Questions for the poet

Questions for an interview. This is a good summary of my creative process and journey.
I've written for the past thirty some odd years and my journey ... love, adventures, travels, concern for the planet, my commitment to creating a more sane and peaceful world have all been part of my inspiration for writing. Though my core instinct is to write poetry, I've written scores of songs, a musical revue Beatnik Café, short stories, the work for the Jazz Beat Blues Poetry Ensemble ( with co-musical direction by Bill Shontz) a book on working on an end-stage AIDS ward, stories and articles on travel, and children's stories. The unifying link is my love for the richness and conciseness of poetry.

I wake up every day and write for two to three hours in my journal. From that early morning start,springs poems or stories. The poems could be something as simple as life on Blue Heron Pond, politics, or life. If I'm on the road, which is often, I try to write consistently, but I find that I am making quick verbal sketches on paper.

2. You have been a homeopath, a community activist and a performance artist. When did you know or suspect that you wanted to become a poet as well?

I've written consistently over the past thirty years and the writing has chronicled my journey. Poetry had always been my first love and instinct. It didn't arise from the desire to "be a poet" but from a deeper well: necessity. Even if I never wrote a word of "poetry" again, I would always be a poet. A poet is not necessarily defined by what you write on paper, but it is a way of being in the world and seeing. William Blake said it best in "Auguries of Innocence"
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour

I have always been involved in community development/ Social Transformation in one form or another. In the l970's I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Yemen, in the early l980's I worked in Morocco with Catholic Relief Services, then worked with grass roots Social Change groups developing programs to sustain activists, as a graduate instructor in Cross Cultural Communications, and health care as a Nurse Practitioner and Homeopath. In the early, l990's I worked for a year on an end stage AIDS ward and the result of that was a book Journal of the Plague (which will soon be available as an ebook on my website www.vermontpoet.com).

Though I have taught at a college level and enjoy offering a "master class" to students, I thoroughly enjoy the two days a week that I do homeopathy. Working with someone to transform their health is immensely satisfying. I follow in the tradition of many writers and poets, like William Carlos Williams, Ibn Sina (Avincenna), etc. who were physicians and poets.

My work as a performance poet is also focused on addressing issues of Social Change like the "Amerika Uber Alles" video on my website or other work from GOD SEX POLITICS. The new book Vermont My Home on Blue Heron Pond is about finding my sense of place and strength as a poet.

The Vermont My Home and the illustrated poems at www.vermontartpoetry.com are poems and stories that celebrate the Green Mountain State. The last poem in the book "Care Well" is about the imperative to care well for this planet.


3. Does your work as a poet enhance your work as a performance artist and/or activist? If so, how?

My creativity may express itself as poem or a song, in English, French or Spanish, and rarely in Arabic. My creative process is a seamless curtain, sometimes a story that I have improvised on stage will reappear in a written story. I rarely see poetry as something written on a paper. For me, a poem is alive as the wind, as the colors of a tree, and as the vibrancy of life. Over the past few years, I've been developing large art poetry banners for public spaces. As you go through a public space like an airport, the poems and colors are alive in fabric or other medium

I am most alive and creative when my identity as a poet, healer, and secular mystic meet. All roles require clear logic and the window of insight open to the metaphysical process. Also, as important, is to be awed and humbled by the enigmas of life, and to realize that love and caring are the most powerful medicines. Whether one is working in social change, health, poetry, art, etc..when a profound love and compassion are at the center of that process, there is a true transformation, both for the doer and the receiver.

I do not limit my creativity to the arts or performance, and creativity and imagination are the predominant themes in my life. I view my entire life as a creative process. This creativity may come as the Creative Director for the Sweet Pond Eco Community or with our foundation www.GRACECARES.com which provides grass roots community development projects to third world communities.

I have an insatiable curiosity and consider myself a "learning junkie," the world is my university. I could be very happy to be on the road as a vagabond.