Blank Page Poetry

     Below you will find the final version of the Blank Page Poetry project that took place at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. I was proud and privileged to be one of the poets chosen to participate. A team of poets and dancers volunteered many hours to bring the vision of Savannah artist Jerome Meadows to fruition and performed this show to a standing room only crowd in October of 2015. The filming of it failed so what follows is a reconstruction using mostly still photographs Jerome and photographer David Murray made happen. The video is fairly long. I come in at 11:40 and at 31:20, but my performance is no more important than any other, and the introduction is very important.

Bowie's books

A couple of years ago David Bowie shared this list of his favorite books on his Facebook page. I sure have got some work to do!

David Bowie's Top 100 Reads:

1. Interviews With Francis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
3. Room At The Top by John Braine
4. On Having No Head by Douglass Harding
5. Kafka Was The Rage by Anatole Broyard
6. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
7. City Of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Wondrous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
10. Iliad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside The Whale And Other Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Norris Changes Trains by Christopher Isherwood
16. Halls Dictionary Of Subjects And Symbols In Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyndham Lewis
19. Passing by Nella Larson
20. Beyond The Brillo Box by Arthur C. Danto
21. The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Castle by George Steiner
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd
24. The Divided Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants Of The Spring by Wallace Thurman
27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights At The Circus by Angela Carter
30. The Master And Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Herzog by Saul Bellow
34. Puckoon by Spike Milligan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishima
38. Darkness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Norris
41. Money by Martin Amis
42. The Outsider by Colin Wilson
43. Strange People by Frank Edwards
44. English Journey by J.B. Priestley
45. A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life And Times Of Little Richard by Charles White
49. Awopbopaloobop Alopbamboom: The Golden Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mystery Train by Greil Marcus
51. Beano (comic, ’50s)
52. Raw (comic, ’80s)
53. White Noise by Don DeLillo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom by Peter Guralnick
55. Silence: Lectures And Writing by John Cage
56. Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews edited by Malcolm Cowley
57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Charlie Gillete
58. Octobriana And The Russian Underground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit To Brooklyn By Hubert Selby, Jr.
62. A People’s History Of The United States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age Of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby
64. Metropolitan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stoppard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All The Emperor’s Horses by David Kidd
68. Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
69. Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
70. The 42nd Parallel by John Dos Passos
71. Tales Of Beatnik Glory by Ed Saunders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Norman
73. Nowhere To Run The Story Of Soul Music by Gerri Hirshey
74. Before The Deluge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sexual Personae: Art And Decadence From Nefertiti To Emily Dickinson by Camille Paglia
76. The American Way Of Death by Jessica Mitford
77. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage by Jon Savage
80. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
81. The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
83. Viz (comic, early ’80s)
84. Private Eye (satirical magazine, ’60s – ’80s)
85. Selected Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Trial Of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes
88. Maldoror by Comte de Lautréamont
89. On The Road by Jack Kerouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
92. Transcendental Magic, Its Doctrine and Ritual by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leopard by Giusseppe Di Lampedusa
95. Inferno by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave For A Dolphin by Alberto Denti di Pirajno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thomson
98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McEwan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes
100. Journey Into The Whirlwind by Eugenia Ginzburg

Busting Out Of The Box

       Happy Boxing Day!

       Today I'd like to celebrate writing outside of the box, which is what I did when I dove into NaNoWriMo at the last minute. I did that when a story idea came to me while driving in the car, listening to NHPR. I came home and started researching immediately, and knew I had come upon a story that would make a great middle grade novel. Since those usually clock in at around 50,000 words I accepted that the universe was telling me to give NaNoWriMo a real try this year. So I dove in. And I did it! A completed first draft novel of 50,000 words written in one month - still surprising to me. It was hard work, but fun, and of course, very rewarding.

      Without those serendipitous inspirations, that I didn't have time to over-think, I am sure that I wouldn't have tried my hand at writing a historical novel for kids about elephants. A subject I knew damn near nothing about before I started. I don't think I would have thought myself capable of writing from an elephant's perspective before I tried it. One just doesn't know what she can do until she gives it a try!

       For a month or two I'll let the first draft sit, before I begin revising it, but I expect to have something worth submitting when the snows melt. Assuming that the snows are coming. 

       Here is an actual broadside about the subject of my story, which turned out to be about slavery as well as elephants, and life in Colonial America, and so it is about freedom and respect for life.

A Holiday Haiku

A Holiday Haiku for you

 

Stumbling through the year

finally, when darkness peaks,

we see the north star.

by Tammi J Truax

My Last Column

   http://www.seacoastonline.com/article/20151208/ENTERTAINMENTLIFE/151209461/0/SEARCH

Happy Veteran's Day

    Here is an image of the original Purple Heart (C. 1782) as it was designed by General George Washington to reward soldiers of any rank for "unusual gallantry" and "extraordinary fidelity". He is only known to have presented it to three men. This moment in history is included in my novel To Get Quit, currently seeking representation.


                                    

Blank Page Poetry - Words and Shadows: Truths That Arise Remembered

      Last week I was part of a volunteer cast that participated in an extraordinary multi-disciplinary event called Blank Page Poetry - Words and Shadows: Truths That Arise Remembered.      
      The show was conceived of and directed by visual artist Jerome Meadows of Savannah, Georgia. Jerome first came to Portsmouth to design the memorial park acknowledging, for the first time since it was built over, our town's African Burying Ground. Blank Page Poetry was an offering of artistic responses to the memorial. I was one of the eleven poets chosen to share a response poem. We performed behind a blank screen showing only our shadows, along with a few words we chose to take from our poems to be digitally projected on the screen during our recitations. The readings were enhanced by choreographed movements we designed, with Jerome's input, to accentuate our words. The audience saw only our black shadows on the white screen, with a few of our words highlighted, while we recited and embodied our poems. The Neoteric Dance Collaborative also performed an ekphrastic piece choreographed by Brea Cali.

    It was an incredibly meaningful experience to participate in, about a subject that already was so meaningful to me. Beyond that it was wonderful to tackle a new art form, and to collaborate with others to communicate to a wider audience. I hope that the SRO crowd of two hundred was as moved as I was, and from the few reports that I have heard, they were. I was privileged to have stood "for those who survived upon these shores."
     I share below one of the two poems I wrote that were part of the show, along with an image of
Jerome's sculpture that inspired it.

I'm on the left with poet Priscilla Cookson on right.

These four photos by Sarah Flause.

The Female Figure

Mother Africa reaches for her children

but her hand can not get to them.

Anymore.

They, like so many of her treasures,

have slipped from her grasp.

And no one can see

her great mother grief

as her quiet tears

fall into the sea

that takes her young.

And no one can feel

the searing heart pain

in her engorged breast

as her milk dries

for want of suckle.

And no one can know

her spiritual sorrow

as she wonders,     forever,

where now     will her children

be laid to rest?

all rights reserved


                                

Seacoastonline gallery photo of artist Jerome Meadows speaking to a crowd near The Female Figure at The African Burying Ground in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Back In My Own Room

A Little ChickLit for my 2015 AROHO Sisters

     “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!’ yelled Chicken Little. She’d been running around for quite some time, crossing roads without reason, like herself with her head cut off.
“Yes, it is dear,” said her plucky elders. “Come and lie down with us. See, feel, hear, how beautiful the falling sky is.” They made a space for her on their blanket where they watched the enormous sky above, willing it to fall. Naturally, it did. Spectacularly, it did. Their collective energy moved the stars, created new constellations, reshaped heaven.
So she stopped being Chicken. Then she stopped being Little. Now she is a huge hen. Each of her feathers a quill for writing stories as big and infinite as the sky. She is content in knowing she will live mostly happily ever after if she does. Though she will stop occasionally to do that funky chicken dance.

     With the exception of the silly little ditty above, I have been putting off my post-AROHO blog post for a long time. Re-entry, as we like to call it, was especially difficult this time. Much more so than in 2013. That summer, upon my return to real life, I felt like a fish, immersed in a swift current I belonged in and knew how to navigate. This year, I feel more like a fish that has mishapped out of the stream, gasping and flopping about, foolishly expending energy meant for a more graceful purpose.

     But I am not a fish. I am quite capable of righting myself, and wading, or even taking a headlong dive, back in. So I'm now sharing my original thoughts. I thought of deleting them, but could not. Though delayed, they have not changed much. This is what I came home with.

    The opportunity to work and commune with Maxine Hong Kingston, Janet Fitch, Breena Clarke, and more than 100 other women writers, is to make constellations on the surface of the earth, while at night the heavens try to tease with the fast bright trains of the Perseids. It is all meteoric. A transient brilliance. A big, ballsy, white hot celestial rarity. You can bear it witness, but you cannot hold it. Yet, I've decided, to bear it witness is enough.

      My Post-AROHO Post

      Maxine Hong Kingston came to Ghost Ranch. Like the rest of us she brought her ghosts. All of our ghosts, too many thousands to count now, are happy that here they can spread out and relax. Ghosts find freedom on the ranch.

     Tiny though she is, Maxine lifted us all up and hugging us fast around our waists, she hung us from the windows. She urged us to call out clever lines to the grandfathers as they pass by, waving, maybe applauding. But the applause is of no real significance. The important thing is not being shy, which means afraid of falling. The important thing is knowing that your elders are behind you, holding you fast with their strong sure hands.

      Later, we will take our places, inside the rooms of our own, and we will hold the tender young ones who come after with our own strong, sure hands. We will dangle them out the windows and watch their pretty hair blow in the breezes. We will say, "Tell your poem, yell your words, do not be afraid."

     And they will tell.

     And they will yell.

     Dangling unafraid.         

That was fun

    Had a wonderful time this morning as a guest on Seacoast Currents morning radio show at WSCA Portsmouth Community Radio 106.1 LP FM.

     

.@TamariTee on Seacoast Currents on Portsmouth Community Radio, Sept 10, 2015, discussing her writing. pic.twitter.com/YD7ISQnxWG

— Larry Drake (@LarryDrake2) September 10, 2015

Elevator Pitch and Plea

     I've been working on my elevator pitch. What sounds so simple, encapsulating your novel in one sentence, is quite difficult, and I have been strugging with it for a year.
     Here is what I have come up with and am seeking your opinion. Please tell me what you think.

     Enslaved from childhood in the first president's household
Ona realizes freedom will not be granted, and chooses to 
right that wrong by running away, compelling George 
Washington to right that wrong in several ways, 
with enormous stakes for both.

     And here I am in an elevator last night,
 sipping instead of pitching...

                                     

Tickets on sale now

     I'm excited to be part of this special event, and can't wait to see what Patrick has painted after visiting me. I plan to read a lyric essay I wrote at Ghost Ranch while enrolled in Lauren Rusk's master poetry class. It is sure to be an entertaining evening.

The Poet’s House at The Music Hall Loft

October 4 at 4pm

Art Opening & Poetry Reading

Featuring Original Paintings of Poets’ Houses

by Patrick Healey

also featured are

Betsy Sholl and Mekeel McBride

together with…

Bill Burtis

Mark DeCarteret

Shelley Girdner

Kimberly Cloutier Green

Nancy Jean Hill

Jody Hetherington

Kate Leigh

Paul Marion

S Stephanie

Tammi Truax

Andrew Merton

Mimi White

Poetry reading in The Music Hall Loft at 4pm.

$20.00

Live music by Agnes Charlesworth, Cynthia Chatis, Douglas Green

Art opening, poetry, live music. Featuring paintings of New England poets' houses by artist Patrick Healey, this event at The Loft will also highlight readings by the poets whose houses are the subject of Healey's work. Original and arranged music by Agnes Charlesworth (piano), performing with Cynthia Chatis (flute and voice), and Douglas Green (bass). October 4 at 4pm, The Music Hall Loft, 131 Congress Street, 603-436-2400. $20.00. Reservations required. www.themusichall.org

Go Local

Upcoming Author Event. A little something for everyone. Bring the kids. Bring the grandparents. Bring some strangers. Just come! Support local writers.


Local Author Fair

September 16, 6 – 8 PM

Portsmouth Public Library

Want to meet local authors, find some great autumn reads, and enter to win fabulous prizes? The Portsmouth Public Library will host a Local Author Fair on Wednesday, September 16 from 6 – 8 p.m. Special guests will include Portsmouth author Katherine Towler and award-winning writer James Patrick Kelly!

Kelly is the science fiction author of Burn, Think Like a Dinosaur and 10¹⁶ to 1. Katherine Towler is a poet and author of the trilogy of novels Snow Island, Evening Ferry, andIsland Light.

This event is FREE and open to the public. Visit with local authors and enter to win prizes from the Music Hall, the Gundalow Company, Louie’s Italian restaurant, Bennett’s Store, Pickwick’s Mercantile, Strawbery Banke, and more!

40 authors from the Seacoast area will participate:

+        James Patrick Kelly     Fiction/Science Fiction                                                                       

+        Katherine Towler        Fiction/Literary                                                                                  

+        David Barnette            Fiction/Fantasy

+        Jacquelyn Benson        Fiction/Historical Thriller/Romance

+        Jeff Deck                     Fiction/Horror/Science Fiction/Nonfiction

+        Tim Horvath                Fiction/literary

+        Shelby June                 Fiction

+        David Random             Fiction/Humor/Short Stories

+        Amy Ray                      Fiction/Mystery/Thriller

+        J.E. Seymour                Fiction/Crime

+        Tammi Truax               Fiction

+        Earl Yorke                   Fiction/Science Fiction           

+        Michele Albion            Nonfiction/History/Women/Technology

+        Nancy  Beveridge        Nonfiction/Moving & Decluttering

+        Marilynn Carter          Nonfiction/Cookbook

+        Bette Freedson            Nonfiction

+        Jessica Kliskey             Nonfiction/Self-Health and Nutrition

+        Rachel Leah                Nonfiction/Death and Dying

+        J. Dennis Robinson      Nonfiction/History/True Crime/Travel

+        Barbara Sedoric          Nonfiction

+        Stefany Shaheen         Nonfiction/Memoir/Health

+        LeCain Smith               Nonfiction/ Holistic Health Care/Integrative Medicine

+        Donald Trefethen        Nonfiction/Local History

+        Ellen Walker               Nonfiction/Memoir/Autism

+        Robert Wheeler          Nonfiction/Travel/Photography

+        Richard Winslow         Nonfiction/ History

+        Nancy  Grossman        Nonfiction/Poetry

+        Crystal Kent                 Nonfiction/Youth

+        Steve Carter                Poetry

+        Kate Leigh                   Poetry

+        Peter Horton               Young Adult/Local Historical Fiction

+        Joyce Shor Johnson     Young Adult/Middle Grade

+        Valerie Lofaso              Young Adult/Paranormal Fiction

+        Robert Miller              Young Adult

+        Pat McDermott           Young Adult/Historical Fantasy/Paranormal/Romance

+        Susan Benedict            Children’s

+        Denise Brown              Children’s

+        Carol Lincoln               Children’s

+        Alvin Walker               Children’s

+        Stephanie Workman   Children’s

Contact:     Laura K. Horwood-Benton, Public Programming & Community Relations Librarian

       lkhorwood-benton@cityofportsmouth.com | 603 766 1711

Sunday Book Launch!

 

     Tomorrow evening at five o'clock at my local indie bookstore, RiverRun, we will be celebrating the launch of a brand spanking new anthology of short stories by seacoast area authors. I am thrilled to have a story included. Mine is something that I tinkered with for a long time. It is based on a couple of my ancestors, primarily the story of how they met and married, but is a work of fiction. I wove into their story the history of how we treat breast cancer, which has changed so drastically in the last century. I wanted to write something that would reflect the progress made on that front. I thought for awhile it might become a novel, but ultimately decided it works better as a short story. It was my first serious attempt at historical fiction, which is what I have been focused on for several years now.
       There are many other authors and types of writing represented and there is sure to be something to please everyone, so you should get yourself a copy. Better yet come celebrate with us, and hear a few stories read by their authors.

      Here is a link if you are not close by;

http://www.amazon.com/Compass-Points-Stories-Seacoast-Authors/dp/1939739829/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1438480495&sr=1-4&keywords=compass+points


                                                   

         

 

Making Fall Plans

       I don't want to miss this!


http://www.bostonbookfest.org/



http://www.boston.com/entertainment/books/2015/07/20/margaret-atwood-louis-sachar-and-more-are-coming-the-boston-book-festival/43n4klABZDXxNWC4cQlFKL/story.html