.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Until about ten years ago I used to spend entire weeks with a brush or a pencil in my hands, and my cellar and walls are full of painted canvases of any size and any color. Poetry and painting are two arts that have often met and overlapped in my work. Not only on a creative level but also at an organizational level. I taught Art in English at the Italian Linguistic Lyceum where I work, as a journalist I reviewed art exhibits, interviewed artists (until my newspaper shut down), and as a translator I specialized in art criticism and still collaborate with museums and art galleries. The same brand new qualification I received is Master in Fine Arts, to which I add, in Creative Writing. Great part of my daily life is dedicated to visual art, its dynamics, textures, the particular philosophical jargon that characterizes it, its metaphysics and physics, its attempts and consequences. I gave up painting for mainly a couple of reasons, the actual lack of time and the mad rush to public relations that characterizes the sale of paintings in our days. If on one side I value a competitive spirit, on the other you lose me if such spirit is turned into prevarication and senseless actions. I like the game where the best wins, and you will see me applauding the best, but I look for something else when the game becomes dirty and manipulated. I'd rather work than try to persuade someone that my art is worth buying.

But going back to your question, Didi, I think that all my poems have been inspired by paintings since I have badly tried to transform into paintings my visual images and it is from these that I draw my writings.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Leonardo and Caravaggio stand out prominently, to whom I would like to add il Tintoretto, il Parmiggianino, Tiepolo, Gustave Moreau, Caspar Friedrich, Böcklin, the artists of the Blaue Reiter, the Constructivists, spatialism in all its forms, the Italian Futurists, the Impressionists, and so many more.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Rather than the aesthetics of a publisher I consider the personal entity of the same Editor. I submitted to or accepted invitations from you, Amy King, Tom Beckett, Gabriel Gudding, William Allegrezza, Eileen Tabios, Mark Young, Gregory Vincent St. Thomasino, Adam Fieled, Katia Kapovich and Philip Nikolayev, Dan Waber, Andrew Lundwall, William James Austin, Jim Rovira, Chrris Murray, Tony Tost, Ken Johnson, Gianmario Lucini, Ram Devineni and Larry Jaffe, Birgitta Jonsdottir, Lance Philips, Wolfgang Goertschacher, John Tranter and Pam Brown, Sheila Murphy, Michael Rothenberg, Karl Young, Jim Cervantes, Lucas Klein, Lorenzo Menguzzato, Jeffrey Side, Bill Lavender, Peter Thompson, the University of New Orleans, the Roger Williams University, Palacký University at Olomouc (and I am probably forgetting someone to whom I apologize), because I highly value the Editor.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

Yes, I did. It is a personal question I'd not rather go into details.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

I'd choose Ungaretti's "M'illumino d'immenso." Jessica Fiorini wears it as a tatoo on her right arm, that is why maybe this poem has come back to haunt me: I am enlightened by the immense. It is impossible to find a respectable translation, various people have tried different versions.

What is your poetic statement?

I am in search of Beauty. As I already hinted above, my notion of beauty comes with a series of other attributes, it is a demanding beauty that needs the Others but gets rid of them as soon as immoral or illegal behaviors come to surface, or it simply retracts into its Solemn Silence.

Review of Issue 1 up at NewPages

Oranges & Sardines
Volume 1 Issue 1
Summer 2008
Quarterly
Review by Camilla S. Medders

Link to the NewPages

Featuring Artists: Ethan Diehl, Marcia Molnar, Holly Picano, Cheryl Kelley, Jennifer Wildermuth, L.D. Grant, Niel Hollingsworth, Steph Chard, Jeremy Baum, Jeff Filipski and E.B. Goodale. Poems by Blake Butler, Dana King, J.P. Dancing Bear, Josh Olsen, Steffi Drewes, Matthew Hittinger, Patrick Leonard, Diana Adams and Graeme Mullen. Short story by Kirk Curnutt. Reviews by Miguel Murphy, Michael Parker, Cheryl Townsend, Courtney Campbell and Jim Knowles. Columns by Talia Reed and Caridad McCormick. Grace Cavalieri interviews Mark Doty.


Availabe at www.poetsandartists.com archives...

Interview with poet Cheryl Snell

Cheryl Snell's books include a novel, Shiva's Arms, and four collections of poetry: Flower Half Blown, Epithalamion, Samsara, and the winner of the Lopside Press 2008 Chapbook Contest, Prisoner's Dilemma. Murmuration, an electronic chapbook, has just been published by Gold Wake Press.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I'm drafting my second novel, and awaiting the publication of my first. My fourth poetry collection, Prisoner's Dilemma, is in the editing stage. That was fun to do, because I worked with my sister, Janet Snell. She did a set of drawings of rather eccentric heads for the project-- emotional, spontaneous, self-sufficient statements with an expressive life of their own. Her pictures do not tell the story of my poems, but extend meaning.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Many. I love modern art. Looking at it loosens my ability to make connections between disparate things. Did I just define a poem?

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Besides Janet? The late Ed Dugmore, an abstract expressionist who had a very lyrical side. To me, his work embodied what D. H. Lawrence called "the direct utterance from the instant whole man." I wrote a poem about his work; it would have been nice to see what he did with mine.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes. Not doing your research just irritates everyone involved.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

Recently I submitted a story to one of the big magazines. Thinking it didn't have a chance, I sim-subbed it elsewhere. By the time the first place accepted it, the second place had already published it. Oh snap!

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

Anne Sexton's "Courage".

What is your poetic statement?

I must startle myself.

Interview with poet and publisher Geoffrey Gatza

Geoffrey Gatza is the editor and Publisher of BlazeVOX [books] and the author of five books of poetry; Not So Fast Robespierre is now available from Menendez Publishing. He is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY (1993) and Daemen College, Amherst, NY (2002), and served as a U.S. Marine in the first gulf war. He lives in Kenmore, NY with his girlfriend and two cats.

Interview


Please tell our readers what project/s you are currently working on.

There is a lot going on at BlazeVOX! 20 new books will be ready soon including Eileen Tabios, Anne Waldman, Ted Greenwald and Skip Fox. The Fall issue of BlazeVOX2k8 will be out in late September. Personally I have been writing like wild fire. I finished a mss on King Arthur, Sherlock Holmes, a four part series on my home town of Kenmore, NY. I am actively pursuing a literary agent for a middle reader series, Stuns’l the clipper ship cat.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes, I did a poem series titled, Peaceable Kingdom based on the paintings of American folk painter Edward Hicks. The peaceable kingdom used symbols of the animals illustrating the quotation of Isaiah's prophecy in the Bible (Isa. 11:6)

The series of poems uses a picture and a poem matched /mismatched to a line in Isaiah. You can find it in Black Diamond Golden Boy Takes Bull.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

René François Ghislain Magritte (the Belgian surrealist artist. His work displays
an interesting concurrence of ordinary objects in an unusual context, giving astounding interpretations to familiar things.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Oh yes. I firmly believe that as a poet writing poems in my home, I have the ability to write anything I may want to explore without inflicting on anyone. But when sending out poems to a journal or for a book publication – we are content providers for a larger operation. So to match that publishing operation’s audience, which they have spent time, money and a great deal of energy to cultivate, is of great importance for the poet to understand what kind of organization you are sending to.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

This will follow up on the previous as I recently was rejected by two journals as I was encouraged to submit work, which I did, but I was unsure of the journal’s aesthetic. One brand new and another in print only and no copies readily available for me to page through. I regret this as I feel quite badly, as I have several different poem projects and what I sent was of no use to the editors. It is reassuring that I was rejected! As no one should publish what they do not think will play for their audience! Hurray on both journals!

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

What is your poetic statement?

Be relevant!

Interview with poet Chris Mansell

Chris Mansell's Love Poems appeared with Kardoorair Press in 2006. Mortifications & Lies (Kardoorair, 2005) was described as "an important book, both stylistically and thematically a ground-breaking book." Earlier work includes: Head, Heart & Stone, Redshift/Blueshift, Day Easy Sunlight Fine, The Fickle Brat, and Stalking the Rainbow. Although primarily a poet, a number of plays have been performed. She has won a number of awards and been short-listed for others. Please see: www.chrismansell.com.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

Theoretically I'm working on my New and Selected poems which Kardoorair Press expects in December or thereabouts, what I'm actually working on is a series of vispo poems which will eventually be on a dvd At the Café Sun which Interactive Digital Press will publish at some stage in the future. I'm liking these – they're like mini-opera poems – except I don't sing (there is often a strong aural component though). I like to be able to manipulate the timings and the order of presentation in a way that is not possible on the page but which keeps some of the advantages of a page poem ie you can re-view it, you can pause and read a particular line or sequence, you can turn down the sound and have a purely visual experience.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes, quite a few but the one that comes to mind is one that was being done of me by Jenni Mitchell ('Lady Gendake writes to the paiinter'). I couldn't see the painting as it emerged; all I could see was the process or the painter who seemed to be extraordinarily engaged in the task. I very much like visual art – painting and photographic – and spend a lot of time walking into them. Good ones are like good poems.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Hmmm. Good question. There have been some painters do this. The best took the meaning rather than illustrating the poem. The worst illustrated the event/action of the poem – and got it wrong. If I had my choice, I think it would be Harold Cazneaux, an Australian pictorial photographer who died in the year I was born. It's a strange choice now that I think about it because his photographs sometimes seem sentimental, but what I like is that there is always something outside of the frame, as if there is something about to happen, or which has just happened and of which you are seeing the aftermath. They are quite dynamic in that way. Other than that: Tjiturrulpa Eilleen Napaltjari or Minnie Motorcar Apwerl – not because they would paint one of my poems, but because I see in them a way of thinking that I recognise and admire. Especially Apwerl. I think really, I'd like to poem their paintings, though it would be an impossible enterprise given the cultural distance between us. I love the complexity in Apwerl's work, the layering.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes and no – it depends on their reputation otherwise. I've been totally delighted at some publications though. For example when Private arrived in the post I was very pleased because of the beautiful black and white photographs. Others have made a point of being plain – a plainness aesthetic – and I enjoy that as well. Some are a bit sad and you know no designer or visual artist has been within a whiff of them: it tends to apply to the selection of works too, so I keep away on those grounds rather on the grounds of visual aesthetic.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

No, not really. I research beforehand. There are publications which are ugly or plain, but they have good content and I'm happy then; or they're from a country with few resources for example so the paper is pretty scrappy; or etc etc. Beauty is unbounded.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

Well, there's a poem called 'Epitaph' which would seem the obvious choice but now I prefer a poem I've just written called 'Sappho' which has nothing to do with death or dying – though it is appropriately short and talks about fragments. I don't see why poems can't go on tombstones. They've appeared everywhere else, buildings, toilet doors … there's a project I'd like to do where poems are projected onto the surface of rivers. I've submerged a poem in the sea. Why not on tombstones?

What is your poetic statement?

Everything, but I reserve the right as a poet to look at serious things as well as the frivolous if it takes me. I reserve the right to use whatever form and in whatever medium I need for the expression. I go on about this at some length on www.chrismansell.com (see the 'poetics' link).

Interview with author Kirk Curnutt

Kirk Curnutt's novel Breathing Out the Ghost is currently one of two finalists for the Best Books of Indiana 2008 competition. It also won a bronze IPPY from the Independent Publishers Association. He lives in Montgomery, Alabama, the setting for his next novel, Dixie Noir.

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

I'm working on several things: I just finished putting together the modernist volume for The Heath Anthology of Literature, and I'm proofing a book of essays on Hemingway that's due out next year. Plus I'm tinkering with my novel Dixie Noir, which will be published in November 09. Plus various stories, articles, and book reviews. My plate stays pretty full.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

I'm shopping around a novel called Raising Aphrodite in which William-Adolphe Bouguereau's The Birth of Venus (1879) plays a prominent role.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I'd like to see what Elmer Hader (1889-1973), who did the covers for Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden, would have done with my novel Breathing Out the Ghost. He had a touch of Thomas Hart Benton in him. I love art that captures the capaciousness of the rural world. Of living artists, there's a water-colorist named April Knox whose countrysides are very appealing.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

You're wasting your time (and theirs) if you don't.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

I regret it each time something gets rejected. That includes when a piece is rejected without any sort of personal acknowledgment and when you've had correspondence with an editor over several months as the submission has worked its way up the chain---only to get killed by one resisting reader (usually an intern).

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

It's not a poem, but I'd definitely have to have a Fitzgerald quote on there. Not sure which one, but it would be him. Probably something from Tender Is the Night---not The Great Gatsby. That's been done ... on Fitzgerald's own tombstone, in fact.

What is your poetic statement?

In a word? Empathy.

Interview with poet Pris Campbell

Pris Campbell: Among other journals and poetry collections, Pris Campbell's free verse poetry has been published in Poems Niederngasse, Boxcar Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, The Dead Mule: An Anthology of Southern Literature, In The Fray, Empowerment4Women, Tears in the Fence and The Cliffs: Soundings. She has two chapbooks out: Abrasions (published by Rank Stranger Press) and Interchangeable Goddesses, with Tammy Trendle (published by Rose of Sharon Press). A third chapbook, Hesitant Commitments, has been accepted by Lummox Press for its Little Red Book series. She also has published her haiga extensively. Haiga is the combination of art/digital images/photographs with haiku.

Raised in the Carolinas, she has lived in the Midwest, Hawaii, New England and now lives in the greater West Palm Beach, Florida with her husband, a spoiled dog and a cat who sleeps on her rough poetry drafts. Her love for the sea brought her to Florida from Boston in a meandering 6 month trip on her 22 foot sailboat. Formerly a Clinical Psychologist specializing in developing and running treatment units for people with chronic mental illnesses, she has been sidelined with CFIDS since 1990.

Interview

Please tell our readers what project you are currently working on.

Actually, I just finished a project. Scott Owens, co-editor of Wild Goose Review, and I have written a chapbook length series of our Sara/Norman poems. Over the years, I've written a number of poems in the voice of my 'alter ego' Sara.
She allows me to bring out my younger, 'hippie' side in some realistic ways and some ways fueled primarily by imagination. Scott uses Norman as his alter ego in poems. One day I spontaneously wrote a response poem to one of his in Sara's voice. He replied and we simply couldn't stop. The poems took on a life of their own and became the chap we're now submitting. It was a fun collaboration.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes, perhaps ten percent of them if I had to take a wild guess. I've always loved art. If I had any talent in that area, that's what I would be doing. One of the reasons I prefer my surreal poems in general, is that surreal art has always been most appealing to me. Perhaps if I were a sonnet person I might prefer Rembrandt.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I've asked that the artwork of Mary Hillier accompany my poetry that's been twice now in In The Fray. I've used your art, with permission, with a poem on my website. But that's two. The art I would pick depends so much on the poem.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Definitely. I don't require that when I'm submitting, but it's a bonus to be featured in a journal that presents its poetry well.

Have you ever regretted submitting your work to a specific publication? And if so, why?

I honestly can't say that I have. I've turned down requests from a journal because I didn't feel my poem fit there well or because I felt I could place it somewhere more widely read or appreciated. In a few cases this has meant I waited two years to find the right journal that wanted my poem in return, but it was worth it.

If full poems could be placed on tombstones which poem would go on yours?

Oddly, not one in free verse, my writing preference, but one with content I deeply relate to. The ocean is in my blood.

Sea Fever
by John Masefield

I must go down to the sea again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a grey mist on the sea's face, and a grey dawn breaking.

I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
All I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.

I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And a quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trip's over.

What is your poetic statement?

My poems are about saying it like it is, whether about myself or others. I write mostly poems that women can relate to, but many men do, too. Aging. Old lovers. New lovers. Also, poems about the lost people in our society - that 'crazy' old lady who lives in every town, the bum on 42nd Street, the Vietnam Vet still trying to find his place. A childhood friend who knew my parents teaches creative writing in Denver now. After reading some of my poetry (he liked it), he told me that my conventional Southern parents would surely roll over in their graves if they knew about it. I do believe him.

What is being said about the latest O&S.....

I've read the book and I plan to buy a hard copy as a keepsake. This is one of the few magazines out there that truly goes beyond the boundaries of mere "art" for art's sake, mere "poetry" for poetry's sake. From the striking cover art of Didi Menendez's portrait of Natalia Fabia to Fabia's own breathtaking artwork, to Bob Hicok's poetry to Grace Cavalieri's interviews...all of it fabulous, it's obvious that these editors put a lot of work and thought into the magazine.

When time permits, I think an in depth review of Oranges & Sardines will give readers a better idea of what strikes a good magazine to become alive, dynamic and worth more than a passing glance. Get a copy for your collection; don't wait.

Mia - Tryst Poetry Editor

I wasn't prepared for how striking the visuals of the second issue of O&S are---Natalia Fabia's "Leopard Sky" in particular. Natalia may be the only person who has a legitimate use for glitter anymore. I was also smitten with Robert C. Jackson and Victoria McKenzie's canvases. I definitely recommend folks buy a copy instead of downloading the PDF. I'm ordering several (of course, I have a vested interested: in in it!). But I also enjoyed the poetry, especially Bob Hicok (a Guggenheimer), Cathryn Cofell, and Brooklyn Copeland. A really arresting magazine that's getting great press. Next issue: November 1st.

Kirk Curnutt - Author and contributor

As impressive as the first, if not more so.

Courtney Campbell - Author

Pick up a copy or download here.

Interview with artist Alan Jacobs

Alan Michael Mark Jacobs was born April 25th, 1979 in Palos Hills, Illinois. Jacobs' formal artistic education began at Victor J. Andrew High School under the tutelage of landscape artist Stephen Moss. Over the next four years, Jacobs developed a penchant for portraiture inseveral varied media, including oil pastel, chalk pastel, photography, watercolor, and collage work. His work over this period earned him a merit scholarship to theSchool of the Art Institute of Chicago, but unfortunately due to financial restraint, could not attend. Since that period he has lived in DeKalb, Illinois with his beagle, "Chainsaw" and his beautiful "Bettie," Renea. In th fall of 2007, Jacobs completed his Accounting degree at Northern Illinois University. He nows plans to return to NIU to pursue a degree in Fine Art. Alan and Renea have just welcomed their first child, Bella Rose.


Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

Not really sure. At a young age (5 or 6), I picked up paper and pencil and began drawing disney characters and other cartoon-like references. I guess since my skill was adequate and my mom told me she liked them, I continued. I think it was the first thing I was told I was good at, so I stuck to that.

As I got older, it was a way to express myself without years of therapy. While my subject matter may not be a direct expression, my color pallet and subject choice often have their backstory and match my emotional state at the time. So if you were ever curious, just ask about what went in to a piece and I could probably remember it like yesterday.

What is your inspiration?

I think my heart is my biggest inspiration. Whether it is broken or full, one emotion or the other tends to spill out onto the canvas.

As far as subject matter, I'm a pop culture person. I enjoy the iconic nature of the electronic media era. I'm a horror movie nut, so you are going to see pretty much the full range of characters and actors. At some point I want to branch out into less reproduction work, or at least modify it more to be my own. I think the Lucy was a beginning with the 3-D knife.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Color. I'm wicked color blind, but can see colors. The problem I have is that I can't differentiate closely related colors in the spectrum, so independantly viewed, purples or blues may look the same. So, in compensation my brain has the urge to reach for contrasting colors and using colors as tone. I would also say that expression is a recurring theme. Each portrait is usually doing so much more than smiling.

What is your preferred medium?

Generally, oil pastel (the cheapest I can find. Generally, "CRAY-PAS Junior Artist" does the trick,) Also, I have been doing watercolors on foam core, minimally thinning the paints with either water or spit. I have been know to do collage work, but they take years to complete, so they are probably not my preferred media. so mostly, oil pastel and watercolors (Koi).

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Nope. I'm just doing this in my spare time. I'd love to do a show, but who knows when that will happen. I guess I need contacts for that to happen.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

Ed Paschke. 1960's Chicago based artist and part of the Hairy Who movement. I was drawn in on his color pallette, but also his bizarre sense of subject matter.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

See above. I'm also a big fan of Basil Gogos.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Basil Gogos

What is your next painting going to be?

I think I want to do a tribute to Basil and do a 4 foot by 8 foot painting of a horror movie icon, but frame it as if it is a cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland. Basically, my own giant issue.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Hmmmm. I had some great art teachers in high school. Steven Moss and Tor Detweiller were two who had their own style, but just let me do whatever I wanted to express myself. While a lot of it wasn't that good, it had introduced me to not limit my media, subject matter, or style. With their help, I was able to construct a portfolio that got me accepted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, but it was too exprensive (even with a 1/2 tuition merit scholarship), so I went to work for about 10 years and packed up the art.

After a 7 year marriage, I got divorced and just started to make art again. And it has been the best thing for my piece of mind and made me so much stronger. Did I need formal training? nah. But maybe I'd paint better noses and ears if I had. Man, noses are a pain in the ass. I think my color and expression is what defines my style, and I don't think I would have turned out the same if I had everyone else in my ear.

What is the one thing they canʼt take away from you?

Hmmmm. I suppose, my self expression. I don't really do this for anyone but me. If others like it, then my heart is warmed, but I really just do it because I like it. I'm not looking to do this for a career, or get rich off it. If I did it as a business, I'd lose all the fun and freedom it has brought me.

Interview with poet Mary Morris

Mary Morris lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is the winner of the Rita Dove Award, the New Mexico Discovery Award and recently, a finalist for the St. Petersburg Review Prize and the 2008 Stan and Tom Wick Prize.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes, poets paint words. Some sculpt and some have perfect pitch.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes, in the tactile language of the medium and also by paintings of Carravagio, old Japanese prints, Francis Bacon, Van Gogh, Michaelangelo, DaVinci's drawings, Andy Goldsworthy and prehistoric cave paintings.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Somewhere between Carravagio and Francis Bacon.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I like them both. They each have their own significance.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I think so.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes, absolutely.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

Yesterday, Thomas Q. Morin

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Always.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Grace Cavalieri, Ioanna Carlsen, Thomas Q. Morin. Catherine Ferguson, Ken Flynn and Andy Goldsworthy.

Oranges & Sardines Issue 2 - Fall 2008

Poets: Bob Hicok, William Stobb, Jane Draycott, Emily Kendall Frey, Cathryn Cofell, Patrick Duggan and Brooklyn Copeland.

Artists: Natalia Fabia, Zhaoming Wu, Robert C. Jackson, Victoria McKenzie, Glenn Harrington, Paul Beliveau, Peter Ciccariello, Jorge-Alberto, Justin Wiest, Dana Clancy, David MacDowell and Nahem Shoa.

Also in this issue:
Grace Cavalieri Interview with Ron Silliman and with Dana Levin.
Cheryl Townsend micro review of Island Time - Block Island Poems by Natalie Lobe and Anon by Chris Pusateri.
Jim Knowles micro-review of Resurrection of the Dust by John McKernan.
Jeremy Hughes review of Anna Nicole: Poems by Grace Cavalieri.
Short story by Kirk Curnutt.
Talia Reed column "On Squinching Naked Before the Masses".
Essay by Jack Anders, Hummingbirds and Fish: Notes on Bob Hicok



www.poetsandartists.com

Interview with artist Philippe A Fernandez

Philippe A Fernandez is currently known for his fantasy fairytale landscapes. He loves to paint spooky dark paths, fairytale like lands, creepy cottages, and lots of magical trees! His Creatures vary from fairies, nymphs, spirits, ghosts, trolls, wizards, witches, vampires, demons, humans, and angels of light and darkness. His Styles can very from Impressionism, Fantasy, Surreal, Gothic, Primitive, Outsider.


Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

Last Christmas my family and I decided on having a “Primitive holiday” theme. Which involved Making all cards and wrapping paper from scratch. I had the best time of my life! And found out that I could actually paint. I’ve been painting ever since.

What is your inspiration?

My own mind. I don’t need to feel anything to paint. Actually painting in it’s self brings me inspiration.



Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Yes! I’m known for my Spooky Dark Paths, Fairytale like Lands, wicked witches, Creepy Cottages, Angels Of Light and Darkness, Mystical Fairy Like Trolls, and lots of Magical Trees. A few Clients call it “Fairytale Art”

What is your preferred medium?

Acrylic! mostly for the fast drying time. I paint full time, with that said. I need to be consistently producing and selling art. Bills don’t wait.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

No, I wish I had the time to enter a show or even visit a gallery. I live a very busy life. However I’m currently selling my originals art, prints, posters, magnets, greeting card, key chains, stickers, mousepads, and shoes on the internet.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

My x-girl friend Jacqueline Cahill. That women can draw anything! I’m happy to say that she will be coming back to the industry very soon.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Not sure! Can’t say that I have really looked.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Emily Balivet! You can find her on ebay or etsy.

What is your next painting going to be?

Good Question! I never know what I’m painting next. I just let the colors take on a form, and then I’ll finish it up.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?
I can’t say for sure. I have heard both positive and negative responses on training.
Some say it was the best choice they have ever made. While others feel it has affected there personal style. I am still undecided . However I do know some of my favorite artists have been formally trained. And still take classes here and there.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

Jesus.

Interview with poet Kathleen Rooney

Kathleen Rooney is a founding editor of Rose Metal Press and the author of Reading with Oprah: the Book Club that Changed America. Her collection Oneiromance (an epithalamion) is forthcoming from Switchback Books, and her collaborative collection (with Elisa Gabbert), That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness, is available from Otoliths. A collaborative chapbook (also with Gabbert), Something Really Wonderful, was published last year by dancing girl press. She lives in Chicago and works as a Senate Aide.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

The cultural position of poets and visual artists is much more similar than the cultural position of, say, poets and novelists, or visual artists and film directors. In most cases (superstar exceptions aside), poets and painters are apt to be more marginal and less mainstream than their novelistic or filmic counterparts, and tend to be—at least in my experience—more reliant upon relatively small, but knowledgeable and tightly knit communities of likeminded others. Both poets and visual artists have the same economic realities that anybody else has, but their economies are alternative economies in a way that perhaps some other creative people’s are not.

Also, there’s something similar, just in terms of the experience of the work, in the immediacy of both poetry and visual art—seeing the poem on a single page, seeing the painting on a single canvas. There are exceptions to everything I just said, of course, but generally these connections seem to be pretty solid.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

I feel kind of bad saying so, but no. That said, a lot of my prose has. I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my manuscript Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object, which is forthcoming in Spring 2009. It’s a memoir/history based on my experience working for five years as an artists’ model in Washington, DC, Boston, Provincetown and Tacoma, and I couldn’t have written it at all if not for paintings and painters.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Hands-down, Carrie Scanga, who is extremely nice, extremely talented, and infuses her visual art with an extremely literary sensibility. Many of my favorite pieces of hers are not, strictly speaking, narrative themselves, but rather suggest that they are fragments of a larger, on-going story. Lucky for me, when I asked her to do the cover of my forthcoming poetry collection Oneiromance (an epithalamion), she said yes and came up with this piece of original artwork, half of which you can see here.

The other half wraps around the back of the cover, and both sides look amazing.

Also, back when I first met her at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (a great place in terms of getting writers and visual artists to collaborate), she let us use an image of hers for the cover of the first book put out by Rose Metal Press that you can see here.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I like them both. There are good print journals and not-so-good print journals, just as there are good online journals and not-so-good online journals. In both cases, writers and readers have a really wide variety of choices in terms of where to spend their attention; this seems to reflect the health and diversity of the literary publishing “scene.”

Personally, I have to give the slight advantage (it’s almost a tie) to print publications, but that’s because I’m a fan of books-as-artistic-objects, and can dork seriously out on trim size and paper weight. Then again, now that I think about it, as someone who spends a fair amount of her week in a cubicle, I find there’s a lot to be said for publications that can be read online under the guise of “looking busy,” which is hard to do with, say, a hand-sewn limited edition chapbook with letter-pressed covers.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Sure—if I respected the work they were publishing, and if I had reason to believe that they might be interested in my work. There are plenty of examples of consistently fun-to-read journals that publish via blog; Sawbuck, RealPoetik, and Otoliths spring to mind.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes, absolutely. It seems only wise. As the editors of a press that specializes in the publication of just three books a year in hybrid genres, few things drive my co-editor Abby and I crazier than when an author is obviously just submitting to any and every press regardless of how appropriate their work is or is not to the missions of said presses.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

Earlier this year, I was reading The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets, and I happened upon the poem “Gong: 11 July 2003—48 lines,” by Caroline Bergvall, and I kind of got that I-wish-I-had-written-this feeling. I’d never encountered her work before and I was completely taken by that poem; I still can’t get it out of my head.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

I’m working on a lot of projects at the moment, but the ones that are the furthest along are more collaborations with Elisa Gabbert, as well as a translation of Le Cornet à dés by Max Jacob, also with Elisa.

I’m in the process of finishing up an essay collection called For You, For You, I Am Trilling These Songs, which is supposed to appear in 2010. And I’m in the very early stages of a project of some kind (though I’m not totally sure what shape it’s going to take yet) on the life and work of the poet and ad copyrighter Margaret Fishback, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Fishback , not to be confused with Margaret Fishback Powers who claimed to have written that inspirational “Footprints” story/poem about Jesus on the beach.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Lots of people, but especially Daniela Olszewska, Kristy Bowen, and Chris Tonelli. Thanks for asking!

An interview with poet Cheryl Townsend

Cheryl A Townsend used to be a prolific poet and publisher before losing her muse via a hysterectomy 10 years ago. (SAVE THE OVARIES!!!) Now, she focuses on her camera lens as her creative outlet.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Most assuredly! It's the juxtaposition of "show & tell".. The poets tells what the artist shows. We did a collaboration locally through Zygote Gallery (a print making studio in Cleveland) where first, the artists selected one of our poems & then painted their interpretation of it.. The 2nd installment, we poets wrote a poem interpreting one of their paintings.







MAMA, I CAN STILL SMELL YOUR PERFUME

left behind
like me
every night you closed the door
to my questions and growing
Your babies on my hips
and crying in my ears
There’s not enough knowing at 10
to fill the void you left me with
when you never showed me how
only told me to
Red hair
longer than your skirts
the only wave I saw
as you drove to big tips
and your own escape
No a.m. off to school
or p.m. how was your day
And over dinner and diapers
and fabric softener
Nina Ricci was all that
tucked me into bed
job well done

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Aside from the above, yes. I'd have to say Georgia Okeefe's work has always evoked a sensual pen.

If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

You. Or in the case of some of the more adverse lines, maybe Jeff Filipski.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I've always preferred having the book in my hands, being able to take it anywhere (the park, a cafe) and read. But online does have it's advantages.. Mostly the savings, both financially & ecologically. You can reach a broader audience, hence introducing more people to poetry & the arts.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Sure.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Of course. Mainly because I was one (Implosion Press) & hated when I got poetry totally off my guidelines. I like to read the publication first, see who they generally publish, maybe even check out the editor.. maybe they also write & have been published. I like doing research, so it's fun.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

Oh wow. Too often, I do book reviews, so there are always those. But most recent, I would have to say one by Bart Solarczyk on Ron Androla's Pressure Press board. I'm a quick/short poem writer, so I'm always envious of how Bart nails them so perfectly & what appears to be so effortlessly.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Always. A couple poetry collections and a couple stories (which I hope to elongate into novels!)

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Bart Solarczyk. Ron Androla. Jim Chandler. Hell, do a Pressure Press Presents issue.

Interview with poet Juliet Cook

Juliet Cook is a poet and the editor of Blood Pudding Press. A few of her recent publication credits include DIAGRAM, OCTOPUS, Spooky Boyfriend, Sein Und Werden and Prick of the Spindle. Some of her print chapbooks can be acquired via www.BloodPuddingPress.etsy.com. Her first e-chapbook, Projectile Vomit, is forthcoming from Scantily Clad Press—and another print chapbook, Gingerbread Girl, is forthcoming from Trainwreck Press. Her first full-length book is slinking around, mewling and hissing and seeking a peculiar home.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes. For me, that correlation is most strongly related to the underlying connotations or tone evoked by certain kinds of imagery. My own writing can be inspired by reading others' poetry and it can also be inspired by looking at visual art. In the last few years, I have written poems inspired by the art of Camille Rose Garcia, Kendra Binney, and Art & Ghosts to name a few.

An Art & Ghosts image was my computer wallpaper for a while and I was just gazing at it and suddenly a poem started to form—and even though if one looked at that image and then read my poem, there might not seem to be a direct correlation, there is definitely some sort of subconscious correlation. Now I often use visual art images as my computer wallpaper, just in case they might foment something.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Yes, several poems (or pieces of poems) by paintings of Camille Rose Garcia and several by paintings of Kendra Binney.

I even titled one of my poems 'Pink Bird' in homage to Binney's painting of the same name, plus used several other of her painting titles within the course of that poem, the content of which is also influenced by her paintings. You can read that poem and view a few of Binney's images (including 'Pink Bird') here.

If all goes smoothly, Binney's 'Pink Bird' will also be adorning the cover of 'Gingerbread Girl', a forthcoming chapbook.

My chapbook 'Planchette', self-published by Blood Pudding Press earlier this year, featured a digital art piece called 'Arboreal Angels' by Art & Ghosts as part of its cover design—and her imagery also had an influence upon that chapbook's poetry.

Another Blood Pudding Press chapbook published earlier this year, 'w i n g'd' by Kyle Simonsen, features a painting by Cat Rocketship as part of its cover design; this piece was solicited by Simonsen and painted specifically to be used for his book.

I love visual art on the covers of poetry chapbooks.

Paintings and digital art have definitely been an influence, as have certain mixed media artworks, such as collage art and installation art and assemblage-style art. I have heard some mixed media artists, such as Jane Wynn, refer to some of their assemblage-style art pieces as 'shrines' and this inspired me to write a sequence of poems as shrines, each of which describes some entity that is affixed or transfixed into a constraining space (a taxidermied pig, a doll head, a memory-laden moment). This sequence of poems appeared in a special limited-edition collaborative project, accompanied by similarly-themed flash fiction by Rachel Kendall, in a chapbook called 'BONE-BODICED', jointly published by Blood Pudding Press and ISMs Press.

I feel like I'm getting carried away here, but other recent visual art influences have included digital artist Ray Caesar (who inspired a poem called 'Octopus Doll') and a digital and mixed media artist who goes by the moniker Curioddities (who inspired a poem that deals with anthropomorphized Circus Peanuts).

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Any of the above and I am always on the lookout for new art that has subconscious power for me.

One reason I relate to Kendra Binney's art is because it lives in a land of misfits.

One reason I relate to Art & Ghosts art is because it floats in a realm of powerful yet alienated girls. There is something creepy and paranormal about it, but also something strangely affirmative.

How do you feel about print vs. online publications?

I like both.

I especially love the artifact-like, hand-designed, otherwise personalized quality of print publications.

I don't like to read long passages of text on a screen, but I do think that poems tend to be well-suited to the screen—and poetry is mostly what I read.

Because of convenient and low-cost submission process and possible exposure to a wider readership, I am more likely to submit my poetry to online publications .

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Yes, I would and I have. It's not my favorite format, but as long as the publication looks neat, stylish, and professional and the content appeals to me, then I do consider such publications as possible homes for my material.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Very much so (although I'm not immune to making mistakes and have certainly submitted to/been accepted by some sources that I wish I hadn't).

Content is my primary consideration, but I also consider the visual style of the publication. It doesn't have to be flashy, but I like it to have its own style and sense of coherency—and preferably something unique about its sensibilities.

Plus it should be neat, professional-looking, easy on the eyes, and carefully edited—and in the case of online publications, I don't want pop-ups, advertising banners, or a lot of clicking and scrolling.

I have a hard time submitting to publications that do not accept simultaneous submissions.

I also have a hard time submitting to publications if I don't like the name of the publication.

On the other side of that token, I have a weakness for submitting to new magazines (even if I they haven't published a single issue yet) just because I DO like the name or the concept—and then seeing what happens.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

A few months ago I read the poetry collection, 'The Hounds of No' by Lara Glenum and I loved it; it was so incredibly up my alley that I felt envious. But it was a good kind of envy. I was delighted I got to read those poems. I was thrilled that poems like that exist in print.

It wasn't that I wished I had written the poems myself. I'm happy to be writing my own poems. But I did wish I had a book of poetry published by ACTION Books. Based on everything I've read so far from ACTION Books, I really like their aesthetic, so I am envious of writers published by ACTION Books.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

I have several forthcoming chapbook manuscripts—my first e-chapbook called 'Projectile Vomit'

from Scantily Clad Press, a print chapbook called 'Gingerbread Girl' from Trainwreck Press, and another print chapbook called 'MONDO CRAMPO' from the dusie kollektiv 3.

I also have two more unpublished chapbook manuscripts ('Mounting Sting' and 'PINK LEOTARD & SHOCK COLLAR') as well as my first full-length manuscript ('Horrific Confection') in circulation.

All of the unpublished manuscripts are viewed as mutable and I change them around with some frequency, so I'm pretty much always working on them.

Sometimes I wish they were all published so I could start over, in a way.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Any of the above.

Interview with poet Russell Jaffe

Russell Jaffe is a recent graduate of the MFA in Poetry program at Columbia College, where he also taught Writing and Rhetoric and Enhanced Composition. He is also a recently displaced Chicagoan in New York. He is the founder and editor of the poetics blog O Sweet Flowery Roses, and is also a professional wrestling journalist. His poems have appeared in Ariel, Word Curves, The Archive, and Columbia Poetry Review. Additionally, two of his poems will be featured in Anacrusis, a musical interpretation of poetry being preformed in Chicago in November.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Both the short answer and long answer to that question is yes. The reordered, reorganized transmission of thought is the key element to visual, auditory, literary, et al. However, I personally find more a link between schools of thought commonly associated with the visual, like Cubism or Abstract Expressionism, to be more easily comparable to the poetry I am most crazy about, like Gertrude Stein and Robert Duncan. As far as the act of structure and elements of production go, there is very little different between any artists. The finished product --the associative properties of what has been composed-- that is where the fun difference comes in. I mean, it's 2008. I think a lot of artists are interested in hypermedia and hybrid form. We live in an overstuffed world in every sense of the phrase, and are bombarded with so many ideas and ideological fist-to-table poundings that it's hard to decipher where anything ends or begins. I think that is visible in a lot of art now, whether it's poetry, painting, or installation.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Sure, I just can't remember what the painting was called. When I was in college, I would play games of poetic development; that is to say I was no good at writing poetry but wanted to experiment as much as I possibly could. I would go to the campus art gallery and write poems responding to / working within the context of some visual piece. Poems came out of that. Also, I was greatly influenced by the movie poster for "The Giant Spider Invasion," a 70's B Movie. I have been working on a manuscript about giant spiders and not only the physical possibility of them, but just analyzing the invocation of such an imagined terror.

If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

I would pick myself, because I am a control freak about my own poems. It's hard not to. But I am a huge pro wrestling fan also, so I think from that that I have learned about the matching of catch-phrases with a certain look or behavior. So I would want myself to represent my poems, and that people would think about me and how I appear when my poems are read or brought up. I hope that isn't a terrible answer...
I would love to, however, hear Anne Sexton read my poems. She is one of my favorites and has an amazing presence and reading voice. I wouldn't mind hearing the German artist Jonathan Meese read or perform my poems either, as I really like his visual aesthetic sensibility compared to my poetry. But if anyone were to represent my poems, defending them or anything, I would want it to be myself.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I love them both! I mean, it would be great to get to a point when everyone feels online is just as valuable as print. I mean, iPhone! Laptops! And now wireless Internet you can just plug into your computer and use anywhere. It's like bringing a book around. There is a romance to having it in print, and to the portability and history of books, really. But I feel really great about online and the possibility for more poets writing poetry and artists uploading art. More, faster, and lots of fun. So I would like to say I love them both as twins, not one more than the other, as if one was a mutant twin I locked in the basement.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I would and I have. And I urge anyone reading to submit to mine! O Sweet Flowery Roses.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Well, of course. I think anyone does. My friend is a geologist, and she came up with a phrase to talk about quarrying and categorization: See the rock, be the rock. She finds a rock, and she takes hours to figure out exactly what it is, where it belongs, and how it can fit in with the other rocks she has studied. Or something. Anyway, I thought it was funny, and I feel that way about publications. See it, be it. I read something I like, I enjoy the poetry, and I imagine how my poems may fit in. Sometimes I think they wouldn't at all, so I can enjoy but tend to think my stuff might be too out there or sometimes too composed and not series based, or for whatever reason my poetry just doesn't happen to fit the dominate form. But there is just so much out there, and an astronomical amount of crossover appeal.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

There was a guy in my MFA program in Chicago named Aaron Flanagan. He just graduated, and I know he has a number of poems in journals and his manuscript is something I wouldn't be surprised to find soon. He wrote a poem about cowboys...it might be called "Cowboys." It was so damn beautiful, I wished I had wrote it but I also just loved to hear it, so the personal want was counteracted by the personal pleasure of hearing it. That, and anything in Brian Mornar's chapbook "Repatterning." I love that book.

An interview with poet Brigitte Byrd

A native of France where she was trained as a dancer, Brigitte Byrd is the author of Fence above the Sea (Ahsahta, 2005) and The Dazzling Land (Black Zinnias, 2008). Her third poetry collection Song of a Living Room is scheduled for fall 2009 (Ahsahta Press). Brigitte received a PhD in Creative Writing from Florida State University in 2003. She currently lives in the southern crescent of Atlanta with her daughter and their “menagerie” and teaches Creative Writing at Clayton State University. She is a board member editor for Confluence: The Journal of Graduate Liberal Studies.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes, of course. It’s all about imagination and creativity. The urge for it.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

I usually write at home where many paintings hang on the walls along with photographs. There is a lot of red. There is a lot of yellow. There is music. There are animals napping by my side. At times, my eyes stop on a painting, and something from it ends into a poem, but I cannot say that I have written a poem that was literally inspired by a specific painting.

If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

My favorite painters are Gustav Klimt, Henri Matisse, and Edward Hopper. When discussing the cover for my first collection of prose poems Fence Above the Sea, Janet Holmes (my wonderful editor at Ahsahta Press) helped me acquire the rights for the cover, which is Mada Primavesi by Klimt, a painting that really represents these poems as a whole. For my second book, The Dazzling Land, I was lucky as well to work with Jeff Munnis (my editor at Black Zinnias) who helped me secure a painting, The Circus Artist, by Francis Hamel, a contemporary British painter whose work I discovered while surfing the net. This painting arrested me. Really. I think that it represents the poems in The Dazzling Land. It really baffles me to observe such a strong connection between works created in different disciplines by different artists at different times. Actually, I am currently reading Jean-Paul Sartre’s The Role of the Image in Mental Life, and of course, his inquiry of the relationships between image and thought and image and perception is very interesting. Anyhow, I am now starting to think about my third collection of prose poems, Song of a Living Room, which is scheduled for September 2009 (Ahsahta Press), and I would love to use one of Matisse’s interior paintings. . . . I am also finishing a new book project (well, you know how it is; it will take a few more months), and since you asked, I could see a Hopper painting, one focused on a woman alone in a room. . . . But really, it’s a bit early for that.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I love holding books in my hands, turning the pages, writing comments on the pages as I go, so I tend to prefer print publications for that reason. I like the concreteness, the tangibility of a print publication. And yet, I love the availability of online publications because I can read so many more works this way and discover so many more writers. If you are talking about “status” or the recognition an author receives between publishing in print vs online, I think that there are great magazines in print and online, and I am always honored to see my work published there. I also think that is it important to publish in both.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Sure. And again, it depends on the blog, the publisher. I usually send my work to publications I like and respect.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes. Always.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

Actually, I have not really developed that sort of envy so far. What I want to say is that I just love Marjorie Waldrop’s and Anne Carson’s works.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes. As I mentioned earlier, I am finishing this new project, which does not have a definite title yet. I started working on it in May 2007.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

I’m not sure, but I want to share this anecdote with you. I love Frank O’Hara’s poem “Why I Am Not a Painter.” When I fell in love with this poem, I became “obsessed” with the word “sardine” and researched all possible meanings for it. This experience took me from the Arabian Sea to the royal family of England. As a result, I wrote an abecedarian poem, “Ode to Sardines,” and guess who took it? MiPOesias! So featuring O’Hara and the painter Mike Goldberg would be great, but I guess that’s why your publication is called Oranges & Sardines already. . . .

Read ODE TO SARDINES by Brigitte Byrd here.

Interview with poet Joseph Milford

Joseph Victor Milford is a full-time Instructor of English and Philosophy at Georgia Military College near Atlanta, Georgia. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in First Intensity, The Canary, Offbeat Press, The Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, The Wisconsin Review, Shampoo, Action, Yes, 360 Degrees, Blaze/Vox, mudluscious, and The Brooklyn Review, to name a few. He is a regular cohost on Jane Crown’s blogtalk radio poetry program and also hosts his own blogtalk poetry program, The Joe Milford Poetry Hour (found at www.janecrown.com). Joseph is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been teaching full-time for the last eight years.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Of course—writers and artists have always had close relationship—the greatest culmination, for me, in what an environment of great writers and artists can produce, is a Marcel Duchamp. Obviously, the period of the French Symbolists was surrounded by a rich tradition of European art—and who can deny the volatile combination of Picasso and Apollinaire roaming the streets together. In the pursuit of the ecstatic, existential, Gnostic, alchemical, the worthwhile in all human expression—the artist and the writer, and especially the poet, I think, must work hand in hand.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Several of them have, yes. Lately, I am particularly fond of the work of Sigmar Polke as an inspiration.


If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

José Clemente Orozco—sometimes Rembrant.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I love them both. However, nothing beats the tactile experience of holding the journal in your hand, smelling the pages, turning the pages, and being able to take the publication with you anywhere—laptops don’t do so well in swamps or on windy beaches. Because of the high cost of publishing a journal, the electronic format is the next obvious step in continuing an accessible aesthetic in this medium. Although there is some debate over the quality of said journals, and the fact that they seem to be popping up like mushrooms is a viable issue, I feel that there is a real Renaissance going on right now in American poetry, and I am glad that the internet makes it so easy for me to experience it.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Yes. I have and I will. And I will continue to do so. A good editor is a good editor, regardless of the format he or she chooses to present the work in. I shop around, find the places suitable to my work and vision, and then I submit.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Of course, as I said above.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

This weekend—I was reading the book length poem AN ARCHITECTURE by Chad Sweeney. I am jealous of his talent.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes—it is entitled HALCYON SCYTHE

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Several poets: Nick McRae, Geoffrey Gatza, Lisa Jarnot, Mike Dockins, Jamie Iredell, Jesse Bishop, the list goes on and on. Thanks for asking.

Interview with artist Jescia Hoffman

Atlas II (Carrying the Weight of the Sky), 2007, watercolor and colored pencil, 8"x10"

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

I have been creating art longer than I can even remember. My passion for art brought me to teach myself technique at an early age. After practicing for years and years, I decided that putting the fruits of my labor aside in favor of another profession would never make me happy. I knew that in order for me to be content in life, I would have to pursue my dreams of being an artist.

What is your inspiration?

I am inspired by almost everything I see, but the human body is my major inspiration. The complexities of anatomy will never get old, and continue to intrigue me. Light and color, most especially when seen in nature, are also very influential in my work.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

My work doesn't have one overarching theme, but many smaller themes. Mythology and symbolism play large roles in my work, but medium and style also connect certain pieces with others.

What is your preferred medium?

I am really into watercolor and colored pencil, whether alone or combined. In my prints, I've been using a lot of Imag-On film for intalgio processes. Graphite and oil pastel are also favorites, though not used as much.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Currently I am displaying three pieces in Mandan, ND with the Mandan Art Association in their newly acquired gallery space. I will be exhibiting work in the Juried Student Exhibition at Minnesota State University Moorhead in April, 2009, followed by my Bachelor of Fine Arts exhibit in the same gallery in May, 2009. I also have two pieces in the permanent collection at the MSUM Livingston Lord Library (near the reference and rare books sections!).

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

It's very hard to remember that far back into my childhood, but I know I loved Salvador Dali's paintings, even though I may not have understood him properly at such a young age.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

I am in love with a lot of contemporary figurative artists - Odd Nerdrum, Jenny Saville, Steven Assael, among others...

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

I would really like to see Odd Nerdrum do something macabre, or as he says, kitsch, with my portrait. I think it would be fabulous.


Madison, 2008, colored pencil on tinted paper, 12"x12"

What is your next painting going to be?

I'm working on a modern, humorous account of the birth of Aphrodite.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

There is no question in my mind that my formal training has helped my art. I have been pushed very hard, and it has opened so many possibilities to me technique-wise and and conceptually.

What is the one thing they can't take away from you?

They? Meaning the establishment? Obviously the desire to create what my mind sets my body to do.

Jescia Hoffman, 22, is a Bachelor of Fine Arts student at Minnesota State University Moorhead, emphasizing in Drawing and Printmaking. Hoffman is a native of Mandan, ND and currently lives in Fargo, ND. Her work revolves around capturing the human figure in a realistic and convincing fashion. She likes her models to tell a story with their expression and pose, giving rise to emotion in the viewer. Her influences include mythology, symbolism, religion, and current events - personal or global. In the near future, Hoffman hopes to attend graduate school for painting or printmaking, and pursue a career as an artist and/or professor. In her spare time, Hoffman also enjoys playing percussion in a steel drum and salsa band, as well as doing yoga and reading.

Interview with poet Matthew Hittinger

Interview:

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

As a former painter who turned to poetry, yes. I guess it's been a bit of a lifelong obsession with visual culture and the act of painting, which to me is really an act of seeing, re-presenting your experience of the world for others to see, holding up the world and analyzing it, pointing out the details that the average viewer or casual passer-by may miss. It's partly why I turn to art in any form: to have the world given back to me through someone else's eyes, to have a world I never knew existed shown to me, and through that art-act making the world fresh for me again. When it comes to something like ekphrasis there's an additional layer: the mode allows you to engage another artist's way of seeing while allowing you to extend meaning by introducing your own way of seeing through interpretation. For that reason I like to think of ekphrastic poems like palimpsests, texts written over texts but both the original and the inscribed visible. There's also something there at the level of the line or brushstroke, and of course, the image.

What is your favorite poem by a 20th century writer?

Oh I hate playing favorites. It changes depending on what project I'm immersed in. Individual poems: definitely anything by Elizabeth Bishop—maybe "In the Waiting Room" or "Santarém"; every time I read her Collected I have a new fave. Most recently is "Roosters." Also Alice Fulton's work in Sensual Math and Felt, in particular "Give: A Sequence Reimagining Daphne & Apollo" and Anne Carson's work, in particular Autobiography of Red.


Have you ever spoken your poetry in public from memory?

No. I have a friend who recites all his poetry from memory and holds a blank piece of paper to give the illusion he is reading from it. But for me, the interaction with the page is part of the experience of a public reading. Even if I know the poem by heart, I prefer to read it from the page, to watch the words and line breaks come to life as a reader might see them as they follow along.


Would you say this statement to be true or false? "Most poets have suicidal tendencies or suffer from depression."

Eh, false for me. I reject the depressed poet, pain-is-my-inspiration stereotype. Do we have better ears and eyes? Yes. Do we experience the world, register and observe human behavior a little more closely than the average person? Yes. Could that lead to depression? Perhaps, but none of my poems have come out of depression (which isn't to say that another poet or artist couldn't draw inspiration from this emotion, it's just not one I've found generative for my own work). I think I just prefer a more playful approach to life. Usually the poem for me is the act of thinking about feeling, the recording of experience and making sense of it, that intellectual work to give emotion and experience form and to record that process of living it, reflecting on it, binding it.

How do you feel about print vs. online publications for your poetry?

I find online publications reach a larger audience which is nice for the individual poem. And if the online publication does audio too then it's nice to hear the poet reading his or her own work as you read it. As for a book or chapbook of poems, I still prefer the material object: the texture and smell of the page and ink, the love and care that goes into producing and making a bound thing, seeing it on a shelf in a bookcase.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Yes. I would and I have. I particularly like what the folk at qarrtsiluni are doing.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I haven't had too many experiences where I've read something and said "I wish I had written that." I don't find that sort of response very productive for my own work. Usually it's more "I wish to write something as good as that, at that caliber" and take it as a challenge. Some examples would be when I read Anne Carson's Autobiography of Red for the first time (I think back in 2003) and Lucie Brock-Broido's The Master Letters for the first time (I think back in 2004). I appreciate a well-conceived, fleshed-out project.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes. Four actually. Three full-length, two of which are complete and have been placing in book award contests and one that is close to completion (a few more poems to compose). I also have a stand-alone chapbook with which I'm tinkering.

What has been the most wonderful thing that has happened to you since you were published in O&S?

A chapbook sequence "Platos de Sal" from one of the full-length manuscripts has been accepted for publication at Seven Kitchens Press, due out in late spring 2009.

Check out Matthew's poems in Issue 1, Summer 2008 of Oranges & Sardines

an interview with poet Paul Siegell

Paul Siegell is the author of Poemergency Room (Otoliths Books, 2008) and the parking lot attendant over at ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL. Paul currently bikes to a building where newspapers are published, and there he writes for a living, but not as a journalist. He's also a staff editor at Painted Bride Quarterly, and a lover of "cutebaños" and fine museum toilets everywhere.

INTERVIEW

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

I read that question and reflex Gertrude Stein and Pablo Picasso. Always found that idea exhilarating, that almost 100 years ago the two of them hung out, talked shop and she winds up inventing verbal Cubism (Tender Buttons) out of his visual Cubism. To me, Cubism is the most wowzers-inducing movement found in a museum, and Tender Buttons is one of the funniest, most educational books I've ever read.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

About three years ago a friend and I visited the Guggenheim in NY and much of what I've written since has been affected by that stroll up the rotunda. I learned more about DISTORTION that day than from anything I've ever put into my body. Outta the Guggenheim came a poem called "City Blocks with Gift Shop Mug and Nude," which features Cézanne's Bibémus and appears in Poemergency Room.

Also in there, the piece "11.11.06 – Medeski Scofield Martin & Wood – Electric Factory, PA" asks: "what if ballpoint / abstained from paper / fingerprints from QWERTY / (whatever from equivalent) / and the effort / could somehow still write / (like Jackson Pollack / dripped)? could such attempt / be read?" I'm still asking it, and still tryna answer it.

On the newer side, "Patchwork Acrobatics: Harlequin Period Typos," forthcoming in horse less review's first print anthology, New Pony, came out after a Barnes Foundation visit and explores Picasso's rose/harlequin period while mixing in techniques introduced by Bruce Covey in his "Reveal" series.

And, currently appearing in The American Poetry Review's Philly Edition, I've invoked Duchamp's Nude Descending #2 in the poem "BIG TIME".

Whew.

If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems, who would it be?

Jacques Lipchitz (1891-1973), Cubist sculptor. Bar none. But, since a heartbeat helps: Reed Altemus, who dropped my jaw with his cover treatment for my book, or... François Coorens! Facebook him and you'll see what I mean.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

I love having a link to send to people, to be able to show my parents. And especially if it's a piece written about a concert, then I can post the poem's link onto the band's message board and let the scene know that the experience has somehow found its way into publication.

However, sites die, domain names expire and links error out. What happens then? Meh.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I would, and have, as long as their html skills can handle my formatting.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes. But I assess editors' aesthetics inaccurately allll the friggin' time.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

So much amazing poetry is being put out these days that it's almost overwhelming. I've read so many poems by so many powerful poets recently, but never once had I wished that I'd written it. I'm glad that they've written what they've written, and I'm glad that I can do what I can do. Let others write theirs and I'll write mine and we'll move the mountain together.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

It's crazy for me to say, but I'm on my fourth full-lengther. Stay tuned/Coming soon: jambandbootleg and Trombone Bubble Bath, and I am currently about a dozen poems into Take Out Delivery.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Jeff Oaks, my poetry teacher from the University of Pittsburgh.

an interview with poet Diana Adams

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes, poets are artists—word art. Parallelisms exist, sometimes even triangles.

What is your favorite poem by a 20th century writer?

Tender Buttons, Gertrude Stein

Have you ever spoken your poetry in public from memory?

Yes, twice. Certain poems embed better than others.

Would you say this statement to be true or false?
“Most poets have suicidal tendencies or suffer from depression.”

Most? No some. So false. Absolutely and thankfully false.

How do you feel about print vs online publications for your poetry?

Print is nice, to have a copy for the shelf. Otherwise both really are the same.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

It depends on the publisher and the blog. Sure, I live in Northern Canada—I’m always looking for ways to engage and participate.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

It happens all the time -a lot with the Canadian poet Tim Lilburn. Peter Gizzi,
And most recently Mary Jo Bang’s poems from her new book Elegy.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

I have two manuscripts. Theatres of the Tongue is continually shifting, changing shape. Also, I am halfway to a new manuscript with a lot of animals in it.

What has been the most wonderful thing that has happened to you since you were published in O&S?

I’d have to say it’s the private jet.

Read Diana's poems in Issue 1, Summer 2008

the making of American Mermaid

Review up at Galatea Resurrection #10

Review of Issue 1, Summer 2008 is up at Galatea Resurrection #10.

Reviewer: Eileen Tabios.

Mentioned in the review are Marcia Molnar, Jeff Filipski, Steffi Drewes, Jim Knowles, J.P. Dancing Bear, Talia Reed and our editor's letter.

Stop by www.poetsandartists.com for the current issue.

Interview with poet AnnMarie Eldon

AnnMarie Eldon, an identical twin, evolved from cryptophasic origins in once densely industrialised Birmingham, England. She was taught by her gypsy grandmother to say the alphabet backwards before the age of three. Whilst writing poetry she raises children, dogs, snakes, hopes and temperature in the mediocrity of a picturesque Oxfordshire market town. You may find AnnMarie's poems at 5 Trope, Arabesques, Argotist, mprsnd, Blazevox, Caffeine Destiny, Lily, Mipo, Moria, Nthposition, Niederngasse, No Tell Motel, Sentinel, Shampoo, Stirring, Tears In the Fence, xPressed, zafusy etc.etc.

Web sites:
http://www.myspace.com/annmarie_eldon
http://www.annmarieeldon.blogspot.com

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

How could there not be? Michelangelo, Blake, William Morris, Rossetti. There cannot be an artist who has not put words down.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

I wrote series of poems entitled 'Lost Paintings.'Manet's 'Après Le Déjeuner sur L'herbe', (the painting is unfinished since Manet got sick of painting scraps and cold chicken legs), Caravaggio's 'Our Lady of the Golden Showers', Botticelli's 'Venus in Autoerotic Asphyxiation Commissioned by an Anonymous Medici' or 'Death of Venus,' Leonardo's sketch for 'The Unsmiling Mona Lisa.' I trained in art before training in psychology.


If you were to pick an artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

The transvestite potter Grayson Perry because I would like to be enshrined politically in ceramic but if I can't have s/him Damien Hirst to do a £50 million 8,601 flawless diamond encrusted platinum model of my cervix with a pink crescent moon shaped diamond os, Francis Bacon if hed done women but more probably Rebecca Warren, "which interrupts the looking at the object in some way."

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

No contest. On line. In medieval times the monks' day jobs were copying manuscripts – I'm not sure even if they could actually read – just copy but they were very good at it and it was their diligence which maintained the power structure as well as passing on knowledge. I see the denizens of printed poetry as elitist establishmentarians.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Yes, especially. It is after all Tim Berners-Lee's 2008 and not Gutenberg's 1493.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes because on line it's the eye and not the hand which has the first say.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I didn't because I rarely have time to read others now. My head is too brimming over constantly with my own writing and I have a family and a successful day job and love life to take up my time. Occasionally I come across something which really moves me but I'm unlikely to think I wish that were me. Anything which disassociates me out of myself has me feel sick and giddy. I can't do displacement and I'm much much happier being absolutely firmly embedded in my own body. I can't and don't envy. So it's much like asking me would I swim the channel to take lunch in Paris. No.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Constantly.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Someone aged 8-12 digging for fresh water off Mumbai beach.. Any kid who'd recently given up carrying a knife as a weapon. A 13 year old single mother. Alice in Asda rather than Wonderland.

Interview with poet Adam Fieled

Adam Fieled is a poet based in Philadelphia. He has released two books, “Opera Bufa” (Otoliths, 2007) and “Beams” (Blazevox, 2007). Two books are forthcoming: “When You Bit..” from Otoliths this August and “Chimes” from Blazevox in 2009.

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Certainly. I think the most prevalent example would be the New York School poets: Ashbery, O’Hara, Koch, Barbara Guest. For this group, the separation between verse and canvas was negligible. Ashbery and O’Hara especially have wielded a tremendous influence on post-avant poetry, and many younger experimentalists, myself included, are keen on ekphrastic poetry, poetry based on visual art. In my own work, the “Madame Psychosis” section of my book Beams was my attempt to recreate in verse what Willem de Kooning did with his Women series. I wanted to capture the adventure, excitement, and rage of Action Painting, including its undertones of the erotic and the perverse. The correlation, to my mind, does not exist because ideally poets are artists.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Beyond de Kooning, I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from Mark Rothko. For many years, I had a print of his Orange and Yellow opposite my bed in my bedroom. One night, I had an uncanny dream experience in which I was visited by Rothko’s ghost. I chronicled the dream in a poem I wrote called “Red Life”, which Lars Palm published in luzmag. Rothko purported to tell me that each of his color chunks denotes a way life, and that it is necessary to choose. In the dream, I choose red. I think my waking choice would’ve been the same.

If you were to pick and artist to represent one of your poems who wouldit be?

Of living artists, I’d have to say John Currin, who has great technical painterly skill (unusual in the age of conceptual/installation art) and a vision not totally unrelated to my own. As with de Kooning, Currin is quite erotic and quite perverse at the same time. It’s a combination that we’ve seen a lot of, from Hieronymous Bosch right through to Courbet.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

At this point, I’d say they’re roughly equal. Poets who refuse to publish online are almost what you’d call “horse and buggy poets”. Most poets have grudgingly admitted that online is very powerful, that the Internet is a powerful vehicle for conveying any information, including aesthetic/artistic information.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Sure, why not? As long as its nice looking, seems professional, and has a record of publishing good people, I’d be up for it, though I can’t be totally objective about this question, for obvious reasons…

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

Yes, but I do sometimes get in reckless moods where I’ll send anything anywhere. Usually, I’m a good boy and will read at least an issue of whatever journal I happen to be interested in contributing to.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

There are about 20-30 poems in Mark Young’s New and Selected from Meritage Press that I wish I had written.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

I’ve just finished a prose-poem autobiography called “Chimes”, which should be coming out from Geoffrey Gatza’s Blazevox in 2009.

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

I’d like to see Andrew Lundwall, Steve Halle, Jordan Stempleman, Lars Palm, Reggie Jackson and Plato. Seriously, I’d like to see these and so many more.

Interview with artist Angie Hoffmeister

Angie was born in August of 1989 in east Gemany, but after the fall of the wall moved to the west and was raised as an only child close to Bremen. She always loved drawing, but needed 15 years to figure out that art was what she wanted to occupy herself with for the rest of her life. She chose art as her major subject in school and will graduate next year. After that, she wants to study art in Hamburg or Berlin.
She would love to earn a living from drawing and painting, and hope to become a successful illustrator but is very much aware that this won’t be easy.

Interview



What drew you to become an artist?

To be honest, I have no idea. When I was about eight years old I started drawing regulary. I remember my first picture from that time, it was a tree and later on I glued a horse on it. I guess when I drew this picture I figured that I could capture dreams, memories and feelings on paper if I only practised drawing hard enough.

What is your inspiration?
I am mostly inspired by fairytales and childhood memories, but also by the works of other people.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

There isn’t only one, there are dozens of things that I draw over and over again because they mean much to me.

What is your preferred medium?

Well I like Copic Markers very much, just like watercolors. I think the latter is my favorite medium, though etchings are also fun. Copics are easy to use if one knows how to, etchings take very much time since I love detailed pictures. Watercolors can be used in different ways, I think that’s what makes them my first choice

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

No, one of my pictures was in the art gallery in Celle for about two months but that show has ended by now.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

That’s a good question. I don’t really remember but it might have been Klimt, whose works still amaze me.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Sure, it’s an artist living in London (www.himmapaan.deviantart.com) whom I admire for his lovely illustrations of Jane Austen novels.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Probably Caitlin Shearer, a lovely girl and great artist from Australia. You can find her works on www.pepperminte.deviantart.com. Take a look at her gallery and I promise you will fall in love with it.

What is your next painting going to be?

Painting? I have no idea. But there are some drawings in my Moleskine sketchbook that I want to finish.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

I think it really helped my art, but I nevertheless hate it. In my opinion art has very much to do with learning, at least for me and my style.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

I will know when they try to take it away and fail.

Interview with poet Belinda Subraman

Belinda lives in Ruidoso, New Mexico. Her poetry has appeared in Puerto del Sol, Main Street Rag, Big Bridge, Babel Fruit, mgversion2, Electica, Social Justice and Unlikely Stories to name a few. Since 2005 she has been interviewing poets, musicians and activists on her weekly radio show and podcast called Belinda Subraman Presents / The Gypsy Art Show. For ten years she was editor and publisher of Gypsy Literary Magazine and Vergin' Press. Her main web site is http://belindasubraman.com

Interview

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes, I think the creative spirit is the same. The drive for a unique expression…beautifully executed, if possible.

Have any of your poems ever been inspired by a painting?

Oh yes, I love to get lost in a painting or photograph, to allow myself to be transported to another world and then to express, in words, what I find in that world.

If you were to pick any artist to represent one of your poems who would it be?

Well, with Rene Magritte and Jasper Johns not available, I would be honored to work with Didi Menendez.

How do you feel about print vs online publications?

They are both important. I feel there are more readers online simply because it is available to the whole world. But nothing beats the feel and look of a beautiful print publication. I understand there is still a bit of snobbery about print publications concerning eligibility for prizes etc. There will probably always be room for both.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

Yes, if I liked the kind of work they published. Though generally, it's not my first choice when I'm looking to submit work.

Do you consider the aesthetics of a publisher before submitting to them?

I certainly try. I read back issues and study guidelines. To the best of my ability I choose work I think may be acceptable.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I admire a lot of J.P. Dancing Bear's work. He amazes me often the way he dances with words.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

Yes, I've been writing much more this year because I've taken some time off from my hospice work. (Although, I'm leaving for NC in a few hours to spend time with my terminally ill father).

Who would you like to see featured in Oranges & Sardines?

Besides myself, uh, there are so many talented writers and artists that's hard to say. Is Marge Piercy still available?

Interview with poet Graeme Mullen

Do you find a correlation between poets and artists?

Yes but I would need a complicated series of graphs and pie charts to illustrate it and I just broke my last pencil trying to stab a fly.

What is your favorite poem by a 20th century writer?

BEER by Charles Bukowski

Have you ever spoken your poetry in public from memory?

Yes but not out loud.

Would you say this statement to be true or false?
"Most poets have suicidal tendencies or suffer from depression."

Writers of villanelles and pantoums have suicidal tendencies. Sonnet writers are usually clinically depressed. Free verse writers all have perfect mental health.

How do you feel about print vs online publications for your poetry?

I feel just giddy about it.

Would you submit to a publisher if they used a blog for their publication?

I would submit to a publisher if they used marker on a bathroom stall as their means to publish. I'm not proud.

When was the last time you read a poem you wished you had written and if so, who wrote it?

I'm too egocentric to think in those terms.

Are you working on a new manuscript?

That sounds so goal-oriented. I suppose I might be stumbling towards one at some point.

What has been the most wonderful thing that has happened to you since you were published in O&S?

Seeing Leonard Cohen perform in Montreal.

Check out Graeme's poems in Issue 1, Summer 2008 of O&S.

Interview with artists Sally Anne Hanreck

Sally Anne Hanreck was born in Sydney Australia on 1st July 1974 to an Australian mother and South African father. Her family moved to London, UK when Sally was a baby, then to Estepona, Spain when her father retired from work as an airline captain. They lived aboard a yacht for seven years and traveled extensively, never staying in one place for long. Schooling was sporadic until she was sent to boarding school in UK, aged 10. When her father died just weeks before her eleventh birthday, her mother went back to work as a psychiatrist and settled in Sevenoaks, Kent, Uk, where they lived until 1993. She found herself studying Bi-lingual European Business administration at West Kent College instead of art. She was due to start a job as a PA/translator with a firm in London in 1993, but at the last minute decided to go backpacking for a while. and came to Australia aged 19 and has lived there ever since. In 1997 she was married and has two children. Sally later divorced and settled into life as a full time single parent.

In 2006 she finally got the chance to study for a Diploma in Visual Arts at Chisholm Institute, Frankston, graduating in 2008. She now works from home as a full time artist, and will be starting on-the-job training as an art therapist in August of this year.


Interview



What drew you to become an artist?

I don’t think there was ever a point in time when I said to myself “I am now, officially, an artist”. Creating images and using my imagination to pass the time has always been an essential part of who I am, not what I am. I was an intensely sensitive and introspective child and found communicating with my peers very difficult. We were a rather nomadic family, never staying in one place for any length of time, and I suppose I used art – drawing, writing stories and journals, making toys, daydreaming.._ as a form of escapism from loneliness.

I didn’t study art until I was thirty one, when my youngest child had started school. Until then I had been a stay at home single parent and found it difficult to get back into the work force without formal qualifications. I had a choice between taking up a dead-end job or going back to school myself. And that’s how, on a whim, I decided to apply for a place studying visual arts at the local Tafe. That is where I first discovered painting with oils, something which gave me a whole new emotional vocabulary. I still have a long way to go, of course, and I do struggle, trying to make ends meet, but I couldn’t imagine living any other way.

What is your inspiration?

Human nature. I am fascinated by emotions, personal relationships, the struggle for self. I find myself drawn to painting portraits and figurative pieces rather than more commercially viable landscapes or still life studies. Trying to capture and portray emotion and that “spark” within which makes us all who we are.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Yes. It is purely unintentional, but I have noticed that each and every painting, print or sculpture I produce has an element of myself in it. I can’t keep “me” from invading my work. It is all very self-indulgent and I do sometimes feel a little exposed, but I’m learning to accept that this is all part of my journey.

What is your preferred medium?

This is actually quite difficult to answer. I find all mediums immensely difficult and struggle with each one, and the frustration of not having access to or the funding for materials and facilities needed to create certain types of artwork (mainly printing and sculpture) means I am less inclined to experiment with those mediums. I do love to paint with oils, but perhaps this has more to do with availability and convenience than preference. Perhaps pencil and paper are my favorite medium, simply because it is so portable, cheap and instantly gratifying (o:

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Unfortunately, no, not at this time. Unless you count a couple of works I have hanging in a tiny little gallery down on the south Australian border. I haven’t exhibited since last year, but my home has become my own private little gallery of sorts. Many of my earliest paintings were autobiographical so I could never ever part with them, even though I sometimes can’t bear looking at them day after day. They are my ‘first born’, faults and all, and it feels only right to have them up on my own walls. I am currently working on a series of paintings which I hope to exhibit in the near future, but I’m struggling a bit at the moment.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

I didn’t know it at the time, but my parents had a huge print of ‘Guernica’ by Picasso. I never liked it as a child, but I certainly was affected very strongly by it. My father was South African and we had a lot of tribal artifacts and tapestries about the place, which I think were intended to be fierce and threatening, but I always felt protected and comforted by them. I’ll never know who the artists were who created those pieces, but they achieved something vital for me, and that was to communicate as much emotion and expression using as little detail and line as possible.

The first artist I could put a name to was Vincent Van Gough. Even his still life paintings are emotionally charged.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

I am always coming across artists who have that effect on me, but I don’t like to name any one in particular. One of the hardest things for me is not to feel intimidated or jealous! It is too easy to make comparisons and feel somewhat futile in my persuits.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Edward Wills - my partner ( top friend on my Myspace page)

What is your next painting going to be?

Something containing a lot of dark crimson.


Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Not having had any formal training has allowed me to develop without influence from others, which I suppose means that my art is raw and unique, but I would have loved to have had some formal tuition earlier in life, especially when it comes to using different materials, learning about perspective, composition, colour mixing, etc. I compare it to having just enough of a foreign vocabulary to be able to ask for directions as opposed to being able to converse fluently in the language. Without formal training, painting and drawing has always been extremely hard work and frustrating for me, but I also believe that because I am untrained and uneducated about other artists, I have been free to express myself individually, without being governed by tradition.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

My sense of Self.

Interview with artist Alicia Hartsock

Alicia was born to parents who drew and did ceramics as hobbies when they were younger. She grew up around two older siblings who also delved in the arts--her brother sketched occasionally and her sister was becoming a serious painter. Naturally, Alicia took an interest in art at a young age, and it stuck with her throughout her life. She is currently studying drawing at a university in the St. Louis, Missouri area. Only twenty years old, she hopes to continue with art in the future. After Alicia graduates with a Bachelor's degree, she plans to go for a Master's. In the meantime, she would like to get more involved with the local art community, submit to galleries and shows, and continue with commissions.










Interview



What drew you to become an artist?

I was constantly drawing people and animals as a child. I tried so hard to make things look like they were supposed to, and when I was finished, I would go to my family and have them guess who or what it was. When they couldn't guess it, I would keep trying. I think that all of those years that I strove to get it right connected me to drawing. Once I finally got it right (or as close as high school student can get), I couldn't let it go. I chose to pursue art in college because there was nothing that I could ever enjoy more.

What is your inspiration?

I have always been inspired by people and how different we all are. When I draw people, I want to get all of them right. I want to be true to their appearances as well as their personalities. I'm also very inspired by what other artists can do--it makes me work harder to develop my own skill and style.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

I'm still very new at this. As I continue to grow as an artist, I'm sure a theme will arise, but it will not be planned. I can only say that I have a broad theme throughout my recent work--that is, that it has always retained something personal. Besides commissions, my art has been like my autobiography.

What is your preferred medium?

Charcoal has stuck with me since I started using it. When I paint, I like to use oils.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

Not right now, but I'm currently working on a series that I would love to submit somewhere when it's finished!

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

Definitely my sister. When I was young, she was going to school for painting. I would always watch her paint and draw. In a way, she was my first teacher, and I learned a lot from her.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

One of my professors is a wonderful painter. If he had a website, I would direct you to it.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Chuck Close. I love his scale and what he can do with paint.

What is your next painting going to be?

It's hard to say what my next painting will be, but my next drawing is portrait of a friend. It's part of my series titled "Tear You Apart," which features different negative emotions and 'torn' paper.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Despite my initial disbelief in formal training, it has definitely helped. I think that being an artist is very much about growing and learning, and I don't know if I would have done much of that without it.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

My drive.

Interview with artist Brandi Read

Brandi was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1976. As a small child, she looked at her mother’s colored page with envy with how well she managed to keep her crayon marks within the lines. “All it takes is practice,” she learned, and has been honing her skills ever since. At the age of twelve she lived with her grandparents and twin sister in Bradenton, Florida. Her grandmother took her to weekly art lessons and Brandi soon received her first commission. A neighbor paid twenty dollars for a painting of five California Raisins, complete with names of the family members assigned above each character. The portrait, despite referencing pop culture icons of 1988, unofficially remains the worst family portrait painted by anyone.

Brandi’s experience and education in art has expanded far beyond the lessons at the local art supply shop; she returned to Kalamazoo, Michigan, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude from Western Michigan University School of Art. In addition to showing in various juried exhibitions and group shows, she has won many awards and scholarships—in particular, a travel grant which enabled her to research a sculpture at the Louvre for her Readdressing Victory series. Brandi currently shows her paintings in cities on both coasts, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Dallas, and Atlanta.

Interview

What drew you to become an artist?

I was born with an extraordinary desire to make things, especially two dimensional things.

What is your inspiration?

Many things inspire me, such as pretty girls, colors, mythology, beautiful things, books, movies, emotions, music, people, moments in time, and ideas.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

I work a lot around the theme of Greek mythology and mythological characters, also the ideas of victory, overcoming obstacles, inspiration itself and muses.

What is your preferred medium?

I paint mostly in oils on canvas, but also paint with watercolor, draw, build things and occasionally do some metalsmithing.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

I have work on view at Thinkspace in Los Angeles right now. I have work in a 4-person show at The Gallery at East Atlanta tattoo that opens July 19 in Atlanta. I also have a painting in the 'Project 57' show at Distinction Gallery in Escondido, CA. I always have work at Art Whino in D.C.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

Probably Norman Rockwell but I've looked at art all of my life and have had many different artists influence me and fuel my interest.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

Many. To name a few...and I'm sure I will forget some, but Dave MacDowell, Kukula, Chase TaFoya, Kris Lewis, Christopher Darling, Erin Laroque, Audrey Kawasaki, Travis Louie. Those are some of the artists whose work I go back to for second, third, and fourth looks. Plus many more, you know.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

Dead or Alive?

Dead: Rockwell, again. Carravagio, Gentileschi, Ingres, David.

Alive: Any of the above would be great, with the exception of Kris Lewis because his work is too realistic and I just wouldn't have my flaws documented forever in a Kris Lewis painting.

What is your next painting going to be?

That's top secret information. You will have to wait and see!

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

I went to art school and wish I hadn't. My college debt is the bane of my existence right now. I could do everything I do now without the degree, and I managed to graduate magna cum laude. I feel that my time at the university was essentially just very expensive practice.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

One thing? Who can take anything away from me at all? I would like to see someone try!

Interview with artist Nicolas Minotti

Nicolas was born in Switzerland in 1982. He lives in total reclusion and attended university from 2001 to 2008. Still a literary student there, he no longer needs to go to school, making for a more perfect isolation. Mainly a writer, Nicolas paints occasionally. He has no formal training, and isn't very skilled. He tries to prove to people that you should always give things a try, and not just a little one, but a long, hard, intense try.












Interview
What drew you to become an artist?

Originally, I didn't think I could be one. But I was very interested in painting and painters, so one day, I picked up some odd paper and a forsaken box of watercolours, and a brush, and started painting abstract stuff. I was really pleased with it, even though it required no skills.

The real trigger was when I tried to draw faces. The first drawings I made were awful, but I kept trying, because I seemed to sense some slight improvement. And right I was. By the fifth drawing, it looked almost good. That's when I decided to paint a portrait. And to my surprise, the result was very good! (Well, relatively to me, that is.) From then on, I truly believed anyone can paint or draw, and I keep trying to improve, knowing that I started with the worst natural talent for either drawing or painting.

What is your inspiration?

I'm definitely not a Romantic when it comes to the creative process. I don't believe in muses or even inspiration; and if I do, it's only in the Picasso way: "I believe in inspiration, but it must find you working." That said, I change my mind on "inspiration" depending on what is meant by it. I think the things I can least corner are those that most inspire me.

Is there one recurring theme in your work?

Yes, face. I'm obsessed with faces. Faces are quite something.

What is your preferred medium?

If I had a good studio and enough means, I think oil would be a dream. Right now, I love simple pens to draw, black ink ones.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

None whatsoever. I'm more than underground.

Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

When it comes to painting, I guess Van Gogh did. Or Dalì. Later on it was HR Giger, but as I never saw myself as a real painter, I wasn't deriving much from them.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

HR Giger, when it comes to painting. Otherwise I know a few yet unknown artists whose work I worship. Laura Z comes to mind, and I forget her family name. Zebresky?

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

It would be a friend.

What is your next painting going to be?

I have no idea.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Hard to say since if you had one, you didn't have the other. I had no formal training, and I sucked at drawing in school. No formal training perhaps helps to feel free, but I don't make any pride from it. No matter how you get your training, you're still responsible for your art.

What is the one thing they can’t take away from you?

They being who? I guess if they try hard, they can take everything away from me.

Interview with artist Angelique Price

Art permeates every aspect of my life. I have been a professional fine artist for ten years, a tattoo artist for one year and am now specializing in henna art as well. It is my desire to succeed at whatever medium calls to me. I am skilled with oils, acrylics, watercolor, graphite, and my latest love, markers. Every medium creates a different style within me and broadens my artistic abilities.

In 1996 I was awarded a scholarship to Belmont University. I studied there for a year and then moved on to hone my skills at Watkins College of Art and Design for two years. Finding it irreverent to have a degree in fine art, I took every art and studio class available, won two awards for sculpture and left school behind.

My career accelerates with persistence. Since the beginning of 2008 I have twice been featured on Juxtapoz.com, a very well known art website for pop culture, for my marker drawings and to showcase my portrait of "Barack Obama" titled "Metamorphosis." I've also been featured on Redbubble.com twice and deviantart.com once. My work has been shown throughout the hemisphere, from my home state of Tennessee to the Northeast, California, and the Caribbean. I have participated in shows at venues such as The Belcourt Theatre Gallery, Muse Haven, The Art and Invention Gallery, The Ninth Life Gallery, and MuseX Bazaar where I was the resident artist. I have filled two model homes with commission work for Haury and Smith Contractors as well as the hotel, Steeple Chase Inn and have been active in donating art to the AIDS foundation "Artrageous." I was also the featured artist at Edgehill Studios, a cyber cafe that opened its first location in Nashville and I am a core member of the "Nashville Craft Apocalypse" a large group of artists who show and sell our work around Nashville.

For the past three years I have been working on a series of work done entirely in sharpie, prismacolor, and bic permanent markers. I have over 70 pieces completed now. My pieces are available for limited edition prints and standard prints. I have two websites where I sell reproductions of my work as prints, t-shirts, mugs, magnets, puzzles, greeting cards etc. It is my wish for everyone who would like to have my art hanging in their house to have access to it in some way. Not everyone can afford the originals. I love the digital world because of this.

I am continuously commissioned to paint and draw portraits. These have an essential impact on each individual's self-objectivity and self-acceptance. I am expanding this awareness with my series "Real Beauty", depicting the natural beauty of the female body. So far, every woman I have painted or drawn has cried when she has seen my interpretation of her. It is very rewarding. I'm also working with my seven year old son, Josiathe, on a series called "The Child Within", a spectacular body of work showcasing the talent and freedom of the art of a child. He and I draw the pieces together and I complete them. These are beautiful and whimsical. He is my greatest inspiration.

Art is my passion. It is the way in which I understand myself, others and our world. Through my creations, I find answers and revelations. I am able to see the world in its inspirational truth. Every person's eyes have a story, every tree and flower is a mystery. The world around me is a perfect intricacy. I am in constant awe and appreciation. I feel honored to be a channel of such a vast loving perfection.


Interview


What drew you to become an artist?

I've always drawn but never actually thought of myself as an artist. I received a scholarship to Belmont University for pre-med. I had always planned on becoming a doctor. Growing up I watched my father have epileptic seizures. I took care of him a lot when he was recovering from car crashes, split open heads, chewed up tongues etc... This is what first inspired me to become a doctor. Later in life, I had severe mental problems and attempted suicide. I was then put into a psychiatric hospital where I was treated like a number instead of a person. This experience led me to decide on psychiatry. I planned on changing the way psychiatrists interacted with their patients. But on my first day of college I heard my inner voice tell me to turn around and change my major to fine art. So, I studied fine art instead of medicine. I have been an artist ever since.

Though I didn't become a medical doctor, I have been studying a new form of therapy called Chord Therapy. It is cellular reprogramming. It deals with the entire being on a cellular level rather than just symptoms. It heals on many levels and restructures DNA. I firmly believe that this form of therapy will completely wipe out psychiatry eventually.

What is your inspiration?

Everything. People and life. Artists, musicians, movies, my son, my husband, my emotions, my thoughts, my own healing. I really cannot think of anything that isn't inspiration actually.


Is there one recurring theme in your work?

The reoccurring theme happens in my titles. They are always about healing and love. My subject matter varies, but the purpose behind the art is always in the title. And if the title is a person's name it just means that the person is the inspiration and love I am projecting.

Also, I draw myself constantly. A large portion of my work is self portraits. And most of the time I'm naked in them.


What is your preferred medium?

Right now its markers. I've spent the past three years creating a large body of work done in markers. I have over 70 pieces completed now.

Do you have any art available in shows/galleries at this time?

No, I do not. I sell prints, t-shirts etc. over the internet and I do a lot of commission work. I'm also a tattoo artist so I make steady money with that. Concerning my originals though, I have most of them. And the ones I sell are usually commission work. I paint and draw nude women extremely well and am hired to do these often. As far as having my work in galleries I am constantly turned down for some reason. Perhaps its because I'm in the bible belt and that is where I've been submitting my work. Its time to submit to Los Angeles, San Fransisco and New York. Nashville just isn't ready. When a gallery finally does pick me up they will be in for a treat because I've got a huge, awesome body of work ready to show.


Who was the first artist that made an impact on you?

Salvador Dali and I draw him often.

Is there a contemporary artist that knocks your socks off?

There are so many that knock my socks off. And most of them are not famous. But they will be.

If you could have any artist paint your portrait whom would it be?

I would have loved for Frida Kahlo to paint me but she is dead so... no luck there.

What is your next painting going to be?

I'm working on two. One of Abraham Lincoln and one of Pablo Picasso.

Do you think formal training or not having formal training helped your art?

Formal training absolutely helped my art. I was a rebel though. I didn't follow directions. And I think thats apparent in my work. But as an artist, you have to apply the rules to your own style. You have to break them or your work will always be generic.

What is the one thing they can't take away from you?

My integrity.

-Angelique Moselle Price

"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." -Gandhi

Issue 1 now available from amazon

Oranges & Sardines: Summer 2008

Oranges & Sardines Issue 1 - Summer 2008

Featuring Artists: Ethan Diehl, Marcia Molnar, Holly Picano, Cheryl Kelley, Jennifer Wildermuth, L.D. Grant, Niel Hollingsworth, Steph Chard, Jeremy Baum, Jeff Filipski and E.B. Goodale. Poems by Blake Butler, Dana King, J.P. Dancing Bear, Josh Olsen, Steffi Drewes, Matthew Hittinger, Patrick Leonard, Diana Adams and Graeme Mullen. Short story by Kirk Curnutt. Reviews by Miguel Murphy, Michael Parker, Cheryl Townsend, Courtney Campbell and Jim Knowles. Columns by Talia Reed and Caridad McCormick. Grace Cavalieri interviews Mark Doty.

Purchase a copy from here or download pdf.

ISBN/EAN13:1438234422 / 9781438234427

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