I was lucky enough to interview Poet Barbara LaMorticella for Reading Local, where the following transcript first appeared.
Barbara LaMorticella lives in the woods outside Portland, Oregon, and tries to see both the forest and the trees. Co-host of KBOO radio’s Talking Earth, she has given over 200 poetry readings. Her poems range freely from the personal to the social and political, from the world of nature to the world of the spirit. She was a founding member, actress and writer with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and her readings are often surprising, sometimes inspiring, and always entertaining. Her second collection of poems, Rain on Waterless Mountain, published by Dan Raphael’s 26 Books press, was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and she won the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Outstanding Contribution to Oregon Literary Arts and was awarded the first Oregon Literary Arts fellowship for women writers. She will be reading at Joe’s Cellar in NW Portland on Tuesday, September 20th at 7:00PM.
Shawna Harch) What originally drew you to poetry? Was there a major turning point in your life that led you to where you are today?
Barbara LaMorticella) I loved poetry in high school, and had long discussions about it with friends. I was always interested in the expressive arts, and acted, directed and played music in school. The school considered me a brilliant student, but I dressed like a bohemian, didn’t like shopping, and was very much the black sheep of my family, which had great contempt for both arts and intellectual endeavors. I left home early, married at 19 and had a child at 20. My husband and I were founding members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. We left San Francisco in the late 60s. I began writing poetry seriously after we moved to rural Marin County, as it seemed to me that that was an art that could be practiced with nothing but a tool to write with. I pretty much figured I would always be poor ― a calculation that has proven accurate! – and I felt poetry was an art that nothing could take away. I still think that, and see a boom in the writing of poetry as the economic world falls apart.
SH) Can you explain how and why you got involved with KBOO and The Talking Earth program?
BLM) Walt Curtis started Talking Earth, at first as a weekly show. He got tired of doing four shows a month and farmed half the month out to Doug Spangle and to Lois Lewis, a sweet black poet who has since died. When Doug’s job made it impossible for him to do the show any more, he asked me if I would like to.
At about this time, in 1986, I noticed a woman showing up at many of my poetry readings. I went out of my way to speak to her, as she was always alone and listening so attentively. Unbeknown to me, she was Kathleen Stephenson, a program director at KBOO. I never asked her about it, but I suspect she was auditioning me, as Doug had recommended me to take his place. When Lois couldn’t do her week any more, I took over that slot also, and from then on hosted half the Talking Earth shows. Read more…
We stand in the rain
watching for our bus, and the firs
shake their needles
at a patchwork of snow.
It’s now we remind ourselves
why we left our jackets
in the trembling hands of mom,
stitched with worry.
Sleeve droop. Hood sag. Zipper
teeth wide and waiting.
It’s not so much that we think
we can fabricate the sun
with our wills or that
grey is a dark-shaded blue. No.
We just want to feel the sky
slide off the blanket of our skin,
to know wetness
without turning soggy inside.
I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Dave Jarecki for Reading Local. The following is a transcript of our conversation (and first appeared here).
Dave Jarecki owns Breakerboy Communications, a writing firm that helps businesses, individuals and non-profit organizations communicate through story. In addition, he facilitates writing workshops for youth and adult writers throughout the greater Portland area. His fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in a number of journals and publications, including Cloudbank Literary Magazine, INUR Magazine, Baseball Savvy, and Reed Magazine. He and his wife Courtney live in NE Portland with their newborn daughter, Lazadae.
Shawna Harch) I often hear students ask you, “What is a poem?” How do you respond to this question?
Dave Jarecki) When I took my first poetry workshop in 1998 at Penn State as an undergrad, Bruce Weigl was teaching. He was a fantastic teacher, and he asked this same question on one of the last days of spring semester. We had to go around the room and answer in one sentence. I remember I compared a poem to Steve Carlton’s slider, which would cut low and inside at the batter’s ankles. Right-hand hitters would swing at that thing and literally spin in a circle.
I know I react to the stuff that hits me viscerally and emotionally first. I think I always will. Hence my comparison to the slider. Even when I’m looking at Peter Sears‘ work or John Morrison’s work (we have an ongoing workshop), I’m doing it from a visceral place. Then I go in and start cracking the shell and looking at the poem from a more academic and mental place, if you will.
With my own work, I want to create the clear image and message. Even when I’m trying to be obscure, I still want there to be a certain level of clarity. The first draft is as much a poem as the last. But the drafting process is key – things shouldn’t be just visceral. I want people to say, “He’s spent some time on this. I see why he chose this form.”
Poetry is a thing people do, but then it’s also this broader essence. You hear people describe a woman’s walk as, “poetry in motion.” But you don’t hear people say, “she has a five-paragraph essay about her.” Read more…
Worth noting: Northwest Mushrooms and Robbing the Bees.
I absolutely love this hotel photo series by Jackie Munro, who completed the project for her thesis series. As she explains, “These photographs are the record of what I saw when I visited hotel rooms after people checked out and before [the hotel rooms] were cleaned. Journeying through the traces of others’ journeys, I used my camera to punctuate the sameness that is moving from one place to another. I never got tired of simply being in each room, seeing the echoes of great spaces traversed.”
I also thoroughly enjoyed reading Jackie’s interview with Time Out New York.
This was too damn cute not to post.
The Guardian recently published “Ten rules for writing fiction,” which featured tips from a diverse group of writers. I was so inspired by the post, I pulled out my favorite insights and rearranged them in a particular order to help myself generate a better writing process. I think that no matter what kind of writing you do, these tips are extremely helpful.
So here they are:
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” -Colm Tóibín
“Learn poems by heart.” -Helen Dunmore
“Read. Read everything you can lay hands on. I always advise people who want to write a fantasy or science fiction or romance to stop reading everything in those genres and start reading everything else from Bunyan to Byatt.” -Michael Moorcock
“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.” -PD James
“Always carry a notebook. And I mean always. The short-term memory only retains information for three minutes; unless it is committed to paper you can lose an idea forever.” -Will Self
“Record moments, fleeting impressions, overheard dialogue, your own sadnesses and bewilderments and joys.” -Michael Morpurgo / Ted Hughes
“Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.” -Zadie Smith
“Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.” -Neil Gaiman
“Reread, rewrite, reread, rewrite. If it still doesn’t work, throw it away. It’s a nice feeling, and you don’t want to be cluttered with the corpses of poems and stories which have everything in them except the life they need.” -Helen Dunmore
“Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.” -Elmore Leonard
“Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.” -Margaret Atwood
“Do change your mind. Good ideas are often murdered by better ones.” -Roddy Doyle
“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.” -Neil Gainman
“Think big and stay particular.” -Andrew Motion
“Honour the miraculousness of the ordinary.” -Andrew Motion
“Try to think of others’ good luck as encouragement to yourself.” -Richard Ford
“[Remember] the reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.” -Jonathan Frazen
“A story needs rhythm. Read it aloud to yourself. If it doesn’t spin a bit of magic, it’s missing something.” -Esther Freud
“Do, occasionally, give in to temptation. Wash the kitchen floor, hang out the washing. It’s research.” -Roddy Doyle
“Only bad writers think that their work is really good.” -Anne Enright
“Have humility. Older/more experienced/more convincing writers may offer rules and varieties of advice. Consider what they say. However, don’t automatically give them charge of your brain, or anything else – they might be bitter, twisted, burned-out, manipulative, or just not very like you.” -AL Kennedy
“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.” -Zadie Smith
“Write [something] you’d like to read. If you wouldn’t read it, why would anybody else? Don’t write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book’s ready.” -Hilary Mantel
“Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.” -Rose Tremain
“Defend your work. Organisations, institutions and individuals will often think they know best about your work – especially if they are paying you. When you genuinely believe their decisions would damage your work – walk away. Run away. The money doesn’t matter that much.” -AL Kennedy
“To cheer yourself up, read biographies of writers who went insane.” -Colm Tóibín
“Take no notice of anyone you don’t respect.” -Jeanette Winterson
“Defend yourself. Find out what keeps you happy, motivated and creative.” -AL Kennedy
“Remember you love writing. It wouldn’t be worth it if you didn’t. If the love fades, do what you need to and get it back.” -AL Kennedy
