Trickster Ridge newsletter (feb22)

 

POETRY

THE ARTS AND LEARNING 

IN THE GRAND VALLEY AND BEYOND

Formerly called Palisade Arts, the inimitable Wendy Videlock of Palisade's Trickster Ridge Presentations has been putting out  this Western Slope email listserve some two or three times a year. It has her striking alcohol ink visuals as well as info on a potpourri of events, info and opportunities.

A visual artist with pieces in multiple galleries and a poet of note publishing regionally and nationally. 

Worth checking out her Speaking Ravanese event on Trickster Ridge April 9th, a Multitudes workshop/playground for those interested in creative aging May into June, the Crestone Poetry Festival Feb. 26-27, and much more.

Sign up for the Trickster newsletter in the upper right-hand corner of the site.

Some URLs

RABBIT HOLES

I may not be the duke of URLs but I know what rabbit-holes I like slipping into. 

Here's a few.

MICROCOSMS: Sacred Plants of the Americas

LORD OF THE RAINY SKY: A Possible Redefinition of Pre-Columbian Aquaculture

BIANCA MIKAHN: Denver Performance Poet Extraordinaire

PAUL CELAN: Audacious Rhetorical Devices in Paul Celan’s“Todesfuge” 

RALPH PEARCE: Weeds in Australia

DAN PAGIS: Holocaust tutorial

KINSHIP: BELONGING IN A WORLD OF RELATIONS: Center for Humans and Nature (Chicago)

GHOSTHORSE TIOKASIN: First Voices Indigenous Radio

JONATHAN STALLINGS: Sinophonic English Poetry and Poetics

Bardic Trails: Goodtimes Coming-Out Playground

GOOD QUESTIONS

Two years of working on myself. Not carrying the county burden. Or the ecopolitical albatross. I'm not used to paying attention to my body, that trusty spacetimeship. For two years that's about all I've done. But maybe itki's all done.

Or at least appears to be. See this morning's post in the queue far below, PSA Lab Report.

Tonight's for poetry! KC Trommer in New York City  and the Shroompa in Telluride. Join us for Bardic Trails virtual poetry series 7 pm MST at the Wilkinson Public Library in collaboration with the Telluride Institute's Talking Gourds poetry program. Come bring a poem to the playground. Or a story, a heartsong.

Talking Gourds is about performing, not just listening -- although that's an important lesson always. But after tonight's feature we'll have a virtual Gourd Circle with everyone in the Zoom getting a chance to read a poem, tell a story, sing a song, or just say a word of thanks and mute.

Here's the Zoom Recording 

if you missed my Bardic Trails 

Coming-Out Reading, Interview & Gourd Circle

this Chinese New Year's

Halle-fuckin'-lulia

as my one buddy media'd me earlier

Today's the Year of the Tiger

If you missed this performance, you can access it HERE

PSA lab report

 CELEBRATING

My post-op PSA lab test came in at 0.1, which is basically negligible, as I understand itki.

Forgive me for focusing on my personal health but this is a big hurdle. Itki means I'm in remission from my prostate cancer post surgery. We will keep monitoring, and this one low reading doesn't mean the cancer can't return, but itki does mean the surgery was successful in removing the cancer that was there.

After two years of challenges -- throat cancer, radiation, chemo, pneumonia, Covid, hernia and prostate cancer -- I may be healthy again. Huge thank yous to my wonderful team of docs -- Dr. Heather Linder, Dr.  Michael Murray, Dr. Duane Hartshorn, Dr. Vernon King, Dr. Kyle Work, Dr. Helen Goldberg, and various consultants and corollary providers; my kind, generous and loving family; and my whole crew of caregivers, friends and well-wishers. You've made the difference for me. Bless you.

I won't be using my CaringBridge site from now on. And hopefully far into the future. But I hope you'll make comments here on my blog, if you're so moved.

Year of the Tiger

13022 [Western Slope Calendar] 

my son Gregorio's birth year

a propitious omen for a gentle man

Photo by Rio Coyotl

If you missed the Holocaust Remembrance Reading 27jan22, you can catch it now on YouTube here

POETRY DOUBLEHEADER

First Tuesday this February First  at 7 pm isn't Lupercalia, but itki's a poetry doubleheader with KC Trommer reading on the East Coast and the Art Goodtimes  in Telluride. Trommer, essayist and poet-in-law of San Miguel County's own Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, headlines a Jackson-Heights-based First Tuesday reading series at 7 p.m. EST (5 pm. MST). The zoom series is run by Richard Jeffrey Newman and sponsored by New York State and Poets & Writers, Inc.

Trommer's reading is free but requires registration with Newman of Nassau Community College.  

A MFA graduate of Univ. of Michigan at Ann Arbor, KC has published books, founded poetry programs, been awarded grants and fellowships in the U.S. and the Czech Republic, collaborated with Grammy-recognized composer Herschel Garfein  on a poetry song cycle, and served as poet-in-residence both for Works on Water and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's COVID-19 Response Residency Program on Governors Island. KC is the Assistant Director of Communications at NYU Gallatin and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens, with her son.

At 7 pm MST (same time but not simultaneous shows thanks to different zones) Art Goodtimes of Wrights Mesa (who has spent the last two years healing from multiple challenges) is having a poetry coming-out party of sorts as part of the Bardic Trails virtual reading series sponsored jointly by the Wilkinson Public Library and the Telluride Institute's Talking Gourds poetry programs.

Join us and bring a poem/story/heartsong to share in the Gourd Circle portion of the reading.

<zoom link came>

Join Zoom Meeting

Bardic Trails

Feb 1, 22 

7:00 pm MST (Mountain Standard Time)

Meeting ID: 810 6884 6690

Elissa Dickson in Stockholm

 

GREEN THUMB

What if you just never knew

Your heart is a greenhouse

Outside

Icy hate, shame bruised sleet,

The gathering dark of apathy

Sure, sure

But 

Inside

Just today

A superbloom

A cacophony of

magenta tangerine vermillion

All clamoring for more

The air thick with lavender

And everywhere 

Butterflies busy 

Pollinating just one thing

-Elissa Dickson

This poem is dedicated to 

my mentor @rosemerry.trommer 

who teaches us all everyday 

how love is everything

Back to the Paleo Present

 

looking for mushrooms

takes one back to the Paleolithic

on a forest time machine, hunting

& wild harvesting as our ancestors did

but with new tools: African baskets

Finnish knives, Lincoff field guides

& edibles laced with magic

Photo by Linnea Gillman

  

parading into a mountain rainbow

under Colorado's highest peaks

looking on looking back looking at us

Photo courtesy of Rick and Marty Hollinbeck