Yesterday, I shared a few poems from the latest National Writing Project Write Across America Project (focus: Baltimore artists) and today’s poem is another piece inspired by that same collection. This time, it’s about Elena Volkova, who works with tintype photography on her Anacostia Portrait project.
Peace (Sitting and Waiting),
Kevin
The National Writing Project’s Write Across America place-based adventures continues into the school year, and I continue my practice of using the resources — when the resources get shared beyond the Zoom sessions that I nearly always miss — for some morning writing. This week, the project focused on artists in Baltimore, and it is a pretty fascinating collection.
Here are three poems (so far), inspired by three Baltimore artists and their work.
The first was from the work of Kathleen Fahey, who does old cranky-style videos, which are spooled stories that someone literally cranks to move along. Pretty cool and gives a story a forward motion.
The second poem came after exploring the work of Joyce Scott, who works with beads and glass and fabrics and more.
The third was focused on visual artist Ernest Shaw Jr., whose work is inspired by West African tradition and who does a variety of styles of art, including street murals. I listened to a video profile, taking notes on his words and then remixed his words into an art-themed poem.
Peace (in explorations of art),
Kevin
During the worst of the Pandemic, I discovered the Itchy Feet comic strip by Malachi Ray Rempen on an app called Tinyview Comics that I support with a monthly fee (because it seems like the organization does a good job of supporting its writers and artists).
Rempen’s focus for the Itchy Feet comic is on world travel, and of course, there was none to be had by most people in the world, so the comic (which Rempen has been making for at least a decade or more) often poked fun at being stuck at home with an itch to travel. The comic became a nice reprieve in an otherwise isolated world of living.
Cappucinos After Lunch And Other Crimes is a book collection of comics from 2018-2021. Some of the Covid-era Comics make their way into this book but mostly, Rempen does a funny job of skewering traveling to different parts of the world through the lens of food, cultural confusions, language and airport obstacles.
I laughed quite a bit at the jokes here and the visual humor, and I appreciate the gentle way that the comic handles the clash of visitors to a destination with mostly grace (unless the faux pas is too deep and needs some skewering). This collection is a fun way to think about traveling to the world. Sure, there are mishaps that might happen, and yet, the comic points out how traveling can be worth it for many reasons, including finding a common understanding other people in other places.
Peace (and Travel),
Kevin
This morning, I started reading ‘Thunder & Lightning (Weather Past, Present, Future)’ by Lauren Redniss (what a book of art and words and ideas!) and I stopped at the early passage about the Global Seed Vault to write and record a morning poem.
Text: https://write.as/dogtrax/the-middle-door-made-of-steel-glitters-with-ice-crystals
Book: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/93798c10-23be-4265-bc78-06a725c1683a
Peace (and Dirt),
Kevin
With news that the original Mickey Mouse from Steamboat Willie is now in the public domain, I tried a little remix — taking a scene from the video and putting it to music.
How I did it:
Peace (with some funk),
Kevin
I remember randomly discovering poet Ross Gay’s The Book Of Delights a few summers ago, reading it while on vacation at the beach and being thrilled by his observational essays that celebrated the small moments in the days of a single year.
His new book — The Book Of (More) Delights — doesn’t change the format of what he is up to here: paying attention to the moments that count as delight, whether large or small or in-between. As before, it’s his voice — a sort of wondering, wandering narrator who is not afraid of meandering into many asides — that shines through in this collection, which begins on his birthday of one year and ends on the birthday of the next.
He shares much about his garden, his neighborhood, his family, strangers that he observes and meets (and at the end, helps), his own childhood memories, places and spaces, and more. The essays are short but well-constructed, and as with my reading of his first book, I came away not just as a reader, but as a reader trying to tune in to the delights of the world.
I am sure Gay would be happy to hear that.
Peace (In Small Moments),
Kevin
For some time now, I’ve been thinking of leaving Goodreads, mostly due to the Amazon connection (I know, it’s been Amazon for a few years). I started there before Amazon took it over, and was irked that a book/reading site that I loved was folded into the Amazon Empire.
Amazon’s presence hasn’t been overwhelming, but still …
And recent controversies over gaming the Goodreads system by authors and commenters and others just leaves me with a distaste. I want a space to track my own reading, and hopefully, see what others are reading.
I’m moving over to StoryGraph, which is an independent platform with many similar features of Goodreads and few more (read-alongs, buddy reads, interesting use of stats, etc.) and if you are in StoryGraph, too, let’s connect (this is my profile) and share books.
These graphs here are from StoryGraph, using my Goodreads data from my 2023 reading.
I was stressed that I would lose all of my Goodreads data but StoryGraph does a nice job walking through how to get your data and then migrate it into StoryGraph. The migration of my hundreds of books read took about 24 hours but it looks like it all made the leap with me.
Honestly, though, I might still keep an eye on Goodreads, if only to get ideas about books to read, and which books are getting a lot of attention. I get my book information from a lot of places, and Goodreads is just one place.
Peace (and books),
Kevin
Each Sunday, I (along with hundreds of others – sometimes, over a 1,000 people) share out a single image for Silent Sundays. I share mine on Flickr and on Mastodon and on what was Twitter (Silent Sunday images are one of the only things I regularly share now in that space).
In June, I made a video of the images from the first half of the year (see below) and today, I am sharing out my images from the second half of the year.
Peace (and image),
Kevin
PS — as a sharing experiment on Mastodon, I invited folks to share their last image of 2023 on a Padlet Map. About two dozen folks from around the world took me up on my offer.
