Interviewer vs. Interviewer

Interviewer vs. Interviewer
( Click on picture to view) Elizabeth Lund--Host of Poetic Lines interviews Host of Poet to Poet-- Doug Holder

Sunday, March 21, 2010

March 23 Poet Melissa Guillet



My guest will be poet Melissa Guillet. She writes,

"I have performed my work at libraries, coffee houses, and bars across the U.S. and Canada. I feel poetry should work on the page and aloud, and would describe it as narrative and often lyric. I have appeared on "Places", Youtube, CCTV, and other local access cable shows. My work has appeared or is forthcoming in Appleseeds, Ballard Street, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, Caduceus, The Cherry Blossom Review, GBSPA’s City Lights, Cyclamen & Sword, Dos Passos Review, Fearless Books, Imitation Fruit (winning poem), Lalitamba, Language and Culture, Lavanderia, Look! Up in the Sky!, New Muse, Nth Position, Public Republic, Sangam, Scrivener’s Pen, Seven Circle Press, Women. Period., six Poets’ Asylum anthologies, and several chapbooks. I am the chief editor and founder of Sacred Fools Press, which has produced three anthologies. I teach Interdisciplinary Arts in Rhode Island.


Aubade


There was no need

for Phoebus

to whisper in my ear when

the lark would do,

or the alarm, your way

of sighing as you turned,

the loudness of my dreams.


Rising, Phoebus wags his finger,

scolding our denial,

yet hopeful as a dog

sooner aware of day.


The dishes done,

the kids away,

our only charge was

to keep the sheets warm.


Nothing was to be done today.

We could just miss it entirely,

“X” it out on the calendar.


I reach for you blindly,

curled up and squinting.

The day has not begun yet.

We have all day to rise.



Sankofa


Sankofa:

Was that the metaphor looked for?

Almost a heart, divided

into two selves, medicinal snakes

spiraling in on themselves

for self-knowledge.


Then the triple-base, the three sides

to the story. The two facing snakes

that speak to each other

across the past.


High school was over,

and who would want to go back?

But in our busy, self-recoiling lives

the third wheel turns us back

and an internet spot pages old friends.


Cut off, your arm grew into its own

starfish, and you find, out

of that tiny sea, your friend

has become a starfish too.


You needed a Beowulf to slice off your arms,

to be faceless and bodiless and reach

past what everyone else had known,

only to grow everything back and reclaim

an identity to call your own.


In excavation, old photos define us,

yet we deny how we were.

We were never perfect.

We return to the source to fetch

the threads of our cocoons,

the molted shells of goofy haircuts

and all-important cliques.


High school was as far away as Africa,

as close as keys under your fingers.

Doors were closed on that life’s chapter,

but windows were open.


Friend, each of us is five parts of ourselves:

Future, Past, Present, Private, Public,

seeking same. Classified

by who we were, who we are, who we want to be.


Turn and take the egg off your back.

Neither one came first

when one needs the other to exist,

to exist one needs the other.

Monday, March 08, 2010

March 16, 2010: Poet Philip Hasouris




My Guest will be Philip Hasouris:

Philip Hasouris has been writing for many years. Like many poets, he began unsure of his words, kept them hidden in notebooks, draws, closets, always in the back of his mind. Started reading publicly, and eventually people started listening. Since then, he has taken every opportunity to share the words.

He has been featured at many local and national venues. He was a founder of the performance group "Spiritous" which combined poetry, music, and movement. He has performed with a variety of musicians in improvisational jazz/poetry, collaborated in the making of the C.D’s Dreams and Schemes, Cross The Double Line", Published Chapbook “Swimming Alone”. Anthologies: Poet Tribe Selected Poems and City Lights with fellow poet James G.H. Moore, Philip co-produced the poetry video series P.L.A.C.E.S. (Poetic Language Artful Communication Elemental Speech) filming poets in their homes, creative space, natural surroundings, giving the audience a virtual tour of the inner workings of poetry, Philip is the co-host of the Brockton Library Poetry Series www.gbspa.org

Linda his wife of 30 years decided to have knee replacement surgery to enhance her life and as sometimes happens bad things happen to good people. She became ill through a series of medical complications the last being Cardiac Arrest which led to an anoxic brain Injury. "Coping and trying to make sense of the madness that enveloped us like those old Oklahoma dust storms, of course poetry presented itself and saved my sanity and out of the insanity came this book" ( Blow Out the Moon)

"I am not a survivor of Brain Injury I was a caretaker of a Brain Injury and I lost which will haunt me for the rest of my life but if I can reach someone and give them comfort, hope, understanding then maybe a little of the pain will ease. So I believe it's important for the book to speak for me, I was a delivery driver that wrote/read/performed poetry caring for his wife his best friend whom he lost and now has to reinvent himself. I'm adjusting to her absence but her presence will always be with me".

Philip Hasouris