Old Creek Ranch Napa Cab Inspires Poetry
I posted this Old Creek Ranch Winery 2007 Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon inspired poem last week over at Wine Predator. While it may not be one of my better poems, I had a blast writing it! Here it is now for the Monday Poetry Train! Climb aboard and see what others have posted. Coming soon–similar poems by other workshop participants!
(PS I’m taking the week off from blogging for some family time! See you next Monday with another new poem from the “Message in a Bottle” Writing Workshop!)
via Wine Predator
April Fools! Join us Friday for an ArtRide!
Here are all the details including our planned route for this Friday’s ArtRide which celebrates the passage of the Master Bicycle Plan by Ventura’s City Council!
via Bikergo Gal
August 20, 2006 ~ 3:15 AM
I hear elephants
keep their trunks at half-mast
when a member of the tribe dies
I hear they parade like lost souls
Do pets ever mourn our passing?
Do animals worry?
I don’t see evidence
in bees or birds
worrying about the sudden change
in weather passing storms
kids have left the nest
haven’t called in a week took off
with that dirty bird
Mourning takes space and time
can be triggered by any sense
or by a slight vision
of personal intake
The man walking in front of me
had my Father’s legs,
that funny skinny pale
and I choked on a lump
in my throat Do birds
suffer for lack of imagination?
Do they “not feel like it” sometimes
the arrow flying north next stop
the Great White North?
I stress therefore I am
and I am because you were
you made me aware you
gave me colour scheme
appreciation of art & music why
I plan to eat ice-cream
next Thursday and take a trip
to the Museum I don’t
expect to see any elephants
or birds there
c. Danika Dinsmore
please note some of the formatting is incorrect
Today March 29 is a good day for poetry! If you’re from around LA or Ventura County, you should consider going to hear Danika Dinsmore or Joyce LaMers. More info on both readings and poets along with sample poems follows. Read more…
Two weeks ago, on 3/15, my collection of 3:15 experiment poetry came out, and I had my first reading from Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press 2011) at the Artists Union Gallery that night.
Since I’ve posted the poems I read here on Art Predator, I thought I’d publish the links to the poems so you can enjoy a “virtual” reading!
The reading started with Danika Dinsmore and I reading an excerpt from “Listen,” Paul Squires masterpiece and which serves as both an epigram and a dedication since the book is, in part, dedicated to him.
Here are the links to the rest of the reading: Read more…
In part one of this three part post by my friend Grant Marcus, he says that THE MAIN LESSON TO LEARN FROM JAPAN IS: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PEACEFUL ATOM. Grant’s a poet, peace activist and more. A registered nurse for 26 years, he was co-founder of the Abalone Alliance, a group that opposed the licensing of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, and was a spokesperson for the Abalone Alliance from 1973-1986. He is also founder of Nurses for Social Responsibility. He was arrested at Diablo Canyon seven times, protesting the use of nuclear power near a faultline.
In Part Two he discusses NUCLEAR POWER IN CALIFORNIA. Part Three considers HIDDEN COSTS AND NUCLEAR WASTE.
The disaster in Japan recalls an old question, is nuclear power worth those “tolerable” fatalities? Are a few to a few hundred, to thousands of deaths tolerable if it’s your mother, your father, your two year old child, your grandmother?
Is it worth it if we, the public, are held hostage by the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe in San Onofre or Diablo Canyon, when both utilities are surrounded by faultlines, and have been called into question regarding earthquake preparedness? Are the plants built to withstand mother nature, and its fault systems?
The San Onofre plant has already experienced the brink of disaster, when mice, that’s right, mice ate through electrical lines, which provided power to circulating cooling water furnishing the reactor core.
The Diablo (devil) Canyon Nuclear Power Plant is the most controversial power plant ever built in the U.S. The Abalone Alliance was formed when California politicians failed to legislate adequate safety standards for nuclear reactors built on faultlines. In 1977, 1,500 people demonstrated against the plant and 47 were arrested. Four years later, 10,000 people rallied and 487 people were arrested. In September of 1981, there was a march of 30,000 up the coast, and 1,960 were arrested, including 40 professors, and the entire San Luis Obispo City Council. Ed Asner and Jackson Browne were held with the others at a college gynasium, acting as a temporary detention center.
At the end of a ten-day civil disobedience, an engineer discovered a mirror image reversal in the seismic blueprints. PG&E had designed one of its Diablo facilities backwards. The NRC approved the plant anyway. Read more…
My friend Grant Marcus says that THE MAIN LESSON TO LEARN FROM JAPAN IS: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A PEACEFUL ATOM.
When I was young, easily influenced, and a science fiction nut, I thought nuclear power was the answer to all our problems. When I was in elementary school and we took a tour of the nuclear power plant of Diablo, I was even more sold. My parents and their close friends also thought that nuclear power would solve all our energy needs.
Fast forward 20 or 30 years and you find me adamantly against nuclear power, traveling to the nuclear test sire in Nevada, and participating in protests. Nuclear power, while it seemed like the answer, was too dangerous. Until I was confident about what we’d do with the waste, I wasn’t going to support nuclear power.
A few days ago, Grant sent me the following email about what’s going on in Japan with the damaged nuclear reactors and he gave me permission to post it for my readers.
Grant’s a poet, peace activist and more. A registered nurse for 26 years, he was co-founder of the Abalone Alliance, a group that opposed the licensing of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, and was a spokesperson for the Abalone Alliance from 1973-1986. He is also founder of Nurses for Social Responsibility. He was arrested at Diablo Canyon seven times, protesting the use of nuclear power near a faultline.
PART ONE of THREE PARTS–
Part One–Japan
Part Two–California
Part Three–Nuclear Power: Hidden Costs
In the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, on August 1945, over 65 years ago, hundreds of thousands were killed, and hundreds of thousands more lost their lives from radiation poisoning over generations.
It was an atomic bomb in World War II, but it was nuclear reactors designed by GE on March 11, 2011. Although we all know Japan is now an ally of the U.S., and that a past disaster was from a weapon of war, and the current disaster is from atoms of peace, it is the lives that have and will be effected, and the body, receiving radiation, which cannot distinguish the difference between war and peace.
Three GE engineers knew that same fact when they quit the nuclear industry 35 years ago. They knew the catastrophic dangers implied by
the building of nuclear power plants, and the faulty designs they, themselves had created.
And so an engineer named Hubbard, and an engineer named Minor, and an engineer named Bridenbaugh quit GE, because their conscience could no longer justify the jobs they were doing.
Dale Bridenbaugh, one of those engineers, stepped forward again after the catastrophic accident in Fukushima Japan, because his fears had been realized. Those same reactors he had warned us against in 1976, were now melting down in Japan. And he knew then and knows now there are still 31 of those plants, near the age of retirement, operating in the United States today. His conscience, again, would not let him be silent.
The GE design is an erroneous, antiquated system. It’s secondary containment vessel, visible to us as the reactor shell, is too small a chamber, particularly for MOX, a new nuclear fuel, made from breeder reactors, consisting of “agglominates,” or pockets of plutonium, which contain greater heat and power, and health hazards. A small amount of airborne plutonium can cause an epidemic of cancers worldwide.
The design also poorly reinforces the reactor, making it unable to endure pressure released by the core when it overheats. Weak reinforcement increases the susceptibility of a containment explosion. And, if the core completely melts down at a GE plant, it is likely to melt through the weaker floor, in what is called “China Syndrome.” Hence the movie of the same, released 32 years ago, nearlyto the day of Japan’s nuclear tragedy.
What most nuclear engineers know by now, in spite of the silence and deceit from TOPEC, is that there is already a partial meltdown at the Fukushima site, where GE reactors continue to vent toxic doses of radiation.
How do engineers know this? Read more…
Ojai WordFest Update!
I won the Ojai WordFest slam on Wednesday with my team mate Danika Dinsmore hot on my heals! The event was lots of fun and newby host Georgia Menides did great (with a little tutoring on hosting from Danika and I!) Georgia’s a natural at hosting and I hope she does more.
Last night’s Living Room Style Open Mic reading at Big Buddha Lounge also went really well. Danika and I co-hosted it and we had nearly 2 dozen people in attendance, more than half of whom shared their own work. Next month Big Buddha and I are talking about holing a National Poetry Month reading there–I’ll let you know as that evolves!
Tonight Friday March 25, I’ll be at Well Red from about 7:45-10pm where I will have a very brief reading from my new book Middle of the Night Poems From Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press) and signing around 8:45pm during Ojai WordFest’s Lit Crawl at Los Caporales Restaurant & Tequila Bar (307 E Ojai Ave on the patio next to Libbey Bowl and across from the Arcade).
My good friend the poet and novelist
Danika Dinsmore will be MC; a collective toast to authors with new works is at 9pm. Sequioa Hamilton is hosting it and the Ventura County Writers Club is sponsoring it. Learn more here about Lit Crawl events:http://ojaiwordfest.wordpress.com/calendar/friday-march-25/lit-crawl/ It’s free!
Tomorrow Saturday March 26 I will be at POETRY BOOTCAMP with DANIKA DINSMORE.
She’s teaching the class in two sessions–$99 each or both for $149. You’ll get a shot of creative adrenalin in this exercise
-driven poetry class doing a number of inspiring “pen to paper” writing workouts. Danika brings to the workshop table innovative exercises in spontaneous composition and various experiments in form which will help break through writer’s block or resistance.
REGISTER NOW. 2 Sessions Available: 9am – noon or 2pm – 5pm
And now, as promised, here’s the schedule for tonight’s reading: Read more…
Art Predator has been on a whirlwind ride promoting my new poetry book, Middle of the Night Poems from Daughter to Mother which collects poems from the 3:15 experiment from 2002-2010 and which came out on 3/15 with a featured reading at the Ventura Artists Union, then a book launch with Danika Dinsmore and art opening at the El Jardin Courtyard on St Patrick’s Day with a mini-reading, then the drizzly Ojai WordFest on Saturday March 19 where I also read. This week will be busy too with more readings and adventures! I hope to see you at one of these readings but if you can’t, you can always order my book directly from en theos press!
via The Write Alley
a bit on why & how to attend workshops & readings
Writing is the best way to improve your writing. But attending and participating in workshops and readings will also make your writing better. Read on to find out how to find readings and workshops and to see who will be reading in the coming months at the Artists Union Gallery, Ventura.
via The Write Alley
Friday August 1, 2003
it’s 315 time again
i go to lie on my side to write
but the baby is there
i can’t lie on the baby
it’s like lying on a watermelon
large and hard
the baby sleeps right now
no movement–i’m awkward
trying to find a way
to comfortably write i’m strained
as constrained as the baby at 29 weeks
we are alike today in that way
both trying to get comfortable
to get some sleep
the baby can see light
a red glow seeps through my belly
can hear sound but probably not
the crickets outside or
daddy making his going to sleep sigh
hmm mmm mmmm he says
the notebook too is pregnant
uncomfortable it doesn’t
want to open to bend back
to receive anymore
it too is slightly bent
out of shape its spirals
damaged well traveled but
empty of much writing
as i slide down scoot down
slip down off my pillows
losing my great grip on my place
the angle of the pen
the lightness of the ink
indicates betrays its discomfort
the pen is pregnant too
pregnant with poems with desire
to be a useful tool
yet more than a tool of transmission
a tool of transformation
i too am that tool
one of transmission of transformation
the baby in my belly
the pen in my hand
This is one of the poems I read last Tuesday March 15, 2011 at 7:30pm in the Artists Union Gallery for the first reading from my new poetry collection Middle of the Night Poems From Daughter to Mother :: Mother to Son (en theos press 2011). I’ll be posting links to all the poems I read next Monday so you can experience a “virtual” reading if you weren’t able to be there in person!
Pictured above is the broadside that was published in ArtLife Limited Editions in November 2003; it’s also on the inside cover of Middle of the Night. The original painting of my pregnant belly by Alan Sailer (with some manipulation by me) is a recurring motif in the book (it’s pictured in color on the back of the book too).
After Alan painted the clock, my belly was photographed by Tim Timmermans and I then used an ink printer in blue then copied the poem on top in black. Broadsides were signed and numbered and published in ArtLife Limited Editions in November 2003. I still have some for sale if you are interested. If you click on the image, it will enlarge and you can see more detail.
For more poetry by bloggers from all over the world, catch the Monday Poetry Train!
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