List Poem by Joe Somoza

In poetry class, we’re working on list poems this week. One way to do it is to sketch your surroundings–in detail. Poet Joseph Somoza has for many years used his backyard in Las Cruces as if it were Paris–that is, as his muse.

The Clouds

It’s New Year’s again.
I wonder what Frank O’Hara’s
thinking. The clouds
are roiling to the north,
difficult to tell
what they’ll be bringing.
Under the clouds,
it’s just us chickens
among the houses and streets
leading to the desert that seems
empty wilderness—if you’re
from the city, and brought only
dancing shoes along.
Because nothing
can be empty that’s so
full of itself—such as Orlando,
moving thickly in winter fur
across the yard
to nap under a yucca.
A siren up Missouri Avenue
diminishes and disappears.
Someone’s dying or getting
born, going
or coming.
The clouds might know.

sfpoetry.org

Icelandic Rune Poem

We are working on alphabet poems in poetry class.

Anna Garforth

***

The Icelandic Rune Poem
(in Old Icelandic)
Fé er frænda róg
ok flæðar viti
ok grafseiðs gata
aurum fylkir.
Úr er skýja grátr
ok skára þverrir
ok hirðis hatr.
umbre vísi
Þurs er kvenna kvöl
ok kletta búi
ok varðrúnar verr.
Saturnus þengill.
Óss er algingautr
ok ásgarðs jöfurr,
ok valhallar vísi.
Jupiter oddviti.
Reið er sitjandi sæla
ok snúðig ferð
ok jórs erfiði.
iter ræsir.
Kaun er barna böl
ok bardaga [för]
ok holdfúa hús.
flagella konungr.
Hagall er kaldakorn
ok krapadrífa
ok snáka sótt.
grando hildingr.
Nauð er Þýjar þrá
ok þungr kostr
ok vássamlig verk.
opera niflungr.
Íss er árbörkr
ok unnar þak
ok feigra manna fár.
glacies jöfurr.
Ár er gumna góði
ok gott sumar
algróinn akr.
annus allvaldr.
Sól er skýja skjöldr
ok skínandi röðull
ok ísa aldrtregi.
rota siklingr.
Týr er einhendr áss
ok ulfs leifar
ok hofa hilmir.
Mars tiggi.
Bjarkan er laufgat lim
ok lítit tré
ok ungsamligr viðr.
abies buðlungr.
Maðr er manns gaman
ok moldar auki
ok skipa skreytir.
homo mildingr.
Lögr er vellanda vatn
ok viðr ketill
ok glömmungr grund.
lacus lofðungr.
Ýr er bendr bogi
ok brotgjarnt járn
ok fífu fárbauti.
arcus ynglingr.

***

The Icelandic Rune Poem
(in Modern English)
Wealth
source of discord among kinsmen
and fire of the sea
and path of the serpent.
Shower
lamentation of the clouds
and ruin of the hay-harvest
and abomination of the shepherd.
Giant
torture of women
and cliff-dweller
and husband of a giantess.
God
aged Gautr
and prince of Ásgarðr
and lord of Vallhalla.
Riding
joy of the horsemen
and speedy journey
and toil of the steed.
Ulcer
disease fatal to children
and painful spot
and abode of mortification.
Hail
cold grain
and shower of sleet
and sickness of serpents.
Constraint
grief of the bond-maid
and state of oppression
and toilsome work.
Ice
bark of rivers
and roof of the wave
and destruction of the doomed.
Plenty
boon to men
and good summer
and thriving crops.
Sun
shield of the clouds
and shining ray
and destroyer of ice.
Týr
god with one hand
and leavings of the wolf
and prince of temples.
Birch
leafy twig
and little tree
and fresh young shrub.
Man
delight of man
and augmentation of the earth
and adorner of ships.
Water
eddying stream
and broad geysir
and land of the fish.
Yew
bent bow
and brittle iron
and giant of the arrow.

***

There were several rune poems in Old Norse, basically set up as alphabet poems. Like many alphabet poems, they don’t attempt to create holistic narratives but essentially are a way of remembering the order of things. This one is so beautiful, though, with its tiny definitions that seem like the answer to riddles, that I know I won’t be able to resist its influence in terms of my own writing.
The work is off the web–no translator given–but thanks to whoever did it.

Edie Tsong’s Snow Poems Project with Students

Check out the corner of Paseo de Peralta and Alameda. The New Mexico School for the Arts is lit with poems–installation by artist Edie Tsong and text by students.

Edie Tsong says–“The real beauty of the project is from inside the building, where light passes through. and throughout the day the poems create unexpected shadows around the room. teachers have also commented how shadows fleet across the wall as cars go by.”

Images: Elizabeth Lende, nmsa
Sabina Hayutin, nmsa
Kirsten Mundt’s poem at Marji gallery, downtown

Two Versions of a Poem by Sudasi Clement–Your Preference?

Sudasi, poetry editor of the Santa Fe Literary Review, has kindly allowed us to look at two versions of one of her poems. Which do you prefer? Why? Basically, do you want that extra stanza in or out?

Elegy for My Brother’s Hair

He was a king once, and you were his crown—
waist-length waves of brown threaded with gold.
During his brief reign we swam in the river,
strolled home through the center of town.

The eyes of a woman across the street 
found him, his splendid braid 
come undone, wild mane in the wind—
she walked into a telephone pole.

Fine locks, you’ve gone the way of rosy skin
and easy muscle. You’ve followed our sleek black
dog with the white-tipped tail to the kingdom 
of blue-berried, woods-wandering days. 

—————————–

Elegy for My Brother’s Hair

He was a king once, and you were his crown—
waist-length waves of brown threaded with gold.
During his brief reign we swam in the river,
strolled home through the center of town.

The eyes of a woman across the street 
found him, his splendid braid 
come undone, wild mane in the wind—
she walked into a telephone pole.

Today he called: I don’t know how to wear
my hair, there’s so little of it left on my head.
I cast my vote for clean-shaven, rings 
in each ear, a tattoo on the back of his skull.

Fine locks, you’ve gone the way of rosy skin
and easy muscle. You’ve followed our sleek black
dog with the white-tipped tail to the kingdom 
of blue-berried, woods-wandering days. 

Philip Levine on Ruth Stone

This is from the New York Times. I’m reblogging it for all the readers of Ruth Stone, not to mention Philip Levine. It is a marveloudly fitting homage.

Ruth Stone, b. 1915

By Philip Levine
Must have been nearly 20 years ago, and I was scheduled to give a noon poetry reading in Paterson, N.J. My host, the poet Maria Mazziotti Gillan, picked me up on a sunny September morning across from the big post office on Eighth Avenue, and through the tunnel to Jersey we went. It was then that Maria told me I was only half the show; the other half was a woman named Ruth Stone. I would get the same “honorarium” (we are so pretentious in the poetry world), so not to fret. I’d never heard of Ruth Stone, and I figured she was an upstart from the corps of 10,000 American poets younger and better than I. We stopped at a humble house deep in a civilized part of New Jersey. When Maria honked her horn, nothing happened, so I was dispatched to go to the door. An elderly woman answered. She seemed out of breath or nervous or both. (No, I’ve never had that effect on elderly women, or on younger ones either.) “We’re here to pick up Ruth Stone,” I said. “Is this her house?” It was the right house, and the elderly woman I was speaking to — actually she looked to be about my own age — was Ruth Stone herself. “I must finish dressing,” she said. “Have a seat.” Up the stairs she went. I heard a door close, then another, then a toilet flush, and down the stairs she came, looking exactly as she did when she answered my knock. “And who might you be?” she said, knowing damn well who I was, and then she gave me a moment of her marvelous laughter.

Photograph by David CarlsonI realized later Ruth was neither out of breath nor nervous: she was excited to be giving a public poetry reading and to be paid for it. Excited to be finally honored for the work she’d done for decades in an America that rarely honors or pays its poets. The reading took place in a modest, filled-to-capacity room in what appeared to be a school building in downtown Paterson. The schedule called for me to read last, but I insisted that I go before Ruth, that we observe the rule of the alphabet. Really, I just wanted to get it over with before I became nervous. And I also knew that if Ruth read before me, I’d be busy plotting my own reading and unable to focus on her work.
I do not remember what I read, and I expect no one in the audience does, either. Ruth simply became the show, and not because she was an especially good reader. In fact, that day her voice was ragged, almost strident. So what made her the unforgettable one? The amazing things she said between the amazing poems she read. On the surface, she seemed to be having a hell of a good time, moving effortlessly from poem to poem, barely pausing between them, never quite allowing you to digest what you heard before she moved on. Her chat and her poems were loaded with pugnacity, sass and humor, but they were also painful and desperate. She read and spoke of betrayal, rage, suicide, loneliness, despair. There are some poets who, when they read, leave at the end of each poem a little silence to be filled by the sighs of the audience as it recoils from so much wisdom in such an exquisite package. Ruth was not one of them. I think we all felt her need to unburden herself of an enormous weight of language and imagery. She’d already waited too long.
Why at 65 was I just discovering one of the truly significant poets of my era? Let me give two self-serving answers to justify my ignorance: we have never had an effective means to discover the best poets among us — think Emily Dickinson — and Ruth never learned how to play the game. Perhaps she took Whitman seriously when he urged the poets of the future never to humble themselves to anyone.
When I heard that Ruth died, I went back to my journals to see if I’d written anything about that incandescent afternoon all those years ago. In my notes I found some random lines of poetry that I must have copied as Ruth read: “and then the apple trees were new,” “it was the same worm eating the same fruit,” “they barely let you through the checkout line,” “the shock comes slowly as an afterthought,” “now cold borscht alone in a bare kitchen.” I kept looking for the line “Things will be different,” but I didn’t write it in my journal. Whenever I think of Ruth, I don’t think of the hennaed hair or her beautiful features bearing the lines of age and grief. I think of that line and the time I first heard it.
Ruth lived in the only world of poetry that matters, the one without publishers, awards, prestige, competition, jealousy, money — the one we might call “poetry eternal,” the same world the great poems live in. Now she is there forever.

Philip Levine is the poet laureate of the United States.

Glass in Durango, Colorado

By Hokanson and Dix–http://boarglass.com

Why Devon Miller-Duggan’s Christmas Tree is Still Up

One of the weird things about having been raised as a New Critic—or maybe it’s just a natural inclination that learning to close-read Eliot in the 9th grade brought to the front of my brain/personality—is that I do tend to read pretty much everything as having layers of meaning for me to pull apart. Which is mostly great fun. So I helplessly apply that even to stuff like noticing when different neighbors dump their Christmas trees. Which means that I get a nasty sort of smile every year when the first tree to hit the curb is outside the house of the guy who runs Campus Crusade for Christ. His wife NEVER smiles at anyone in the neighborhood. Neither do his kids. I’ve never understood evangelicals who are grim—I mean, if you’re so sure of your own salvation, why wouldn’t you be cheerful?

But this post is actually about Christmas trees. Maybe you were hoping that you wouldn’t have to hear any more about it until after Halloween. Well, I’m not done with it. I don’t mean the theological side of it, not entirely, though I am much more oriented toward Incarnation than toward Resurrection as a Christian. Nope, I’m talking about the excessive, exhausting, blithering decorative practice of Christmas. Or, more to the point, why my tree is still up and my lights are still on.

I was taught to decorate a tree by my father. My father was a dentist. Most dentists are profoundly artisanal by nature and very often aesthetically obsessive. My father certainly was. Decorating the tree was a very specific and slightly crazed process: First you put the lights on and make sure they are perfectly, beautifully, lavishly placed. Then you turn the lights off to put the ornaments on—bigger ornaments toward the bottom. Every ornament must be hung so that it can hang freely (the tree should be able to shiver slightly when anyone walks by), and if it doesn’t, then you can trim the branch to make it hang right—but you must trim the branch so that it doesn’t look trimmed. You must make sure the tree is lavishly arrayed in ornaments. Then you do the tinsel—one piece at a time, each piece hanging freely (scissors help here). Then you turn the lights back on. And your tree is magical. God, my father made a beautiful tree. You can imagine how he was about the lights outside. The angriest I ever saw him was one year when local boys went on a bulb-shattering spree. Those boys were very lucky that he never caught them.

I’m much less obsessive than he was (my family might dispute this), and do different things with the tree every year (all red, all green, all this or that), but I am still finicky as all get out. I gave up on tinsel 30 years ago when I realized the cats were eating it, though.

Since a tree is essentially a huge floral arrangement, and floral arrangements are, by definition (not a huge fan of silk, me) ephemeral, why would you expect it to last very long? Besides, the needles fall off, don’t they? Not always, esp. if you’re careful about what sort of tree you buy. Still, the holiday is over by 12th Night/Epiphany, so why’s my tree still up? Aside from the fact that it still has its needles.

It makes my husband goofily happy. He grieves when it finally comes down every year on his birthday (mid-February) or right before Lent, whichever comes first. He grew up with Eugene-O’Neil-Irish-family Christmasses (ever seen the SNL Disfunctional Family Christmas skit?). And Christmas was pretty much the one thing my family was good at. Seamus has rejoiced in the folderol and fa-la-la of my family’s practice for 35 years and shows no sign of stopping. So the tree stays up and the outside lights stay on to brighten winter nights for as long as we can keep them. Unlike my mother (who lives in a bed-sit on our ground floor), I don’t actually have to fight him to take things down by that time. She’d leave her stuff up all year if I wasn’t able to convince her that it’s more fun when it comes out (the day after Thanksgiving, NOT the day after Halloween) if it’s been packed a way for a few months.

Besides, didn’t Dickens suggest that the world would be a kinder place if we all kept Christmas in our hearts?
***
Read more by Devon.

Concrete poem by Anna Garforth

http://crosshatchling.co.uk/

To see more by British designer Anna Garforth, http://crosshatchling.co.uk/

Should I Try and Turn this Dream into a Poem?

I had a dream a few weeks ago that has stayed with me still. I’d like to use it in a poem, but how?

The dream: Opens like a French movie (in French). A voice over says: “It was snowing, but then again, it was always snowing during the ice age.”
A typical French movie heroine–pretty, young, sad, short dark hair,–is in the Metro. Beneath a cloud of steam–beneath a heating grate–she sees a band of old stone age hunters walking along silently.
As the dream/movie progresses, her life becomes entwined with theirs, and the two stories echo each other. The modern woman–the ancient tribe–experience the same things: betrayal, trust, lost, redemption.

Then I woke up.

I could just accept the pleasure of this vision. I happen to love the Neolithic, and think about it a lot. The dream tells me people are the same, whoever they are. The dream also tells me we modern urbanites are alienated from our true nature. And that we aren’t meant to be alone.

Maybe this shouldn’t become a poem. But if it did, how?

Azimuth: Writing on Walls

This project has been archived at Santa Fe Poetry Broadside. I’m also adding it here.
Azimuth: Writing on Walls
Miriam Sagan, John Tritica, Sabra Moore, Terry Mulert, Phyllis Hoge,
Dale Harris, Stefi Weisburd, Paula Castillo, Steve Peters, Mera Wolf,
Ephia, J. A. Lee, JB Bryan, Abigail Doan, Suzanne Sbarge, Jeff Gburek

Type and installation design, Kim Arthun; photographs by Matthew Marston

Miriam Sagan

Statement About the Project
AZIMUTH: Writing On Walls
There are several collaborative sources of inspiration for this installation. In 2007-2008 I was a frequent visitor to The Land/An Art Site and created a long poem or “map” of the site. An outtake of this was installed as a sculpture “Laundry Line Koan.” But as in many creative experiences, there were leftover images, poems and ideas about the site. When E. Nuevo asked me to create a text that could be written on the walls of the LAND/gallery I went back to the original experience. Since boundary lines and directions were important, I focused on the four directions for four sections of poetry. As in a planetarium, these directions are both actual (the walls of the gallery) and a metaphoric closed system with each other.
I then set up a collaborative process with four small teams of poets. The North team was given the last line of my North section, etc. The poets added a link or stanza in turn, passing the poem by e-mail. This process was a lose version of the Japanese renga or renku, where all poets involved see the entire work as it evolves, unlike the surrealist exquisite corpse poem where much of the work is hidden until the end. Essentially the teams of poets were writing free verse renga, or linked verse. Of the fifteen poets, the majority are from Albuquerque but are also from throughout New Mexico, the country, and the world.
The last part of the project is a scroll which has one final remaining stanza of the group poem. Visitors to the gallery can add a link or stanza to the scroll at will. Metaphorically, the poem can then roll unfettered into the world. The final collaborative element is the actual writing on walls. Kim Arthun has designed the typography so that the text had its own visual integrity. In this way it goes from being words to being environment, or back to the original source of the poem in the first place.
***
Miriam Sagan–SOUTH

South

Azimuth–arc
distance between fixed horizon
and moving object
(from the Arabic)

like a stone wall
and solstice
the body the sea the past

how as a child
you were sure
you’d see Easter Island—
after all
how far could it be
once you got
away

***
John Tritica, Sabra Moore, Terry Mulert, Phyllis Hoge–SOUTH

South

good fortune
of the eyes
took over

you used to wear glasses
for distance
you engaged
in abstract thinking

while sparrow and redstarts
saw with their feet
and dreamt of walking
without fear
of touching ground

yet knowing that dreams do not confront

the real cat hidden in the clover
they fluttered their feathers and took to the air

phrase eye sets flight
sculpts the wing
describes paw track    tendons
relieves light touch freely

fractured burr
one spot of green
they settle and forget

their pantomime

suddenly mistakes drift down through branches
old plums, love letters, cotton parachutes
a portrait of you sitting on the wall

the sound of dead leaves is
a chance

—a meaningless chance-rattle in the chill
and the ringbirds scatter
sketching a flight on blue paper

***

Miriam Sagan–NORTH

North

yellow sunflowers
on both sides
of the road
double yellow line
only color
in this overcast
hand-tinted
late afternoon
photograph

***

Dale Harris, Stefi Weisburd, Paula Castillo–NORTH

North

this dry, dappled light
obscures some features,
exalts the rest.

face blurred by a struck match,
a james dean look-a-like,
makes a long shadow in the prairie grass

his flatness a leaf
on the edge
of the pig pen and trailer

from an attic trunk —
smells of camphor, vanilla
ribbon tied letters, an Army hat;
dreams that outlast the dreamer.

come, set your camera down
step into the wind-blown scents,
lie on the grass like a leaf
shadowless

be tiny and haughty
with rolled up fists and wrappers
the hole in your pocket
provokes the ant

***

Miriam Sagan–EAST

East

an unembroidered bird
flaps in the wind
air’s fossil prayer flag

half moon
whistle
mirror
rustle

packrats steal
my clothespins
wedding slip, white gauze dress flap
I danced the feet off
my stockings
stained the shoes
green with grass

half moon hangs like laundry in the daytime sky
moon that scours
the blue

***

Steve Peters, Mera Wolf, Ephia, J. A. Lee–EAST

East

face of the hillside
wind whistles through cholla spines
the grasses, reverent

renascent, sweet with
seed reaching firm lament
reflected, burnishing stars

 quick
ears of hare, track
center of stone
a perfectly round emptiness
which hangs from
a claw of the juniper

the breeze, shifting, barely rustles
fencepost, cricket, star

nothing to hear
nothing to see
watch and listen
everything trembles

unknown
fecundity anticipating flights
distance
not with standing time
plane beyond place

dry
thin river climbs
  falling
  with
  out
  legs

where shadows
pool under low branches

where’s the moon?

***

Miriam Sagan–WEST

West

Venus as evening star
gone (underworld)
rising as morning
ballcourt
Pleiades
twins     east-west

flooded salt flats
choked with clouds

light that limps
on its uneven legs
from equinox to solstice

(what is it)
a nest
for the invisible
bird.

***

JB Bryan, Abigail Doan, Suzanne Sbarge–WEST

West

old song
as path with same moon
known by aim
& agile glimpse
blinking in the bright light
I hear
wings flapping
bird gurgling
threading & lacing the horizon
with seeded strands of footpath
finds broken twigs,
scratched earth
reveal who has come before
mingled with my own track
dusty boots stumble,
leashes tangle
shiny crows laugh in unison
only the train’s whistle
pierces this sanctuary
like potsherds
that poke through the topsoil
and reveal the migrations of travelers past
as always, what is new is what is old
who listened to what sound then?
eating juji fruit to pass the time
chewing loudly
I drop a few so I can be found
cholla sentinels mark the way
as time resonates
  with lunar feathers

***

Opening Poem on the Scroll
• Jeff Gburek

By Light, By Dark
(opening poem on the scroll)

by light

stillness of surface, slated
to crumble, when a rage of water rips through the arroyo
no longer seco
water on which torn boughs tremble and bob
waded through, brown stream
full and blinding sun

by dark

the nightlife of quick society crickets
and above, stars near enough
to seem some earth-seeking seeds
rather an image of me, man
seeking beyond
thrown into the limits of his world

***

About the Poets

Miriam Sagan
Miriam Sagan was born in Manhattan, raised in New Jersey, and educated in Boston. She holds a B.A. with honors from Harvard University and an M.A. in Creative Writing from Boston University. She settled in Santa Fe in 1984. She is the author of over twenty books, and directs the creative writing program at Santa Fe Community College.
John Tritica, Sabra Moore, Terry Mulert, Phyliss Hoge : South

John Tritica’s translations of Swedish poet Niklas Törnlund All Things Measure Time appeared in 1992. His books of poems are How Rain Records Its Alphabet (1998) and Sound Remains (2008). A spoken word CD, John Tritica Reads at Acequia Booksellers in Albuquerque, NM, was issued by Vox Audio this year. Together with Mary Rising Higgins, he is a founding member of L)Edge, a poetry circle, which began in 1986.

Sabra Moore is a Texas-born artist and writer living in Abiquiu, New Mexico. Her art work is based on re-interpreting family, social, & natural history through the form of artist’s books and sewn & painted “constructed” sculptures and wall works. She sees herself as a “literate” granddaughter who has synthesized the quiltmaking/storytelling traditions of her rural grandmothers into new forms. She has written and illustrated a book on rock art, Petroglyphs: Ancient Language/ Sacred Art (Clear Light Publishers, 1997) and is currently writing a memoir entitled ON THE MOVE: a Memoir from the Womens’ Art Movement/ New York City 1970-1990.

Terry Mulert began writing and publishing poetry in 1980, and he has continued to pursue this art through readings, performances and publication in literary journals. In May of 2003, one of his poems was selected as an award poem by Plainsongs; a critical essay accompanies its publication. Recently, Mulert’s poems have appeared in The Lilliput Review, Mudfish, Mid-American Poetry Review, The Madison Review, Puerto del Sol, The Chiron Review, and others.

Phyllis Hoge taught for 20 years at the University of Hawai’i before retiring to New Mexico. Her creative achievements in her youth were 3 sons and a daughter, a PhD on Yeats, plus as “Phyllis Thompson” 7 books of poetry and a memoir. In 1966 she initiated the first PITS program in the USA—Haku Mele, “song weaver,” received the Hawai’i Award for Literature in 1995, and in 2007 the Red Shoes Award (for poetry) in Albuquerque.

Dale Harris, Stefi Weisburd, Paula Castillo : North

Dale Harris has made her home in New Mexico since 1993. She organizes the annual Sunflower Festival Poets & Writers Picnic at the historic Shaffer Hotel in Mountainair, N.M. From 2002- 2007, she edited Central Avenue, a monthly poetry journal that sponsored poetry readings in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Her art interests include pottery and book making. She is also a nurse practitioner working in HIV care.

Stefi Weisburd is the author of The Wind-Up Gods (which won the St. Lawrence Book Award) and a poetry collection for children, Barefoot: Poems for Naked Feet (Wordsong, 2008). She is the recipient of a “Discovery”/The Nation prize, a Bread Loaf Scholarship and a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, the American Poetry Review, The Paris Review and other journals.

Paula Castillo Born in 1961 in a small town along the Río Grande in New Mexico, Castillo’s work recombines personal and familiar elements in unusual ways. The man-made microcosms combined with the expansive natural environment are the catalyst for her critical exploration of the systems and spaces we inhabit; places our own lives depend on. Castillo says “I believe strongly that this interior connection to nature is essential to our humanity.” Castillo’s work is concerned with bridging the new field of Complexity Science with culture and art in order to understand and visualize our perceptions and connections with our place on earth. Castillo currently lives and works in Córdova, New Mexico, a tiny village in the mountains north of Santa Fe.
Steve Peters, Mera Wolf, Ephia, J.A. Lee : East

Steve Peters makes music and sound for various contexts and occasions. The work is often site-specific, made with recorded sounds of the environment and found/natural objects, or through exploration of acoustic phenomena, as well as normal instruments and spoken text. He also works as a freelance producer, writer, and curator, and since 1989 has been the Director of Nonsequitur, a non-profit that presents the Wayward Music Series of experimental music in Seattle.

Mera Wolf is a peripatetic teacher currently traveling between the provinces of research and writing. Wolf earned her Ph.D. in Educational Thought and Sociocultural Studies from the University of New Mexico. In addition to her research, she is currently working on a serial novel, a chapbook, and a screenplay. When asked by a student to describe the nature of her profession, she responded, “I’m really a cosmologist.” “That’s just wonderful,” replied the young woman, “Do you also do nails?”

Ephia studied dance with Min Tanaka, Kazuo Ohno, Anzu Furukawa, and Akira Kasai in Japan. Following her interest in ritual dance, she travelled to study under renowned teachers in Ghana, Java and Bali. She holds a BFA in dance from Columbia University, New York City. She danced in the company of the late Anzu Furukawa in Berlin, appearing in Furukawa’s final production, GOYA: La Quinta del Sordo. In 1998, she co-founded Djalma Primordial Science, a performative and pedagogical collaboration with electro-acoustic musician Jeff Gburek.

J. A. Lee has written about the arts for several newspapers and magazines and is the author of a chapbook, Memories of Lost Books. As a writer with a particular interest in art, land and language he has curated two exhibitions for THE LAND/an art site and given workshops on site-based language and writing.

JB Bryan, Abigail Doan, Suzanne Sbarge : West

A virgo and a boomer, J.B. Bryan is poet, painter, potter, graphic designer, publisher of La Alameda Press, former bookseller at Living Batch Bookstore, and a cranky advocate of alternative culture. He was educated in one way or another in Iowa, British Columbia, New Mexico, and California. As a book designer, he has a gained a reputation for distinctive style and classic typography. An impresario-of-sorts, please check out Outpost Performance Space, Duende Poetry Series, and many events hosted by New Mexico Literary Arts, including their upcoming Flea Market. His most recent book is the internationally-acclaimed collection Big Thank You. As a saxophonist, he performs with the Thunderbird Poetry Orkestra in Placitas. As a 35-year semi-native of Albuquerque, he and family have a funky but lovely existence in the North Valley.

Abigail Doan is an internationally exhibited fiber and environmental installation artist based in NYC, Sofia, Bulgaria and Italy. Her eco-textile work is featured on Greenmuseum.org, Art Cloth Text, Hiphonest, Landviews, and in the new book, Green Guide for Artists. She has exhibited with the United Nations Environment Programme and was a 2006 artist in resident at THE LAND/an art site in Mountainair, New Mexico. During 2009 her recycled textile forms will be on view in Fiskars, Finland, and in the Hunterdon Museum of Arts upcoming exhibit, ‘Knitted, Knotted, Netted’.

Suzanne Sbarge is a visual artist, curator and sometimes writer. Her mixed media collage paintings have been exhibited nationally in numerous exhibitions, are in the collections of many local, national and international collectors and is represented at galleries across the United States. She received her B.A. degree in Art History and Studio Arts from Barnard College in New York City and her M.A. degree in Art Education from the University of New Mexico. In addition to her visual art work and writing, she is also a gallery director, curator, graphic designer and arts consultant. She is currently Executive Director of 516 ARTS in Albuquerque. Her poems have been published in Earth to Honey (Riverside Ranch Press, 1995).

Jeff Gburek : By light, by dark

Jeff Gburek is a guitarist /electronic music composer/sound artist currently living in Berlin. He employs extended & prepared guitar techniques, signal processing, open source applications and phonography to create richly textural music, wherein extreme pianissimo, organic object manipulation and silence contrast energetic swells of excited electronics. For 8 years he has worked with dance/theater artist Ephia in Djalma Primordial Science, evolving a praxis of body and sound through performance and pedagogy.

•