You can read Erica's answers
to the four questions and her guest post at
Transformative Blogging, Fairytales, Facebook, and Poetry
Prompts, in which she
describes the process behind writing her book, Vibrant Words,
ideas and inspirations for poets (PushPen Press, 2014); she is
also the author of Wild Place
(Finishing Line Press, 2012). I highly recommend checking out the
video poetry column Goss writes for Connotation Press, The Third Form.
What
are you currently working on?
To
be honest, I’m working on getting used to a bit of reckless joy. My first
poetry collection, November Butterfly, comes
out on November 1, 2014, thanks to Saddle Road Press. I am pretty much levitating at this point.
When
the box of ARC’s (Advanced Reading Copies) came in August and I first held the
book, I realized what an evaporative state I’ve inhabited since
most of my writing "lives" online. I’ve blogged since 2007 here at
Feral, Mom, Feral Writer and since roughly 2012 at Transformative Blogging and Mother Writer Mentor.
While blogging is a satisfying extension of journaling and single poems appearing in
online journals benefit from possibly a wider readership than those in print journals,
nothing replaces the feeling of holding a physical book of one's own poems for the
very first time.
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| photo by Robyn Beattie |
When
I lost a friend to cancer in 2011, I decided to stop leaning so heavily on (and
waiting for) outside validation. To grow as an artist, I began making short
poetry videos. So far, I've "video illustrated" seven of my poems and dedicated the first one, She Dressed in a Hurry, for Lady Di to
my late friend Barbara Robinette Moss.
The others to date are: Amelia, Nefertiti on the Astral, Nefertiti Among Us, The Corridor
(Guinevere), Thumbelina, and Mordred's Dream. New projects are underway for The Three
Oranges, Black Angel: Scripted, Never Shot, and several Joan of Arc poems.
I’m
also working on a manuscript about an Illinois commune I lived on as a child
from the age of five to eleven. The blizzards of Illinois coupled with
disillusionment regarding the group’s spiritual path--disintegrating under post
leader exile--inspired our family to leave. My father built a wooden camper for
the back of our maroon 67 Chevy and off we trundled to California.
Memories of a sincere longing for spiritual beauty mingle with memories of witnessing human fallibility, and as an adult, I'm left with questions. Why do people join communes or other
groups? Why do they leave, and what becomes of the children, parents, and
leaders of abandoned communes?
How
does your work differ from others of its genre?
During
the first blog tour, I talked about the
process of writing poetry; here I'd like to talk about poetry videos/movies. I
love the collaborations between Nicelle Davis and Cheryl Gross;
watching In The Circus of You you'll find drawings
and animation with narration (there's a lovely bell tone to Nicelle's reading
voice). Through Erica Goss’s Connotation Press Video Poetry Column mentioned
earlier, The Third Form, I fell in love with Nic Sebastian’s,
"let me tell you about yourself" (scroll a third of the way down to
see Sebastian's video with its amazing Hubble generated imagery). Goss
also interviewed two pairs of video poetry
collaborators about their process.
 |
| Photo by Robyn Beattie |
I
haven't ventured into animation--my collaborator photographer Robyn Beattie
and I call our videos "photo poem montages;" in comparison to
animated work or videos with actors, ours are more static, frames fading one
into the next. Robyn and I are both drawn to images that suggest or imply but
don’t necessarily correspond directly to the line of poetry at hand.
The
third collaborator is often my father (composing and selecting music and performing it on
keyboard/piano). Years of kinship make each project flow effortlessly, and each time we finish a new one, I'm relieved to have mapped another portion of the heart. A fourth collaborator technically is a group made up of
the artists Robyn encounters. We have been blessed to receive permission to use
photographs of work by painters, sculptors, assemblage artists and more.
Feedback
regarding the photo poem montages continues to be overwhelmingly positive,
though we also have heard that the words of the poem stimulate one
set of images in the viewer’s mind's eye that in turn compete with the
photographs. And that the voice recording of the poem also potentially competes
with the music.
Trying
to finish any particular project given raising my three children always seems a
miracle--I get a little crazy trying to nail as much beauty down as
possible when the opportunity arises. Or maybe the desire to have those
competing strains (photographs, narration of poem, music, motion of the images
bleeding one to the next) reflects the effects of our media conscious culture of burgeoning stimuli. I only know I am flooded with happiness when I sit down with
Robyn to sort through her gorgeous images and listen to my father's choices for
music.
Why
do you write/create what you do?
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| Lighthouse Eye by Tania Pryputniewicz Point Loma |
How
does your writing/creating process work?
I
keep my journal with me and write throughout the day as I ferry children to and
from their activities. Without the luxury of portioning out time slots
for the various kinds of writing (poetry, blogposts, etc.), I lift blog
paragraphs and poem starts directly from the seedbed of the journal. I
run poems by members of my writing group (a beautiful array of friends, many I met through A Room of Her Own Foundation retreats). I subscribe to a number of online
newsletters with calls for entries; these calls for entries become deadlines to
create new work.
Up
Next:
Jill
G. Hall uses
found objects to create whimsical mosaics that are displayed in galleries, private
homes and downtown San Diego street corners. Her poetry has been published in A
Year in Ink, Serving House Journal, City Works, The Avocet: A Journal of
Nature Poetry as well as Wild Women Wild Voices. She plans to
publish her first novel in 2015. At Inspirations Gallery she curates themed
work by local artists and facilitates workshops to help others find their
unique paths. Her blog posts share personal musings on the art of practicing a
creative lifestyle. Find Jill at: www.jillghall.com
Cathe Shubert is currently living,
writing, teaching and learning in Wilmington, NC, where she is enrolled as a
MFA student and Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of North Carolina
at Wilmington during the academic year. During the summer, she participates in
a MA program called the Bread Loaf School of English. She's taught all over the
country and world, having spent two years teaching Spanish and English in
Philadelphia, a year abroad teaching ESL in Andorra, and a year in Detroit
teaching creative writing in public schools. You can read her Virtual Blog Tour post here and follow her blog at ilmwritinglife.wordpress.com
