25 – Fourteen Poets, Far and Near, Reading Their Poems

What to do during the COVID era when it's problematic interviewing someone in person? Get a bunch of your poet friends to read their poems to your listeners! I realized that I have at least ten friends who are poets, some of them highly celebrated poets, and I had already recorded some of them reading their poetry. Several other poet friends wrote new poetry for this show and sent their recordings to me. Most of the poets you’ll be hearing are from California, and I live in Arizona now where I know only two poets (so far) so I’ve also included several poets from this year’s Tucson Poetry Festival, which occurred a few weeks ago on-line because of the COVID crisis.

List of poets/poems:

Neil Harvey – Zoom Word

Jon Hammerbeck – Accidental Droppings

David Hammerbeck – 4-3-20

Susan Thackrey – Selections from Andalusia: The Farewell / How do you...; Mourning in Al Andaluse / Alba; Walnut / Eyelid; The Moon / Look How...

Ralph Jack (Ralph Gutlohn) – Acceptable Limits; Be Like Concrete; At The Bottom Of A Glance

Ken Paul Rosenthal – Where Icarus Flew

Kara Daddario Bown – Graceland; Safety in Numbers

Waz Thomas – Falling Water; I Walk, I Stumble, I Fall; Susanville; No!

William Pitt Root – Ways Water Has; Ode To A Frog

Pam Uschuk – Green Flame; Cracking 100

Bojan Louis - Huzzle 8

Diana Marie Delgado: The Kind Of Light I Give Off Isn’t Going To Last; Some Guy I Liked Who Dated Strippers; & Who Makes Love to Us After We Die?

Sylvia Chan - Personal Concept

Sean Avery – Genius; How To Make Mumble Rap

Special thanks to Melanie Madden, Executive Director of the Tucson Poetry Festival.

Neil Harvey is an award-winning artist, photographer and media producer. His artwork and writing attend to the space between thoughts. His work has been shown in galleries in California, New York and New Hampshire. With five short films to his credit, he has been a featured artist at Chicago’s Mess Hall Experimental Music Festival. He has been a radio producer, writer, editor and host for The Bioneers: Revolution From the Heart of Nature, New Dimensions Radio, The California Indian Radio Project, The Love of Wisdom With Alan Watts and Music From the Hearts of Space. He has produced over 300 internationally distributed radio programs for which he has won numerous awards. He earned a B.A. in Visual Arts/Communications at the University of California, San Diego. About his 40 year Correspondence Piece and the 2019 Brooklyn installation Sound In Stalls One, Two, Three collaborations with sound artist Jon Hammerbeck, he has written "It is like dropping a rusty cadillac into your birdbath."

Jon Hammerbeck is a big tall lawyer, of Viking descent, who lives on the edges of Los Angeles. For many years he DJ’d under the name Lew Cadia, on KSDT-FM radio in the southern empire. His sound work has been featured at The Mess Hall Experimental Music Festival in Chicago, in films, and in various vehicular forms during rush hour traffic for over 40 years. His in-depth study of the works of Martin Heidegger, Alfred North Whitehead, Fritjof Capra and Edgah have informed his interests in Dada, musique concrète, and multilayered muscilageounous musical forms. His multimedia titles include Mental Shelf Life, Chronospondence I 1982/2013, Suburbaphobia Melted Combo 8/82 and Correspliceness I: Is Growth Lions(1982). About his part in the 2019 sound installation Sound In Stalls One, Two, Three he wrote: “The honor to present carefully crafted and randomly mussed-up sound in the intimate acoustics of three Brooklyn brew pub toilets has opened new possibilities for creative release.”

David Hammerbeck has been a teacher, a writer, an actor and director, a trekking company owner, and has even toiled in the restaurant business, most notably at the venerable Keens Chophouse near Herald Square in Manhattan. He has taught at UC Santa Cruz, Loyola Marymount, DePaul University, and other institutions, as well as teaching abroad in Kazakhstan and Nepal. He has trod the boards in London, New York, LA, San Francisco, and other choice locations, and has appeared in films, including a Batman film as Michelle Pfeiffer’s father. David also has a bunch of degrees, including a PhD from the School of Theatre, Film and Television at UCLA, though...