Nostalgia: The Poetess at Green Lake

Studies in OCCU(PY)(PATION)

2011-12-16T17:08:00.001-08:00

Artist Studies in & around Occupy Seattle
Seattle Central Community College, Westlake Park, City Hall
8A-8P on Saturday 17 December 2011

A K Mimi Allin
* Hand Book
8AM-8PM at SCCC & Westlake Park (ongoing)
Wearing a 2 lb. weighted glove, the artist will repeatedly raise and lower her right hand until her arm is fatigued. She will then ink her hand and make prints of it in a large Hand Book. The prints will then provide prompts for writing. Writing will be done with her left hand. This study uses the Occupy logo as a starting point for exploration. Onlookers will be invited to ink their hands and contribute a print to a guest Hand Book.

Stephen Roxborough
* Study to Vacate and Occupy the Mind
9AM (ongoing) starting at SCCC moving to Westlake Park
Artist will meditate for 20 minutes in each location, attempting to clear the thoughts that occupy his mind. When thoughts arise, he will record them on paper and begin to meditate again. Between sittings, he will move mindfully and thoughtlessly, studying other artists with his camera, taking pictures and referencing his list of discarded thoughts.

Shannon Stewart
Study of Movement/Occupation & Outside/Inside
10AM-12PM starting at SCCC moving to Westlake Park then City Hall
A duet (with Mary Margaret Moore) on the inside/outside experience of the movement that doesn't move.

Mary Margaret Moore
Study of Movement/Occupation & Outside/Inside
11AM-12PM at City Hall
Movement study that explores being inside/outside systems, all the while in duet with another mover (Shannon Stewart) who is conducting her own study in procession from SCCC, Westlake to City Hall.

John Burgess
Public reading of Walt Whitman. Artist will stand atop a soapbox and read aloud from Drum-Taps, including Song of the Banner at Daybreak, Beat! Beat! Drums! and Rise O Days.
12PM at Westlake Park

Lainne Dexter
Recipe for Change/To Bake an "Occu-Pie"
1PM at Westlake Park
Performance Art Piece

Nat Phen (with Benson Smith & band)
"Effects of Ambient Organized Vibrations on Social-Political Group Dynamics" or "To What Will the People Bop?"
2-4PM at Westlake Park
Nat Phen will give an audible voice/cry to the Occupy movement with their Popular/Blues/Mexican/Klezmer/Jazz music.

* Studies with asterisks offer the opportunity for public participation

STUDIES IN OCCU(PY)(PATION) is 5th in the ongoing series, STUDIES IN EVERYTHING, preceded by Studies in White, Studies in Melancholy, Studies in Forgiveness and Studies in Memory.

Studies in OCCU(PY)(PATION)

2011-11-22T14:54:00.000-08:00

STUDIES IN OCCU(PY)(PATION)
Saturday 17 December 2011 (8am-8pm)
Westlake Park, City Hall & Seattle Central Community College
SEATTLE

CALL FOR ARTISTS
Artists experimenting in movement, performance, process, dance, text, sound, voice, music, visual and other media wanted for Studies in Occu(py)(pation), a full-day, outdoor, live art event, 8AM–8PM, on Saturday 17 December at (1) West Lake Park, (2) City Hall and (3) Seattle Central Community College (Seattle, WA). Select a 15-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour or 2-hour time slot. Engage in a stationary or moving study anywhere in one of the three locations. All genres considered. No plug-ins available. Self-supporting, low-tech only. Situated in an open urban area. Standing audience unlikely. Studies overlap and continue for the length of the event. This is a free and independent event generated by working artists in Seattle.

APPLY
Send an informal e-mail to mimiallin@gmail.com with your: (1) name, (2) contact info (3) work history (brief) / link to your website, (4) one sentence expressing your medium and idea for the study, (5) desired study location and (6) desired study time and length. There is no formal deadline, but to receive proper attention and be placed on the schedule, before 10 December is best.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Studies in Occu(py)(pation) is 5th in a quarterly series called STUDIES IN EVERYTHING, preceded by Studies in White (January 2010), Studies in Monk, Mompou and Melancholy (April 2010), Studies in Forgiveness (July 2010) and Studies in Memory (November 2010). The goal of STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is to form a temporary community and to have that community study, in a collectively and public way, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. Studies aren’t about finished, choreographed work, they are about the artist’s process. We do not spend a great deal of time preparing for or reporting on studies, but spend time partaking in studies and thus evolve as artists. 10-40 artists participate in each study. For examples of past studies and to see images and videos, visit our FB group page STUDIES IN EVERYTHING.

INFO FOR ARTISTS
Artists are encouraged to visit the site before their study to consider weather and other conditions that may affect their work (noise levels, crowd flow, lighting, pedestrian pathways, bottlenecks, nearby bathrooms, warm dry places to retreat to, parking situation and bus routes). This is a rain or shine event. Performances will be photo and video-documented.

WHY A STUDY?
Studies free us. Unlike their finished and focused counterparts (rehearsals, choreographed pieces and performances), studies show us the artist in the process of discovering. We believe this work helps situate the artist in the community and manifests a real artist-to-world connection. We hope to encourage artists everywhere to envision and set into place parameters for studies and to spend time exploring the world publicly.

WHY OCCUPY?
This study comes in response to the international political event—Occupy Wall Street. Artists may find it helpful to attend the Occupation, if they haven't already, to help clarify and/or broaden their ideas and approaches. It is not, however, necessary to respond in a political way or to offer a politics-focused study. Studies may be as personal, as quiet or as pedestrian as you wish. Artists are encouraged to take their study in the direction of their choosing, as far or as near the current political situation as they wish.

oc·cu·py verb \ˈä-kyə-ˌpī\
1: to engage the attention or energies of
2a : to take up (a place or extent in space)
2b : to take or fill (an extent in time)
3a : to take or hold possession or control of
3b : to fill or perform the functions of (an office or position)
4: to reside in as an owner or tenant

oc·cu·pa·tion noun \ˌä-kyə-ˈpā-shən\
a : an activity in which one engages
b : the principal business of one's life : vocation

LINKS
Occupy Seattle
West Lake Park Seattle

PEG &FRANK @ Gallery 110

2011-10-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

Saturday 8 October at 5PM
Featured ArtsCrush Event
Gallery 110 (TK Building)
Seattle, WA

PEG &FRANK is an elastic collective born in 2011 from the imaginations A K Mimi Allin & Vanessa DeWolf. PEG &FRANK bring visual art, writing poetry, performance art and critical viewing together to manifest a new field of work that lives between the art object and the viewer. We plan events for galleries and artists that facilitate a closer viewing of art, using a process that requires an intensive amount of time in the gallery. Those experiences are then shared with the artists and their audiences at public and private events.

For the exhibit of manipulated photographs by artists Ray Schutte and Jan Cook (Gallery 110), Peg &Frank spent 20 hours with the works of art, including an overnight. We navigated our responsive structure and edited and culled our materials to what was viewed in the gallery on on Saturday night. It was a thrill and an honor to have shared that process with poets Stephen Roxborough & Lyn Coffin and with fellow art maven Mylinda Sneed and cellist Natalie Hall.

To bring PEG &FRANK into your art space, contact: mimiallin@gmail.com.

THE LAMPLIGHTER

2011-10-04T01:50:00.000-07:00

Public Art Project
October 2011
Seattle, WA

Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) is a novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry about a little boy who lives on an asteroid with one rose and three volcanoes that come up to his knees, one of which is extinct. When The Little Prince decides he is unhappy, he sets off to learn about life and visits seven nearby planets, the last of which is Earth. On his travels, he meets The Lamplighter, a man under orders to extinguish his lamp at daybreak and light it at dusk. The Lamplighter explains how his task, once useful, has become absurd over time as his planet began spinning more and more quickly. Since a new day occurs every minute now, the lamplighter is so busy he hasn't a moment to sleep. Is not The Lamplighter a metaphor for our own condition? We are all so busy doing things we think are of consequence that we miss the smaller, simpler things that make up the truly significant stuff (seeing the stars, sharing a sunrise, listening to a friend, dancing, putting my hands in the earth, talking to the elephants). The Little Prince is a fable about how money, ego and power close our hearts and turn into dimwitted adults.

PERFORMANCE
Performance artist A K Mimi Allin rolls through the Seattle night with a 10' rolling lantern and spinning, papier-mâché planetoid (conceived of and constructed by inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss), illuminating and extinguishing her lamp once per minute. When you see her wink of “good night” and blink of “good morning," think to the things of consequence in your life, then come and commemorate someone who believed in you when you a child by painting a golden star on her lamppost. By mid-October, the entire lantern be covered with golden stars and made bright by the light of our belief in one another, and at last the lamplighter will be able to put down her work and take a much needed rest.

SCHEDULE OF APPEARANCES

• Wallingford Artwalk - 5 October
• Pioneer SquareArtwalk - 6 October
• Fremont Artwalk - 7 October
• Capital Hill Artwalk - 11 October
• West Seattle Artwalk - 13 October
• Greenwood-Phinney Artwalk -14 October

The Lamplighter will light & extinguished her lamp 1,440 times over the next 2 weeks and then install it at the Phinney Center Gallery in Greenwood.

THANK YOU
This project received a CityArtist grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Thank you for that!! Cosmic thanks go out to inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss for his work on my whimsical lantern. Thanks also go out to the talented & beautiful Mylinda Sneed & her brilliant son Beckett Arnold for their support. Thanks indeed to The Fremont Arts Council for use of The Powerhouse & to Christopher Peragine for his time & expressive drawings. Thanks unending to all those who support & enjoy public art throughout the universe.

TAHOMA KORA 2011

2011-04-01T18:10:00.000-07:00

TAHOMA KORA
A Human Powered Spiritual Journey

Tahoma Kora is a 3-month, prostrating pilgrimage to and around Mount Rainier. It begins in June 2011. Prostrate means to lie down in adoration. I'll lie down every 3 steps until I've circled the mountain. Tahoma Kora is an attempt to locate the spiritual in the landscape and in myself, of course. It's a joint effort between me and my audience, my patrons. I'm looking for daily sponsors, 90 sponsors at $50 per day, for each day I walk. Each sponsor gives me mantra to recite, to keep me on task. In return, sponsors take half the karma I earn. And if you don't believe in karma, you can always believe in me and my art, in the work I am doing.

I've launched this project on Kickstarter, an online fundraising platform for creative projects. The details are all there. Go to Kickstarter and search "Tahoma Kora" or click here to go directly to my project. Prostrating is beautiful work, a slow shifting between micro and macro, the grass blades, the mountain, the tiny trembling bugs, the wide open sky. It's relaxing and powerful, if not tiring and strenuous.

Please consider supporting me at some level. Kickstarter has information on how to donate. The minimum pledge is $1. There's no maximum pledge. For $10, I'll write your name on my pilgrim's apron. For $50 you give me a mantra to recite for a full day. The scale keeps going to include various handmade treasures, but the thing with Kickstarter is, if I don't reach my fundraising goal of $5000, I receive no money from anyone. Your gift is only processed if I make my goal. I have 60 days to make it. If you feel inspired, share my project with others who may be interested. I thank you and thank you again. May all be happy! Tashi Delek.

MOUNT TAHOMA | RAINIER (14,410')
Tahoma is a native name for Rainier, an active, glaciated volcano in Washington State (USA), the most prominent mountain in the lower 48, located 95 miles southeast of Seattle.

Further Reading
What Is a Pilgrim? by Swami Veda Bharati
Conversation with a Prostrating Pilgrim
Pilgrimage in Tibet-The Yoga of Transformation by Anne Z. Parker
Our Sacred Land, Chief Seattle's Speech & Letter

Song of Tent City has a Blog!

2010-11-17T21:32:00.000-08:00

For those who wish to follow this project, please visit the Song of Tent City Blog. It is there I will post my experiences as a resident camper at Tent City from late November 2010 through December and possibly on through February 2011. It is there too that I will post my poems and all relevant news and calls for collaboration. Visit from time to time or become a follower. And, if you haven't yet found a way and wish to offer assistance, drop in to Tent City when you have time and come find me for a conversation or stop in and talk to any resident in camp. People are always interested in talking. The camp will be at Maple Leaf Lutheran Church in Meadowbrook neighborhood of Seattle from 27 November to 27 February. For directions and a map click here. It isn't necessary, but if you wish to bring a gift, the following items are always needed: coffee, duct tape, tarps, tents, wool blankets, underwear (men's or women's), hot food and hygiene products. Thank you in advance for your interest and input.

3 BRAINSTORMING SESSIONS Song of Tent City

2010-11-06T15:32:00.001-07:00

Below are details on 3 upcoming brainstorming sessions for Song of Tent City. These are open, drop-in sessions, to which all are invited to listen and talk. They are about bringing our arts and hearts and minds together to begin a dialogue about what might be possible. Check back here for info on future sessions in December.

BRAINSTORMING SESSION NO. 1
Wednesday 17 November (7-10PM)
Studio-Current on Capitol Hill
1417 10th Ave
Seattle, WA 98122

BRAINSTORMING SESSION NO. 2
Thursday 18 November (6-8PM)
The Fremont Abbey Arts Center (Cafe)
4272 Fremont Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103
www.fremontabbey.org

BRAINSTORMING SESSION NO. 2
Friday 19 November (9-5PM)
SPACE Building in Fremont
600 N 36th St
Seattle, WA 98103
http://www.fremontspace.com/

If you can't make a session, but want to meet for tea & talk, contact me at mimiallin@gmail.com with a time and day you'd like to meet and I'll do my best to meet it.

SPROUT!
I'm proud to announce that Song of Tent City was selected by the voters at Sprout II to receive $1000 in funding. This will enable me to give myself full-time to the project and will provide money for project materials. Thanks to all who supported my project and to Sprout and The Abbey.

Song of Tent City - December 2010

2010-11-03T00:02:00.000-07:00

POET-IN-RESIDENCE
I approached Tent City 3 on Capitol Hill in Seattle on 20 October 2010 requesting to be their poet-in-residence for the month of December. I was welcomed in and given a tour. They then asked me to write up my proposal so the community could review and vote on it. Tent City 3 is presently at St Marks Episcopal Cathedral on Capitol Hill, but moves to Maple Leaf Lutheran Church in late November, so I'd be joining them in Maple Leaf. I proposed to live in my own mini-yurt and to work alongside the other volunteers in camp. My main task will be to listen, respond and give voice to the residents. I'd also like to identify ways in which I might work with residents to gift something back to the community.

SONG OF MYSELF
Song of Tent City references Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself" written and self-published in 1855. "Song of Myself" was the major poem in Leaves of Grass a collection Whitman edited until his death in the late 1800s. It was the new American epic, a free verse poem cataloguing all of American life. It presented a search for the self, a search for the boundaries of self. It addressed the communion of all peoples and things. It embraced the coarse along with the fine, the weak and the strong, the body and the soul, offering poetic elevation to everything ordinary. There are, I argue, still a few strains missing. It's these missing strains I go in search of, the ones ringing through Tent City. What do they sound like? How might they find expression? As a song, a poem, an installation, a performance, a craft? I don't know, but I intend to find out. The most I can do is to put myself out there and listen for it.

THE GROWTH OF THE POET
I agree with Whitman, to truly experience the world one must be fully in it and of it. That's why I want to set up my ger (yurt) and work and live with the community. What other way is there to know it? The democracy of the poet must know no bounds. This endeavor is as much about the growth of the poet as it is about the voice of the people. I have no doubt I will take on more than I can give and learn so much more than I could ever teach, but I know too that this is my way. This is what I have to give. Myself.

THE GRASS IS DEMOCRATIC
"This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just same as the righteous,
I make appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away"

The poet too is democratic. I was once The Poetess at Green Lake. I was later adopted by the global architectural firm, NBBJ. I go now to Tent City. What ever kept me from walking through the gates into the community at Tent City? I do not know. What keeps you from doing so?

GIFT
While listening for the Song of Tent City, I plan to offer some sort of ongoing art and gift-making opportunity. When we make art, we express our experience. When we make gifts, we become parts of the community. I go then with open eyes and ears, eager to learn the needs of the camp, to facilitate a dialog and arts community. Tent City, as much as any community, needs a poet. I offer myself as an interface and invite you to do the same. This project hopes to show that the unsheltered and the sheltered each have something to give. Strengthening our community begins by valuing each member as a participant. Finding ways to value ourselves and one another, regardless of our needs or skills, enables us to trust one another and form bonds.

SPROUT
I've been invited to present Song of Tent City at Sprout II on Friday November 5th at The Fremont Abbey. All in attendance vote for the project they like best to receive the money raised at the door ($20 door fee includes a home-cooked meal and a vote). Please attend. This event sells out, so get your tickets online asap. If you can't make the Sprout! dinner event, check in here for info on the brainstorming sessions I'll be hosting in November and December. I want to put all kinds of art and intellectual minds together and begin to dialogue about what might be possible. Mostly, I'd like to open the floor for idea sharing and dialogue.

TENT CITY FACTS
Since Tent City 3 began operating in 2000, it has occupied more than 30 sites around King County. Tent City stays on private land in one location for 90 days before they relocate. As of this posting, the camp is located at St Marks on Capitol Hill. On 27 November, it will move to Maple Leaf Lutheran Church. There are 9,000 homeless people living in Seattle. 2,000 are living on the streets on a given night.

LINKS
Greater Seattle Cares
Municipal Research and Services Center for WA
The One Night Count
Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness
Seattle Gov / Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness
SHARE/WHEEL self-managing, grassroots organization of homeless people
U Utah Phillips

Studies in Memory | Junanita Bay Park

2010-10-14T14:56:00.000-07:00

STUDIES IN MEMORY (Kirkland, WA)
1-6PM SATURDAY 23 OCTOBER

Our collective set of memories is who we are. Some say it is our only possession. Others call it unreliable. Some think of it as a purse or a sieve or an artist or a politician. Elizabeth Bowen tells us of memory’s charms, “The charm, one might say the genius of memory, is that it is choosy, chancy, and temperamental: it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.”

STUDY ARTISTS
A K MIMI ALLIN| My Happy Life
CLINTON LEE BLISS | Memory Spool
ANNE DEJARNETTE| Memory Box
VANESSA DEWOLF | over&over-again&again
CHIN HUA CATHERINE DONG | It Is the Way of Being
MAUREEN “MOMO” FREEHILL| Study in Dark
JEAN HINDLE with CYRUS & CHLOE KHAMBATTA, CHRISTIAN SWENSON, HARUKO NISHIMURA, DIANA GARCIA-SNYDER & ETIENNE CAKPO | Memory?
KARL S. MONROE | Meditating on the Consciousness & Memory of Trees
AARON SILVERBERG | How We Die

These local & international artists will be situated throughout Juanita Bay Park (Kirkland, WA) from 1-6PM on Saturday 23 October offering individual studies in memory. There will be opportunities for the public to engage in select studies. Pick up a map & schedule at either entrance to the causeway on the day of the event. Studies are overlapping & continuous. Studies in Everything series curator is A K Mimi Allin. Studies in Everything is supported by 4Culture.

STUDIES IN MEMORY | JUANITA BAY PARK

2010-09-05T16:31:00.000-07:00

CALL FOR ARTISTS
Artists experimenting in movement, performance, process, dance, text, sound, voice, music, visual arts and other media wanted for Studies in Memory, a half-day, outdoor, live art event, 1PM–6PM, on Saturday 23 October in Juanita Bay Park (Kirkland, WA). Select from 15-minute to 5-hour time slots. Engage in a stationary or moving study anywhere in the 110-acre park. Studies overlap and continue for the length of the event. STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is supported in part by 4Culture.

APPLY
Send an informal e-mail to mimiallin@gmail.com with the following six points: (1) your name, (2) tel # & e-mail contact (3) link to your website if you have one, (4) very brief work history (<100 words), (5) preference for study length: 15-min, 30-min, 1-hour, 2-hour or 5-hours, and (6) one sentence loosely expressing your medium or idea. DEADLINE: 5 OCTOBER 2010.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Studies in Memory is 4th in a quarterly series called STUDIES IN EVERYTHING, preceded by Studies in White (January), Studies in Monk, Mompou and Melancholy (April) and Studies in Forgiveness (July). The goal of STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is to form a temporary community and to have that community study, in a collectively and public way, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. Studies aren’t about finished, choreographed work, they are about the artist’s process. We do not spend a great deal of time preparing for or reporting on studies, but spend time partaking in studies and thus evolve as artists. 10-20 artists participate in each study. Funding helps organize, announce video-document the event. Visit the Facebook Group STUDIES IN EVERYTHING to view past studies.

WHY MEMORY?
Memory is the ability to store, retain and recall information and experiences. They say one brain cell is capable of holding a memory. We know that sleep can improve and stress can impair our ability to remember. Our collective set of memories make us who we are. We remember in order to know ourselves.

INFO FOR ARTISTS
Artists selected for a study are encouraged to make a site visit & consider weather & the environment when devising a study. It’s not necessary to stay for the entire event, but please do plan to witness the studies on either side of your own so we might witness one another. Note: This is a rain or shine event for which you need to be self-supporting. Bring water, sunscreen, hat, umbrella, jacket, snack food, bus schedules and anything else you need. There are a few inexpensive restaurants within walking distance. Juanita Bay Park is a public place with a fair bit of strolling traffic but, unless you specifically invite people in to witness your study, a large standing audience is unlikely. This is perfectly ok with us since STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is all about the artist’s engagement with the topic at hand. So… “Let the bucket of memory down into the well,/bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one/stirring, no plans. Just being there.” From Just Thinking by William Stafford.

INFO ON JUANITA BAY PARK
Juanita Bay Park is located at 2201 Market Street in Kirkland, WA 98033. There is a day-use parking lot, a restroom, a water fountain, a very long boardwalk with benches over a wetland, a paved path winding through rolling lawns (this area used to be a golf course) and two long finger piers with viewing platforms over the marsh. The area is rife with wildlife. While the adjacent Juanita Beach Park is closed for renovations, Juanita Bay Park is clear and open to the public. Click here for MAP & INFO.

DIRECTIONS

BY BUS
From Downtown Seattle take bus #255 to the corner of 98th & Juanita Park Road or take any bus to Bellevue Transit Center and transfer to bus #234.

BY CAR
From I-405 North, take the NE 116th Street exit (exit 20A) and turn left onto NE 116th Street. Turn left onto 98th Avenue NE, which becomes Market Street. End at 2201 Market Street, Kirkland. From I-405 South, take the NE 124th Street exit (exit 20) and turn right onto NE 124th Street. Turn left onto 100th Avenue NE, which becomes 98th Avenue NE, which becomes Market Street. End at 2201 Market Street, Kirkland.

Hermit Seeks Hermitage

2010-08-04T22:06:00.001-07:00

Mikhail Nesterov. Hermit. 1889.

Poet seeks bit of fallow land to use (lightly) as a hermitage for one month. Any season. I currently reside in Pacific NW, but am considering offers both nationally and internationally. In the spirit of Basho and the wandering poets of Japan, I’m heading into the hills to practice silence and to write and reflect on life. I own a small sailboat, but currently have no land. Willing to trade poems for land use. Ideally looking for forested, valley or mountain land—high up, far out or down under—however inaccessible. It’s crucial only that it be removed from society. I plan to haul along my handmade, mini, portable yurt (collapses to 6 x 2’ and rides on a bicycle wheel) and a month’s supply of food. I will collect and treat my water and dispose of waste responsibly. I’m a grant-funded conceptual artist and former climbing ranger—respectful, quiet, clean and practiced in leave-no-trace. References available upon request. I’m interested in all serious offers and suggestions. Thank you.

Poet Hermit
poet.hermit@gmail.com
617 460 6110

SEASIDE OPERA | Tacoma

2010-07-30T08:30:00.000-07:00

Spaceworks Tacoma
Tollefson Plaza
16-20 August 2010
A K Mimi Allin

The ocean washes its way up to Tollefson Plaza this August for a playful performance set to ocean-side operas. The plaza turns into a beach and the birds sing in opera through a record player. An aging wooden lifeguard chair rises up from the base of the curved pink steps, which are now lined in blue waves. Using costumes, flags, whistles and metal pails, the artist performs to a changing audio of sea-inspired operas and carnival music. 15-minute performances occur daily, on the half hour, for one full week from 2-7pm. The public is encouraged to take a seat and watch the performances or participate in the activities by playing with the water toys around the cascading pools. There will be paper boats, wind-up water toys, water guns and fishing rods. Summer is finally here.

From Mongolia, With Love

2010-07-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

From Mongolia, With Love
The Loganberry Festival
Whidbey Island
Saturday July 24 July & Sunday 25 July
In the teardrop garden near the Rob Schouten Gallery

In a specially designed & constructed miniature yurt or ger (8' diameter) made of hemlock & felt awaits the nomadic poet. Inside you'll witness a little scriptorium with handmade poetry scrolls on which are written verses drawing from a variety of wandering poetry traditions (Han-Shan, Li Po, Basho, The Troubadours, The Beat Poets, Bob Dylan and Buddhist Poetry in the New Mongolia). Visitors will be invited in, one at a time, for a unique & intimate poetry experience. Scrolls will be unrolled & read to you in the mottled light of this tiny yurt. Experience the itinerant poetess face to face at the Loganberry Festival!! This project is sponsored by Brave New Words. See you at the festival!

Loganberry Festival 2010
It’s summertime on Whidbey Island, time for the annual Loganberry Festival at the Greenbank Farm. We look forward to a weekend filled with live music, good food, wine tasting, arts & crafts booths, chainsaw & other artists in action, pie eating contests, & more from 10 AM to 7 PM on Saturday, and 10 AM to 5 PM on Sunday. Admission is free, with only a $5 per car fee for parking. Directions to Green Bank Farm.

Artist
A K Mimi Allin has twice crossed the Pacific Ocean by boat, has worked a climbing ranger on Mt. Rainier and served in the Peace Corps in Poland. In 2003, she enrolled at City College of New York where she split her time between Museum Studies and Writing Poetry. In 2006, Allin returned to Seattle and started practicing as a performance artist. Her work encompasses many media often involving movement, poetry, installation and the participation of onlookers. These performed events are documented in video, photographs and writing. In her best-known work, Nostalgia: The Poetess at Green Lake (2006-2007), Allin spent 8 hours every Sunday at a small writing desk at Green Lake, offering intimate poetry exchanges to the public. Allin has created work for ACT Theatre, Seattle Art Museum, Bumbershoot, ArtSparks, LitFuse, Smoke Farm, Brave New Words and Urban Wilderness Project. In 2010, she was an artist-in-residence at both Project: Space Available and at NBBJ.

artSparks 2010

2010-07-07T02:53:00.001-07:00

Walking in War & Peace
Weeklong performance by A K Mimi Allin

Occidental Park, Seattle
Daily, ongoing, from 13 July-19 July 2010 until Le Fin

Everyday, for one week, beginning Tuesday 13 July 2010, I will roll out a red runner that stretches the full length of the park (one full block). I will stand at one end and wait for someone to walk with me. Those who join me, tell me their full name and take me by the arm. As we walk, I read to them from War & Peace which is strapped to my body with a specially-designed book harness. At the end of the aisle, my partner gives me a sentence from their life. The only rule is that it must contain the words war and peace. In parting, we take hands, look in one another’s eyes and say, “in war and peace,” as a sort of closing vow. As a community, we stand together despite our differences. We also walk the purchase at Occidental Square and work through an epic novel. Those who walk take away a small piece of the epic whole.

This is an artSparks project
16 artists , 1 city park

Forgiveness on Aurora

2010-06-30T00:30:00.000-07:00

STUDIES IN FORGIVENESS | Aurora Avenue
3 July 2010
A full-day, 4-mile, free art event

MAP
EVENT PROGRAM
Two other significant arts events happening in Fremont this Saturday are Shakespeare on the Troll and Red, White and Dead.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Partial funding for Studies in Everything comes from 4Culture. Studies in Everything is a quarterly, performance undertaking that mobilizes artists into temporary communities for the purpose of studying, in loose, but collective and public ways, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. A study is nothing like a rehearsal or performance. Studies favor the personal movement of the artist over that of the audience. Studies offer a chance for inquiry, a time for collecting experiences, gathering information and creating possibilities. Our studies happen in the public arena so the community can see them, ask questions, offer feedback and give support. Situating artists on the street level allows us to manifest a real artist-to-world connection that, in turn, encourages us to value our artists. Approximately 10-20 artists (experimental artists, performers, musicians, visual artists, dancers, printmakers…) participate in each daylong study. Events range from 5-12 hours with individual studies from 15 minutes to 3 hours. Studies in Everything was founded by A K Mimi Allin. Studies in Forgiveness is the 3rd of 4 events in 2010. Studies in Memory will take place at Juanita Bay Park in Kirkland on Saturday 23 October. Studies plans to continue this important work long into the future. We hope to encounter your artist along the way. For images, videos and information on upcoming events, see our Facebook Group or check The Poetess at Green Lake.

STUDIES IN FORGIVENESS | Aurora Avenue

2010-06-04T02:48:00.000-07:00

Call for Experimental Artists
Artists experimenting in movement, performance, dance, text, voice and visual arts wanted for Studies in Forgiveness, a full-day, outdoor, live art event, 9AM–9PM, on Saturday 3 July along the west side of Aurora Avenue between Seattle Center and Green Lake. Select from 15-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour and 2-hour time slots. Engage in a stationary or moving study anywhere along the 4-mile route. Studies will be scheduled geo-chronologically, south to north, so that witnesses and performers can walk the 4-mile route and see the studies in order. Organizers will witness and film all studies. Studies in Forgiveness is 3rd in a quarterly series called STUDIES IN EVERYTHING and was preceded by Studies in White in January and Studies in Monk, Mompou and Melancholy in April. STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is very grateful to have received funding from 4Culture and encourages you to visit the Facebook Group STUDIES IN EVERYTHING for images and feedback from previous artists.

What is a Study?
A study is an experiment undertaken for the purpose of self-enrichment. It is not a finished, choreographed work and should therefore not require a great deal of preparation. It is itself a preparation and requires only your presence and focus on the day of the event. If you have questions about the appropriateness of your idea, review the Wikipedia definition of artist study and review our past studies. If you still have questions, feel free to inquire with the organizers.

AURORA AVENUE (State Route 99)
Artists are encouraged to make a site visit before applying and to consider the weather and environment when devising a study. Buses run in both directions and the sidewalks along Aurora are generous. There are 4 pedestrian overpasses and 3 underpasses crossing it and neighborhoods on all sides. Aurora is nonetheless a state route with speeding traffic in both directions and several on and off ramps that must be navigated to walk the route. Selected artists will be encouraged to witness the studies both before and after their own and to walk part of the study route. It is not necessary to walk the entire study route. No artist will work alone. At least one organizer will be present at all studies. The Aurora (or George Washington) Bridge is a half-mile long. The study route is 4 miles long. Aurora provides terrific views to the Cascades, Olympics and Mt. Rainier as well as Lake Union and the Fremont Ship Canal, but there are no benches, very few shops and very little foot traffic along this stretch and, thus, a standing audience for your work is unlikely. There will, however, be kick-off and close-down events at the start and end points, Seattle Center and Green Lake, which are both heavily populated. Please note, this is a rain or shine event for which you will need to be self-supporting: water, sunscreen, hat, umbrella, jacket, snack food, bus schedules. If you require support, you should bring your own.

Why Forgiveness?
Forgiveness, like art, is a process and not an event. As artists, we pave the way for forgiveness. "Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it," said Mark Twain and Dag Hammarskjöld said, "Forgiveness is the answer to the child's dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is again made clean." The artist sees, but can also make new.

Images & Info on Aurora Avenue
Aurora Seattle
Aurora Bridge
Galer Street Overpass
Aurora at Woodland Park
History Link on Aurora
Image of Aurora

How Do I Apply?
Send an informal e-mail expressing your interest to mimiallin@gmail.com no later than 19 JUNE 2010. Include your (1) name, (2) telephone and e-mail contact information (3) link to a website if you have one, (4) a very brief work history (<100 words), (5) your preference for a study length: 15-min, 30-min, 1-hour or 2-hour, and (6) one sentence expressing your study medium or idea. Each application should have 6 points. Incomplete applications will be set aside.

Event Curator
A. K. Mimi Allin

HAM--Hold, All Movement (Showings)

2010-05-18T14:24:00.000-07:00

A K Mimi Allin is the current artist-in-residence at Project: Space Available on Capitol Hill in Seattle (1 April--31 May 2010). HAM--Hold, All Movement is the title of Allin's project, for which she built a 8x11' hold (think of a ship's hold) within the P:SA studio & outfitted it with a cot, teapot, personal library & communications station (shortwave, marine VHF & HAM radios). She then earned her Technician's Class Amateur Radio License (in 2 weeks she'll be issued a call sign by the FCC!). An official Ham, Mimi is now residing full-time in the hold, listening to radios by night & turning that info into gestures by day. Radio gestures. At the end of her residency, she'll present this work in 3 public shows. O yes, and she's been eating ham (pink organic meat) everyday during her residency. Mmm.

SHOWINGS OF HAM--HOLD, ALL MOVEMENT
7PM Friday 21 May (in the hold within the studio)
3PM Sunday 23 May (in the hold within the studio)
7PM Friday 28 May (in the studio -minus the hold)

Tickets $10, no advance sales. RSVP REQUIRED: projectspaceavailable@gmail.com. All showings at Project: Space Available at 1417-10th Ave on Capitol Hill (Seattle). Tune in to the P:SA Blog to see images of the space & learn more about the project. Thanks for supporting P:SA!

HAM or Hold, All Movement

2010-04-05T00:22:00.000-07:00

My 2 month residency (1 April-31 May 2010) at Project: Space Available on Capitol Hill in Seattle has begun!

HAM or Hold, All Movement is the name of my project and my plan is to build a hold (think of a ship's hold or a closed inner space) and stock it with a cot, teapot, personal library and a communications station, complete with shortwave, VHF & HAM radios. With all of this in place, I'll learn morse code and earn my amateur radio license. Not long into the residency, I'll impose a radio listening schedule &will begin to reside in the hold, listening to radios at night &turning that info into gestures by day. Yes, lo &behold, I will eat ham sandwiches daily during my residency. The ham will of course come from a local, organic farm, Crown S Ranch in Winthrop WA, where the pigs are raised free of antibiotics on 50 acres of lush farmland. Oink oink! At the close of HAM, there will be 3 public performances, 2 will occur within the hold, 1 will occur in thin air, after the hold has been dismantled. Forget what mother told you. Tune in. Tune in!

Follow the HAM project journal online.

18 Artists to Study Melancholy

2010-03-26T21:10:00.000-07:00

STUDIES IN MONK, MOMPOU & MELANCHOLY

2010-03-08T10:01:00.000-08:00

CALL FOR EXPERIMENTAL ARTISTS

Artists wanted to present studies in Melancholy at The Fremont Abbey. Apply by 23 March. E-mail applications to mimiallin@gmail.com. Twelve artists will be selected to present studies in melancholy for a half-day event, STUDIES IN MONK, MOMPOU & MELANCHOLY, 1PM–4:30PM Saturday 10 April at The Fremont Abbey. Pianist, Kristine Thomas, will play throughout the event— Federico Mompou, Thelonious Monk and other melancholic composers—with brief pauses to allow for transitions.

A STUDY

Organizers seek artists interested in experimenting with movement, performance, visual, verbal, paper, audio... All mediums considered. Self-supporting, low-tech preferred. This is not an endeavor in finished, choreographed work. It is an investigation of process and preparation. Artists should not spend vast amounts of time preparing, but should envision and set into place parameters for a study and plan to partake in that study. A study is about the growth of the artist. See Wikipedia definition of study. It may help to consider the difference between performance, rehearsal, improvisation and study.

PRE-TALK: 1PM Saturday 27 March @ The Abbey

A pre-talk, also at The Abbey, will offer info on Mompou to those unfamiliar with his work. This free, informal gathering is open to the public. Presenting artists are encouraged to attend to familiarize themselves with the space and subject matter.

Why Melancholy?

"I can now add another threat, perhaps as dangerous as the most apocalyptic of concerns. We are possibly not far away from eradicating a major cultural force, a serious inspiration to invention, the muse behind much art and poetry and music. We are wantonly hankering to rid the world of numerous ideas and visions, multitudinous innovations and meditations. We are right at this moment annihilating melancholia." – Eric G. Wilson, from Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Apply

Interested individuals please send an informal e-mail expressing your interest to mimiallin@gmail.com no later than 23 MARCH 2009. Include your (1) name, (2) contact information (3) link to a website if you have one, (3) a very brief (<100 words) work history, (4) your preference for a study length: 10-min, 20-min, or 1-hour, and (5) one sentence expressing your study medium or idea.

Curators: A. K. Mimi Allin & Danae' Clark
Pianist: Kristine Thomas

Studies in Everything of which Studies in White and Studies in Monk, Mompou & Melancholy are a part is on FACEBOOK.

STUDIES IN WHITE @ Counterbalance Park

2010-01-16T23:33:00.000-08:00

Ice on the windshield. Dense fog filling up the ship canal. White sky with blue cracks. What a study in white! What a way to begin!! After calling for flooding rains, we were blessed with amazing weather, a few splinters of sunshine, some cool blues and whites breezing overhead, a cold northerly clocking around to the milder southerly. Though the ground was wet, it only really rained once, for 30 minutes, while Kate was presenting her study in white, a a 3-D paper sculpture. We covered her with white umbrellas and she worked on. Studies in White presented 8 studies over the course of 12 hours in at Counterbalance in Seattle, WA. The names of participating artists follows. I thank them all for bringing their genius to bear in a public way without worry to the weather.

White Field: A. K. "Mimi" AllinImage by Danae' Clark

Wall: Joan Laage, Sheri Brown, Alan Sutherland

Deconstructing The White Album by The Beatles: Lainner Dexter

White: Danae' Clark

White: Vanessa DeWolf

White Construction: Kate FreemanImage by Danae' Clark

White Mask; Mylinda Sneed

The Flashlight Chorus: A. K. "Mimi" Allin, Clinton Bliss, Hugo Bliss, Beckett Arnold, Danae' Clark, Kate Freeman, Sean O'Connor, Mylinda Sneed. We each took a turn at directing. Styles varied from the traditional baton-bearing conductor to the point and explain conductor to the free form announcer to the story teller. Hoots and howls of laughter no matter which way you slice it.

Write To Move

2010-01-03T13:23:00.000-08:00

Write to Move
Life Drawing for Writers presented by Untitled [Intersection]
2nd Fridays @ The Phinney Center
7-8PM: Writing from Movement
8-9PM: Optional Sharing
Fee: $5 drop-in

Art Walk
Untitled [Intersection] has moved to 2nd Fridays to coincide with The Greenwood Art Walk. We’re still at The Phinney Center and now a part of art walk. There’s more reason than ever to come out on a 2nd Friday--a gallery opening, a live event and an opportunity to make (and share) art!

2nd Fridays
Join us every 2nd Fridays at 7pm @ The Phinney Center for Write to Move, a living, breathing version of Untitled [Intersection]. The models move and the audience breathes and responds. It’s life drawing for writers. Anyone interested in witnessing and responding to movement is welcome—teachers, poets, writers, performers, improv, visual artists, general audiences too! All levels. $5 to join. Donations support the performers & The Phinney Center. Each month features a different artist from the rich community of performance artists in Seattle.

What To Bring / What To Expect
Bring your own supplies (paper, pen, rhyming dictionary, charcoal, watercolors). Prepare to work, unguided, for an hour in a spacious studio along fellow artists.
At 7pm, the performer begins to move. Artists circle around and respond by writing, drawing or preparing scores for movement.
At 8pm, the performer stops moving and joins the circle. Artists are invited to share work and discuss methods.

Respond
Write to Move challenges poets, performance artists and audiences to respond to movement and share their responses. It’s part exercise, part practice and part translation. It’s a real experience.

2010 WINTER/SPRING - PERFORMER SCHEDULE
22 January – Wylin Daigle
26 February – Vanessa DeWolf & Kris Wheeler
12 March – Betty Jo Constanzo
9 April – Beth Graczyk
14 May – Christian Swenson
11 June – TBA

STUDIES IN WHITE 1.16.10

2010-01-01T21:18:00.000-08:00

Call for experimental artists working in movement & performance

Independent, full-day, outdoor event in Seattle curated by A. K. "Mimi" Allin and Danae' Clark. Studies in White takes place over the course of 12 hours starting at 9AM on Saturday 16 January 2010 at Counterbalance Park in Lower Queen Anne. Individual artists will present studies lasting from 30 minutes to several hours.

Take a virtual tour of the park.

Studies in White is not an endeavor in finished, choreographed pieces. It is a preparation for something. Artists should not spend vast amounts of time preparing, but should envision and set into place parameters for a study and plan to partake in that study, publicly. Artists are encouraged to review the Wikipedia definition of study (art) and to visit the park (Roy St & Queen Anne Ave) and to consider weather and temperature variables when proposing a study. This is a rain or shine event. Portions of the park are covered in gravel, wood and concrete. Performances will be video-documented for a full-length DVD--Studies in White. Video will become part of a Color Study archive.

APPLY
Organizers seek artists experimenting with movement and performance. Visual and audio aspects encouraged. Other genres considered. No plug-ins available. Self-supporting, low-tech only. While situated in an urban area, Counterbalance Park is not very well frequented and, it being winter, a standing audience is unlikely. The park does, however, sit across from a warm and busy café and is one block from On the Boards, so there will be ample visibility. Interested individuals send an informal e-mail expressing interest to mimiallin@gmail.com no later than 4 JANUARY 2009. Include your (1) name, (2) contact information (3) link to website and (3) a very brief (<300 words) work history, including current project(s).

FLASHLIGHT CHORUS
Call for individuals with flashlights (any size) to be part of a FLASHLIGHT CHORUS at 8PM on 16 January 2010. Flashlight Chorus is the final study for "Studies in White" which takes place at Counterbalance Park in Lower Queen Anne. Bring a flashlight and prepare to join the chorus!!! A conductor will be on hand to direct you. This is a rain or shine event. Flashlight Chorus will retire to Cafe Ladro across the street after the show to chat and warm up. Need more info? Contact mimiallin@gmail.com.

2009 CityArtist Grant

2009-12-26T23:11:00.000-08:00

NBBJ CORPORATE POET RESIDENCY

WooohoO! Five years after it's conception, thanks to a generous 2009 CityArtist grant from The Mayor's Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs in Seattle, WA, my project, "Adopt-A-Poet," which entails placing me, the poet, in a corporation for a month, is finally happening. I've designed a separate blog for the project and welcome you to follow along as I undertake the nation's 1st Corporate Poet Residency. Click here to visit the blog. The residency begins January 2010 at NBBJ (Seattle), an architectural firm with offices around the world. I'm so very glad to be working with NBBJ. I'm also excited about my plans to row to work in a little wooden pram. I'll travel across Lake Union from Fremont to South Lake Union everyday. Many thanks to The Center for Wooden Boats for their generous support of this project.

Poetry Polar Bear Plunge, 2009

2009-12-14T20:27:00.000-08:00

POETRY POLAR BEAR PLUNGE, 2nd Annual
Date: Saturday 12 December, 2009
Location: Green Lake (Seattle, WA)
Temperature: 29F
Organizer: The Poetess at Green Lake
Polar Bear Poets: Julie Jane, Noah Star Weaver, A. K. Allin, Clinton Bliss, Vanessa DeWolf, Dave Kuhns and Carissa Quisenberry
Not a Poet/Not a Polar Bear: Lydia Swartz
Friends: Mylinda Sneed, Beckett Arnold, Kate Freeman, Bond Aster
Photos & Media: John Cornicello, CityArts, MyGreenLake, Komo News

MORE GREAT IMAGES HERE
Noah and Julie Jane emerging from the lake
John Cornicello's Flickr page
Blue's Flickr page
MyGreenLake

Thanks to polar-poet Dave Kuhns for videotaping!

The Weather
It may look sunny, but it was cold, cold cold. There was a week-long arctic blast hitting the region. The low on Saturday was 23F and Green Lake was frozen at the edges. I couldn't feel my feet after the dip. Next year, booties for sure, and more poems, poems, poemS!!

Congratulations!
Congratulations to all the polar bears, poets, helper cubs and fans (you too Mr. Bear) who made this event spectacular! Thanks for being so bold and brave and high-spirited and for coming together to make a proud, loud statement for pOetry. I'm honored to be part of this community.

Oh yes, we DID!
On Saturday 12 December, seven brave pioneers ambled to Green Lake and stripped down to their poetry. Seven brave poets made a splaSh heard round the globe. What did it say? It said, "poetry matters."

Brave Poets
Twice as many poets were signed up to plunge this year, but then it grew cold, very veRy cold. Then came the frost. Puddles froze. Some poets fell sick. Others were smart and stayed in their dens. A few were held back by family members. Alas, when the day of reckoning arrived, the arctic air stayed on though it was predicted to go. Sun shone on the thin crust covering the lake. And the hair stood up on our skin. The we who were left gave our poetry up and broke the prose that day. WhooOO!!

Polar Poetry
I wrote a poem called "You Came out of the Twinkling Sky." Julie Jane and Noah each read part of an adorable rhyming poem. Clinton read a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson. Vanessa wrote one called "Take Back My Alaska." Carissa sang "The Garden" by Shel Silverstein. Dave Kuhns read a poem he authored that morning, which ended with a raised fist and a, "Go, go go!!" And so we did. We counted to three and we went, went wenT!!

Ice on the Lake
Witnesses commented on the curious sounds the ice made as we plunged. The ice swelled ever so gently and, as it did, it crinkled and cracked and broken in a wave.

P.S. Thanks to Kate, not one pair of eyeglasses were lost this year.

2nd Annual POETRY POLAR BEAR PLUNGE

2009-11-20T11:38:00.000-08:00

Poetry Polar Bear Club
Noon, Saturday 12 December 2009
Green Lake Bath House Theatre | Seattle

Jump into the lake with a poem & a bikini. Don’t worry, your POETRY will PROTECT you. Yet again, the poets show Seattle how to be one. This is year #2. Last year we made headline news & had a ton of fun. See pix from last year.

So.... join us this year?

CALLING ALL ARTISTS, poets, Alaska-natives and crazies. Looking for 50 hardy individuals to jump into Green Lake this December. It’s simple. Write a poem, put it on a bikini, put your bikini on & come to Green Lake at NOON on Saturday 12 December. We’ll be working up our courage behind the Bath House. Then, at 12:30pm, we’ll drop our fuzzy layers, line up on the water’s edge, read our poems to the massed and staring crowds and plunge on in! This is a quick event. If you’re late, you’ll miss it. Plan to be parked and ready to go at noon. Questions? Contact Mimi mimiallin@gmail.com / 617.460.6110.

Not willing to freeze your pants off? This is still a spectacle worth attending. Come enjoy the poetry, sip some cocoa, have a laugh. The POETRY POLAR BEAR swim is the same day as the Pathway of Lights. Go Green Lake!

ARTISTS
Willing to take a DIP in Green Lake? SHOW UP behind the Bath House at Green Lake, at NOON on Saturday 12 December, in a bathing suit (preferably a bikini, but the rules are lax), with a POEM written somewhere on your suit or body (doesn’t have to be one you wrote, but we’d like it if it were & if it related to the event).

DONATE A POLAR POEM
Don’t want to swim, but want to contribute a poem? That’s cool. Post your poem on a picket & bring it to the lake or e-mail it to mimiallin@gmail.com. See you on 12 December!

WARM A POET FOR THE HOLIDAYS
We need HELPERS on the sidelines to bear witness, hold towels & eyeglasses, hand out coca & take pictures. To lend support, simply arrive at noon and say, “I’m a helper,” or call Mimi at (617) 460.6110.

“Putting the O back in poetry”

WINDOW SHOW in the news

2009-11-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a great big thank you to Zee Grega of Seattle Metblogs for noticing "Window Show." Now 10 days into the project, "Window Show" is already offering amazing and interesting insights. In addition to my almost daily sittings, five other poet-performers have participated in second sittings. Interested in trying it out? If so, e-mail me at mimiallin(at)gmail(dot)com to schedule a sitting. It'd be equally wonderful to have your artist appear on the other side of the glass in a performance of any kind. Be sure to come by when the window is active if you want to be seen.

WINDOW SHOW @ ACT Theatre

2009-10-21T02:03:00.000-07:00

An endeavor by A. K. "Mimi" Allin
Tuesdays-Fridays 5-6PM
Saturdays & Sundays 1-2PM
October--December 2009
ACT Theatre
7th & Union / Seattle

For 1-hour a day, from now until December, you'll find me in a window at ACT Theatre gazing out at the world. My task-- to look out at the world as if IT were the show. After an hour, I'll write a review of what I saw and place it in the window. The next day, passersby can read about the show them themselves put on.

"Window Show" is a form of reverse theatre, exploring the idea that if it is framed and viewed, it is performance. What's the point of turning the tables and finding theatre in the everyday? I want to know how my viewing changes the world. How people behave. If they change. Perform. And how my seeing changes over time. I also have an interest in sharing the experience with would-be performers and professionals.

For all those who would take the challenge, here's your chance to perform. All you have to do is show up outside my window at 7th & Union. "Window Show" takes place daily (except Monday) from 20 October-31 December 2009 in the northernmost storefront window at ACT Theatre in Seattle, WA. What's your definition of "performance?"

And for those with a serious interest in participating on the inside, a limited number of 2nd sittings will be arranged weekly to extend this special viewing-finding-writing experience to local artists. Poets and performance artists are especially encouraged. A written review will be expected of all those who sit. Interested local artists should contact me (mimiallin@gmail.com) no later than one week before they wish to sit. 2nd sittings will not occur everyday. Times will be available immediately following my daily sitting, starting at 6PM weekdays and 2PM weekends.

Thanks for reading and see you on SEVENTH!

Thank You, LitFuse 2009

2009-09-28T17:56:00.000-07:00

I had a terrific weekend at LitFuse. I gave a slideshow, installed a Ritual Room and offered up 3 participatory works on the Town Green. I feel energized by the poets I shared time with and the town of Tieton!

APPLE TREE / Tieton Town Green
This was a gift to the children of Tieton. The glass apples were filled with cinnamon hearts. I used to love them as a kid. The 6' snake has a quote from Ingmar Bergman. It reads: Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship.

GOLD SKY & THE ORANGE TREE / Tieton Town Green

It was a gusty, windy day. The wind huffed and puffed into the canopies, snapping and popping the colors and text all the warm afternoon long. In the late afternoon, I took the children into The Orange Tree, which was constructed with them in mind. Its bamboo stakes were set at 4', whereas the Gold Sky was set at 5'. The Orange Tree had prompts and the Gold Sky had little bits of golden poems.

A sign of instruction nearby told people to, "ACTIVATE A CANOPY (or sky or tree) by getting into it. The holes are for putting your head into. Pop your head up through a hole and read what’s there–a bit of poetry, something to say or do. Get a group together and get activate the canopy at the same time. Or try them all on your own. GOLD SKY addresses select “golden poems,” by Katherine Mansfield, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Andrew Marvell and Robert Frost. THE ORANGE TREE addresses a poem by Robert Graves. These canopies are patterned after James Lee Byars' participatory clothing, such as Two in a Hat and Pink Silk Airplane for 100. Gold Sky & The Orange Tree extends Byars’ notion of play and community by asking the audience to participate and by prompting them with text."

Happily, on Sunday afternoon at the open mic, we activated the canopies one last time. A group of poets put the garments on and walked the periphery of the Harvest Hall patio. It was another gorgeous sunny day in Tieton and everyone was pleased at the invitation to step outside. I'm thankful it was a bold and curious group. They did a great job bringing the canopies and poems to life.

NIGHT FISHING / Tieton Town Green

I have a dream. I think if you want something badly enough and dream about it and prepare yourself and go about like it will happen, it will happen. Do you think so too?

The sign reads, "Here’s my dream. I want to catch fish in Tieton. I know, I know, Tieton is hundreds of miles from the ocean and I don’t have a very big fishing boat and there’s not even a lake to put it in. It might seem silly, but dreams often are. I want to catch fish, enough to feed the whole town in fact. I’m prepared to work all day. I think I can do it. Who knows, maybe with your help, and the help of the children, if we work together and wish and dream, we can do it? Starting at 3PM on Saturday, I'll be right here in my rowboat. Come by and say hi. Send me a fish. Tell me a story. Draw or write a poem. Hook your fish on my line. Tell the story of how a poet came to Tieton, caught a boatload of fish, and fed the whole town.

I can’t catch enough fish on a line to feed the whole town, and I don’t even know what kind of fish live in Tieton, so I brought a big net. I’m planning to stretch it out at 9PM. I need your help! It’s a very large net. I can’t do it alone. Please come to Tieton Town Green at 9PM. Together we’ll set the net and put glowing rings on it. It will remain out "catching fish" until morning. And then….? Join me on Sunday at 3PM for FISH STEW on Tieton Town Green. Assuming I catch fish. O, I hope I catch fish!"

Happily, we did catch enough fish (octopus, mussels, mahi-mahi, shrimp, scallops, salmon) to feed all-comers the next day. The Mexican-American locals were a bit reluctant to come close, given their lack of English, but everyone in sight was (like it or not) brought a full cup of soup. Few turned it down. Most of the kids out that day were courageous enough to try it and liked it too. Indeed it was beautiful soup! I set up a propane stove in a stand and warmed up a huge pot of soup (over 10 pounds). It was a creamy red soup made with roasted red tomatoes, leeks, lemon juice, garlic and cream. One hundred thousand thanks to Clinton Bliss for making the soup and for, in part, funding it. He is a mighty supporter of the arts!

THE RITUAL ROOM / Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery

I was thrilled to be able to install The Ritual Room at LitFuse 2009. Thanks to Michael Schein, Director of LitFuse, for letting me do it. The LitFuse group last year was so responsive and amazing, I was looking forward to having them experience this.

The Ritual Room was a seed planted during my residency at Vanessa DeWolf's highly volatile Studio-Current on Capitol Hill. The installation was my then answer to an opportunity to teach my process to my peers there. It was an invitational evening event. Eleven people experienced it and it included a procession and feast. It took 18 hours to install that room and 3 hours to perform it. It was indeed lovely. We ate red velvet cake off of china plates and drank champagne out of fluted glasses. Afterwards we threw our glasses into a wooden barrel. Ca-crash!
The Mighty Tieton Warehouse offered new possibilities and a larger audience already steeped in poetry. I installed The Ritual Room between 9PM- 2AM on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Ed let me into the warehouse and I worked there alone until every last thing was just right. My, my, the warehouse makes some curious and alarming sounds in the night. Though I was tired from the work earlier in the day, the wind and trees brushing against the building kept me awake and on edge.
I added so many new rituals to The Ritual Room I first conceived, it was a totally new experience for me. Things had to be more portable, more spacious and more free-standing for the Tieton space. I added The Runway, The Silk Road, The Ritual Bottles, The Ship, The Immeasurable Self, Bending the Rules, Perfect Tiny Circle, Magic Signal Flags, Chance, Home, Crossing the Rubicon, Whispering Hole, Senseless Desire, Golden Plates, Pulse, The Five Selves and The Pink Artist, The Pink Eye and In the Pink. I subtracted the Nail of the North, The Cocoon and The Stooping Basin. Some of the new ideas came from the new materials I found. Some came from trying to reconfigure.

I'm happy with the way The Ritual Room looked and felt. If I could have added more sound elements, it's the only thing I would have changed, but there wasn't an option of hanging things from the ceiling so my option were more limited.

SHUTTERSHOTS OF GUERILLA POETRY / Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery

Putting together a slide show gave me some valuable information about myself. Holy Toledo, I've been busy! Now I see just how busy. Maybe too busy. I included 20 projects in the show, all executed between LitFuse 2008 and LitFuse 2009 (an 11-month time span). I didn't include any of my Field session work or The Poetry Playground work or any of the smaller community installations I did.

Having pulled the projects together in this way, it was interesting to see the shifts in my work: from purely poetry-driven installations to installations that prompted poetry as a response, then on to visual and participatory maneuvers that may or may not have a poetry mind. Well, they do for me, but not as a means of projection. They always do for me. I don't find one art is ever separate from the others. Aspects. They're all aspects of the same problem or situation. Community. Home. Pathways. The condition of the individual and community spirit. And on and on. The human struggle.

The Ritual Room @ LitFuse 2009

2009-09-15T11:26:00.001-07:00

I'm going back to Tieton in Eastern Washington this year to teach at LitFuse. Litfuse is an awesome literary arts festival that combines writing, meditation, workshops and of course art in a dusty town in called Tieton. The festival takes place from 25-27 September. Find out how to register here. Below is some info on The Ritual Room I'll install & the other scheduled & unscheduled events I've got planned. See you in Tieton!
The Ritual Room
Sunday 27 September
8AM - 12PM
The Ritual Room is a self-monitoring, participatory installation in the Warehouse Gallery available to all LitFuse participants. Participants may spend the entire morning in the room or come and go as they please. It is designed to provoke practice, thought & writing. A powerful blend of poetry and ritual, The Ritual Room invites you to move through space and time that will heighten your awareness. Engage in a variety of rituals, in a hushed space, at various self-monitoring stations: “The Threshold,” “The Tightrope,” “The Nail of the North,” “Cocoon Therapy” and “The Atelier.” Partake in activities that lead you from prompt to experience, then on to poetry. The Ritual Room is an invitation to discover, unleash and create, with ritual in mind. It is more a experience than a class; equal part creation, exploration and observation. You will be asked, at some point, to sit and observe the others and to write about their movement. You will be invited to play with boundaries and connections, beginnings and ends, milestones and between times, passages and endpoints, peripheries and centers, stillness and movement. Come stretch your idea of where poetry stops and where living begins. Let The Ritual Room draw signifiers in the spaces around you.
ShutterShots of Guerilla Poetry
Saturday 26 September
12:40-2:00PM

An hour-long slideshow & talk covering my recent poetry projects & installations.

Gold Sky & The Orange Tree
I am planning to present work on Tieton's Town Green as well. An installation. Or two. One project I am preparing is inspired by my favorite performance artist, James Lee Byars, especially his Two in a Hat and Pink Silk Airplane for 100. My Town Square installation is called "Gold Sky & The Orange Tree." It consists of 2 shoulder-high canopies into which people may pop their heads (through various head holes) and activate a participatory poem by reading and responding to the prompts they find there. Play is as deathly important as community.

Thank you, Bumbershoot 2009

2009-09-09T20:56:00.000-07:00

What a generous, thoughtful, beautiful crowd. Thank you for participating in Silence at Bumbershoot. You showed me how deeply you desire to listen to yourselves.

Hundreds of you crawled into my pods each day and tried your best to achieve silence. You fought the commotion of the children's stage, the bass of the pop bands, the whine of tired babies and car alarms. And you brought me your thoughts. I scribed them on discs, heated them and gave them back to you on a string and you wore them proudly away.

You took your place as an artist in the project--removed your shoes, took a deep breath, closed your eyes and sat. You read poems and quotes from writers, philosophers and musicians on the ideas of silence and noise. And you worked hard to find the self. I admire you.

Thank you for your support. I feel privileged to have served you. I learned from you that each of us experiences silence in our own way. We each have our own path. For some it is laugher, for others stillness. Some want loved ones nearby, others wish to be alone. But silence and peace are available to us all whenever we need them, whenever we're ready.

My interest in silence and in the waking of our senses to the here and now is growing. Many of my installations and maneuvers incorporate the sacred, encourage people to participate to experiences for themselves--from practicing rituals to dialoging about matters of the heart and soul. I strive to help people articulate the meaning in their lives. For it is only in the naming of things and in the direct experience that we are able to live.

Silence @ Bumbershoot

2009-09-02T12:17:00.000-07:00

It’s easy to get disconnected and lose our thoughts in this busy world. But losing our thoughts means losing ourselves (mind and spirit), and that makes so many of the world’s experiences and joys impossible. Native Americans placed silence at the core of their Vision Quest, using it to help them discover their path and purpose. Mystic, Thomas Merton, meditated in a tool shed called St. Ann’s where he felt closer to nature and closest to God. Artist, Jamie Wyeth, sat painting in a cardboard box, using its frame to help him focus on his art. You too can retreat into silence and gain clarity and understanding. Why resist the call to silence? Crawl into one of these low-to-the-ground, egg-shaped pod (made of vines, fabric and foam) and sit quietly allowing the sounds and cares of the world melt away. How much is revealed in silence? Once inside a pod, you’ll be encouraged to, “Empty yourself and wait.” When you can hear your own thoughts, you’ll be asked to settle on one and bring that back into the world. Artist, A. K. “Mimi” Allin, will write that on a Polyshrink disc, shrink it down to pendant-size and give it to you on a string. Then you can take your quiet thought with you wherever you go. Let it to guide you through the busy world and remind you what is possible.

11AM-8PM this Sat, Sun & Mon (9/5-9/7) in the Breezeway between Vera Project & the NW Rooms at Bumbershoot.

aka Lo-Fi projects @ Smoke Farm

2009-08-25T09:47:00.000-07:00

I presented work this past weekend at Smoke Farm, a 360-acre farm on the Stilliguamish River north of Seattle. What a place! I first visited in June of this year and found myself wandering around conducting the tall grasses in the far stretching meadows and baptizing myself in the cool river. I was smitten.

The annual performance/installation festival was coming up. I was asked if I'd present. Yes absolutely! But coming up with an idea posed a problem. Before I could settle on something, I'd dream up another idea and another and another. The closer the festival got, the more ideas I had. In the end, I decided to show three pieces: two installations & a performance piece.

1. Egg Herding
Full-day (ambient) performance with eggs."From sunrise to sunset, on Saturday 22 August, performance artist Mimi Allin herds 40 fresh eggs across the Smoke Farm grounds – eggs carry depictions of the various homes the artist has known. Get in close to view the eggs, but please don’t disturb the herding process. Herding takes an incredible amount of attention & patience, and we certainly wouldn’t want any of the eggs to break because, at 8am on Sunday morning, on the shores of the Stillaguamish, the eggs that survive will be cooked into a FORTY-ACRE OMELET. All are welcome to breakfast with the artist."

Something struck me as lovely about the mix of bizarre, humorous and challenging idea of Egg Herding. Hah. I'd herd eggs (yes fresh eggs) across the farm on the various paths and dirt roads. The idea of drawing the various homes I've lived in on the eggs came to me at 3AM the week before. I added it to the sketchbook, bought some eggs and started drawing. I very much wanted to engage in a longer, deeper performance of my own. So many of my recent projects have been about engaging others in performance. I wanted a turn. I the end, it was an awesome experience. I started at 8AM as I'd proposed to do and went until about 7PM. I learned so much over the course of the day. A number of themes came up: collecting, distinguishing, counting, fracturing, threats, the lost sheep...

2. Composer’s Stump
Installation in an exposed tree root system on the Stilliguamish River with 8 mirrors, 8 composer's busts, several unfinished manuscripts and a blank composition book in which visitors are prompted to add their unfinished and abandoned "composition" (which will be left to decompose).

I was at the farm the weekend before the festival for another event called Target Art, where you were supposed to destroy your artwork (by shooting, dripping paint, etc), but instead of destroying my art, I spent all my time installing something for the festival. I'd found 22 mirror squares on the side of the road and brought them and a few other things out to the little beach to try some things. The first three ideas didn't work and ate up a lot of time. The last idea morphed and morphed until it became "Composer's Stump."

3. Rare Poetry Sightings
"Take a look around. Use the scopes and binoculars. Some rare poetry sightings have been made in this area recently. It seems Smoke Farm is in a unique fly zone for poetry. Be careful not to disturb any nesting poems. Log your findings in the Rare Poetry Sightings Log Book. Before you go, help yourself to some Patchen Duck Soup (in the tureen)." This is an installation with poetry, birds, binoculars, telescope, log book.

There seemed to be a desire for some literary/poetry related projects, so I came up with this one to satisfy the need. It was the last project I prepared and, luckily, the Goodwill had a healthy supply of birds. The idea was to choose poems you'd rarely or never see and attached the to birds at enough of a distance that you might use field glass to read them, but they were also close enough that you could just go over and read them. Some were hidden in the grass, others were on dowels, on stumps or in trees. The tiny red cardinals Vanessa loaned me were the most striking of all and I found a gorgeous poem about the heart of a bird, a little red bird, to go with them. Perfect.

FIVE STROKES - Part 2

2009-08-11T21:03:00.000-07:00

"From Art Criticism to Poetry in FIVE STROKES"
Curated by A. K. “Mimi” Allin
@ Seattle Art Museum | SAM Word | 7:30PM 20 August 2009

"From Art Criticism To Poetry in FIVE STROKES” is about gesturing. It is about reversing criticism and using art to respond to art. It offers, as an alternative to traditional critical modes, simpler responses such as letting go and sensing. It plainly suggests keeping the art in the art.

PART ONE happened at this month’s Art Walk (7 Aug), outside the TK building. It included an installation and an interaction. There was a table with sumi-e brushes, ink and a stack of art reviews. Participants were asked five questions, ranging from the simple “How are you?” to the complex, “How successful are you at casting off burdens?” They then used ink to gesture their responses. They made their marks on large-format copies of critical art reviews, everything from groundbreaking essays by Clement Greenberg to contemporary reviews in The Stranger & The Seattle Times.

Once their marks were made, participants could either take their work home or donate it to become a poem. Most chose to donate their work. What appealed most about this project was watching the care with people responded and sensing the clarity of the moment we shared. There was a tangible “brink of expressing” followed by “an expressing” that was curiously and carefully observed by both parties. If this is the kind of communication that is possible, I dare say there is hope.

PART TWO happens Thursday 20 August at SAM Downtown. It is at this event that the sumi-e criticisms will be distributed to 10 poets. Each will have 3-4 to consider. Poets will sit in the SAM galleries, weighing gesture against text, and turning them into poems. Afterwards, they will explain their methods. They will not read their poems. They’ll drop their poems to the floor and go on working. Their explanations will be broadcast to the Brotman Forum (the SAM lobby). Museums visitors will be able to read the poems and see the drawings in the galleries until the museum closes at 9PM.

Witness the event in the SAM galleries or listen to it in the main lobby. The Seattle Art Museum is a “suggested donation.” Don’t let cost keep you away.

LiTFUSE 2009

2009-08-11T18:30:00.000-07:00

September 25-27 * Tieton, WA
$120 early registration (includes Saturday banquet) / $130 after Sept. 11
Friday Master Class with George Bowering, $50 ($75 if not registered for LiTFUSE weekend)

LiTFUSE combines writing, improvisation, meditation, camaraderie, natural beauty & readings to ignite your muse. Join us for a weekend of poetry & inspiration in the beautiful little town of Tieton. Check out Ed Marquand's print shop. See Trimpin sculptures in the cold storage warehouse. Fall in love with small town America. Tieton is 15 miles West of Yakima. Homestays possible (inquire when registering). Read this Seattle Times article to learn more about the town of Tieton and the man who is revitalizing it.

2009 Faculty:
George Bowering, Canada’s Poet Laureate emeritus
Carolyne Wright, American Book Award winner
Judith Roche, American Book Award winner
Charles Potts, Washington Poets Ass’n Lifetime Achievement Award
Tara Hardy, Seattle Grand Slam Champ
Mike Hickey, Seattle Poet Populist
A K "Mimi" Allin, Poetess of Green Lake
Leonard Orr, TS Eliot & Blue Lynx Prizes Finalist
Carol Trenga, movement & meditation for the creative spirit
Swil Kanim, musical muse

BETTER RECEPTION

2009-08-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

Westlake Park | Seattle
Monday 10 August 2009
11:30am-1:30pm

A. K. “Mimi” Allin (Installation)
Andrew Stauffer (Music)

Artist, A. K. "Mimi" Allin, provides Westlake Park users with better reception by installing 30 antennas, 2 transceivers, a satellite dish & 2 radios. Avant-garde musician-composer, Andrew Stauffer, layers with sounds.

Visitors walked through antenna field, responding to questions verbally or in writing. This project explores the questions: Who gets good reception? Who gets bad reception? Who gets no reception? Are “fringe” areas to be avoided? Is the fringe where art & meaning are made, or is it where they are lost?

See Gabi Campanario's sketch of this project posted in the Local News section of The Seattle Times and the print version, also in The Seattle Times, which ran on Saturday 15 August 2009.

Sponsored by King Country Performance Network Site-Specific '09 as part of ArtsSparks, the summer-long, post-modern art series at Westlake Park curated by Ingrid Lahti & Carrie Bodle. ArtsSparks is made possible by a unique partnership between the Seattle Parks Department, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, and 4Culture's Site Specific Program.

From Art Criticism to Poetry in FIVE STROKES

2009-08-06T23:32:00.000-07:00

Downtown Seattle | First Thursday Art Walk | 7 August 2009

I set up an installation last night in the windows of a vacant storefront (where Design Commission used to be), between All City Coffee and Punch Gallery, on Prefontaine Pl. S. Space-wise, it was perfect, like having my own gallery. After about 20 mins, I started getting regular customers. I had a steady stream of visitors then, until 9P when I packed up to go. It was a bit tough at first. I'd had a hard day and was feeling a bit outside things, so I was quick to feel disheartened by the regular hurry-past, off-to-meet-someone sentiment and translated that into an overarching feeling of fear and unwillingness to interact. My, my, talk about criticism. These projects have a way of becoming learning lessons for me most of all, which is good, very good. Happily though, once things got going, I did have a terrific time and so did those who stopped by.

This was an installation in three parts: (1) a set of 20 sumi-e line practices with words on them (left window), (2) a set of 20 sumi-e gestures with titles (right window) and then, between them, (3) a live interaction with the artist.
I stood behind a 2-tiered table with sumi-e brushes and ink on the lower level and a stack of art reviews on the upper one. All those who passed by were invited to participate. I asked five questions of them and they used ink to respond, making gestures on the page.
The pages I used were large-format copies of critical art reviews, from groundbreaking essays by Clement Greenberg to contemporary reviews in The Stranger & The Seattle Times.

Once their marks were made, participants could either take their work home or donate it to become a poem at the Seattle Art Museum. Most chose to donate their work. And so the collected works will be distributed to ten poets on Thursday 20 August. Each will have 4 works to consider. They will sit in the SAM galleries, considering the gestures and the text, and turn them into poems. Afterwards, they will explain their methods of approach. Their explanations will be broadcast to the Brotman Forum.

SAM | Word Thursday, 20 August 2009
"From Art Criticism To Poetry in Five Strokes” is about gesturing. It is about reversing criticism and using art to respond to art. It offers, as an alternative to traditional critical modes, simpler responses such as letting go and sensing. It very plainly suggests keeping the art in the art.

Thanks to all who participated and especially to Mylinda Sneed and Beckett Arnold who supported the project with their rosy presence.

What kinds of questions did I ask?

1. Do you consider what you do to be of value?
2. Is the real you still hidden?
3. In what ways are you compromising?
4. How successful are you at casting off burdens?
5. Do you know the right people?
6. What’s next?
7. What are you holding onto?
8. Are you still growing?

How did people respond?
Thoughtfully. Carefully. With focus. Great interest. What appealed to me most about watching people respond was the clarity of moment we shared. We were at the brink of expressing and then we expressed and that was curiously and carefully observed. This is the kind of communication that is possible! I very much like to see people engaged, especially in creating.

SIGHT/SEEING @ SAM, Thursday 16 July

2009-07-15T16:51:00.000-07:00

There is not such a great difference between construction and destruction. What I'm trying to do is to create poetry through destruction and I think it is beautiful. –Niki de Saint Phalle

The challenge, of course, is not the actual destruction of the painting itself, but rather its transformation into something else. –Hélio Oiticica

SIGHT/SEEING
Curated by A. K. “Mimi” Allin in response to SAM Special Exhibit TARGET PRACTICE

Live performance by avant-garde musician Andrew Stauffer
Live poetry performances by 13 remarkable poets
SAM | Brotman Forum | Special Exhibit Galleries
Thursday 16 July 2009, 7:30–8:30PM

Curator: A.K. “Mimi” Allin turns one of Seattle’s most talked about special exhibits into an avant-garde collaboration between poets, composers and musicians. Target Practice, on view now at SAM Downtown, transforms into language, music and finally text on the floors of the museum, in this vanguard event on Thursday 16 July 2009. Watch as 13 poets and 1 very special musician play.

Background: 2 weeks ago, 5 Seattle poets (Hugo Bliss, Vanessa DeWolf, Renee Risher, Margaret Roncone and Galaxy Saskill) took a walk through the exhibit with avant-garde guitarist/composer/blind musician, Andrew Stauffer. Each poet spent 15-minutes with Stauffer, relating select works from the exhibit to him in unpracticed, spontaneous language. Stauffer then reteated to his studio where he worked feverishly to prepare a musical response.

Performance: Tonight, Stauffer (pictured above) premieres his response, in a site-specific composition in the SAM galleries for July’s SAM/Word. 5 poets will be seated upstairs, in the galleries of TARGET PRACTICE, listening and responding to a recording of Stauffer’s music. 8 others will listen and respond right here in the Brotman Forum as Andrew Stauffer performs live, also starting at 7:30PM.

Goals: To examine the ways we experience, absorb, process and re-work art. It likewise wants to explore the kinds of collaborations possible for doing so: audio-visual, visual-verbal, poet-musician, sensation-shape. Sight/Seeing also hopes to get at the heart of the question-- Why respond to artwork at all? Isn’t just looking enough?

Poets: The poets participating in tonight’s performance are excellent examples of mixed discipline artists. They write poetry, they make music, they paint and draw and perform. Poets include Rebecca Elliott, Mike Hickey (2009 Seattle Poet Populist pictured above), Jacob Jans, Joseph Kelly, Jed Myers, Doug Nufer, Arne Pihl, Renee Risher and Monica Schley. A younger set of poets, assisted by their very own artist-parents, will be among those responding to Stauffer’s live performance in the Brotman Forum. These include poets (parents): Hugo (Clinton) Bliss and Galaxy (Sage) Saskill. Can't wait to see the results.

SIGHT/SEEING TIMELINE
Deconstruct: 2 July: 5 poets take Stauffer on 2hr walk-through
Reconsruct: 3-15 July: Stauffer composes original score
Deconstruct: 16 July: 12 Poets turn Stauffer’s music into text
Reconsruct: 16 July: Stauffer performs live at SAM

Lenin Poems Ch(e)apbook - A Public Pouring

2009-07-01T09:50:00.000-07:00

Just another Independence Day in Fremont

Comrades! At 10AM on Saturday 4 July 2009, armfuls of the freshly published Lenin Poems Chapbooks (tiny, accordion-folded booklets with potato-printed covers) were poured over the Lenin Statue in Fremont. I repeat, there were witnesses! Chapbooks were assumed by the public! Poems were read and poets celebrated! People marched about aimlessly, shouting, "It's hollow! It's hollow!"

Congratulations
To the Lenin Poets and those whose work was selected for these tiny throwables! Chapbook poets include: Roxanne Baechler-Gill, Patrick Bentley, Lou Contreras, Rebecca Elliott, Thomas Hubbard, Christopher J. Jarmick, Joseph Kelly, Carlos Martinez, Jed Myers, Peter A. Nelson, John Persak, Cindy Peyser Safronoff, Charles Potts, David Sandberg, Michael Schein, Judith Skillman, Nick Williamson, Chris S. Witwer and two students from Hamilton International Middle School, Anita and Ethan. Congratulations to these poets and a big thank you to all poets who submitted work and supported the project.

The Official Lenin Poem
One special poem was chosen to be bronzed and put with the statue in Fremont. This Is Not V.I. Lenin by Rebecca Elliott was chosen by the Lenin Poem judges after a blind reading through the 59 poems received. Rebecca Elliott's 5-line poem (shown below), will be bronzed and placed with the Lenin Statue sometime later this Fall. We are now just starting to collect funds to cover the cost of bronzing. If you wish to donate, send $5 or more (in cash or check) to: A. K. Allin/600 N 36th St #210/Seattle, WA 98103. Estimated cost of a bronze plaque is $275. Thanks for your help.

This Is Not V.I. Lenin

This statue is hollow. Inside are six inches
of water in a ditch along a country road
just outside the small village of Russia,
Ohio, a boy in a threadbare sweater,
his palms in the mud.

-Rebecca Elliott

Rebecca reading her poem.

THE JUDGES

Gregory Crosby
Born in Michigan, Gregory Crosby spent his formative years in Las Vegas, where for more than a decade he was an art critic, columnist and cultural commentator. His poems have appeared in several journals, including Court Green, Jacket, Rattle, Poem, [sic], Pearl, BigCityLit, The South Carolina Review, The Red Rock Review, Stirring and others. He is the author of three chapbooks: Twenty Poems (1996), Revenge of a Mortal Hand (1998) and Satan’s Skull Glows White Hot (2000). He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, where he won the 2006 Marie Ponsot Poetry Prize. Most recently, he was a finalist for the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.

Vanessa DeWolf
Vanessa DeWolf creates interdisciplinary poetic works of text-based performance. Her work often combines narrative and poetic language with visual and movement processes. Her training: figure skating, M.A. in playwriting at Boston University under Nobel prize winner Derek Walcott, somatic practices, alternative dance, improvisation, printmaking, and more. She runs an artist residency program at Studio-Current on Capitol Hill, is a facilitator of Field sessions and has been the director of The Field Seattle. Her work has been seen in various venues throughout Seattle including: Untitled [Intersection], Ten Tiny Dances, Fisher Ensemble, Velocity Dance Center, and Freehold Studio Lab Theater.

A. K. Allin
A. K. “Mimi” Allin produces poetry on the page and off, by way of public installation, instigations and collaborative and solo performance. “AKA” has whispered poetry through a 300-pound block of ice, painted it on umbrellas and put it in the middle of a labyrinth cut into a lawn with hand shears. All of this to get poetry to the people! On Thursday 11 June, Allin installed 100 poets in SAM Downtown for “An Impasse of Poets.” Her next SAM event, "Sight/Seeing," happens in the galleries at SAM Downtown on Thursday 16 July. Allin earned her MA in Writing from City College of New York in 2006.

Poetry Playground $5

2009-06-22T06:27:00.000-07:00

The Fremont Abbey
Weekly, drop-in sessions
Tuesdays 7 - 8:30 PM
$5 /session

Exercise Your Poet
This class generates experiences from which artists of all levels can grow. One of our regulars is in his 40s. Another is 7 years old. The Poetry Playground is a place to explore poetry in physical ways. Guided, unguided and group play in a studio setting. All genders, genres and levels welcome. Sessions include a warm-up (voice, movement and writing), written exercises, group work, solo work and time to share. This kind of “play” hopes to develop into a “practice” you can take with you. Classes are drop-in. It is not necessary to pre-register. Bring a pen and notebook. It’s time to play!

INSTRUCTOR: A. K. “Mimi” Allin teaches poetry, poetry on art and guerilla poetry classes to youth and adults. Allin founded the monthly poetry & performance series “Untitled [Intersection]” at the PNA in Seattle.

** To inquire: (617) 460-6110 or mimiallin@gmail.com

Following Junk @ Westlake Center

2009-06-19T18:17:00.000-07:00

Following Junk
Westlake Center
Friday 19 June 2009
It was a whimsical performance that wanted telling bad enough.... it got told. It was a rowboat on wheels. A boat filled with gold. Or was it candy? Hey, that's Frank Junk -- isn't it? Or is it a magical musician? Whover he is, he's making eerie music with his metal dishes, and that's making eerie weather, which is causing eerie things to happen. He's plucking and bowing and plinking and stretching his notes up into the trees.
He's drawing lines of children. They're rolling through the park and the forest and floating down rivers. They're popping out at the sea and struggling back up into the country.
They weathered a storm. They came to a rest in a golden field, a trail appeared behind them. Where had they gone? What will happen to them now?

Our Very Own Private Author

Olympia poet, Elizabeth She, kindly accepted the offer to come view our performance and write a story about it. Her story will be posted here this Monday, with her permission, after it is read aloud at the Fremont Solstice Parade on Staurday. Check back! Elizabeth wrote a beautiful story about a heavy boat being hauled through the forest by a girl named Mimi. Her friend Frank was traveling with her. Nomads. Far from the sea. Frank plays sweet and spicy music. Mimi pulls their burdens around. They meet a greedy monkey. They are followed by a rat and a talking horse. After the performance, Elizabeth shared her story with us. The intention of this project was to urge onlookers to follow a visual story with their imagination, to suck it back onto the page....schuuuLP.

Following Junk
by Elizabeth Shé (pronounced Shay)
written Juneteenth 2009 in response to a moving performance by Mimi Allin and Frank Junk

Once upon a time, there was a magic musician named Frank Junk. He loved to play instruments of any and every kind.

Frank was followed by mysterious creatures: some shiny, some black, some tall, some pink.

Frank had a friend named Mimi, a gorilla of brilliant hue.

Mimi and Frank were nomads – they traveled from place to place, pulling a boat filled with golden objects. Some folks thought the gold was money, and stole it when Mimi and Frank weren’t looking.

Some people said it was magical, gold-covered candy. If you ate it, strange things would happen to you, depending on your state of mind:
If you were a peaceful person, the candy brought sweet dreams and bliss.
If you were an angry person, perhaps your head exploded.
If you were sad, perhaps the candy took all your cares away.

One day, a monkey fell from a tree into the boat as it was passing below. The monkey screamed and grabbed handfuls of the golden pieces.

Mimi stopped in her tracks, but Frank kept playing. His song was sad and sweet and spicy and silly, all at the same time.

The monkey looked at Frank, then looked at Mimi, then looked at the gold in his hand. He jumped out of the boat and climbed back up his tree… or he tried to. He quickly realized he couldn’t climb while holding the gold. He had to make a decision.

Frank kept playing the sad, sweet, spicy, silly music, and looked at the monkey, who looked at him.

Mimi sat in the road. She was tired of pulling the boat.

“Monkey see, monkey do,” said Frank, over the sad, sweet, spicy, silly music.

BANG! the monkey threw the gold back in the boat, and scampered up the tree.

Mimi jumped up and clapped her hands.

Frank laughed and played his sad, sweet, spicy, silly music.

Mimi reached into the boat, grabbed a piece of gold, and threw it up to the monkey in the tree.

Did the monkey catch it?
Was it money or was it food?
Did the monkey’s head explode, or were all his cares washed away?
What do you think happened?

Meanwhile, at the same time, down the road apiece, walked a horse, a girl, and a very hungry rat.

“I’m starving!” grumbled the rat. “It’s been 45 minutes since my last meal!”

“Hush, Ratty,” said the horse. “Can’t you hear the music?”

What did they hear?

Sad and sweet, spicy and silly… MUSIC!… coming from down the road.

“Pick me up,” said Ratty, so the girl set him on her shoulder. “I can’t see,” he said, and climbed up her hair to the top of her head.

As the horse, the girl, and the very hungry rat drew closer, the music got louder: sad, then sweet, spicy, then silly.

Soon they saw a tall tree by the side of the road.
They saw Mimi dancing and clapping her hands.
They saw a boat.

“Is that a boat?” asked the horse.

“Yes,” said the girl, “ so far, so far from sea.”

Soon the horse, the girl, and the rat on her head were close enough to see a glimmer of gold.

Was it money or was it food?
Where was the monkey?
Who were the mysterious creatures a little bit behind the boat, some shiny, some black, some tall, some pink?

What do you think?

The horse stuck her head down into the boat. “Smells like hay,” she said.

“Looks like gold,” sniffed Ratty. “Not very good to eat.”
Frank laughed. Mimi laughed. The monkey, up in the tree, hidden behind leaves and branches, laughed.

Mimi grabbed handfuls of the golden objects and threw them up in the air.

Was it money or was it food?
Did the girl’s head explode or were her cares washed away?
Who were those mysterious creatures, some shiny, some black, some tall, some pink?

What do you think happened?
You tell me, if you please.
My belly is full of golden candy.
Do you think my head will explode?

THE END

Thank You
To my collaborators Frank Junk (music composition & performance) and Mylinda Sneed (puppet direction). Thanks to Ingrid Lahti for asking me to present a few performances at Westlake. Thanks to Elizabeth She for writing and sharing her beautiful words with us. Thanks to Shin Yu Pai for attending and supporting. Thanks to the Fremont Arts Council and to Artsparks for material funding and support.

Cricket

2009-06-18T20:48:00.001-07:00

Hop, Leap, Hurdle & Move

This poetry-infused project (sponsored by Artspark) happened outside, at Westlake Center in Seattle, on Thursday 18 June at noon. It was outlandish. It was odd. It was Thursday. No, it was not easy. But we hopped. It was noon. We hopped nonstop. For poetry. Yes poetry. And sweet summery mirth. No doubt we'd do it again, but in the woods next time. We gave away 300 poems. We instigated 30 that we know of. We gave it our hop, leap, hurdle and move. We grew tired, then quiet, then all of our poems were gone. And so now... let summer begin!

Mimi spent most of her time handing out poems and cricket-clickers, explaining the project to all who passed. She hopped three times and realized hopping is hard!

Jeremy Halinen couldn't be stopped. He hopped straight through for an hour and a half. It was his personal goal to see if he could do it. He could. When asked where he would be if he weren't here hopping, he said, "work."

Jacob Jans, the first to begin hopping. He hopped high and long, lean and strong, taking breaks only to write poetry.

Paige Barnes was a wonderful hopper and also helped hand out poems and clickers. Thank you Paige!

Writing poems in response to the jumping poets and clicking crickets and warm summer's day.

IMPASSE @ the SAM

2009-06-18T20:08:00.000-07:00

An Impasse of Poets was a live installation of 100 poets at The Seattle Art Museum on Thursday 11 June 2009, curated by A. K. Allin for SAM Word.
A gorgeous and wide range of voices and ages, local and out-of-state poets came together for this event -- our bodies and words making impasses on the escalators, moving through the galleries, crashing in The Porcelain Room, wrapping round a silver emperor's robe in the Ebsworth Gallery, starting all time in The Italian Room and finally reclining on the Grand Staircase, murmuring poetry for almost ten minutes. We appeared on all 4 levels of the museum over the course of an hour. Thanks to all the poets who participated in this memorable and inspiring event. There are images of this historical event and of the fine poets who participated in it on Gene Frogge's SmugMug site. Thank you, Gene, for documenting this event. They are wonderful! I especially love the portraits in the Brotman Forum and those of the poets at various stages of assembly on the Grand Staircase.

summer? poetry?

2009-06-06T07:26:00.000-07:00

The Field | Seattle
Mostly Poets Summer Session
Sundays, 2 to 4 pm
July 12 to August 30
Artists of all disciplines encouraged, poets especially encouraged. Show work and give feedback weekly. E-mail: thefieldseattle@gmail.com. Sessions filled on a first-come, first-served basis. 8-week session: $60 first-timers, $50 if you have participated before. All sessions held at Studio-Current, 1417 10th Ave, btwn E. Pike & E. Union.

3 poetry-infused performances in 3 days

2009-06-03T23:27:00.000-07:00

1. CRICKET
Curated by A. K. "Mimi" Allin
Westlake Park | Seattle | Thursday 18 June 2009 | 11:30am-1:30pm

"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.” --Ludwig Wittgenstein

3 mini trampolines, 9 poets, hundreds of cricket clickers (toy metal clickers), each with a small poem about crickets, grasshoppers and sweet, summery mirth. Poets take turns jumping and writing about their experience. Cricket-Poems are handed to onlookers. All are encouraged to chirp away and write poetry. This event will provide a unique experience for both public and poet, and should, I hope, provoke laughter! Jumping poets include: Jacob Jans, Jared Leising, Paige Barnes, Jeremy Halinen, Megan Ady and Heather Joy Gosnell. Let us follow Ludwig Wittgenstein into the green valleys of silliness! Cricket clickers donated by Top Ten Toys. Photocopying and cutting by Kinko's.

This project is one of many in a summer-long series being curated at Westlake Park by Seattle artist Ingrid Lahti for Artsparks. Artsparks, a new and experimental program, is bringing the creative energy of Seattle’s vibrant arts community into daily downtown life.

2. FOLLOWING JUNK | Creating Story
Curated by A. K. "Mimi" Allin
Puppet direction by Mylinda Sneed
Westlake Park | Seattle | Friday 19 June 2009 | 11:30am-1:30pm

"Following Junk" is a whimsical and moving performance that wants a story. A wooden rowboat set on wheels and filled with gold-wrapped candies, occupied by magical musician (local instrument-maker Frank Junk plucking and bowing his homemade instruments or Junkophones). 10-20 junk puppets will follow along as the boat rolls through through the park.

We want to know-- Where is the magical musician going? Why are the puppets following? Are they children? Is he the pied piper? Is the boat filled with gold nuggets or magical candies? Or are they junk? What’s junk? Is it what’s in the boat or what’s in the children’s heads? 4 or more children’s authors will be present to view the performance and write stories about it. This all happens outside at Westlake Park at noon on Friday 19 June 2009. Authors include Sarit Goren, Danae' Clark, Shin Yu Pai and Elizabeth She. We want to urge onlookers to follow a visual story with their imaginations. Some of the freshly composed stories will be shared at 1PM, before the close of the performance. They will then feature in The Fremont Solstice Parade on 20 June.

This project is also a part of Seattle artist Ingrid Lahti's summer series for Artsparks.

3. FOLLOWING JUNK | Telling Story
Parade float with junk puppets & umbrella walkers (a tumbling river)
Co-curated by A. K. "Mimi" Allin, Mylinda Sneed & Frank Junk
The Fremont Solstice Parade | Seattle | Saturday 20 June 2009 | 12:00pm-2:00pm

The same ensemble that floated around Westlake Park will tour Fremont's Solstice Parade. This time there will be real children walking with the junk puppets, handing out the gold-wrapped candies and animating white umbrellas to form a dancing river. Now that we have stories to go with the ensemble, we read out lines from them to the crowd.

Following Junk was awarded a Dave McKay Grant. Thanks to The Fremont Arts Council for their support!

An Impasse of Poets @ SAM

2009-05-26T15:46:00.001-07:00

Live installation with 100 poets
SAM Downtown | Seattle Art Museum
8-9PM Thursday 11 June 2009

Line drawing by Richard C. Allin after Matisse

Event Details

Experience guerilla poetry at The Seattle Art Museum this summer. At 8pm on Thursday June 11, artist and poet A. K. “Mimi” Allin will present her first of three events at SAM Downtown – An Impasse of Poets.

The above list of local poets will move through the museum, gather around specific works and drape themselves over The Grand Staircase while reciting poetry from memory and in response to the artwork. The poet will physically and verbally embody SAM's galleries and artworks. Their voices will come together to form whispering walls—impasses—of poetry here and there.

Do Ho Suh’s artwork, “Some/One,” currently on display in SAM’s Ebsworth Gallery, is one of the works the group will address. The group hopes to bring this and other works to life through their words. “Some/One” takes the shape of an emperor’s jacket made of stainless steel military dog-tags. The parts symbolize the individuals that came together to make the larger whole. They also signify loss, but the result it a glorious jacket, larger and grander than its parts.

Come to the SAM on June 11th. Experience "An Impasse" first-hand in the galleries or hang out in the lobby and listen for free. Wireless microphones will broadcast the group’s poetic output, in live time, to the main lobby (Brotman Forum). As you listen, imagine the above mass of poets enveloping your favorite work, zigzagging down the halls and infusing the art you love with their words. An Impasse of Poets will perform 6 times over the course of an hour, creating impasses with their bodies and words on all 4 levels of the SAM.

IMPASSE brings together 100 poets to make one cohesive voice– the voice of the poet. The group will address SAM spaces, exhibits and works of art. The voice of the poet will mingle with the voice of the art and of the museum. We invite you to see and move along with us.

Event Schedule

8:00pm – ESCALATORS b/w Level 2 & 3 (behind ticket booth in lobby)
8:15pm – 3 groups simultaneously address 3 areas
* Group #1 – TACK & JIBE EXHIBIT – hallway NE corner – Level 3
* Group #2 – THE PORCELAIN ROOM – Level 4
* Group #3 – THE ITALIAN ROOM – NE corner – Level 4
8:30pm – SOME/ONE by DO HO SUH – Ebsworth Gallery – Level 3
8:45pm – THE GRAND STAIRCASE inside 1st Ave & University St.

Why an Impasse?

It is a mission of Allin’s to bring poetry to unexpected places. She uses performance, visual art and participation as ways of inviting the public to think, act and create. Allin is looking not only for ways to interject poetry into our public and social spaces, but into our culture and daily lives.

Thank you
The poets of Seattle dedicate this performance to the Seattle Art Museum, to its permanent and special collections and to Mimi Gates.

A Translation Success

2009-04-27T23:29:00.001-07:00

"A Translation Experiment" happened at Hugo House on Saturday 25 April. It was a WPA event co-sponsored by Richard Hugo House and I was its creative director. The idea was to give the audience one poem in various forms --dance, movement, voice, flowers and visual art -- and have them write it again in English. Five artists were asked to translate this one poem into their own medium and then it was performed live, in those forms. After watching it all, the audience was asked to consider carefully, to take notes and work at its meaning.

Gene Frogge, a fantastic local photographer, has a smugmug page full of gorgeous, richly textured images from the day - workshops, open mic and setting up the main stage. Many thanks to Gene!!

POETRY IN LANGUAGES

Can a poem move between genres and hold its message? What kinds of translation are worth while? Where does translation stop and interpretation begin? How is it that I receive the message of a poem? Can seeing the same thing, provoke the same response in us?

We started with an hour of poetry in languages. Languages included Mandarin, Hebrew, French, Japanese, German, Nahuatl and Spanish. Adela, above, read a poem in Spanish by Rafael Alberti.

We got the audience in the mood by offering them poetry as rhythm, by asking them to listen for the poetry of a given language and just to enjoy it.

SECRET SOURCE POEM

Shhhhh! It's the secret source poem. In a prescribed meeting place, one month before the show, the featured artists met to choose a poem. They discussed their choices for a bit and made their decision. It was unanimous. Then, over the next month, Christian Swenson, Linden Ontjes, Keely Isaak Meehan, Barbara Anne Allin and Horatio Cordero considered the poem. Now, having seen their polished and provocative translations, it is without a doubt they put every effort into it.

What came out was a five-side, sumptuous, vivid, true-to-the-poem original.

A poem drawn into dimensions. With facets. Something infused. And experienced.

And there in the background, a flay of tulips, a squirrel's nest, a floral translation.

In a secret gallery that opened out of the darkness on stage left, just before the close of the experiment, came one final image, this one drawn by a 5-year-old boy living on Cape Cod. Horatio. A young poet of merit whose work should not be overlooked. Horatio offered his own translation of the secret source poem, full of the same matter, yet made with younger tools. Horatio's work made a wonderful complement to the four that went before. It was unique and familiar, serious and humorous, bright and dark. Hooray Horatio!

TRANSLATION PANEL

A pre-show Translation Panel was moderated by Dave Jarecki.

Panelists included Zachary Schomburg, Debby Watt, Lyn Coffin, Vanessa Dewolf and Andrea Lingenfelter.

At the and of the evening, audience members were invited to bring their translations forward to become part of a glass assemblage made by Clinton Bliss. At the exit doors, all those departing were handed wax-sealed envelopes containing the secret source poem and instructions to "receive these words well."

A Translation Experiment

2009-04-17T14:26:00.001-07:00

Designed by aka for the WPA

@ RICHARD HUGO HOUSE
Saturday 25 April 7P
$8 advance ticket sales

DANCING A POEM

Can you dance a poem? Can you arrange a poem in flowers? Can you move a poem from language to language without losing its message? I want to know.

7pm - "Translation Panel" includes guests Lyn Coffin (poet & translator), Vanessa DeWolf (performance artist & writer), Andrea Lingenfelter (literary translator), Zachary Schomberg (poet and literary translator) and Debby Watt (experimental musician, vocalist, performer).

8pm - “Around the World in Poetry.” An hour of multi-lingual readers in the Hugo House theatre, non-poets from other cultures will share a favorite poem.Hebrew, Romanaccio, Spanish, French, German and Japanese.

9pm - “A Translation Experiment.” Five artists will present one secret source poem (hidden from the public until the end) in their various "languages." After you see/hear/watch the poem performed multiple times in various genres, you will be asked to write the poem and contribute it to a visual art piece. On your way out, you will be given a sealed envelop with the source poem in it. It is up to you when you open this (straight away or much later in the comfort of your own home).

This day-long festival also includes a morning translation workshop by local literary translator Andrea Lingenfelter, who will work from Chinese (cost $60), and an afternoon workshop with WA State Poet Laureate Sam Green who will work with poetry as a translation of the life experience (cost $80). Register for a workshop. Just before the evening experiment, there is a panel discussion on translation moderated by literary journalist Dave Jarecki of Portland, OR. This is included in your ticket price. Tickets will be on sale at the door for $10 starting at 6:30pm.

The Lenin Poems - Our First Strut

2009-04-17T14:00:00.000-07:00

Friday 17 April @ 7P at The Lenin Statue in Fremont

We took it to the streets. A little crowd formed. We began to read. Three local poets shared their Lenin Poems on the corner beneath The Lenin Statue in Fremont. Leo, pictured above, posted more photos here.

The artist wants to know how the people of Fremont feel about The Lenin Statue (clearly there are some strong feelings), and how Lenin feels about the people of Fremont (not so clear), and what this all means to people who live here and visit. I asked the poets to begin to explain. We received 59 poems. In 2 months, we'll have a contest winner. In the meantime, let's enjoy the poems.

This is, I hope, the start of what will be a rich discussion about what our community values and fears.

A contest winner has not yet been chosen. This reading was a sneak peek into the submissions. Judges are currently reviewing the poems (anonymously). Judges include: Vanessa DeWolf, Gregory Crosby and A. K. Allin (who will not read submissions anonymously). We received 59 Lenin poems, poems both small and light, large and serious, in English and Russian, in rhyming and in free verse. We thank the poets of Fremont and the world for taking the challenge.

Once a winner is chosen, that poem will be cast in bronze and placed with the statue. The judges will choose "the best of the rest" for publication in "The Lenin Poems," a chapbook which will be “publicly poured” over the statue on 4 July 2009. This "pouring" will read as performance and publication date. The hope is that these poems will be seen, read, taken and remembered.

Onion Breaking Ceremony

2009-04-13T09:48:00.001-07:00

Easter Day
Gas Works Park

"Inside my imagination, inside my dream's shoes I found a mimi onion. The light around me was blue with a coming storm. I poured little letters inside, heard them sing against the ceramic. I poured little tears inside, salting and curing, and woke to a white pillow, a bright sky, a release and grace." Phoebe Caulfield

We met at a cafe at 10am. We sketched onions on vellum. We wrote about whispering vegetables and tears and release. Curious souls approached our table, "OK, I've just got to ask. What's up with the onions?" A few more tears collected.

It was raining. It was going to rain. We drew tears on our faces. We sliced lemons half way through. Vanessa handed me the rock she had been warming. I put it against my belly, stretched my shirt over, tucked it in and cinched my belt. This was my burden. We carried white umbrellas and handed out raw onions along the way.

We walked one block down the hill and caught our first glimpse of the hill. The Hill! Such a green has been sucking in water all night. We beckoned the heavens. We addressed the trees. We advised the mud. "These are our tears. Prepare to take them."

I carried a wicker basket of onions, onions filled with our tears, tears of joy & sorrow. It was time for release. The onions had been out collecting tears for over month by Lake Union (February - March 2009) carefully placed with instructions for all to release.

Six "onion breakers" were present for the ceremony at on Sunday: Vanessa, Danae, Kate, Chris, Deb & Mimi.

I made a circle of real and ceramic onions on the summit of The Hill. I whispered, to each person present, something I had discovered that morning while writing. We passed around the mallet and each of us broke an onion. The onions broke with happy, white cracks. The rolled and folded little notes blew out and rocked around and found puddles to settle into. We read silently and collected them into envelopes made of onion sketches.

Then we broke open our lemons and squeezed them over the area, to freshen and purify it.

It was time to connect with the lake. We took out our smiles, paper smiles, and held them up to our faces. We showed them to heaven & earth. "This is what release looks like." I took the stone from my belly and placed it on the ground. I began to roll it toward the edge. The others helped. We rolled it down the hill towards the lake. Deb gave it a final push under a thicket of blackberry bushes and it fell into the lake with the sound of final release.

This was a ritual, a performance and an exploration into what brings release. If you are unfamiliar with The Onion Years project, see the previous post.

THE POETRY PLAYGROUND, Weekly Classes (Tuesdays 7-9pm)

2009-03-17T06:47:00.000-07:00

From the crazies who brought you THE POETRY POLAR BEAR CLUB, now offering ongoing, weekly, drop-in classes at The Fremont Abbey Art Center, Tuesday nights from 7-9pm, starting Tuesday, 24 March, 2009. THE POETRY PLAYGROUND is facilitated by A. K. “Mimi” Allin.

THE POETRY PLAYGROUND
A place to stretch your poet and play with words. A place to practice physical poetry. A place to test your tools. This is not a poetry reading, critiquing circle, performance or acting class. This is a playground. We’ll use games, exercises and prompts to free our poet. Intended for artists of all genders, genres and levels, who work (or wish to work) from poetry. Be prepared to move, talk and play, alone and in groups, to create on the page and in the round. We will not sit in seats at tables.

EXERCISE YOUR POET $10
Ongoing, drop-in, weekly sessions, 7-9 pm, Tuesdays. Classes meet at The Fremont Abbey starting on Tuesday, 24 March, 2009. 2 hrs on the playground, pay-as-you-go, $10/session. No stress. Generative play. Just show up. Pay in person, cash or check.

INSTRUCTOR
A. K. “Mimi” Allin, The Poetess at Green Lake, spends her time developing interactive poetry performances. An instigator of social dialog, Allin teaches poetry guerilla poetry to youth and adults. She has been performing, projecting, installing and instigating poetry since 1997. Allin, who earned her MA in Poetry from City University of New York and founded the monthly poetry & performance series Untitled [Intersection], will moderate all playground sessions and performances. Special guest co-instructors will be announced.

INQUIRE
mimiallin@gmail.com

aka readings| performances

2009-03-07T23:32:00.000-08:00

SOUL FOOD POETRY
A. K. Allin & Vanessa Dewolf perform/read together on Thursday 19 March, 7pm, at Soul Food Books in Redmond. This will be Allin's first long reading since "Soviet Poetry" at Soho20 in NYC, a slide show of epigrammatic poems over Modern Soviet Art with percussion by Greg Stare of Rare Bird Rumba Ranch. Expect the off kilter.

FREMONT PLACE BOOKS
The very next night, Friday 20 March, 7pm, Allin will perform at Fremont Place Books with the dapper Aaron Silverberg and the therapeutic Laurie Scullin. In typical Allin fashion, this will not be a reading so much as a happening so bring your witness.

The Onion Years

2009-03-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

In February 2009, I placed 12 ceramic onions around Lake Union in Seattle. The onions came from the Goodwill. They were part of a kitchen decoration meant to look like a strand of garlic. I cut off the twine that held them together and put corks into the holes that remained. Then they looked like onions, white onions. They led me to this project.

I walked six miles around Lake Union on 7 February 2009, placing onions here and there in hidden places by garden gates, above rock walls, under trees, beside bridges. I put them in places where they might be noticed by some wandering soul. The various paths around Lake Union do not connect. There are little parks and public waterway access points. There are old railroad ties and bouncing sailboats. There are piers and community gardens. The Fremont Bridge closes the circle to the west.

Little laminated signs, placed near each onion, instruct the public what to do. Write, on a bit of paper, something that made or makes you cry tears of joy or sorrow. Put it into the onion and gently replace the cork. If you break an onion, you will wear the sorrows it contains for a year. Gasp!

The onions sat outside for a month collecting tears. Some of them disappeared. Most of them stayed. Some collected a great number of notes. Some collected only a few. I am beginning now to collect them. Yes, spring is upon us!

Soon I will break them open and their tears will be released. It will rain for a week. Those drops that fall as tears will bring forth flowers with a so beautiful a fragrance, those who inhale it deeply will be affected with amorous feeling for the next person they see.

For those who want to witness the Onion Breaking, I will post details here soon, on the when and the where. I suspect it will be in the next few weeks.

Thank you to all who contributed. You are beautiful. Because of you, this spring is already filled with magic!

The Lenin Poems

2009-01-20T01:03:00.000-08:00

RISE UP TO THE CALL FOR POETRY
WRITE THE LENIN POEM
The Fremont Lenin has long needed a poem. A poem in bronze, a verse to lift and root, to explain, to challenge. Emma Lazarus saw the Statue of Liberty as a beacon to the world. When you look at the Fremont Lenin, what do you see? This isn’t a call. This is a challenge! Write the Lenin Poem. Now accepting commemorative poems for the Lenin Statue. All ages, languages and genres accepted, but plaque-sized please, bronze ain’t cheap. There is no strict word count. The winning poem will be cast in bronze and the (best of the) rest will appear in a chapbook.

HOW TO SUBMIT
Send your poem as an attachement to mimiallin@gmail.com with the subject line “The Lenin Poems.” Or by first class mail to: A. K. Allin, 600 N 36th St. #210, Seattle, WA 98103. Include your name and contact info on each page. No materials will be returned. Do not send your only copies. Authors retain all rights. Deadline: 1 April 2009.

PUBLIC PERFORMANCE
A “public pouring” of The Lenin Poems will take place on 4 July 2009 at The Lenin Statue in Fremont. The statue may go, but the poem, the poem will stay.

POETRY JUDGES
A. K. Allin, Gregory Crosby, Vanessa DeWolf

DO YOUR HOMEWORK
Wikipedia’s Statue of Lenin (Seattle)
Artists' Republic of Fremont: Lenin Statue
Lenin Statue at Roadside America

The Healthy Art Commission

2009-01-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Artist,

I know you. You're working too hard, you're doing too much, you're skipping meals, eating out, forgoing exercise. And you don't have health care. You don't even bathe as often as you should!! Who is going to take care of you?!

Living too is an art. And a healthy artist is a sustainable artist. The Art Doctor has been sent to you by The Healthy Art Commission who hopes to raise awareness about the issues of health, art and sustainability. This is an artist-driven project with artist-receiving rewards. We hope you’ll consider taking part. All you have to do is.... something GOOD FOR YOU. Click on the form above, read all the possibilities and go do yourself some good. Begin anytime. Undergo any pleasure. Document it. Then send me a note. In return, I will recognize you in a performance. The performance will be small, public and rife with ritual. Include a return address and I'll send you a record of it. In your own way, you will be taking care of me.

The Healthy Art Commission hopes to set up a new model whereby artists can begin to take care of one another and steer each another towards healthy, sustainable art. If you know an artist who should see this, forward it on.

Sincerely,
The Art Doctor

Poetry Polar Bear Club

2008-12-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

The Original POETRY POLAR BEAR CLUB
Green Lake, Seattle, WA

Looking for the 2009 event? Go here.

For those who haven't heard, we made history today. A group of brave souls in POETRY BIKINIS took the plunge for poetry, into Green Lake, in Seattle (The Seattle Times, "For poetry's sake, they jumped in the lake)." This was a first! Yes indeed. On Saturday 13 December 2008, just after noon, we plunged into the cold waters to prove that poetry is still alive. See John Cornicello's fabulous PHOTOS documenting our polar poetry swim. How lucky we were to have John on the scene! He's famous for his work with the Fremont Solstice Parade and I can see why. He knows how to capture an event!

What Does Poetry Have To Do With Cold Water?

This is about living. The point is to find new ways to live. In this case, cold water was the focus and poetry the approach. So you start with an idea, you develop it through memory and language into poetry, then you let it out to play, to act (in and) on the world. What results is an understanding. A being. And, for those who put themselves into it, poetry. Jumping into cold water with poetry on our suits proved to be yet another way to live. The cold water provided a focus that both demanded and offered poetry. And life begins.

The Poetry Polar Bear Club was both invigorating and powerful. It brought poets and dreamers together. It awed and inspired the public. And it jump-started a new tradition. Not only do I feel lucky to know a group of poets and artists crazy enough to jump into the lake with, but I feel honored to be able to initiate change where I live. I'm starting to feel a shift in the poets. And I can see that paralleled in New York City and San Francisco and other cities. Poets are beginning to engage with the public and are starting to see their fellow poets as collaborators instead of competitors. Hooray!

How Cold Was It?

It was the coldest week of the year, we were expecting snow (in fact it did snow later, which was wonderful because it so rarely snows in Seattle), the temps were predicted in the 30s. But there we were, as we said we would be, out reviving poetry. You know, it really didn't feel that cold. I guess was too busy feeling excited, but my knee jerk reaction, after getting into the water, was to hug everyone in sight. So I suppose it was quite cold, for I was starting to feel like a polar bear. Anyway, the event went off perfectly. The weather was cold & dry after a day of freezing rain. The crowd, at about 40, was full of curiosity and cheer. The polar bears, especially the ones in bikinis, but even the ones in tightie whities, were as giddy as can be. It all made for a hilarious and pervasively good time. So, once we were all lined up, we shouted out the poetry written on our suits (and bodies), one at a time, then plunged into the lake all together for a very quick dip, to wake up our artist (brrRRR!) to the moment. Then we got out and got dry and warm and shared cocoa and hugged goodbye. A few of us headed for a hot tub! So who said poetry couldn't be fun?! Not I. Certainly not I.

Where Did the Idea Come From?

I was running for Seattle Poet Populist and the program coordinator, Bob Redmond, asked me to make a pledge.
Q: "If selected as Seattle's Poet Populist, what will you offer?"
A: I gave it some thought, and came up with this. "I'll put 25 poets into Green Lake this winter, in little white bikinis, with poems written on them!"
Well, I didn't make Poet Populist, but that didn't stop me from following through on my promise.

Thank YoU

Thank you, Seattle, for listening.
Thank you Seattle Times and Nancy Guppy for heralding.
Thank you Green Lake for accepting.
Thank you to the 12 furriest poets I know: Mark Pomerville, Vanessa Dewolf, Clinton Bliss, Megan Ady, Tracy Day, Christian Swenson, Dana Martin, Jacob Jans, Patrick Kent, Love Boyd and Larry Neilson (& Mimi makes 12)!
Thank you John Cornicello for attending & capturing this event in pictures. You are amazinG!
Thank you Bob Young for being a nice person and for writing such a nice article (that rhymed)!
Thank you to all of the unnamed polar supporters.
Thank you & a big polar bear hug to Mylinda Sneed, for the wagon full of steaming hot tea!
With your help, we did it.
We put the "O" in pOetry!

What We Did

We came together.
We made a statement for and about poetry.
We got cold.
We got wet.
We laughed &laughed &laughed.
&omygod it snowed 5 hours later.
We gave ourselves a reason to warm up.
And we warmed up.

Why We Did It

We did it for poetry.
We did it for fun.
We did it as an invitation.
A wake up call.
A message to the poets.
Let's come together.
Let's meet the people where the people are.
Let's collaborate.
Let's embrace.

Can I Read A Polar Poem?

Yes you can. Here's one written by a local poet. It was worn by the poet and plunged into Green Lake on December 13th. Now that's cold!

bear of the north

bear of the north
you amble over hard-packed silt
your shoulders jut arrogantly
with every step
your snow-bright fur is tinged
nicotine-yellow
the stain of a thousand dismembered seals.
I sacrificed my meat for you
and stopped driving my car.
I went to jail for you
ten years for PETA.
I screamed at bloody pedestrians
who wore your brothers' arctic skin.
I slouched self-satisfied
in my righteous, perfect path.
I never questioned my rending of
other people's beliefs.
they were assailable and slow.
they were prey.
still
I never ripped apart a living being with my
bare teeth
or collapsed invulnerable
in Superman repose on
a whirling floe of cruel ice
I never lapped at dark starlit waters
adrift on a splintered blast scape
or lifted my head to puzzle over the
antics of migratory birds.
I never was a natural animal
that slaughtered and sighed in innocence.
I know what I do.
for your part, maybe your time is ending, and maybe
I will not mourn.
you were always a monster.

Patrick Kent

To sum up.. you didn't hear it here first, but you did hear it here.. poetry IS news!

xo
aka

Is It ART or Is It POWDERED SUGAR?

2008-12-04T11:50:00.000-08:00

Based on the belief that how a person respond to art is every bit as important as the art itself, A. K. "Mimi" Allin sifted a powdered sugar line from one end of Art Walk (Seattle Center) to the other (Pioneer Square), for Seattle's First Thursday Art Walk on 4 December 2008. She challenged art walkers to involve themselves in the process of making art. Allin is underlining, visually & performatively, what it is that makes Art Walk a thing-- it's the audience, it's you!

She handed out prompts designed to challenge artwalkers, as they wandered the galleries, to see more, feel more & respond creatively.

An Art Walk Enhancing Tool
- Stand before a work of art and compose a poem.
- Stand before a work of art and make a sketch.
- Title an untitled piece.
- Name of an artwork that made you smile.
- Name of an artwork you could have done better yourself.

Completed cards should be mailed to – A. K. “Mimi” Allin, 4714 Ballard Ave NW #148, Seattle WA 98107 or dropped off that evening at All City Coffee, 125 Prefontaine Pl. S. in Pioneer Square.

Alice In Your Pocket

2008-11-20T20:04:00.000-08:00

If you live in Seattle, well you're lucky indeed, because on Thanksgiving Day, Thursday 27 November, starting promptly at 10 a.m., the entire text of Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll will be read aloud, in one standing, by your neighborhood pocket poet, A. K. “Mimi” Allin. This reading will take place in a cozy neighborhood pocket park in Fremont called Fremont Peak Park.

Free to dogs, mice, horses, monkeys & humans. Especially free to cats. No crows please. Tea & cookies encouraged. Puppets provided for the nervous. Join anytime, early or late. Bring a chair & read along or just close your eyes & listen. There will be bread & butter & marmalade. When the Queen shrieks, “To be con-tin-ued…” get ready for games, a race & even a court hearing! Some rain, some shine & some light breezes expected. Dress appropriate. And remember, like every good story, this one will end. But for a good story to end, it must first begin. So.. shall we begin?

Alice In Your Pocket intends to bring live readings of Alice In Wonderland to all of the pocket parks in Seattle over the coming year. Look out for Alice In Your Pocket flyers on telephone poles in your neighborhood of check back in here.

Spoon River Installation

2008-11-03T14:23:00.000-08:00

LITFUSE 2008
Tieton, Washington

It was the children who decided the spoons should hang from the trunk. I knighted this tall pine "Old Spoon." Together we read every shoe down the river of gingko leaves, looking for the happy people in Spoon River. There weren't many. Poor Henry Chase. Poor Minerva. Sad old Doc Hill. Later we tied spoons to our fingers and walked in funny ways along the river - baby steps, big steps, backwards, very slowly and finally we pretended to be trees and let the spoons dangle and clang in the breeze.

I spent Friday night and Saturday morning picking candy wrappers and wads of gum out of the grass in town square. At noon on Saturday, I began installing Spoon River. The kids gathered round. What are you doing? Can we help? It was the skinny boy with bent ears who offered. I let him take the shoes out of the bags and soon everyone was scattering them around and tying laces.

Once I'd formed the river and placed all the signs, books and shoes, I went for soup at Vicki's Cafe.

And then the magic began!

Out the window I saw it happening, Lisa and Marco reading to the children from the book I'd placed under the pine tree. Kids running to the entrance to wipe the rain from my signs and read them.

I dropped my lunch and went to meet them.

A teddy bear named Andrew, a heathcliff named Jainy and a pearl in a blue dress, I've lost her name.

The boys playing soccer moved to the other side of the park without a question. The younger boys and girls stayed with the project all afternoon, running up and down the river, questioning everything, listening to poems and reading shoes. They needed help with the cursive writing, so I read those aloud. A group of children even came back at dusk to help light candles. In the morning, not a thing was missing, only a few shoes had been gently turned to avoid them filling with rain.

Some adults had expressed concern that the children might rip my installation apart. But it was the children of Tieton who most fully engaged with Spoon River. When I walked on top of the path of leaves that made Spoon River, the girls cautioned, "You're in the river." Yes," I said, "it's cold!"

SPOON RIVER
Yet another "aka installation" happened on 1 November, 2008, this time in the little town of Tieton in Eastern Washington. Tieton is a town of 1100, an apple picking town, currently being revitalized by Ed Marquand and the Tieton Arts & Humanities Association.

Great humps rise up out of the undulating brown and black-tuft landscape in Eastern Washington. Tieton is built on one of these humps, west of Yakima. Up a curvy road, on the back side of a cliff, sits the windy orchard town of Tieton.

LITFUSE

This Spring, Michael Schein asked if I'd present a Guerilla Poetry class for his annually-occurring, weekend-long literary festival, LITFUSE, which marries poetry, meditation and letterpress printing. It brings prominent local and national poets to Tieton every November.

I said yes, of course, then asked myself --what kind of guerilla poet would I be if I didn't make something happen right there in Tieton? So I needed to know, where do the people congregate? How do they move? What is their history? And how can I tie it all into LitFuse?

I knew early on, it was town square I was after, a solid plunk of space with a significant presence. I used up hours here and there thinking, long winding questioning, sketching and finally SPOON RIVER for this little world atop the hill. Clinton, Ed and Vanessa were my closest collaborators, helping to iron out the details.

SPOON RIVER was installed in town square for 28 hours. Candles were lit. The shoes filled with rain. The sun shone. Wind clinked the spooncups together. The festival participants and town children embraced it. I lived it for a full day. What thanks I have for all those involved!

It was inspired by Tieton's town square and by the American classic, Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Master. Spoon River Anthology is a book of 244 poems, each about a different character who lived in the fictional town of Spoon River.

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS

In the hot light at the center of a black-painted cold storage room in Mighty Tieton, Dia De Los Muertos expert, Raul Sanchez, prepares an incredible and collaborative altar for Day of the Dead. Participants were later invited to place photos and various articles that reminded them of their deceased loved ones. Then Raul sewed us all together. With a strong blast through his conch shell to the north and the east and the south and the west, then a whistle in the ocharina, and finally a rattling of bones. We gave voice to the names of those we had lost, one after the other. Que viva! Afterwards, we were invited to read the poems we'd prepared. Many were moved to tears by this collective remembering and shedding of grief. Thank you, Raul, for introducing us to this rich celebration and for the allowing us to share and witness our histories.

GUERILLA POETRY GUERILLA POETRY
GUERILLA POETRY GUERILLA POETRY
GUERILLA POETRY GUERILLA POETRY

I've been focused on bringing poetry to life through performance, installation and instigations for the past 5 years. When Michael Schein came to me and offered the chance to share what I've learned, I felt a door open. It gave me the chance to define my process and plan and teach my tactics to two classes, in an effort to inspire and encourage poets to use actions to make their poems happen.

I prepared writing and listening exercises and a host of outdoor activities. The weekend went terrifically! I was thrilled to be teaching something I love.

DAY 1: We spent an hour thinking and writing creatively, transforming poetry into actions and altering public spaces. I started with a photo of the moon projected on the wall and, miraculously, while waiting for the group to assemble, I found her - The Poet in the Moon! I'd been looking these past two months and while I thought I knew where she was, I hadn't really seen her. But standing there before class, in that cold storage room in Mighty Tieton, I found her, plain as day, entranced in a poem. What was she writing about? I showed her to the class and encouraged them to teach the world to see like this.

INSTALLATION: Participants were invited to help install and experience Spoon River right there in town square, Tieton. The children of Tieton chipped in right away.

DAY 2: We began by writing an imagined sound landscape and then we prepared poetry for action.

OPEN MIC: Bravo! Three of my four groups presented poetry as actions for the open mic. I was bursting at the seams, so proud of their freshness, braveness and genius. Great job everyone! If you ask me, it was the blood in the body of poetry at the open mic. Group 1 (Carol Trenga, Elaine Bishop, Don Berk & LeAnne Ries) wound, revealed and named the burka. Group 2 (Vanessa DeWolf, Heather Gosnell, Judith Walcutt, I need one more name here, and myself) ushered the audience outside to watch "The Poetry Generator" at work. Group 3 wrote something specifically for their reading and presented "Shake the Shaker Till We All Lie Down." Their poems was read in turns, while lying side by side, on the floor.

Poets Getting Over Themselves

2008-10-19T12:05:00.000-07:00

>>>YOUTUBE VIDEO HERE

Here we are, Poets Getting Over Ourselves.

The words "I Love You," said over and over, become something else over time. They become a mantra, an empty lobby, a babble and then, finally, when you come back into them, a gesture. As the hour wore on I moved from hands in pockets to hands by sides to hands opening and finally blowing kisses. My words became an embrace. By the end of the day, we were all complaining of pain in our faces from smiling and laughing so hard.

"I LOVE YOU, MAN!"

The weather was perfect, dry and sunny, cool and bright. The young trees by the lake were golden and rosy-red and sending airplanes down.

We stood along the speedway and quietly said "I Love You." Over the course of two hours, we loved the old and the young, the dark and the light, the low down and the high up, democrats and republicans, the infirmed and the rosy-cheeked, runners and bikers and walkers and bladers, the open up and the closed off. I saw so many more open people than I would have imagine. I saw many in pain.

Coordinated by: Aaron Silverberg & A. K. “Mimi” Allin, pictured here with Janette and Kristen. This event happened at Green Lake in Seattle, Washington, on Saturday 18 October 2008, from 2-4 p.m. POETS GETTING OVER THEMSELVES was brought to you by working poets in Seattle. With every poem we write, we love you.

Dana Martin, a participant in this event, PUT INTO WORDS what happened in such a beautiful way that it asks to be read in its entirety. See--->MY GORGEOUS SOMEWHERE.

"Mimi" for POET POPULIST

2008-09-29T17:54:00.001-07:00

Y o u y o u V O T E V O T E f o r f o r M I M I

A. K. “Mimi” Allin for Poet Populist 2009

I’ve whispered poetry into a 300-pound block of ice, painted it on umbrellas, put it in a labyrinth cut with hand-shears. All of this to get poetry to the people! Now it’s your turn. Please vote for me www.poetpopulist.org.

CAMPAIGN PROMISES/PLANS-

1. POETRY POLAR BEAR CLUB. The world's first ever Poetry Polar Bear Club. I vow to put 20 poets _into_ Green Lake this December, wearing only teensy weensy white poetry bikinis. Who said poetry couldn't be fun?!

2. MEMORIZE THIS! You've got a home-cooked meal in your repertoire, but what about a love poem? Do you have one of those up your sleeve? Sometimes all is takes is one drop-dead, seductive, get-em-every-time love poem. I challenge you. Memorize one poem this year. Not ready for a love poem? How about a good-bye poem? Or a welcome home poem? Woo with confidence. Toast with pride. I’ll help.

VOTE for a poet www.poetpopulist.org.

KISS - "Kiss my canvas!"

2008-09-15T09:04:00.000-07:00

KISS was a work of guerilla art. It happened in the open lot by Cugini Cafe on Old Ballard Ave in Seattle.

150 lips met the canvas during Ballard Art Walk on Saturday 13 September 2008. People got on each other's shoulder and knelt down low to kiss it. Women did it. Men did it. Little boys and girls did it. A gray-haired woman with a walker did it. Did you kiss the canvas?

I'm going to keep it going to all sorts of events until it gets covered and turns into a red color field. Then, I'll send it to the MoMA.
This was a dedication to my favorite performance artist, the late James Lee Byars, who once told a friend that the gallery walls around them, which were red, had been "prepared" by 100 Brazilian girls.

Artist & friend, Vanessa DeWolf, pucker their lips to start the event.

Poetry Umbrellas

2008-07-07T13:10:00.001-07:00

THE SEATTLE TIMES, MONDAY 7 July

I felt the community I'd gone out, just 2 short years ago, to find. It was very much alive. And wonderful & real. Lovely to see you all again & remember what was so meaningful (& difficult) about the project. Thank you!! I'll be back. Soon.

Dance of the Flaneur

2008-06-27T00:40:00.000-07:00

GET READY FOR ANOTHER POETRY-DRIVEN INSTIGATION
You're invited to help commemorate the 1st anniversary of the year-long performance, “The Poetess at Green Lake,” undertaken by A. K. Allin from July 2006 - July 2007. Allin is a Seattle resident & artist with strong ties to the Green Lake area.

The Final Day

2007-07-11T21:01:00.000-07:00

Sunday 24 June 2007

2007-07-11T20:52:00.001-07:00

Nearing the end now. What do I know?

There is a tendency to meet.

If you put yourself in the world, you will be found.
You need only send the invitation and wait.

A Perfect Circle

2007-06-27T18:39:00.001-07:00

What does it look like? Is it closed? Is it open?
Does it look anything, or nothing.. the void or the sum?

Does it look like Green Lake?
Does it look like your life?

On his death bed, visual and performance artist James Lee Byars said to his friend Tom McEvilley, "Tom, why can't we make anything perfect!?" This from an artist who spent a lifetime searching for the perfect. Attempting the perfect.

"His oeuvre had begun over thirty years before with the theme of Question - an open interrogative stance which lent an airy sweetness to the early work. But now, a lifetime later, his oeuvre was ending, in darkening Egyptian sunlight, with a troubled emphasis on Perfect. In the mid '80s the shifting relationship between these themes began with the Perfect Question. As things unfolded, it seemed increasingly clear that Perfect was not in fact a question; it was an answer. Perfect was the Answer to Question" [Johnny wakes.(James Lee Byars), Artforum International, 9/1/1997].

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

This Sunday (1 July 2007) marks one full year of poetry at Green Lake (Seattle, WA). This is it. The end of the line.

I'm invigorated. I'm tired. I don't want to go. I'm ready to move on. I've got a million things to do. I won't know what to do with myself (oh yes I will). I'll miss it. It hasn't yet dawned on me.

My poetry desk is (still, yes still) the most important thing I do. It is the dog I walk. It forces me away from myself and into the community.

What will I be without it? Where will I be? Who will I be? And how can I leave?

MEANING??

One year ago today, I walked out of my apartment, in despair. I had no community. I had no collaborators. I had work to do. I had no way of doing it. The people I knew fixed boats. The people I knew climbed mountains. The people I knew sailed boats. The people I knew were not making the kind of art that changes things.

I left my apartment in despair one day. I knocked on every door. Cindy Fuda opened a door for me. I walked in. I occupied a space for a while. The people I needed came to me. The art I needed came. The community came. The work I was called to do became apparent.

I stood for me. I stood for you. I stood for the poet. I stood for all of us. And the things before me became for me as I think they became for you.

MISSING THE POET

The people I have come to know at Green Lake say they will miss me, they will miss the poet, the poet's presence. Do you hear?! They will miss the poet! That means they will be looking for you.

Dear Poets,
Have you heard? The world misses you!

Dear Poets,
They need you. They want you.

Dear Poets,
Wait at the door no more. Go to them.

INSTIGATION #3 : A PERFECT CIRCLE
This Sunday, 1 July 2007

You're invited... to the closing ceremony (at Green Lake of course).

Not just I, but you have survived a full year of poetry. Bravo! You did wonderfully. You were curious, as I knew you would be. You responded. You turned your head. You held your camera up. You whispered as you went by, "poet." Then you came forward. You asked questions. Some were hard questions. Some easy. You gave answers. Very good answers. You enlightened me.

You made this happen as much as I. We met in the middle. I leave in full hope that this conversation will keep going for a long, long time.

A PRESENT! A PRESENT! OPEN YOUR PRESENT!!!

I am preparing an installation for you, a present, to bring the year to a close. Local labyrinth designer, Dan Niven, and I are preparing a temporary meadow labyrinth for you. Come walk it. Come make a perfect circle. Come answer a question. (Isn't it fitting that the project should close with a collaboration?)

It's free. It's anonymous. And it lasts all day (9-5). Let's celebrate our new community. It'll be nothing without you. It'll really be something with you! Please come.. to the meadow where 72nd street intersects with Aurora Ave, near the Shell gas station.

Less and less and less until you are,
aka

Sunday 17 June 2007

2007-06-27T01:29:00.002-07:00

IT'S FANTASTICK! IT'S ROUTE 99 (AURORA)!

What’s wrong with 99? I just spent a year of Sundays on route 99. And I grew to care about my 4-mile stretch. I grew to care about The Middle Place, the place dead center on the bridge where I wished a wish for the world each week, and the cavity under the overpass where I made a word echo each week, and the lemon-lime Austin Healy in front of the European car repair shop, and the apple tree by the troll that yielded so many apples last year that it toppled over, and the Black Box Gallery which is always empty and so lives up to its name, and the scent of elephants all cramped in their acre lot at Woodlawn Park Zoo, and on, and on.

Route 99 was commissioned in 1926. It was intended to connect us all, from Blaine to Calexico.

It is 1930. The small towns between Blaine and Calexico are suddenly connected. Here you are, here is the rest of America. You are free to walk out your doorway to anywhere. Anything is possible.

It is 1950. The freeway has come to speed things up. Our traveling time is greatly reduced. Our neighborhoods are ruined. You are free to go further than you have gone before, much further than the next neighborhood and the next, but when you get there it will be no better than your own neighborhood, nor the next, nor the next. They have equally been ruined. You are free now to cross America without ever seeing it.

Matt and Luisa of The Fantasticks each headed off to explore the world. Eventually, they were drawn back home, back to where they began, and to one another. When they returned, home was waiting for them.

Much of small town America has no home to go home to. Our small towns are gone or are so badly damaged we no longer recognize them. The neighborhood I grew up in, Exton, PA, is pretty well gone. It’s still there on the map, people still live there, but it’s gone just the same. It’s been so overrun with strip malls and town houses and industrial parks, there’s nothing left to it, nothing I can recall. And I certainly don’t wish to return to it, nor live in it, nor reminisce over it. It’s a deep-rooted loss I can neither express or experience. Nor can anyone from that town or the next or the next. What are we creating?

We start by disconnecting the populations that stand in our way, then we hack through the wilderness to the next place we'll found. Once we stand where they stood, once we have cleared a space in the land, perhaps out of boredom, we begin to disassemble ourselves. It is, by now, second nature to deconstruct our landscape, our community, ourselves.

Who we are is no longer clear. We no longer recognize ourselves from the enemy. We are the enemy. We are fragments scattered on the landscape.

Is there any chance of reversing the damage, connecting with our story? Is it possible yet to preserve our history? Or will we end up on a freeway clover, traveling faster and faster in a circle. A perfect circle? Hey, we’ve seen this before. And this. And this. A perfect death.

PETRICHOR: The blood of the gods

Mention of petrichor, the smell of late spring, rain on the parched ground. The Wart is a chemist. Things for him are clear, are known. Is this sort of science devoid of wonder?

Clinton wants to drink his wine blindly, without knowing its story, its passage to living. Just give me the wine. I don’t want to know about its overtones or undertones, its legs or body. I just want to experience the wine.

I say learn all you can. Knowing brings you to closer to what you love. With greater intimacy comes depth of love. Dive into a thing. There is more than one way of knowing. Don’t limit yourself to what others have discovered. Once you know what is known, branch out, add your own observations. Imagine each new thing as a fish carcass on the beach, and yourself as a dog.

There is not only knowledge by sight, but ink knowledge and blind knowledge. There is a starved knowledge. Knowledge through movement. Poetic knowledge. Weather-borne knowledge. Waking and sleeping knowledge.

Petrichor. The smell of fear. Oils produced by a plant to help it preserve itself, its reserves of water. Here in the desert, at the window, the fear of death. Here is the making of armor, the last defense.

The Wart gave me a bottle of label-less wine last week. A sailor on my dock tied it to a line and heaved it overboard, to chill it. We opened it aboard his 50' wooden ketch before the sun went down. It tasted like a chardonnay, but it couldn't be. No, that'd be too easy. The Wart tells me, this week, that it was a rousanne, a white grape from the northern Rhone region, one of three varieties of white grape from that region.

The difference between information and knowing, between studying a label and hand-crafting a wine. There are so few things we hand-craft these days, so few things we stick to from start to finish. I ask you, is it really a worry we will learn too much, that we will demystify things with information? Is that really a worry?

LEARNING TO SEE

I think Clinton is talking about pure sensation. Experiencing a thing that has no previously prescribed meaning. Is pure sensation possible once we have quantified and named a thing, once we have constructed a meaning for it? Can we ever truly experience a gentian once we have given it a name? What a loss, to have named that flower! That flower that just yesterday was a purple dress!

In Space and Sight, Marius von Senden recorded what he was learning from patients who had just woken up from successful cataract operations, a new medical procedure in 1932. What did the newly-sighted see? They saw color fields and color bands. And so Faulkner spoke that way and Cezanne painted that way and began to question the eye and the brain. The “eye” and the “I.” How the “I” works.

What does a pure sensation look like? “One patient, according to his doctor, practiced his vision in a strange fashion; thus he takes off one of his boots, throws it some way off in front of him, and then attempts to gauge the distance at which it lies; he takes a few steps towards the boot and tries to grasp it; on failing to reach it, he moves on a step or two and gropes for the boot until he finally gets hold of it” [Space and Sight, Marius von Senden].

“Her unfortunate father, who had hoped for so much from this operation, wrote that his daughter carefully shuts her eyes whenever she wishes to go about the house, especially when she comes to a staircase, and that she is never happier or more at ease than when, by closing her eyelids, she relapses into her former state of total blindness.”

For the newly sighted, vision is pure sensation unencumbered by meaning. “They are pleased by the sensation of color, and learn quickly to name the colors, but the rest of seeing is tormentingly difficult. . . . The mental effort involved . . . proves overwhelming for many patients. It oppresses them to realize, if they ever do at all, the tremendous size of the world, which they had previously conceived of as something touchingly manageable. . . . A disheartening number of them refuse to use their new vision, continuing to go over objects with their tongues, and lapsing into apathy and despair.” [Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek].

THE OBSESSIVE "I"

Has our search for knowledge become an obsessive one? Is our need for more and more education, more and higher degrees and instant information damaging us? Does having more information available mean we know more? Or does it mean we know less? A speaker on NPR this morning suggested that the internet was a detriment to our knowing, to knowledge. There’s no reason to know when information is this accessible. Why learn to spell when Word will correct for you?

What is keeps our knowing from knowing? And is this democracy?

Peterson, of Peterson’s Backyard Birding books has been accused of feeding our frenzy to categorize, to know. "Before being exposed to Peterson's system, birdwatchers could enjoy the charming behavior of backyard birds without feeling compelled to identify them. . . . But Peterson invented an obsessive game. . . . The game, packaged by Peterson to be played by all comers, has become more and more popular ever since. (Gibbon and Strom 300)"

"The birder can say, "I know you." (And I appropriate you in my colonizing, will-to-knowledge act of "ownership.") [Thomas C. Gannon, The New World Bird as Colonized Other. The Ampersand 11: January 2002]

WHAT COMES AND GOES

The starlings have taken the meadow. Six of them, speckled and sleek, jutting through the grass. Their being here has a history we can know. The starling's arrival was part of a project started in Central Park (NYC) in the 1890s by Eugene Scheiffer, a lover of Shakespeare. He wanted to introduce into America all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare's plays. Thus the bluebirds and crested flycatchers and red bellied woodpeckers and Northern flickers and tree swallows and purple martins all lost their homes [ASPCA, Animaland]. What is worth of nostalgia?

Martha and Maddy and their friend came twice today, once before and once after their walk. They decided, as they walked around, to recall poems to recite for me. So when they returned, Martha sang Robert Lewis Stevensons' "Dark brown is the river." Their friend recited a poem by Jacquelyn Byrd. Jacquelyn Byrd is her mother. And Maddy recited a poem by Robert Frost, "Fragmentary Blue." "Why make so much of fragmentary blue/in here or there a bird, or butterfly,/Or flower, or wearing stone, or open eye/" Why? Because bluebird's gone. Because bluebird's gone.

It is 4:30pm now and while he day was full of long nice conversation that kept me warm and busy, nothing truly magical unfolded. I was sick this morning and it feels as if the air here has made me well. My head no longer hurts and my muscles are all relaxed. I'm shivering though and ready to walk home and warm up.

A Hundred Poems @ Green Lake

2007-06-19T19:12:00.000-07:00

Here they are, the poems (by 100 local living authors) printed on t-shirts and put onto unsuspecting runners running around Green Lake (Seattle, WA) on Sunday 10 June 2007. They're printed here in no particular order for poets and runners to enjoy. Author bios follow. Formatting may be funny due to blogger margins (tabs not recognized, prose paragraphs chopped). If something is unbearable, write and I'll change it. Otherwise, enjoy! Please respect copyright.

* Some poets have expressed interest in buying their own poetry shirt, and while there's money to be made marketing these to you, I deliberately left commerce out of this project and stand by that decision. I hope you understand. I won't be making/selling t-shirt copies. I do, of course, sympathize with the want to own one of these shirts(which I in fact do not). They were lovely, really, and made people smile. Take time, instead, to consider the value of your poem on the back of one member of your community... invaluable!

Running in Reverse

Donald Davis ran 1 mile backward in 6 minutes and 7.1 seconds on Feb. 21, 1983. -- Guinness World Records

To not see where I’m going,
not to follow the flickering heels of others,
not to trace the trails of sweat
on their necks,
not to count the miles until I’m done,
not despise the man in front
nor pity the man behind,
neither to watch the horizon slip
continually away:

For this and nothing else, I run
with my face turned toward the starting point,
my body trusting the narrow arch
of each foot,
no, trusting the path instead to find me,
and if I fall, if I crash headlong
into victory,
let it be blindly, let it be without
knowing who greets me,
let the finish line smack across my back
like an unexpected, longed-for kiss.

-Stephanie Lenox

FIRST POEM

One day I went out walking
I found a little seed
I took it home & planted it
It grew up to be a weed

-JT Stewart
(at age 4)

Writer’s House

Sometimes the grass gets mowed
at the house
where the writer lives.

-Christopher J. Jarmick

Spring windstorm--
my raincoat and I
dance the Merengue

-Lana Hechtman Ayers

Poem in French

I have one son and two wishes.
One is the kind you blow out.

I have one bad dream,
two cups for my morning tea.

Once I sat on a beach, the Siuslaw
slamming the Pacific, twice I rode

a silent, silent boat. I had never before
been two people: my outbursts, my longings,

his train pulling away: A bientot!
I have two thoughts and one of them is ugly.

At night I’m a thorn in your thorny side,
two feathers sticking sideways

from a hummingbird’s glowing gorget.

-Martha Silano

Renunciation

I saw your rejection letter from Pan Macmillan of London today.
It was stuffed inside the 2006 Writers' Market you returned to the library.
They don't accept unsolicited work.

They suggested that you read a book called From Pitch to Publication.
It's available at amazon.com.uk. I have a feeling it might be a
Pan Macmillan publication, but maybe that's just my inner cynic.

I won't tell anyone. If I did, I'd slip it inside a poem
which, when submitted for publication,
might generate a letter much like yours.

-C.E. Bozek

Inquiry #2

The way of the heart
is that it ripens –

lights up
each object

in the room –
lifts the bedposts

and two table lamps –
in wild levitations

shoulders, hips,
spirits crooning.

In morning hours
repeat, repeat, repeat

then leave -
again,

in languorous ruin.

-Susan Rich

June in Seattle

It will rain for at least 12 of the 30 days.
It will probably rain more.
Umbrellas will appear between the seats of busses
and remain at work when the sun comes out at 3 p.m.
You will wear wool one day.
You will wear sunglasses two days,
then lose them between rainstorms.
You will wear shorts one day and think
you can taste summer in the air.
Your neighbor will barbecue ribs
and the world will stop to inhale.
You will carry raindrops in the cuffs of your coat
even as the calendar reads, July.

-Kelli Russell Agodon

Poetry is
one letter less
than poverty.

-Thom Schramm

Love, Like At the Bank

I had a friend who, on and off, for fun,
Would, out of the deposit slips, take one
And write down underneath, in forceful black,

GIVE ME THE MONEY,

Fold, and put it back.

It wound up, hours later, in the hand
Of someone’s docile tweedy-suited grand-
Mamma in orthopedic heels.

The teller’s face—

And that is how it feels.

-Alexandra Oliver

Tending Eagle Point

Rakes in hand, the schoolchildren croon
into the wooden mics or shadow
the moves of imaginary characters. The lake
swirls behind them as they weed
and mulch, readying the winter ground
for seedlings. Cold and wet, they have stayed so long
they have seen the eagle:
now their eyes hold fire.

-Nancy Dickeman

Charm Against Headaches

Jar
nine pins
in spring water

With
seven shards
of blue glass

Mix
five eye
beads, three crosses

Gold
and new.
Seal with beeswax,

Then
shelve against
hungry, jealous aswang.

-Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor

VALENTINE

Yes, we’re odd as ginger snaps
dunked in Turkish coffee,
we’re hot, beneath the sugar.
We stir each other’s chai
until a foam forms.
We sip, we sleep.
Honey, you still toast
every sesame seed in me—one bite
and it’s Madagascar all over again.

-Julie Larios

WHITE FUNGAL SODA

White fungal funeral where I met you Assasin, o
Assasin, in a corpuscule of memory: bird’s nest flavoring

I would like to taste your

Caught in the mushroom in French
middle at your lips

woods electricity, root:

velcro

pulse, the piano key
out of its plug. place

Underneath, sea plaid, and by the fireplace the sound of the wheel
between us, bird’s nest flavoring in the fungal garden. Want.

-Melanie Noel

How We Can’t Separate the Music From the Sun

You wake dreaming of a melody
that suspends planets
like the upward notes

your black lab, Garbo, sends
shaking herself after a swim

prisms gone before you're certain
they existed or what it was that made you

fall on your knees in all that green
unspeakable tenderness
among the fragments.

-Jenifer Browne Lawrence

I am older than Rubik’s cube, younger than a Frisbee. The Viewmaster could be my grandfather. Click, click. The Eiffel Tower. Click. This is where I met your grandmother. Click. Where your mother was born. The house where we lived. The Grand Canyon. Click. New York City. Click. Chosin Resevior. Imjin River. Heartbreak Ridge.

-Elizabeth J. Colen

Another Bird Song

by Paul E. Nelson

(appears below as an image to retain formatting)
WORK
HUNT
EAT
SLEEP
SPEND
BREED
DIE

-L. Swartz

Google: running

away apparel a business ahead around boards barefoot back by
cramps circles coach clothes distance down daily errands everyday
free for office fatigue gear guns government hurt hard in place
in rain joke java jacket journal jump knee kismet knot lights late
laps legs lyrics map marathons miles meditation nose nowhere
out of gas on empty out of time pace pain partner poets quads
quota quarter mile room races routes rampant ragged red lights
shoes scared sore stop signs tab team time total uphill up the score
uniform visor video vista on mac with scissors watch wild with the
bulls
water windows xbox xerox copies your mouth year round zone zen
around green lake in seattle

-Carl "Papa" Palmer

DAPHNE AND APOLLO

At first it’s as simple as two people running.
Running from one story into another.
Another second, she’ll scream out in bowers.
Bowers of new green so tender it hurts her.
Her hands become halos that twig bone to branches.
Branches that carry her up into sunlight.
Sunlight that sinks a warm hand into belly.
Belly that gives way to rough bark and breakneck.
Breakneck the turning from fear into arbor.
Arbor for armor, his ardor outlasts her.
Her sense turns to sun-dapple, leaf-hiss, surrender.
Surrender the girl for the heartbeat worth saving.

-- Sierra Nelson

* Sierra's poem "DAPHNE AND APOLLO" was published previously in the journal "Mare Nostrum."

THE MOON IS FALLING
[not printed by request]
-Jeremy Halinen

Tomatoes planted
yesterday drink morning sun,
compost contentment.

-Fredda Jaffe

The city awoke drenched
With the splash
Of the great salmon.

-David Kelly-Hedrick

Nocturne for Doug Longman

In Heaven
you constantly direct
men in suits
to move pianos.

The Steinway is very nice,
thank you.

Please bring in the
Bosendorfer.

-Rebecca Loudon

tuning

the clink of a glass
solid with water
is an upright scale
to which your fingernail
is a metal hair

-a. k. allin

Tranquility

I like it best when the lights are out
and the night is clear - all of the rain in LA,
not here - and I can light a cigarette
and step onto the deck, the door sliding shut
quietly behind me and I can see
the darker mountains against
the darkened sky, and Regulus
hangs above me, blue-white giant,
the moon sheds its many skins,
a train down by the water goes by,
blowing its whistle once, then twice.

-Carlos Martinez

roots knuckle, a fight
against concrete breaks out-
blood red roses bloom

-Jourdan Imani Keith

Easter Surprise

Downwind of Christian Capitalism
Vile, loathsome smells of Boise Cascade’s paper mill
Blow in on the wind from Wallula to foul
Up the thin and beautiful pagan fog of morning.

People began worshipping the sun;
Theology has gone downhill ever since.

There are billions of people,
Christians Buddhists Moslems Hindus Republicans,
Who believe libraries full of fantasies for which
There is not a shred of reproducible evidence.

They meet in difficult to appreciate rooms
Full of noisy fools for whom
One life on earth is not enough.

-Charles Potts

Leaf

My father once sent me a leaf
instead of a letter.
It was pressed between folds of notebook paper
in response to a column I wrote
while in the Midwest, missing my first New England autumn.
The leaf
deep red, found somewhere, in response to my longing
and sent across half a country;
an unspeakable kindness.

-L. Chris Leasure

"Error"

The drive is not accessible, Lord.
Format me, O God.

Should I save the changes I’ve made?
Do I really want to quit?

Forgive me, for I have performed
an illegal operation. Again.

I’m frozen. I cannot go back.
Copy and paste me to your will.

Save this draft. Save this draft. Save this

-Stephanie Lenox

(Did you notice, Stephanie has two poems listed. "Error" is the poem that went on a t-shirt. "Running in Reverse" was too long, but was read to many visitors on the 10th of June because it was just tooooo perfect for the event. Thanks Stephanie!)

HARVEST

two weeks ago workers picked
budded daffodils, bound them into
bouquets, loaded them on trucks.
a few bunches fell in road-
side grass and lay there
conjuring all the wasted
treasures. now, i pass those same
bouquets again, flowers fully
opened, blooming at nothing.

-Ann Tweedy

green lake circuit

running
always running
running hard
trying to better
my time
trying to trim
my waist
trying to stay
young
and in shape
but mostly
trying to
get away from
that damn
poet

-David M. Laws

My New Philosophy

The chill is in, and I'm sifting decisions.
Ask, "What would I do if it were summer?"
Pop a Corona, dive into kisses,
Stay up past bedtime for meteor showers.
What am I-in work, in the dark-that comes close
To the clove-pepper-pink exploding rose.
Don't know, but it shall be my mantra,
To do what I'd do if it were summer.

-Molly Tenenbaum

Fall Song

I should like to live in Chinatown
where the rain-drenched poplars grow
and the streetlights break like beggars' teeth
or sputter, swell and glow

I should like to walk those leaf-blown streets
and sip the sour tea
the oba-chan pours in my cup
from the bottom of the sea

Penny daikon, tuna bones
the scribbled neon signs
which light the silk embroideries'
inscrutable designs

The quarter moon is on the wane
the corner cats are thin
where someday I shall make my home
and call my strangers in

-Jay Thompson

A Formula for Domestic Spousal Coexistence

On the fro motion
a piercing squeak
in the handle of
the vacuum sucking
rug dust is excruciating
my persnickety
auditory perception.
As soon as
the switch
flips off the irk
of it all is forgotten.

-Carol Levin

Skunk Cabbage

overgrown spatula
arms stretching back
to prehistoric era where humans didn’t exist
to gawk at you on lined forest paths
taking digital photographs
for relatives trapped in the ice age

-Angel Latterell

A Thousand Words

I have a hundred words to convey my thoughts
a thousand words to make idle conversation
a million words to confuse you
a hundred syllables to say the same thing
over and over
dozens of inarticulate sounds
to infer nothing
oodles of notes to sing and divert you,
but only three words
that says it succinctly
so listen closely and intently baby
I.
Love.
You.

-Venetia Ghozlan

My poem, "A Thousand Words," is being published by the Canadian Federation of Poets, in one of their anthologies.

THIS BLISSFUL LIFE

The big, brown hen
scratches out a living
of corn and oats;
pulls grubs and worms
from the compost heap

beside the newly sharpened
hatchet that leans
against the chopping block. Cluck.

Cluck. Just two days
‘til Sunday dinner.

-Anita K. Boyle

Songbird

Love is
a robin's song
sung daily,
caressed by cedars,
storm stolen,
red-breasted given,
Chinook shriven.

-Robert Dickhoff

My Daughter, English Teacher in South Korea

Oratio Animi—the spirit which moves
—Yang Jae-Moon’s Seoul photo exhibition of clouds, 1998

The solitary photo of a man by the sea
in a wheelchair.

Insa-dong calligraphy brushes
and ink.

On the Imperial grounds, children with crayons
to rub the occupation story from stone.

From the rafters, hot pink paper blossoms,
and the bell’s sound lost to the Japanese.

The way to bow in temple—red satin
kneeling pillows.

Songni-San mushrooms, drying, on orange tarps
like chameleons, exhaling slowly.

And the tallest standing Buddha, his feet
on a lotus flower.

Much we do not know and pass by—
incense, like dissident poets, perpetually burning.

-Denise Calvetti Michaels

Ollalie

This alpine lake
revolves toward morning's sun
like a baby turning her head
toward mother's voice
to nuzzle contentedly for a nipple.
The shrubby alder next to me,
the rock I perch on –
we are all painted in this light.

-V. Pepoy

Palmistry

Bars and breaks
are most common. A fork
at the midnight of life.
Everyone has chains.

-Dave Jarecki

Night Inspired Garden
Inspired by Janet Wong

Scattered in the moonlight
lie darkened tulips
a red-orange pumpkin
sitting on green leafy vines
and me,
standing next to a tree,
on the soft ground.
My bare feet make
prints in the soil.
Moonlight falls
on me
and my garden.

-Eamon O.

Lost

Lost, it isn’t the hardest word to say.
Having to go on in life is the biggest challenge
of them all.
Lost, it’s a familiar word for everyone to use.
Seeing through the past and memories
Of someone full of happiness and joy
Lost, is a word you could put with your
Keys, your phone, but even people,
and homes.
Losing things you admired in your past,
Feeling like you’re the only one who
understands.
Lost, in your feelings like falling and
Falling, until you can see you are not
the only one.

-Riley M.

A year passes like a snowflake

falling into a lake a moment intricate white dissolved
(waiting for moon)
to join thousands of liquid years glacier lake made pure
(to rise through tree trunks)
by snowflake each your face at the edge of vision lace repeating
(moon in the wrong part of sky)
and tatted by hand every expression crystalline perfection
(where it has never been before)
your face on my skin melts a year passes like a snowflake

-Janet Norman Knox

My poem, “A Year Passes Like a Snowflake” was first published by The Diagram v. 5.5 2005 and I gratefully acknowledge it.

Esther’s Harmonica

it’s an eye an egg yellow jello
with a swangle blue dangle
plunk these strings baby
and whap my bass notes
go green up the tickle scale
shiver my orange knobs
purple gramophone
climb aboard my checkered ladder
so limber look out X marks
my secret spot behind your wings
your slippery silver bedroom wings

-Beth Coyote

Rules of War

One wears a silver tag
Another covers his head
The rest are people in towns

Everyone revolves around the same center

When a town falls toward its center
Subtract from the ones on the ground

When the people in towns
Fold their bodies in half
Add zeroes to their ancestors
Then lead their goats to the next town

Who reaches the big gate first
Must stop at the big gate

(In this game every week comes to an end)

-Dana Elkun

Viet Nam at night - 1967

jagged shadow sand
the moon is high
and the night stands out
breathing heavy

-The Other Michael

April Plaint

So cold today
and tulips refuse
to open even when
told it is okay
after all this is April
the month for tulips
who last long as cut flowers
when you put an ice cube
in their waters
so cold is not what bothers
them as much as does
the lack of light
full enough for any thing
to open up.

-Maggie Kelly

Cold wind bites my lips
He is a jealous lover
I need your warm kisses

-Connie Walle

Chutzpa

I’d like to tweak the elephant’s tail
just once. I’d like to hum so loud I can leap
onto her great gray silence and ride, ride,

while I beat out a muffled tattoo
on her coarse skin. I’d like to shake
the trunk that hangs, soundlessly swaying,
that trumpet, that glory horn -

and make it blast out modest revelations.
I’d like to lift her wrinkled ear to peer,
tenderly, into its vast hidden whorls.

I’d like to stare into her eyes upside down

and then sail out to grab, in resolute
terror, those wise old tusks.

-P. Hurshell

ANGEL

Being visited
by an angel (in-

visible, subtle) is
like every cell

in your body being
kissed

by this world's
smallest lips.

-James Bertolino

Whisper

At night on the mountain
in upstate New York
a tiny ubiquitous creeping sound
as though the earth were on the march
in the silence that was not silent
terrified this city girl
until she recognized
the sound that grass makes, growing.

-Susan Stern Grossman

This Side of Solstice, She Slips from Sleep

in flannel and lace to gather
the feed, secure the coop. Tonight
she is rooted

to this earth, rusted bucket
in hand. Waxing moon.
Three days time

a child arrives.
Sleep draws close, then goes,
but dreams

are made of flesh, taste
of breath, restless, tangible –
yes, definitely this.

-Ronda Broatch

Bone Structure

The shape of bones beneath the skin,
white winged clavicle, curve
of metatarsal arch, an alabaster span,
the fine intrigue of hands,
twenty-seven bones, splayed
as the sycamore in winter
against a soft edged sky,
visible as the swell a finger traces
across the apple of a cheek, then lingers
down along the line of jaw,
the frame of bones both intricate and strong
as thoughts beneath the flesh of words.

-Maureen Doyle McQuerry

My poem "Bone Structure" was first published in The Southern Review and is in the chapbook Relentless Light published by Finishing Line Press (April 2007).

Blue sand,
Blue sky,
Blue sea,
Blue mountains,
Ahhhhhhhhhh
Eyes shut,
blue.
Goofy smile,
blue.
Rollicking,
blue.

-Sheila Alexander

Punk Poem #31

Why would you have a word for that
Moment when the sun crests
Mountain, halos the ridge line
With a horizontal brush
That now how wow moment—
How disappointing to sum
Enlightenment in one word
When it extends beyond
When in a moment
Covers much more than that.

-John Burgess

For the Sensualist

I met a man who made me think of cloves
And pepper on the eastern coastal air
And windy wheat that, cut, became the loaves,
And ginger in the wind that blew his hair.
Another made me think of bolts of silk;
Another of the oranges of Spain,
The shimmer of a stream of Jersey milk
And mushrooms that would mingle with the rain.
I never thought of socks or moldy bread,
Of sandwiches that lie around neglected,
That jobless wonder loafing in your bed
Who leaves you feeling cheap and disrespected.
So think about the world of useless oaves
And tell me if you smell the scent of cloves.

-Alexandra Oliver

GRAY WHALES / MIGRATION SONNET CYCLE

They wallow, ravenous, in shallow bays
The giant devilfish of Chukchi Sea.
An appetite for amphipods their way
Of building tonnage for the long journey

Down the coast five thousand miles no trifle.
They fast now progress slow a target for
Orca, shark, Makahs' high-powered rifle.
They're searched for, too, by watchers on the shore.

Unflummoxed, they swim on toward warm lagoons
Once slaughter sites, but first and last the place
For birthing baby grays the buoyant boon
Of Magdalena Bay and Saint Ignatius.

Junior puts on fifty pounds a day
And learns to spy hop in the balmy bay.

-Barbara Lloyd McMichael

Life of poetry
will save some, but not save all
Write poems save yourself

-Julene Tripp Weaver

The Room

in which Georgia
O’Keeffe paints
hamburgers: greasy
glass walls, coved
ceilings, but her door
isn’t ajar—it’s a lid
with holes punched
in it, so sharp skulls
and flowers can breathe
while a firefly burns.

- Jared Leising

BOOK OF DAYS

Judge someone else.
Meditate, pay me no lapdog.

Move along,
move along.

Many plans are idealism out of hand.
They blur, joggers singing our terror.

Suppose that I always flounder.
Forgive me later.

-Laura Gamache

There Is a Silence that Sings

You nature look
I not knowing how to love birds
tell them I am
guilty before them.

This is my joy.

-Courtney Hudak

On the long drive home
From an open mic
Across the street from a maker
Of prosthetic limbs
A one legged crow

-Brendan McBreen

Mirror

A lake lives here. The land is low,
The wet earth slow to swallow rain.
The wind paints patterns on the plain
Of water. It makes a mystic show.

We, the shore life, gather, curled
Round our mirror of the heights.
We glimpse ourselves inside its lights,
We glistening ripples of the world.

-Jed Meyers

HIGH-KU

Red-tailed hawk soaring
Above the glittering stream,
Eyes probing for prey.

Tree swallows dart past.
Three-dimensional swervers –
Mosquitoes, beware!

Cottonwoods reflect
The orange-red setting sun –
Fiery goodnights.

-Len Elliot

LEARNING

Something to get you started,
A drowning man,
The soft rustling of bamboo
By the river. Six ducks.
You've forgotten how to swim
& so stay on the edge
Of the continent
Thinking in hindsight
Of your mistakes. If only
You could do it all again,
You'd do it all differently,
Different mistakes, the same
Six ducks.

-Craig Van Riper

Sourdough Creek Trail, Diablo Lake, Washington

Could there be such a thing
as a white deer,
walking in a quiet wood,
quiet as the wood,
by a creek called Fawn?
Tim saw one in this very wood.
Pattie tells of a white stag returned each snow.
Startled silent,
I do not even ask for such.
Knowing they exist gift enough.
Follow the sound of Fawn Creek
right into the eyes
of white deer walking by,
dignified as life lived right.
I can go home now.

-Martha Vallely

Prescription

One pill for my heart, another
for heartburn. Take with food--

fruits and vegetables. "Fiber"
and "exercise" underlined twice

in the nurse's cheery handwriting.

-Amanda Laughtland

Take What You Have Gathered

Then at the end,
when the footprints filled in,
and the wind wandered the silent streets –
obviously so alone without me –
the place was my character.
Stare, or slip away and
likewise the eyes of the world
open and close because
we have walked our roads.
But being closer to far away
plays like an interlude to making
a path, the eventual one,
and an eventual ending.

-Joe Franklin

Tender, Then Bright

Oh, to be on the water at dawn
when the pearled light softens
and the earth turns to another day.

What isn’t green is becoming green.
Next she will see the new leaves
of the willows—so tender, so bright.

Her oars cross the lake and the smell of the lake,
rank ooze of decay and birth.
The mess of living inhabits the wind.

She pushes herself a little harder,
feels water and blood, muscle and pulse.
The sun rises higher,

burns a hole through the mist.

-Joannie K. Stangeland

Confession

What you don't know is
there are actually many
of me. I am not one
individual. We trade off

working, cooking, sleeping,
dancing, drinking, fighting,
talking, listening, ignoring,
reading, writing, erasing.

The advantages
are obvious, but I
am still waiting for my
turn to hold you.

-Michael Bowers

U DISTRICT DAWN

Here seagulls, not roosters, announce the dawn:
Our sentinels of apartment roofline
Above thin shrubby lawn
And two-story pine
Voice lucent opal seacoast
Above parked pavement, traffic's ghost.

-David D. Horowitz

Unidentified World

I splash into the unidentified world
ahead of me. The lush, cool, green water brushes
my fears and worries away. A blue school of
fish whisks by me. The green kelp floats
to the surface. I try to speak but my
words turn into bubbles that float
up like little butterflies. I know that
I don’t have enough time
to see everything. I speed toward
land and take a big gulp of air.

-Santiago

Oh, the Meek shall inherit the Earth
And I hope we can do it in time
Yes, the Meek shall inherit the Earth
But I hope by the time that we do
It's worth more than a dime

-Reneene Robertson

The Public Day

New lovers leave the house for the first time. They follow water
because following water is what they have been doing.
They are learning sea, sun, sky instead of each other’s features.
In secret each fears the other’s mouth will fade.

But look at the houses! Flower boxes, flamingos, flags!

Holding hands, they step across asphalt
into the new world where all will know.

-Carol Guess

Be full of summer
reading poetry out loud
ripe words and berries

-Kim Pearson

FRANKIE & JOHNNY MUSICALLY UPDATE THE FUTURE

'AEROVIVANDA'
A futurist menu item by Fillia sans Marinetti:
'The right hand carries straight to the mouth
Freshly cut fennel hearts sprinkled on slices
Of frehly baked pesto bread. The left hand
Uses a wooden spoon to arhythmically strike
The edges of each bowl and dish on the table.
A diaphonous mist of scented water is sprayed
On the back of each diner's neck by a woman
Called Nellie Blye. Everyone at the table
Is called Johnny. While out in the unlit alleys
Frankie claws the old dirt and cries, looking
for her man. Eat while wearing a blindfold.'

-Rick Werner Fahr (for Mr. Bungle)

Confessions of a Learnéd, and Publishing, Professor

I think that I should like to be considered
a “difficult” poet. I should like my metaphors
to be “uncanny.” I should like my images
to be not merely deep but “unusurpable.”
I should like my implications to be “palpably plangent,”
my themes “insubordinate,” my forms “diabolical.”
I should like my rhythms to be “poison” or “feathers,”
or perhaps, with increasing regularity, “ineluctable.”
I should want my first editions to be squabbled over on eBay,
the queues to be tedious at my book signings. I should like,
in fact, to have a society about me, before I am dead.
I should like the Pulitzer, the Lilly, the Nobel,
and how about a knighthood, and while I’m at it, sainthood?
Then, surely, I will enter the canon, and gain, finally, tenure.

-Michael Dylan Welch

French Toast

Did the French really invent this way
of scrambling eggs and milk and cinnamon
and dousing bread in batter,
frying it golden brown on both sides,
slathering the hot squares
with pure maple syrup--
perhaps a slice or two of banana on top--
cutting the squares into tinier cubes,
until all that is left on the plate
are swirls of sweet brown syrup signaling
the dénouement of the morning meal?

-Laurie M. Greig

Embouteillage des cochemars--
Eking out sunsets one slender whisper
At a time--

These Medieval adumbrations flicker
From candled night-sweats while
The sky like dingy blue dungeons
Brightens into clay--
Eventually to yield
To the sun's feverish investigations.

These residua of Saturday night's
Softened graspings blister into daybreak.

-c peterson

Cada quien halla lo que busca

El campesino escarbó la tierra y encontró yuca.
El industrial explotador perforó la tierra y encontró petróleo.
El campesino removió la tierra y encontró fríjol y maíz.
El magnate minó la tierra y encontró diamantes.
El constructor excavó la tierra y encontró edificios,
El sacerdote recorrió la tierra y encontró almas.
La raíz penetró la tierra y encontró vida.
La gallina arañó la tierra y encontró mierda.
¡Es que cada quien!... encuentra lo que busca-.

Carlos Gutiérrez P

(English Translation)

Every one finds what he looks for

The farmer dug the Earth and found yucca.
The exploiter industrialist drilled the Earth and found petroleum.
The farmer dug the Earth and found beans and corn.
The tycoon mined the Earth and found diamonds.
The constructor excavated the Earth and found buildings.
The religious one roamed the Earth and found souls.
The root penetrated the Earth and found life.
The hen scratched the Earth and found excrement.
So it is that every one... finds what he looks for -.

Carlos Gutiérrez P

Perfumes of spring
Dance in the warming air
Offering promises
Yearnings for summer

-Jay Schlechter

Before I Waken

Shiny black-feathered ponies
soar over mountains toward
father sun’s early colors, and
that smiling woman who
guards the path between
this world and others, she
dances across the sky,
stepping to painted drums,
her blanket blowing loose
revealing flashes of her
coppery skin, luring me
into another day.

-Thomas Hubbard

My piece, "Before I Waken" has been submitted for the bus poetry project, and WILL be published this summer in INJUNZ, (a chapbook) from Gazoobi Tales Press.

GREEN LAKE, AFTER LAST POETS WORKSHOP

A profound mind, speaking simply.
--Richard Eberhart, of William Stafford

Water: how consistently it courses
through sight, like Stafford's river,
alive in sunlight.

I want to heave these textbooks
over the side, leave school
forever, in my thirty-ninth summer

having finally learned that poetry
is the driftwood shack I'll inhabit always.
Wise counsel, upwell in me

as you will; psychology be dammed,
I shall paddle away amid lilies & milfoil
without mastering recovery from brain damage.

-Ellen O. Setteducati

Addict

Your bet
on your mortality
you think
you're bullet proof
yet one day
life will take you
by the hand
and make you bleed
without ever
drawing a weapon

-Terrie Wells

Thinking of You

Sometimes I lie awake at night dreaming of you.

The gentle lock of hair floating across your eyes
The softness of your hands against mine
The sweetness of your breath upon me

I watch the darkness fade to light and sleep comes.

There under Somnus' watch in the light
There drifting among the dust of time
There between life and death

I find you close to me before Nyx calls you home.

-J. Wolf

LIVING

Breath and life given
memory

Treasured past
life

Harvest reap
pleasure

Peaceful moment
consciousness

Halcyon, serenity
spirit

Luck is mine
today
I give thanks!

-Raúl Sánchez

SING ALONG DREAM

I sing the songs of peace and love
in hopes they last the length of time.
So listen my friends and all you others
for the song that brightens your night.

-Gerald A. McBreen

Greenlake Cycle

Pilgrimages begin with absence;
The void at the center.
Spanish lessons, roller bladers, ass chasers.

We find ourselves wanting health,
Wanting coupling, wanting joy.

All come to Greenlake for the weight loss plan,
To unburden ourselves of our selves,
To cast the old into the pond.

By August the milfoil, spread thick across the lake,
Dares me to walk its platform.

-Bruce Rips

Indulgence

As in a kindness towards, as in patient attention,
As in a tolerance of desire and frailty and delay--
a complete giving of self and a giving again.
As in the hand held out and the hand taken up
in what sustains and reminds
present in weeping and later in laughter.
As in the necessity for open eyes and a softened tongue
in what brings us to what is possible and what can change--
in the willingness to hold failure close again and
then like surf, watch it break and fall away.

-Alpha Selene DeLap

My cologist

There to the left of the stage
that is where he would be sitting listening
green eyes alight as his girl reads
there wasn't enough rain
for this fun guy to grow
after he would tell me how he cringed
at Kelly's maggot covered limb
or was gasping for breath with Pat's tale
there was only enough rain for oysters
the kind without pearls
his voice only seven digits away
the keypad is blurred
waking up alone
craving the taste of his flesh
I go to the farmers' market and buy the dried wild mushroom mix.

-Marta Sanchez

Running full tilt

chasing unwaveringly
this butterfly
in my chest.
A sweet child's
unbearable pain
divides us.
Enduring love
binds us.
Catch me if you can.

Clinton Bliss

Tide Watch

A stick of heron
holds
a great blue silence.

-Laura Synder

She walks across the cool linoleum like I'm dreaming,
slow pouring silk,
and wearing the air like a sheet of gauze
floating lighter than light.
I lose myself inside the sound of her feet,
her toes,
her arches,
heels pulling with a million kisses
and sighs
and broken-hearted cries
from each molecule of the floor
as she glides and billows,
swallows my periphery in her presence.
I might be dissolving into droplets of breath,
but I don't mind.

-Hannah Ellice Rames

shadows follow
each voice sings
chiming in from behind and to the
left in accordance with
streetlights
-- the first,
she is
far too lively for this
night as I feel it
she is last
to reluctantly disappear
-- although I don't want
to be alone
I cannot invite her
inside

-Sara

TIME IS ON MY SIDE

I have partnered with time, my new best friend.
It's always in motion -- a current that must flow.
It fends off stagnation -- always an opportunity to grow.

Time is an infinite river of possibilities -- constant, reliable energy.
You don't need to drill for it.
You don't have to store it.
You don't have to pay for it.

It turns dreams into reality.

Utilized everyday, any outcome will have its day.

What will you do with your time?

-Ross Safronoff

Sagittarius

If Sagittarius is the sign of sages
Than I hope that I may be as wise as laughter.
No better way to share a moment faster
Than a smile's gratitude. To be courageous
And laugh at fear, or grin down the cages
Of sorrow. Teasing to soften a master
Is wiser than sending hard opinions after.
Your jokes will not jeopardize your wages,
And you can save your dollars for the cold.
For we all need our warmth in December,
Start your fires with laughter's embers,
Catching in hearts and burning in jokes told.
For this I wish to be a wise comedian,
So I may share my warmth on dark meridian.

-Adam T Hamilton

"Thank you, No"

This gift is too precious
Too beautifully wrapped with too many ribbons and twine

This will and want to paint the day in words
This sudden “yes” that gives me a brush and says “go.”

Where will I keep such evidence of knowing?
And how will you give so much, so often?

This gift is too full in my palm, too round,
and too easy to tuck in my pocket.

You give me voice, and the eyes to see again what I want to say.
And it’s all too much… may I borrow it, instead?

And then-- here. I will give you it back.

-Emilie Rommel

The Art of Foretelling

Like David released
from a chunk
of white marble,
I discover a cake--
flour stirred with olive oil
and lemon wine.
A tablecloth spread.
Berry glaze,
blood-stained fingers--
finding fate inscribed
in a smattering of crumbs.
Tea leaves tipped
over a china saucer,
my future revealed,
a twist of green.

-Nancy Loud Canyon

A Large Oak

It's a wet, gray,
joyless Saturday,
the clouds brooding
over this Winter afternoon.
Walking along,
I see a large oak,
with an eighty foot branch span,
reaching towards the heavens
as if in rapture,
happy to be alive,
no matter the weather,
no matter the sky.
I continue on,
now walking a little taller
and happier than before.

-James Rodgers

A Self Portrait

I drew myself a picture, a self-portrait,
So to speak
And when it was done, it was not who I wanted
To be
The person I had drawn was cold, cool, and
Withdrawn
And incapable of seeing the beauty of the
Dawn
I witnessed the death of a human being with
Wide open eyes,
And looked inward and wondered why?
Why is life so easily ended, and why not me?
I looked at my picture again and asked,
Is it me,
Or the person I have always wanted to be?

-luke n

his gear
runners shirts shorts socks
runners shoes with the last 75 miles
walks over to Greenlake
stretches
then he is gone for 2.8 miles
passes by the bathhouse
twice sometimes three
pure poetry in motion
smiling each time

-Deneen Brown

Mama's Time

Mama on the corner waiting on the bus

Had to get to work so she could care for us

Freezing from the cold
Or burning from the heat
But always standing on aching feet

Answering those fair ladies doors and pouring their ice teas
Scrubbing their floors on her knees

Cleaning up this and straightening out that
Twisting and turning
And
Bending her back

Cooking in their kitchens and putting their wash to soak
Humph.

Worked hard everyday

Still mama died broke

-Sonya Carmichael Jones

GORILLA!

When my son was 6, he wrote this poem:
way down South, there is a bone, &
in that bone, there is a stone, &
in that stone, there is a moan, &
in that moan, there is
A GORILLA!!

So— deep in our hearts where it’s warm and sticky,
there’s a bone of contention, &
in that bone of contention, there’s a stone of anger, &
in that stone of anger, there’s a moan of sadness, &
in that moan of sadness, there is
A GORILLA OF LOVE!!!

-Lyn Coffin

IN SHORT

There will never be another touch, not like that one.
There will be no skin so penetrating or filling in this world beyond this day.
This day of mourn, this day of release, this day of death.
No drinks of heaven or licks of a goddesses boot are left in this life.
You will find only yourself here.
The sea of solitude has stretched her stomach muscles and i served as main course, wailing and suffering and changing, sitting inside her inside you inside me.
There we were, sitting together inside us and trying to find a goodbye, seeing none and feeling less.
Never can survive you another I, me, this guy.
This fear and this weight are far too great even to hesitate, on this magik, this voodoo mess, this death fate.
There will be no extensions for our snip-its of perfection, no do-overs, no resurrections, no reincarnations.
What will be are collections of thin lined sheets ten and a half by eight.

-Aidan Starr

If Only …

If only I had asked for less,
not wanted the best,
been satisfied to survive,
never known I could live and thrive,
taken the line of least resistance,
settled for anythingaccepted everything,
Then life would have been conflict-free.
Because there would be no me!

-Georgia S. McDade

Obsession

Longing. Indulgence. Just a little at first to see if it’s satisfied.
Euphoria! For a moment your mind is diverted. For a moment you are able to think of something else.
But it creeps back in waves. Small at first, easy to ignore. It grows larger. You consider giving in but choose not to.
You are still able to choose.
The pounding of its waves grow louder the harder you work to ignore them, until
You're standing on the high dive looking down at the
Swirling; uncontrollable urges that hold you prisoner.
You dare yourself not to jump—pray you don't fall. The waters rise.
Despite your resolve, on that very high dive; despite your love for the solid footing of the board beneath your feet,
Before long it is up to your knees, and you've waited too long to run for higher ground.
The water rises. And the swirling froth begins to feel like bathwater—it feels warm around your waist.
You turn a bit, feel it rush between your legs and tip-toe around your fingertips.
Neck deep in the milky warmth, muddy and murky though it is, the sensation
Captivates you, pulls at your muscles, begs you to come play in the deep,
And you do.

-Heather Lilly

set-up

child - easily drawn in
fast to the phone
quick to blush
senseless ringing
a set-up for the crush
hapless juvenile
needs correction
prone to calling ‘fire’
(when) it’s only smoke
flouncin’ around
short-chairs teaparty
reading tea leaves
lopsided joke

-Nashira Priester

..........................................................................................................

POET BIOS

Kelli Russell Agodon is a Seattle native who has spent many a wet June in the city. Her books include Small Knots and Geography, winner of the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award. Visit her website at: www.agodon.com

Sheila Alexander writes her passion for nature and celebrates the laughter and tears that are part of embracing life fully. Trained as a journalist. Walks, swims, hikes, is active in her community and family. Slowed by chronic kidney failure but not foiled.

Five years ago, A. K. Allin climbed a 60' mast in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. She spent an hour there, studying the ocean, then read a poem and cast it to sea. One day she's going to sail around the world with poems on her sails.

James Bertolino's ninth volume of poems is titled POCKET ANIMALS, and is available from Egress Studio Press in Bellingham. His poetry has won numerous regional and national awards--most recently the 2007 Jeanne Lohmann Poetry Prize. In 2005 he was the Washington Poets Association "Poetry Road Show" poet, and has taught poetry writing at Cornell University, University of Cincinnati, Western Washington University and Willamette University, where he was Writer-in-Residence for 2005-2006. JimBertolino@yahoo.com

Clinton Bliss: I'm an ER Doc. I'm a warm heart in the dark and I love my son with all my heart.

Michael Bowers is a Washington native, having grown up in Shoreline. He currently lives and works in Seattle, facilitating informal science education by day, and dabbling in writing poetry, songs, and short stories by night. He is a graduate of the University of Washington with a BA in Anthropology. In his free time, Michael most enjoys playing the lap steel guitar, salsa dancing, and enjoying the company of good friends.

Anita Boyle's book BAMBOO EQUALS LOON is available from Egress Studio Press in Bellingham. Her work has been anthologized in the Washington State poetry anthology, RED SKY MORNING, and the national anthology SAINTS OF HYSTERIA: A HALF-CENTURY OF COLLABORATIVE AMERICAN POETRY. In 2003 the Willard R. Espy Foundation granted her a one-month residency in Oysterville, Washington, where she wrote 60 poems. She is co-director of the Whatcom Poetry Series in Bellingham. domino@nas.com

My name is Charline Bozek. I live in Bothell with my husband, two daughters and a myriad of cats. I write poetry and short stories. I am also a quilter. I work in a public library. This piece is from a group of poems I'm working on based on things encountered in returned books.

Ronda Broatch is the author of Some Other Eden, (Finishing Line Press, 2005). Her work has recently appeared, or is forthcoming, in Atlanta Review, Rattle, Poetry Southeast, Silk Road, and Rhino. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Ronda is the recipient of the 2005 Kay Snow Poetry Award, and 2006 WPA William Stafford Award.

John Burgess grew up in upstate New York, worked on a survey crew in Montana, taught English in Japan and now lives and works in Seattle. He’s a 2006 Jack Straw writer and co-founder of Washington Poets Association’s Burning Word festival. He's currently running for Seattle Poet Populist as the "from the ground up" candidate. His first book is Punk Poems from Ravenna Press (2005).

Nancy Lou Canyon is the author of three works of fiction: Celia's Heaven, Stealing Time, and Whispering, Idaho, and numerous poems, essays, and articles. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Pacific Lutheran University. She and her Tuxedo cat, Sid Canyon, live in Fairhaven, Washington, where she writes, teaches, and cares for her grandbaby part-time. www.nancycanyon.com

Widely-published poet, playwright, fiction writer. Runner up for 2006 Poet Populist. Work forthcoming in Rose Alley Press's anthology of Northwest poets. Winner of last year's Bart Baxter Award. Member of EffectiveArts acting troupe. Medal-winner at last year's World Congress of Poets in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.

Elizabeth J. Colen is an obscure functionary cultivating harmless eccentricities. She's currently finishing a novel in fractured narrative on the damage we do to each other. She has a blind dog, a deaf dog, and two needy cats and has recently gotten married in Canada to her favorite person in the world because the U.S. won't let her.

Beth Coyote is published in Snow Monkey, Gumball Press, synapse, When It Rains From the Ground Up, Chrysanthemum, WPA anthologies, Mute Note Earthward and Tattoos on Cedar, Reflections and a new anthology of women’s political poetry, From the Web.

Alpha Selene DeLap grew up in New York City, lives in Maple Leaf with her son, husband and golden retriever. Loves to work with words, ideas, weeds, yarn, and extend her physical and emotional capabilities.

Robert Dickhoff was born in 1947, in New York City, where he studied music at the High School of Music and Art, playing oboe with the United States Air Force Band in Wiesbaden, Germany, and later with the Bellevue Philharmonic, Bellevue, WA. He received a BA in English (creative writing), and a BFA in painting from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA; an author of fiction and poetry, as well as a visual artist; a painter and print-maker.

I have recently completed my first novel, "The Wind-Scattered World," and am a graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Washington. My poems have appeared in the anthology March Hares: The Best of Fine Madness, and in Poetry Northwest, The Seattle Review, River City and other publications. I have an essay forthcoming in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer: 'The Nuclear Tide and the Child's Nightmare." I have three children, live in Seattle, and work as a children's environmental health advocate.

Dana Elkun is a Seattle poet and poetry teacher. She has taught courses at University of Washington, Richard Hugo House, and University of Arizona Poetry Center. She also works as a writer-in-residence for Writers in the Schools and with youth in detention and foster care. Her poems have been published in Beloit Poetry Journal, Bellingham Review, MARGIE, and Puerto del Sol.

My name is Len Elliott. I live in Auburn along the Green River. The three haiku that compose this offering were written while sitting on my bench at river's edge. There I am surrounded by native plants, entertained by birds and other wildlife, and calmed by the waters. Enjoy your run!

Rick Werner Fahr has made several 0 budget stoner slacker ridiculous movies with titles such as ROCK'N'ROLL MOBSTER GIRLS,& THE HEATHEN. Also an actor, he has toured and performed internationally as well as in the wilds of northern Alaska and at the Burning Man Festival in Nevada.He was a performing co-creator of the SUNSET SMACKDOWN, a notorious bar show that ran for 10 months in Seattle. He has published poetry in a number of small journals, including The Commonline Project.com and FarmhouseMagazine.com.

My name is Joe Franklin and I am working at Mount Rainier right now. I wrote this poem while i was travelling in South America this past year. I cannot make it into Seattle because I dont have a car. I like clouds and peanut butter. I had knee surgery in March. My eyes are green and I am left handed. My favorite poet is Robinson Jeffers. Cheers to all the runners and writers.

Laura Gamache would rather walk than run, swim than waterski, cox a rowing shell than jetski. Her poetry has appeared online, in journals and anthologies, in a chapbook (nothing to hold onto, 2005,) on the radio, on stage, on the bus and on bookmarks. She teaches writing workshops through Seattle Arts & Lectures' Writers in the Schools and other programs. This is her first tee shirt publication.

Venetia Ghozlan is a 49 year old disabled homo sapien, fem, daughter, mother, grandmother, mixed cultural heritage, humanist, non-tribalist, apolitical... an administrative assistant (daytime grunt earn the gruel job) and has written since she could breathe...well at least could think, cognitively.

Laurie M. Greig works as a psychotherapist with adolescents and adults in Seattle. She has published her poems and writings in Art Access, Exhibition Magazine, Crazy Woman Creek, and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She can be reached at OnTheWheel@comcast.net

Editor, writer, and photographer Susan Stern Grossman came to Seattle from New York in 1990 for six weeks to attend the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. She took a look at Mt. Rainier, had a latte, and tore up her return ticket. She’s still here.

Carol Guess is the author of four books, most recently the poetry collection _Femme's Dictionary_. A new book of poetry, _Love Is A Map I Must Not Set On Fire_, is forthcoming in 2007. She lives in Bellingham, WA.

Carlos M Gutiérrez Parrales (1960, Diriamba, Carazo, Nicaragua): A pesar de que Gutiérrez ha publicado solo un libro bilingüe de poesía por ahora –“¿A dónde Irá?” (2003)—su nombre es ya bien conocido en varios países latinoamericanos asiáticos y europeos. En su narrativa, el autor se identifica con la tierra, el campesino, su pueblo. Los temas de sus poemas y cuentos ofrecen una visión universal de la existencia humana. En ellos se registran los sentimientos de angustia, remordimiento y violencia que acosan al ser humano. Actualmente tiene cuatro libros sin publicar; es presidente de la organización de poetas y escritores bilingüe, llamada, “PENSARTE” y es uno de los presidentes de la UPLI. Vive en Seattle.Carlos M Gutiérrez Parrales (1960, Diriamba, Carazo, Nicaragua): Although Gutiérrez has published a single bilingual book of poetry, so far entitled - " Where Will She Go?" (2003)-his name already is well known in several Latin American countries, Asia and Europe. He is president of the bilingual organization of poets and writers, here in Seattle called, "PENSARTE". Carlos is also one of the presidents of the United Poets Laureate International (U.P.L.I), which is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. He lives in Seattle. In his narrative, the author identifies himself with the earth, the “campesino”, and his hometown. The subjects of his poems and tales offer a universal vision of the human existence. In them are registered the feelings of anguish, remorse and violence that harass the human being. Currently he is working on four books unpublished, as of yet.

Jeremy Halinen holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Eastern Washington University. He is editor and founder, along with Brett Ortler, of the new print literary magazine Knockout. His chapbook Fragments of Water won the 2003 Alan Bunn Memorial Award. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Dos Passos Review, Rio Grande Review and the 2008 Outside Voices Anthology of Younger Poets.

Adam Hamilton is a Philosophy and English Literature double-major finishing his 3rd year at the University of Washington. He often draws on philosophical, religious, and esoteric themes for his poetry and short stories. Confident in his African American heritage and his strong Mormon faith, Adam plans on going on a proselyting mission after he graduates from college. In the long term, Adam intends to continue his education at the graduate level and earn a PhD in English Literature, so that he may represent his culture in the mostly white post-Graduate arena and facilitate academic discussion of race, religion, and socioeconomics in relation to how society affects literature, and literature society.

Lana Hechtman Ayers enjoys spicy tuna rolls and the roll of ocean waves. She lives in Kirkland with many cats.

David D. Horowitz founded and manages Rose Alley Press, which primarily publishes books of rhymed metrical poetry. He earned bachelor's degrees in philosophy and English from the University of Washington and a master's degree in English from Vanderbilt University. His verse has appeared in numerous journals, such as Candelabrum, The New Formalist, The Lyric, and ArtWord Quarterly. His most recent poetry collections, all published by Rose Alley Press, are Wildfire, Candleflame; Resin from the Rain; and Streetlamp, Treetop, Star. Winner of the 2005 PoetsWest Achievement Award, David lives in Seattle and gives frequent readings at literary venues around the Northwest.

Thomas Hubbard, writing instructor, retired from Tulalip Reservation, Tulalip Heritage School.

Courtney Hudak is a poet and aspiring attorney who runs too occasionally to enjoy much in the way of runner's high. She has been published in a small number of high and low places and is currently going through a cake-baking phase.

P. Hurshell lives in Seattle. A former European opera singer, she has a PhD in English from the University of Washington and won its Robert Heilman Dissertation Award. She is the recipient of Ford and Woodrow Wilson grants for her research on Jewish women and the Holocaust. Her work has recently been heard on Literary Café, broadcast in Astoria Oregon. Forthcoming poems are Aria for Soprano in the anthology Myths and Legends, and Taffy-Pull in Borderlands: Texas Review.

Fredda Jaffe teaches poetry to fifth graders at Beacon Hill Elementary (through Powerful Schools) and works as a family therapist.

Dave Jarecki is a Portland writer with Pennsylvanian roots. He is currently working on a novel, requesting an interview from a stranger, writing a song in the key of G, and checking box scores.

Christopher J. Jarmick is a widely published author, journalist and poet. His novel is The Glass Cocoon, he curates and hosts two monthly Seattle poetry readings and is the President of PEN – Washington. Email him at glasscocoon@hotmail.com.

Sonya Carmichael Jones is a writer and marathoner who will always miss Mama.

Jourdan Imani Keith: Seattle Poet Populist 2006-2007

After teaching in classrooms in Minnesota and Puerto Rico, Maggie Kelly moved to Tacoma, WA for graduate work in literature. Kelly won a Freedom Foundation award for a poem about heroes and more recently, was a prize winner in the Utah State Poetry Society’s annual heritage contest. Some of her poems have appeared in a variety of newsletters, bulletins and anthologies, as well as in Moonthorn, Finnish American Reporter, Chrysanthemum, Another Morning and Senior Scene (for which she also writes a monthly column). In addition to taking a class from award-winning poet Allen Braden and a critiqued class at Centrum, Pt. Townsend, WA., Kelly belongs to five poetry-writing groups. She was recently a featured reader for the Distinguished Writer Series in Tacoma where she read some poems from her soon-to-be-completed chapbook, Transformations. Kelly is the editor of the newsletter for the Washington Poets Association.

I am a poet with a few poems published in magazines and a self-published chapbook entitled “Cairns” of short poems including the salmon poem which I gave out to friends and family. I work at the YMCA of Greater Seattle developing youth and international programs. I am a husband and father of three beautiful kids. I write early in the morning at my desk with a window into the side yard now graced with climbing roses and a raspberry patch and scribble notes throughout the day. I am part of an informal group of educators, agitators and poetry lovers called the Poetry Revolution. Here is a short poem I wrote several years ago on hearing news about the listing of northwest salmon on the Endangered Species List….

Janet Norman Knox’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and have appeared in Crab Creek Review, Rhino, Diner, Seattle Review, Adirondack Review, Poetry Southeast, Cranky Literary Journal, Red Mountain Review, Diagram, Pearl, and in Pontoon and Red, White, and Blues (Iowa University Press). Her chapbook, Eastlake Cleaners Where Quality & Price Count [a romance], received the editor’s award and will be published by Concrete Wolf in 2007. She was a 2007 Finalist for the Discovery/The Nation award.

Angel Latterell migrated to Seattle two years ago to escape midwestern weather and sensibilities. She has been writing poetry since she learned to read. Angel is a practicing buddhist and attorney for artists. She lives in an intentional community devoted to sustainable living practices, organic/local eating and soulful living. In her spare time she can be found around town searching for live jazz music, performing her poetry, wandering around pike place market, or enjoying our wonderous environment filled with so many treasures.

Amanda Laughtland is a lifelong resident of the Seattle area. She teaches English part-time at Edmonds Community College, works part-time for Sno-Isle Libraries, and writes poems whenever possible. For more of her poetry, please see www.teenytiny.org.

Jenifer Browne Lawrence was raised in Alaska & currently lives in a small town on the west side of Puget Sound. A 2006 Artist Trust GAP grant recipient, Jenifer's poems are published or forthcoming in Crab Creek Review, the North American Review and elsewhere. Her first poetry collection, One Hundred Steps from Shore, was published by Blue Begonia Press in 2006. She is not a runner but admires them from a safe distance. She once had a dog that fished for salmon, practicing only catch-and-release.

David M. Laws is a former musical instrument repair technician, poet, writer, proofreader, editor, gardener, model railroader, hiker, and political satirist who lives in Bellingham with his beautiful wife, also a writer, and Lucky the Wonder Dog. He hates Bush and the GOP only slightly more than he hates the Dems. Go to www.cascadiaweekly.com and click on Electron Edition to see his weekly column, Snark News.

Chris Leasure has an MFA from some midwestern college, but would rather have a poem on a t-shirt.

Jared Leising, originally from the Midwest, received his MFA in creative writing from the University of Houston. Currently, he teaches English at Cascadia Community College and is a volunteer for 826 Seattle, a youth writing center in Greenwood.

Stephanie Lenox is a poet and co-founder of Blood Orange Review, an online literary journal. If she could do anything, she’d be an aerobics instructor. Alas, she cannot smile and grapevine at the same time. Instead, she writes poetry where she can sweat in private.

Carol Levin's chapbook “Sea Lions Sing Scat” May 07 is from Finishing Line Press and a chapbook “Red Rooms and Others” is pending from Pecan Grove Press. Poems have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Rock Salt Plum Review, Third Coast, The Seattle Review, The Comstock Review, “Seattle Woman” magazine, and issues #16 and 35 of the Cortland Review. Other publications include a coffee table book, “Kalakala: Magnificent Vision Recaptured” by Steven Russell.Poems were set as a choral work by composer Carol Sams. She collaborated with two Russians in translating Anton Chekhov’s four major plays, now being offered in a manuscript “The Three Sisters and Three More, Plays by Anton Chekhov.” She teaches the Alexander Technique in Seattle. clevin@televar.com

A lover of stories since before she could remember, Heather has always gravitated toward writing and art in every form. She finds her native Seattle to be exceedingly inspirational and loves writing on rainy days. She also enjoys reading books of pretty much any persuasion, doing fun things with fabrics, riding horses, hugging trees and being close to the ocean. Every day holds a story and Heather plans to tell it.

Rebecca Loudon is the author of Tarantella, Radish King and Navigate, Amelia Earhart's Letters Home. She lives and writes in Seattle.

Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor received her MA degree in English with honors from Western Washington University in 2003 for her thesis “Notes from the Margins,” a mixed work of memoir and fiction. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in the Katipunan Literary Magazine and the online magazine Haruah. In addition, she has served as a freelance writer and editor for several trade journals. Currently she is working on her first novel, tentatively titled Maganda’s Comb, and she performs regularly as a storyteller in her local area. Her blog is Binding Wor(l)ds Together. I'm a writer based in Bellingham, Washington. I'm also Filipino by heritage and the reference to aswang in the poem is from Filipino myth regarding the viscera-eaters (vampires) who lurk in the jungle ready to drain life from humans and animals, thereby causing disease and death.

Carlos Martinez has been writing a very long time, the consequences of which are he has an MFA from Antioch University LA and is presently privileged enough to teach this arcane art at Western Washington University. He's 57, divorced, the father of two boys, tall, dark, used to be quite handsome, likes poetry (obviously), thinks both our species and our civilization are doomed, doesn't like nuts or vegetables (green is for money not for food), would like to see national parks closed to humans and even more land set aside where humans wouldn't be allowed to go, and is grateful for having his eyes open every morning (so far, so good). Though he's been out this way a long time, at heart he considers himself to be a quintessential New Yorker.

Brendan McBreen: member of Striped Water Poets in AuburnGeminihave poems published in various placesI enjoy haiku and surrealist poetsI'm an artistI believe the poem should speak for itself, so I very rarely include much information in my bio

Gerald A. McBreen: Omaha, Nebr., U. S. Postal Service (retired). Certified by NIA (Newspaper Institute of America). Committee member Uniquely Auburn, and Auburn Good Old Days art/poetry show. Coordinator of STRIPED WATER POETS of Auburn. A living room work shop for aspiring poets/writers. Published in anthologies and magazines.

Georgia Stewart McDade has spent more than half her life in Seattle. Her loves include reading, traveling, and teaching. After teaching English at a community college for more than thirty years, she assists teachers and students in several elementary and high schools. Currently she is trying to get a collection of her poetry published and a biography of her high school principal completed.

Barbara Lloyd McMichael: I live in Des Moines. I am a freelance book reviewer and I also work as the administrator for SoCoCulture.org, a coalition of arts and heritage organizations in South King County.

Maureen McQuerry is a writer and teacher. She was the MacAuliffe Fellow for WA State in 2000. She has poems in many journals, and has published a poetry chapbook, Relentless Light, two non-fiction books, and the first book in her YA trilogy , Wolfproof. The Travelers' Market, the second book in the trilogy will be out in summer 2008. She loves the idea of people wearing poems while they run and thinks poets on bicycles might be good too.

Jed Myers, a Seattle poet and singer/songwriter, was recent guest editor for Chrysanthemum. He won Writers’ Haven’s 1st Prize in 2004. His work has been featured on NPR, and has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals including Poetica, Drash, and Fugue, and on the web in Friends Journal, Satya Center, and Tempozine. He hosts NorthEndForum, a weekly gathering for writers and musicians in Ravenna, and can be reached at medjyers@hotmail.com.

The Other Michael: Into art at a young age. First poetry, such as it was, at 13. Graphic artist for most of my life. Astrologer too. Viet Nam survivor...to a degree. Music freak. Widower. (Sigh).

Denise Calvetti Michaels' poems have appeared in several journals and anthologies with new work in Centrifugal Eye, Seattle Woman and forthcoming in Paterson Literary Review, City Works & Crosscurrents. Denise teaches at Cascadia Community College, lives near Denny Creek with husband, Kirk, and enjoys walking and jogging with their six grandchildren.

I usually write poetry in the depths of depression, or in the midst of a life altering event. My poetry reflects the course of my life and the many twists and turns that it has taken. It is my escape and my link to the moment. Thank you.

from A Time Before Slaughter, by Paul E. Nelson, co-founder of the near-legendary SPLAB!, former radio host/interviewer, now teacher of word to Indians. See his graduate work at www.OrganicPoetry.org. (The Stuck River, one of two running through Auburn, has been diverted by explosives on several occasions. Slaughter is the original name of Auburn, Washington, where the slaughter continues a little bit at a time.)

Sierra Nelson received her MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She co-founded the literary performance group The Typing Explosion, and her newest collaborative project, the Vis-à-Vis Society, recently published a book of poem-surveys and performed a Statistical Musical. Nelson’s poetry has appeared in publications such as Cranky, Swivel, Mare Nostrum, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Diagram. She has been lucky enough to travel to Rome several times, and Bernini’s statue of Daphne and Apollo was part of the inspiration for this poem.

Melanie Noel's work has appeared in Fine Madness, Cranky, Crab Creek Review, Filter, and on the audio magazine Weird Deer. She has written poems for the installations Partsong and Collocation, and as a live score for What Remains Unseen, an experimental documentary by James Merle Thomas. She is a co-curator for the dance, music and poetry series APOSTROPHE with Gust Burns and Michele Steinwald.

Eamon O. is in 2nd grade.

Canadian poet and humorist Alexandra Oliver’s work has appeared in Orbis, Nexus, and The Atlanta Review, as well as in her first book Where the English Housewife Shines (Tin Press.) She has performed at events including the National Poetry Slam and the CBC Radio National Poetry Face-Off and was a featured performer in the documentary Slam Nation.

Carl Palmer is a member of The Puget Sound Poetry Connection, Striped Water Poets of Auburn, The Writers Roundtable, New Poets of Lakewood, Dream Weavers, and The Tacoma Writers Club. He lived the retired life in his little corner of University Place, Washington.

Kim Pearson is an author, ghostwriter, and teacher dedicated to getting our stories out into the world where they can help to connect us, teach us, inspire us, and heal us. www.primary-sources.com.

V. Pepoy lives in the Puget Sound Basin to which she was born. She is dedicated to exploring arrant kindnesses, her surroundings, the ways we are connected and the things we forget. In life, V. Pepoy aspires to aid the effort to restore the historic processes of her bioregion. She hopes you enjoy this poem; may you consider sharing one of your own with a loved stranger, a strange lover, or both!

c. peterson: Intrepid curator of landslide scenariosExile of corn lands. Cowboy of wine-swamps.Massaging that slippery crucifix of coordinatesBetween the frontier nostalgias of marbleAnd the insouciant halo-slinging Of a yeoman on a lightning binge.

Charles Potts lives in Walla Walla and has been publishing poetry since 1963. Used to live in Seattle and has run all the way around Green Lake!

My name is Nashira Priester and this is my poem for the run around Green Lake.

Writing sappy poetry since tenderly clutching crayons in tiny toddling fists, Hannah revels in the sounds of words forming and flowing and growing into imagery. Outside of literary pursuits, Hannah enjoys trail thumping and pavement slapping, joyous dancing, lyrical musings, affixing things to other things, and general rock star magic-making. She embraces the all-around fabulousness of her native Seattle, despite leanings toward wanderlust and desert dust.

Susan Rich is author of The Cartographer’s Tongue Poems of the World, which won the PEN USA and Peace Corps Writers Awards. White Pine Press recently published her second collection of poems, Cures Include Travel. She lives in West Seattle, but has worked in Bosnia, Gaza, Southern Africa, and West Africa. She is an editor at Floating Bridge Press and on the board of directors at Whit Press.

Riley is a 6th grader working with a Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools poet. She has written, “Poetry is words that speak of the truth about feelings that are even fiction.”

Bruce Rips is an architect, urban designer and writer. When not shaping Seattle's skyline, he shapes poems and sketches drawings. Greenlake Cycle is one of a series of poems written based on Bruce's meditations while walking around the lake.

I was born in 1943 and have been writing poems and songs for about half a century. I have four children and three grandchildren, and thousands of books. Was part of StreetWrites writing/performing group through Real Change Newspaper. Was also the 2000-2001 Seattle Haiku Laureate.

James Rodgers: I have been writing poetry for the last 21 years and have turned two manuscripts of over 600 poems and song lyrics in for copyright with the Library of Congress, with another 300 ready to go. I have been published in Prism- OSU’s Literary Magazine, the Washington English Journal, HA! Magazine, the 2004 Treewalk Foundation Chapbook, the 2006 WPA Poetry collection, Raven Chronicles and in the Northwest Renaissance Poets of the Canterbury Fair, among others. I won honorable mention for a humorous poem through the WPA Poetry Contest in 2004 and won first prize and honorable mention in 2005. I am a member of PoetsWest and I read regularly in the Seattle area. Have a great day!

Emilie Rommel is 25. She lives and works in Tacoma, WA as a technical writer for a software company. She is a singer, an actor, a youngest daughter, and a francophile. She has always, always written.

Marta Sanchez - trubador, poet, drinking in the rain acid and all.

Raúl Sánchez - His eclectic poems touch on cross-cultural issues, assimilation, immigration and everyday life. Written in English, Spanish, Spanglish or Caló, “the rhythm of the rhyme is in the sound of the words”. Currently acting as the representative of Los Norteños, a Seattle Latino Writers group. The “Day of the Dead” is the most important day in Raúl’s calendar. Next event by Los Norteños scheduled for June 16th at the downtown Central Library from 3 to 5 PM. Spicy Words and Voices/Palabras yVoces Picantes. Here is my submission. Looks like a Haiku but it is not. Sounds like a Haiku but it is not. I call it 6x2x3 Six stanzas of two lines -very minimal- that connect with the single word below. The last line is the key, connecting with the title. I hope you will like it.

Santiago is a 6th grader working with a Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers in the Schools poet. About poetry he wrote: “Poetry is like a flowing river. It silently goes without a sound in the night. Poems are like doors to opportunities to life. They are the air we breathe. They can be hard like rocks or soft like silk. Poetry is life to me.”

Sara: Once upon a time I came from the Midwest to the seashore. You know how some people are called to the ocean? Some people are called to the cornfields... but here I am still, a 25 year old woman, Iowan at heart, recently rejected by Poetry on Busses. It's cool. Who needs the Metro when you have an athletic Seattleite out for a morning jog?

Ellen O. Setteducati (EOS) comes from Berkeley, is still looking into graduate school, and has acurious ongoing relationship with the source of synchronicity, three instances of which are already connected to this poem. You can find four poems she wrote to stop the war from starting at poetsagainstthewar.org. Peace & Love.

Martha Silano is the author of two full-length poetry collections, _Blue Positive_ (Steel Toe Books 2006) and _What the Truth Tastes Like_ (Nightshade Press 1999). Her poems have also appeared in many magazines, including Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, Beloit Poetry Journal, and TriQuarterly. Martha teaches at Edmonds and Bellevue Community Colleges. Her website is www.marthasilano.com.

Jay Schlechter, PhD. Author of Intimate Friends: An Antidote to Loneliness.

Thom Schramm's poems have appeared in The American Scholar, New Letters, Notre Dame Review, Ploughshares, and Poetry Northwest. The opera he co-wrote with Garrett Fisher, Stargazer, premiered in Seattle in 2006, and will be released on CD this fall. The poetry anthology he edited, Living in Storms: Contemporary Poetry and the Moods of Manic-Depression, will be published by Eastern Washington University Press this fall also.

Laura Snyder lives in Seattle but each year longs to sheds her suburban-self to spend at least a month alone in the wilderness of British Columbia. She is a self-taught naturalist, a basketweaver, a knitter and a grandmother. She spins on an old spinning wheel that came out west in a covered wagon. You might catch her scribbling in her journal in art museums or wherever trees and bears hang out. Her most recent words appear in Pontoon 9: An Anthology of Washington State Poets, Switched-on Gutenberg, Chrysanthemum, Red River Review, Ekphrasis, and Moon Journal. Two nature anthologies have published her writing, Tree Stories: A Collection of Extraordinary Encounters and in Grrrrr: A Collection of Poems about Bears.

Joannie Stangeland: When she was in high school, Joannie ran at Green Lake as part of her workouts for the Roosevelt cross-country team. Now, she writes poems, some of which have been printed in various journals and on the bus. She has been a Jack Straw artist in residence and her chapbooks have been published by Rose Alley Press and Floating Bridge Press.

Aidan Starr is a poet and short story writer. Born a Pisces in 1983, he has been writing from age 9. He is a recent Seattle transplant from Portland, OR. He has self published 5 poetry zines and has been involved in two consecutive years of Language of Paradox peeformances. He will be attending Bent soon, a writing/performance poetry non-profit queer school, in Seattle, WA. He can be contacted at his email address: dismemberme2@yahoo.com.

JT Stewart – Curator of the 2006 Jack Straw Writers in Residence – uses her creative time as writer, poet, editor, playwright, educator, urban storyteller and vociferous foe of mean spirited evil doers. Now, as a grownup - see her “First Poem” - she realizes how weeds have deep roots and outlive catastrophes. Her teaching includes: Artist-in-the-schools (Seattle); writing workshops in Washington and Oregon; and these schools - the University of Washington, Seattle Central Community College, and Fairhaven College (Western Washington University). She’s a Hedgebrook alum & Co-Editor of two books: Gathering Ground: New Writing and Art of North West Women of Color (Seal Press) and Seattle Poets and Photographers: A Millennium Reflection (University of Washington Press). You can sample her work as a public artist in the collaborative permanent installation – Raven Brings Light to This House of Stories – in the Allen Library at the University of Washington.

Lydia Swartz: 50-year Seattle resident, novelist, pornographer, Buddhist, introvert, editrix. And recovering poet: This is the last poem I ever wrote, except the ones I trick readers of prose into.

Molly Tenenbaum is the author of the books By a Thread (Van West & Co, 2000), and Now, forthcoming from Bear Star Press. She plays banjo and lives in White Center.

Jay Thompson gains weight every time someone says the words buttered toast. He's moving to St. Louis for school in the fall.

Ann Tweedy grew up in a small town in Massachusetts. She has been writing poetry ever since she moved to the West Coast in 1996. Over fifty of her poems have been published or are forthcoming in publications such as Clackamas Literary Review, Rattle, Avocet, Gertrude, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Berkeley Poetry Review, knock journal, and Stringtown. For her day job, she works as a lawyer on behalf of Indian tribes and divides her time between Seattle and Skagit County, Washington.

Martha Vallely: I am a woman who loved to run but whose right Achilles tendon won't do it anymore, so thank you for running for me. I am a legal editor who lives, works, writes, and walks many miles in Seattle. I am a long-term ovarian cancer survivor and I am forever grateful to be a living writer even while I can no longer be a living runner. I like to think this gratitude imbues my poetry. Thanks again for running with my poem.

Craig Van Riper is the author of Convenient Danger, winner of the Pecan Grove Press National Prize (St. Mary's University, San Antonio), and Making the Path While You Walk (Sagittarius, Port Townsend). His collaboration with Seattle painter Suzanne Brooker, Each Scar a Broken Arc, with poems and companion paintings appearing en face, is forthcoming from Egress StudioPress (Bellingham), as is a Selected Poems (Pudding House, Columbus, OH). A Contributing Editor of San Francisco's Five Fingers Review, Writer-in-the-Schools, and Poet-in-Residence at Goldmyer Hotsprings, Van Riper's work has appeared in over sixty literary journals and anthologies of contemporary American poetry, including Seattle Poets and Photographers: A Millennium Reflection (University of Washington Press, Seattle).

Connie Walle, life-long resident of Tacoma, WA. President of Puget Sound Poetry Connection. Recipient of the WPA Faith Beamer Cooke Award, and the Margaret K Williams Award in Support of the Arts.

Julene Tripp Weaver moved to Seattle in 1989. She has her undergraduate in Creative Writing and had the good fortune to study with Audre Lorde at Hunter College. Her first chapbook, "Case Walking: An AIDS Case Manager Wails Her Blues" is coming out this summer from Finishing Line Press.

Michael Dylan Welch is editor/publisher of Tundra: The Journal of the Short Poem and Press Here haiku and tanka books, contributing editor to Spring: The Journal of the E. E. Cummings Society, and a board member of the Washington Poets Association. A longtime vice president of the Haiku Society of America, in 1991 he cofounded the Haiku North America conference and in 1996 the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento. In 2000 he founded the Tanka Society of America, and served as its president through 2004. He 2004 and 2005 he directed the Poets in the Park conference. He was won the Henderson, Brady, Drevniok, and Tokutomi awards, among others, and has had thousands of his poems published in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than a dozen languages (most recently Turkish). He has poems in two Norton anthologies: The Haiku Anthology (1999) and the brand new Baseball Haiku (2007). Michael lives with his wife and two perfect children in Sammamish, Washington.

I am an Alaskan at heart, living in the city with my two white doves and three week old chicks. My attempt at world peace. I am a gypsy, poet and gardener. I believe gardening is running your hands thru Gods hair. Love words and the way they sound.

Jason Wolf is an unpublished Seattle based poet and writer. He has been writing poetry and prose for over 20 years for friends, lovers and relatives. Now, he is working to get his work out to the public for the enjoyment of all.

That's it, folks! If something needs correcting or credits are due, let me know.
-aka

Sunday 10 June 2007

2007-06-18T21:53:00.001-07:00

WHERE WAS THE COMMUNITY INPUT?

Four month ago I took a walk around the lake asking any business with a door onto Green Lake for sponsorship to help effect “The Running Poets of Green Lake.” Last month, as I was getting closer to making it happen, I walked around the lake again. In the end, I didn’t get any funding (strange, everyone thought it was a great idea), but the experience of walking around the lake with my request letters, going business to business, talking up the project, will stay with me. It made clear in my mind the reasons for supporting locally-owned and operated businesses. Really, I mean why would World Wrapps or Duke’s Chowder House or The Blue Wave have any care for the poets who live and write and run here at Green Lake, or for the children of Green Lake, or for the fish or birds or raccoons or rabbits, or even the fiction writers? Well they wouldn’t, unless you happened upon a store manager who was also a poet or a fish or a raccoon. “Send your letter to our corporate office in North Carolina.”

Being an individual artist asking for money, that's tough. Were I a registered non-profit or a sports team asking for certificates or gifts-in-kind it would have been easier. I'm sure a better business person could have demonstrated the pressing need for Super Jock'N Jill's involvement with a juicy little advertising space. At the outset, I thought I'd found supporters in both stores. I was invited in by Always Running and was able to effectively engage the 3rd manager I spoke to at Super Jock'N Jill, but in the end neither one bit. And so, after being turned down by all the stores and restaurants I went into and then being denied a discount by American Apparel (I didn't make it into their giving schedule), I went ahead with the project. I believe in this. I got a raise in May. I can put money into this. This month marks my first expendable income in 4 years. Here's something I can give my money to. Why? Because it needs to be.

I found a printer in my new neighborhood, Ballard. John of Elephants Gerald was awesome. I recommend him. He’s not only an extremely nice person, but helpful, smart, t-shirt savvy and has made himself into an epi-center for an amazing network of Ballard locals. In the 7 hours I was there heat-pressing poems on shirt backs, at least 15 people stopped in or waved at the doorway despite the chairs blocking the door and the sign that read, Closed: Rush Job.

THE LOGO

Thanks to Jeff Tolbert, a local artist, musician and graphic designer, for his help converting the logo into a TIFF and JPEG. I didn’t have the programs to make the logo read for a printer so he worked them up for me. Turns out John is happy to work from paper copies, but the image helped with all sorts of event promotion.

THE POETS

I need 100 poets. Where am I going to I find 100 poets? Do we even have 100 poets? I put out a call to PoetsWest, WPA, Hugo House, the UW, Open Books, Writer Grrls, Artist Trust, Craig’s List. And the poems started to patter in. Rebecca Loudon was first to send a poem. I had 14 by the end of the day. I got ten more each day. By the end of week one I had close to 50 poets and decided to broaden my search. I called on poets and professors to send out their feelers. I need 100 poets. Hurry please!!

Paul Nelson put a call to SPLAB!, Carlos Martinez put a call to his students, Laura Gamache took it to her elementary school and Raul Sanchez put a call to Los Nortenos. More poems came in. I had just under 100 by the deadline, 5 June. But I need 100. I won’t settle for less. I called louder. Finally the last few came in. I had to turn about 10 away.

In the end, I had said yes to 105 people and had to buy a few more shirts.

RUNNERS

whooOOOSH!

The shirts went in under 40 minutes! It was awesome. Such energy from both ends– poets and runners. A handful of poets had come to see their poems run away. They were gathered around the desk. When a runner received the shirt of a poet who was present there was hand shaking and an exchange. And everyone cheered as the pink shirts flew by!

Women and men, young and old, children in strollers, poets, nonpoets, runners and some walkers wore the 100 poetry shirts around the lake this Sunday. Oliver filmed it with his Super 8 camera. I dropped the film off Monday at Alpha Cine. I get it back Friday. Next week, I’ll convert it to DVD at Northwest Film Forum. I hope to get it out to folks soon afterwards. Work, work, work. Communication takes our every effort.

I’m spending all my thought now and my energy devising and planning and fine-tuning the last day of my project. It's just 3 short weeks from today.

My very last day in the park will be Sunday 1 July 2007. I am preparing an installation which will invoke The Perfect Circle. An instigation with public interaction, filming, sound recording, drawing and movement. I hope you'll come be a part. It wouldn't be anything without you.