Speaker 1 00:00:39 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Josh Webber. And tonight on right on radio, we have a very special one hour long episode focusing on poets and pints poets and Pines happens on the third Wednesday of the month where anyone can go up on stage and read their poetry as specific brewery brewing. Excuse me, in this show, you will hear readings from a post and pints event and my conversation with the curator of PO's and Pines, Tony Placido, he also facilitates a workshop to help poets become better performers of poetry for information about Tony and poets and pints. You can check them
[email protected], all this and more. So stay tuned to run a radio.
Speaker 2 00:01:36 I'm speaking with Tony Placido, Hey poet, occasional photographer, crack Walnut board member performance committee chair for cracked Walnut published author three books, sucker punch, wisdom, aging, and other side projects, and felt this so many times. And he current curator and host opponents and pints. Welcome to write on radio Tony.
Speaker 3 00:01:57 And actually I got four now.
Speaker 2 00:01:58 Four.
Speaker 3 00:02:00 Yeah. Well, in August I gave you a old bio apparently, and I apologize. So the conflict that creates is my fourth book,
Speaker 2 00:02:09 Was that also polished through Spartan press,
Speaker 3 00:02:12 Um, an offshoot called Luchador press, but yes,
Speaker 2 00:02:16 On your website, you say you began writing horrible songs and nine, eventually that morphed into more of a poetry slam.
Speaker 3 00:02:23 I mean, I was, you know, young and I, and I remember the first song I wrote was called noises and I, my poor mom, I made her hear me sing it once. And, um, this, the song probably has the word noises 50 or 60 times in it. It's truly awful. And I feel bad for her, but yeah, I, I thought it was so profound for how old I was though. Just about all the noises I hear everywhere around me. And so my, I didn't write a lot of poetry. So I started in kindergarten writing poetry, and then it was more like I was just writing science because I had to walk to work. So singing to myself basically. And then I really didn't do anything with it until like late junior high high school. And then I started writing poems again about being a teenager and not getting the women I wanted.
Speaker 4 00:03:17 I'm worried one more. Um, I started writing, people asked me what, what did, what kind of you writing poetry? And I actually started my senior year in college when the first true love of my life telling me that was the reason poetry had been good to me ever since. I never wrote about really about that until, um, until this year I was living in north and, um, was living above the, uh, right above where the Baltimore plant was and they shot the puffs. We'd have these guns and early in the morning of like five stone fall down to the pump. And so I spent a lot of time just standing out there and listening the winter. My first love left, left me, but did not leave. The town was shared. I lived just up the hill from the railroad tracks in the multiple meal plan, midnight to three were chosen hours of prayer.
Speaker 4 00:04:09 The whistle of a long freight heading south was corn coal. The sweatshirt where tomorrow's box cars were hitched to engines by men with lanterns. The son of Canon's is a puffed wheat or rice was shot from the Flint fifth floor and fell into air as air curl into each kernel, snow muffled, all and breath was all. I spoke breath warmed by the blood, transporting through my lungs, some vessels bringing oxygen into flesh, others, offering carbon to the part of the sky. We overlook the part that rises a foot or two from our mouths, and then disappears in winter. We can see our breath in all seasons. We must trust it. Craze rises, but so does grief. What is not ashamed of the other that winter snow became my council tracks heading somewhere beauty, cold, deep unspeakable alive. Thank you.
Speaker 3 00:05:29 After your teens, did you stop writing completely? I did not stop writing. No, I just didn't realize there was something I could do with it. So I would write it. It would just sit in my computer and my while a book until I was actually very late to the computer game once, then it would just sit at my computer. Once I realized I didn't have to hand write it anymore. I actually started writing more because the way my thought processes work, I think too fast. And sometimes writing was actually hard. I kept writing, but then it wasn't until much later where somebody is like, you know, you can perform those for people. And so then I started open mics and, and then I really got into it and had a lot more fun and, and grew as a writer too, because of it, because I started hearing a lot more poetry in the world.
Speaker 5 00:06:17 In my spare time, I enjoyed reading interior design, cooking, singing to my cats, fishing and hiking. Everybody. Please put your hands together for Laura Robinson.
Speaker 7 00:06:33 Okay. Hi, I'm Laura. Um, I'm going to be reading from mostly from my first book, which comes out actually next year. I'm with Docker press. It's a
Speaker 7 00:06:53 Um, my book explores the dispossession of body and self during and in the aftermath of trauma. Um, the grief and reconciliation, that's born from the separation and the ultimate return to yourself with the understanding and acceptance that you may come home to a new and different self. And that's pretty groovy. We're going to keep it like
Speaker 7 00:07:21 When you were the only light on the highway. I hope you feel my spindle fingers twisted in your curls. Remember spiders on your neck, leaving wicked tapestries. My voice cracking like her pipes in winter on the coldest nights. Count your fingers. Tied your breath. Do you remember milk and honey naked and spread over and sheets for your nails dredging the base of your back. Nicotine stain in brackish, because I could not bear another night, drunk and alone, read my poems, hung on the walls like AvaTax or of the windows and doors build a mausoleum and visit when he needed to remember a Juul number fluttering on your porch and feeding sunsets, fireflies, feeding them glass and wood. Remember the days you forgot to feed the molting orchids, how you let them die. Tom's title is also the first line. So we're just getting lost in the back collar of God's country. You're 10 sitting on a Creek bank holding him pretty bird too closely. While your fists, when your next lumps brought on the carcass and curse the callosum globe, you were 20 years removed, moved from gliding metals in taxidermy, matchings, a hunting lodge, the family home, somewhere in the shadows where all the blue Jays are broken and happiness sleeps under your pillow. Come see the flushing, planks and rotting roof. Behold, the beauty of the death. You Raj
Speaker 7 00:08:59 Homeostasis. You have carved. You're wanting out of what cannot be melted of. What cannot be exchanged to love is to vacate to over-engineer. Your silence is a carcass sudden bleached bones on an empty beach or rock to be mounted Murals. One, the Spinnaker, you know, your history machines for suffering Picasso, Erika portraits. He paint in the bedroom telling bitten spit drunk and flailing metallic tannins alive. The novelty of your own violence. She tips the bourbon down the drain. Double-barreled melting joints, your own love, shattering hot glass, the loneliness you laid on your pillow, the silky girls who never knew her name, spinal shrapnel, scarred over and spluttering years of it swallow you whole, all the beautiful fighters. She sat in the kitchen, all the ashes of things helped those through the new
Speaker 2 00:10:14 On your website. You, you discussed how, what revitalized your interest in poetry was you were invited, I think by a friend of yours in 2007 to a poetry event, is that
Speaker 3 00:10:22 Right? 2009 or 10, but it was the, uh, poetry filibuster in Kansas city, Missouri. Um, it was, they were trying to break the world record for the longest poetry reading ever. And it was going to go five and a half days, basically with non-stop 20 minutes sections. And she lived just down the street from the bookstore where it was all happening. And I was like, okay, I'll come, I'll sleep on your couch and whatever. I'll read a poem in the middle of the night when nobody's there anyway. And just try to, I'm a late I'm a night owl anyway. And so for me, this was perfect because I'm a person that could be up at three in the morning and be done at a bookstore, reading a poem because I'm up anyway. And so, um, but I ended up taking several slots because they were open and I was like, I've just never read before. And after the first time, I was just like, this is a lot of fun. Um, and I realized that based on other people telling me that I was actually good at it. And so then I just, I was like, oh, well, once somebody tells me I'm good at something, then I'm going to do it forever.
Speaker 2 00:11:30 I kept thinking about this when I was, when I attended poets and pints about the kind of allure of having a stage and reading words. And it's like, we're words are made flesh in a way that doesn't, it can't be really be comparable to other literary arts. What's the interest for you?
Speaker 3 00:11:45 Yeah. I mean, a lot of that is, is that it's for me in high school, I was in acting. I was in theater. I was a theater kid. I wasn't sports. So I was always doing theater and I love it. But being an adult in theater is a, is a huge time commitment. You've got to go to rehearsal and then you've got to be at all the plays. And it's just something I don't have time for though. I love doing it. So for me, poetry is a way to do sort of these little mini two minute plays. And so that's why I also try to help people learn how to perform poetry, because there's so much emotion that goes into things that people write most of the time. Um, and I, I want people to present that on stage to many people. I don't know if they had some English teacher that said, just stand at the podium and read your poem or what, but that's what they do. And to me, it's like, if all you're going to do is read out of your book, just, just hand me the book, because I'll, I'll make something out of it while I'm reading it in my head. As opposed to you just standing there reading words, which don't mean anything without emotions. If you're sad, be sad while you're reading it. If you're happy, be happy while you're reading it. So it became a thing.
Speaker 7 00:13:01 So my name is Liz Statia. Um, I am a funeral celebrant, uh, an advocate and an artist, and I'm so glad to get on stage and share my poetry whenever I can, because I feel like all those parts of my self get to come together and, um, be witnessed. So you're probably going to see a little bit of that. Um, you know, I saw the prudency in the hair. Um, I talk about death and sex, and I mentioned mangoes a couple of times because I love them so much tattooed on my arm. Um, and, uh, this morning, or, um, earlier in the day, um, a childhood friend of mine passed away. And so I would like to, um, dedicate these problems on my portion of the show to Erin. Um, I see waters softened over her spring time, sand, the closing of winter's bath ritual collides with breathing time, the grandfather's big hand wrapped around his grandbabies little thumb.
Speaker 7 00:14:28 This place called to me where the end needs. The beginning. I tried to run bargain sparkle, tried to love and poor and love and love and love trying to be better, lead more with less, but death wanted to meet me like warm sand meets the water's edge. So I've walked into the brush and looking for a place to lie down like a bear slipping into dream time, or maybe like a cat looking for a place to birth. The aspect said that a mother who gives her life to her child will go to the same hat and have dinner as any warrior who gives his life to defend the animals here. My sound, my breath deepens as each motion of my hips deepen. I inhale until I'm so full that my bones crack and my grandmother's side, it said for a moment, I feel just as wise as she is put your blood into the garden, she says you are as further as the soil tension turns to thunder and they sing for me, the birds that bear the water's edge in the sky, they roar and Tom and crack and croon in symphony. I heave fire and wind raptures me. Your voice was made to heal. You says grandmother's voice carried by the wind. So I copy the sounds of my forest can resurrecting Wilde from my gut. I heave again. I don't remember who I am.
Speaker 7 00:16:26 Which binds did you pick to dress the wounds? How tightly did you tie them? Which herbs did you put beneath the vines? What phase was the movement? Did you spread yourself across the earth? Did you bury yourself? Did you bathe in honey? Did you call it a baptism? Did you cry long enough to mistake your voice for your grandmothers? Did you sing long enough to mistake your voice for your grandmothers? Did you braid your hair? Did you shave your head? Did you find your rage? Did you see, did you gather match sticks and kerosene, did you spit hot embers from your mouth though? I stepped into many rooms alone. You had been there burning stage for me before I arrived. Did you feel joyful too? After you leaped and spread your bones across the floor and counted them, then gathered them, then stepped out of that room and into the rain, washing salt in the Ash from your tired face. Oh, show me the shadows within your becoming, how you crawl to the belly of the earth to rice, but you've time and bedrock, how you were so certain that you'd find a place to rise some deeply. It would the wounds of your ancestors. Tell me how sweet, the sounds where they're at going through your chest. Like caves, becoming very ribcage. When each thing you learned to think about yourself away as your skin turned to dirt, and you heard your own song, did it feel like coming home?
Speaker 7 00:18:19 Yeah. Life's full of contradiction. Roses have long time been a symbol of both love. And, uh, what would the hell does death have to do with falling in love? Maybe they're like Ms. Lies and the way grief can pull you in the same way. Love will have you feeling like you're falling. Hopelessly. Where is my beloved? Life's full of irony to like walking into a death cafe and sitting down to talk about well death. When a woman says, I don't really know what I'm doing here. In fact, this feels like a cult, but one time my friend's brother blew his brains out. So we took a piece of his brain and we put it in the freezer as she moves around nervously because that itself may emerge from the walls where we sit in this art gallery as if art doesn't come from the same place, everything we've ever known goes to die.
Speaker 7 00:19:22 Completely ironic, really how we come to know the depth of our love at the hour of separation grief, tears me open, but eventually love rushes back in richer and more vivid and fuller than before. A lot of petite Mort that's French for a small death, but you see you're talking about sex, where breath chases breath, where in a brief inhibition breaks down into chaos before chaos, thous calm season, then delivering me each time I burst like a cloud and my wetness waters, my lovers like raindrops, kissing grass. I have exonerated liberated of flesh. I am propelled at the speed of light, into the deep dark, to a place where not a single Adam vibrates. I am surrendered to a small debt. My thoughts settled like clinking plates returning to the cupboard as the dinner guests wipe the carnage from their faces.
Speaker 3 00:20:40 When I'm listening to a poet speak, I want to be lost in what they're saying. So if is just a euphoric over the moon happy piece, by the time they're done with it, I want to be shouting. Yeah. Like this is, this is great. Um, I feel great now because you've made me feel great. And if it's sad, then the same thing. Like I want to be like, oh, my heart hurts now. Or I'm so mad at that person also like I'm with you. And when a person does that, they become one of my favorite poets and, and the people that in Kansas city that got me into this whole thing, they were all those poets. When I watched them speak, they were into it. It was a thing that they had rehearsed to the point where it seemed like natural speech. And that's, that's kind of the thing that I preach in, in my classes, workshops. There's a better term that every poem has a character. There's no, there's no true to life poetry because nobody speaks that way. So when you're on stage presenting this character, be that character. Otherwise it's a waste of everybody's time, including yours.
Speaker 8 00:21:53 Sorry. I needed to pick something so much to choose from. Uh, this is a persona foam. It was inspired by something I saw driving to work recently. How much humiliation must one dog stand. First, you move into a small yard in the suburbs. I'm a hunter. I should be roaming the woods and planes. Then you surrounded with an invisible barrier. That hurts when I crossed second, do you remove my testicles that hurt to them? At least they don't get zapped. When I cross your invisible barrier, that electronic torture device that should be fastened around those small and meaningless testicles that we're so fond of and will never be able to lik 30, address me in costumes, a giant hot dog or horse being written by a monkey drag and a slice of watermelon, a taco, a superhero cat, not as superhero sidekick, but it can't no cat can be a superhero or any kind of fear for if you name me, Jasper, the nickname given to you by a friend in grade school.
Speaker 8 00:23:08 Jasper deep makes me wonder if he really was from, if you were an intelligent animal, if you cared, you know, I am Shazzam Ella wishes, Melvin scores, your cats, harasser of squirrels, chaser, birds, tormentors, sleeping, children, conqueror the solfa soiler of the carpet. The story of all things left mine about Supreme leader or the hairballs residing everywhere in mind, fortress where you are allowed to be present. It is appropriate. You carry my wastes in plastic bags. As I parade you around the displaying to all creatures that I'm having a human. But now for the final humiliation, you put me in a cone, a plastic funnel to protect me. You say, and I ask, who is protecting me from you? Who is protecting you from me in the middle of the night? And it gets worse. The cone is festooned with butterflies and flowers. I eat butterflies. I piss on flowers just before you put your nose to them. You make me wear a cone for all dogs and that feline hell spawn next door. To see you leave me to be a happy dog. That is just my face beneath it waits the truth. I can not see to the left or to the right, but I can see you. And your time was coming. If you had a cone on your head, you'd
Speaker 9 00:24:37 See that
Speaker 10 00:24:49 The air was heavy today. Like if they bond that I must wait through. It's a sunny day and warm wood. It feels cold and hazy heavy. Like I'm weighed down my mind. Won't move. My feet are planted. My eyes have a film playing tricking, hiding dust from the desert oil from a spill blocked in concrete. The air is heavy today. So much is happening rather quick. And decisions are being made and get no decisions are decided and nothing is happening at all. It's the journey that ended and the journey that just began. It's the changing of the guards. A moment of stand still. The moment after a rifle has been shot before the deer has been hit heavy as in palatable, full of feeling full of nothing at all. I container with no boundaries. The is heavy
Speaker 9 00:26:14 Yeah, it was time to decide and it's now down pouring outside. So I'm certainly not going to read a poem that I wrote about snow. So, um, this is another persona poem. I was going to read it. If there's Lewis is one of my favorite people, but he's not here, but you're right. It's humorous stuff a lot of times. Um, so this would be what I would read for him. Um, little preface to it, to, uh, there's a commercial about safe driver discount stuff, you know, and somebody's moving really, really slow because they didn't want to risk their discount. So this is called a re goldfish on the car.
Speaker 9 00:27:06 I am the gold fish in the fishbowl on the top of that car. You know, the one that insurance commercial, something about safe driver discount. I'm sure you thought as everyone else said, how did they do that? Sticky tape ticky tack surely something. Right. Once I left my coffee on top of the car, and as I strapped my kid on the way to school, I started to drive off and within seconds, the black stream does float across my windshield. And now on a goal just to goldfish in a bowl on the roof of a car. So yeah. Now the thing you should be asking, the thing that you should find fascinating is what it would be like to be me, the fish on the top of the car, viewing the wide wider world as it zooms by all seen through fishable, an actual fish islands.
Speaker 9 00:28:09 Imagine if you were a store bought fish and suddenly the whole of your world, stable, predictable feeding at regular intervals, the same food every day. Maybe the occasional weird face here again is spun around and around. Quite literally the world suddenly races by you are possibly fastened to the roof of a car. And while it may be moving at only the legal limit, that is far faster than you have ever gone. And centrifical forest will have its way multicolored houses block after block passed by cars moving, or still seem to zoom pass, right? Streaks, just latching by like nothing you've ever experienced or seen, literally do fish vomit. I'd expect you're about to find out soon. And it's not pretty vomit is never pretty on that. I think all species can agree, especially if you then have to swim in it and thank God this isn't San Francisco.
Speaker 2 00:29:41 I think you're really hitting on something here. I was preparing for this yesterday. My roommate was hanging a background living room. He heard me, I was going through your book and I was reading it out loud. And if for him, it was funny because he said something I've never really heard anyone say out loud, I don't really get poetry. What would you tell someone if they said that to you?
Speaker 3 00:30:00 Well, I mean, first of all, I'll ask what they mean. They don't, they don't understand overwhelming metaphor. Well, neither do I. And honestly, that's not my favorite kind of poetry. And I jokingly because I don't honestly believe this is true. I jokingly say I write poetry for people who don't like poetry, which isn't entirely true. It's not like I don't use metaphor at all, but I don't think if you pick up my book on maybe 95% of my poems, I think you'll understand what it's about. And I don't think that makes me better or worse. I'm a type of poet. I'm a type of poet that I like. Um, and so I gravitate towards poets like that. Where when you read your stuff, either you make me laugh. You make me cry. You make me mad, whatever. But it's because I understood it. I didn't have to take it back and break it all down and try to realize, oh, that's a metaphor for, you know, the moon or whatever, because I don't, I personally don't want to do that.
Speaker 3 00:31:08 Other people love it. It's their favorite thing. They love to take poetry. Re-imagine it? Try to figure out what the artist meant and I'm of the school with art in general, that whatever the person receiving the art thinks it means is what it means. I no longer own it. I should get paid for it because I wrote it. But other than that, I no longer owe it own it. It's not mine anymore. It's you know, if you come to me and say, I love that poem about your mom, blah, blah, blah. And it was about a dog or whatever, I'll just say. Yeah, thank you. You know, I don't tell them this. Well, that's not about my mom because it's not important. So
Speaker 9 00:31:46 Yeah. I like to usually like come prepared to perform, but, uh, I've read this on my way. Or right before I came in, it started from a prompt with bill at, at our last legal Minnesota poets gathering, uh, from on line. He just happened to say in passing, which is stepping out of my shoe laces and tripping over myself. And so we made a bet that, you know, like, all right, just to see what we can do with it. And again, this is my second time reading. And since I wrote it, so you're going have to, if it sucks well, and you get to make fun of me.
Speaker 9 00:32:28 I don't mind stepping on my shoe laces, tripping over myself. I looked down at my shoes and asked why the laces. I heard somewhere said hands shaking and not time, which has to be wondering, I'm wondering why I'm staring at my shoes. As in real life, the world's move all around me and with me and public for all to see, I look the fool standing, still staring at my shoes and tripping over myself. I wouldn't even want to mind it because you have to fall. You have to fall to pick yourself up for the first time. There's a power in deciding to get up and go. But that decision can only be made from the stimulus of the floor. Tripping over myself. I decide about chipping out loud. I love myself and I'm not sorry for it. Cause I know that in myself. And that's how I see it in you brother mirror, I acknowledge and salute the divinity within you. I simply say not mistake, but media is these days. They made that word seem kind of cheesy and hokey I'm over myself. Now I only need medication. And when you, as myself in my heart in loving life, loving you is a reason to grow for anybody.
Speaker 11 00:34:32 I wish I had the words to exemplify the way you would make me feel, letting their delicious melody, drip from the tip of my tongue to ink, blots smear turns, blossoming margin doodles. As I fumbled to express how you find ways to quench what I had yet to begin to thirst for, but then such as the way that time sometimes interrupts itself. I watch a Chrysalis outside my window glimmer and the frost. And I cannot remember what butterflies feel like. Or if I could pin down some future dream, I haven't dared to venture.
Speaker 2 00:35:25 And I totally get what you're saying. I was going through a book. They really, what I like about your work going through felt this many times, it's really, you have a real great power of observation, a moment. There's one that stood out to me. That was bit different. The rest though. Um, don't mind my asking you about distancing the divine. Sure. I like this a lot. I mean it, to me, it seems like, um, I don't know an ode to an, from an atheist about their loss of faith, but almost like a, like a, an apology in a way, I guess. Is that a fair to,
Speaker 3 00:35:59 Um, well, it is so there's so many, self-righteous easy. It's in the world and for me, I don't like that. Like, I don't care what anybody wants to believe to get them through the day. But for me, this is a poem talking to the people who hammer me with God and my lack of belief, especially considering that I didn't always not believe, you know, that's a weird way to structure a sentence, but I did at some point, but the problem is I learned this is going to sound snarky and I don't mean it to it's just how I talk. I learned science and to me, the bigger the universe got, and the more it got explained to me, the less that any kind of religion I ever learned made sense because it was so earth centric. And to me, if, if God is about this earth in, in this earth is so screwed up in so many ways and great in so many ways. Like I'm not a pessimist. Like I don't think that everything's going to hell and we're done. But if God is the architect, that's what the whole last line was about. Like, if you're saying God's great architect, well, every other architect would be fired for this mess that is around you. Like it can't be good here in bad here. The bow, the building will fall down.
Speaker 2 00:37:20 If there is a plan in the bland life that I've lived, it's full of falling walls, dead and halls and countless mistakes forgive. And the other architect would be fired for that. And that I loved that. Well, even like here to the beginning, you say it's not much of a thing that life is an accident for a lot of people are kind of afraid to admit that. And for me, it's okay to see that it's meaningless and I can find meaning in that and not be scared of that.
Speaker 3 00:37:42 Yeah.
Speaker 7 00:37:46 Okay. Ready? This poem is called the world before. This is not the him before the bees were dead. We pray to God or gods who might have heard us. We closed mounds around communion wafers, but candles to saints or nouns at some alter or another. The hand to the dead has always been haunting. We loved and thought held in the hands of children measuring time by sun and moon measured time by leaves and frost studied the studied cloak of night. We baked bread marveled at how yeast rises, measured love by gifts and pain by loss. We knew success was not possession. Still we bought and sold, consumed all. We could sure there would be peace. Sure. There would be more. We could predict things. Then when water would freeze fish would glide along the underbelly six inches of ice like glass birds would migrate in search of heat and light. The bees would hunker down buzzing like a heart in winters hive. When the ice would fall, the chirping would return first in pockets. Then in full sheets of bird, buzzing would spill out into the air and explosion of gilded energy. And this was the way of things. There was always cleansing. There would always be more. We said our prayers and lit candles who knew the sacrifices we make
Speaker 12 00:39:29 Um, and it was, uh, the one who actually shared this place with me, encouraged me to go. So I guess I'm dedicated to her chair. Um, so it's called made to move, create a, to create setting out in the morning for a dollar. My mind, body and spirit are, is lifted from a fog. Instead releases me from the stagnation of extended sitting. And my senses are overwhelmed. As I pay attention to each in its time. I see the classic sight and sound of a bird singing and said to him, we are made to move. As the bird created to create. I hear also the sound of the wind picking up to cool. The warning day we're made to move. As the wind created to create a smell. Third Oak waltz set out to the landscape. A set of flower beds were made to blossom as a flowers and share seeds of insight created to create a taste. The saltiness of my drying, thirsty timing. As I continue forward, we are made to be salt created to create. I feel my heartbeat increasing as my breath quickens and think about how alive this makes me feel in this moment. We are made to move and created to create.
Speaker 4 00:41:05 It's going to take me a second to find this a technology. Well, since I can find it out this way, this one that showed up here, it's really short. Somebody wrote a while ago in 2006 through my first check. I like Walt Whitman because he's a fat man. you? Steak and potatoes, not sushi and quail eggs. He is Elvis. And the rolling stones is Texas in New York, not researchy and teacups. What women is Jack Daniels and apple pie. What Whitman is red Cadillac soldiers and fat babies like Walt Whitman. He is a fan man, a poet. He is Walt Whitman.
Speaker 3 00:42:17 Let's talk about poets and Pines. So, um, absolutely backed this up. So when did you first get involved with poets and minds? Poets and pints was not developed by me. It was developed by David Bayless and bred. Elizabeth Jenkins is two local poets. Although bread has moved away since then, but she, yeah, she moved to Indiana. David's still here. They came up with this show where they w they were at fair state. I believe originally. Um, it was before my time and back in 2015. So, and that was in February of 2015. So they started it and then it quickly got moved out of there to Sisyphus. And it's been at for about six years. I came in in 2016. Yeah, it was right when they would go over to . So it was around February and I just came to see the show. Somebody told me about it.
Speaker 3 00:43:11 I came to see it. I participated in the open mic and then David liked what I did a piece called argument that's in my first book. And he asked if I wanted to be a feature on the show, because that's basically how this show works. There's no trial process. You just basically get asked to be on the show I did. And then just a few months later, I was a full on feature and had a bunch of fun. And then I started helping David with the shell. So I helped them develop an email address, a website, a Facebook group, like I, he was doing all this stuff just by word of mouth basically. And wasn't really broadcasting it the way it should be. And I was like, this is a great idea for a show. And it's a great venue. Let's make it more popular.
Speaker 3 00:43:52 So I was helping them. And then eventually in fall of 2018, he came to me. He's like, I don't, I'm going to want to stop doing the show. And I want to know if you want to have it. And I was like, absolutely. Yes, yes. I, I won't even think twice. It sounds great. So we made it so that February of 2019 would be as last show. And then March of 2019, actually technically would be my first show, but the late Michael Finley who was sick at the time, like a lot of people know this poet, Michael Finley, he was already sick at the time. We didn't know how much time he had left. And he asked if he could curate a show and host a show. And I said, absolutely. I, you know, I don't even care. It's supposed to be my first show, your legend, please do it.
Speaker 3 00:44:35 And so my first show was actually in April of 2019, where I was the host and curator been going ever since. And then one of the first things I did was talk to crack Walnut, which is a local chapter of the league of Minnesota poets. And see if we could tie, get a tie in with them and become part of them so that I, I just wanted it to have more of a credence and more of a nonprofit field, wanted people to know that we're not here trying to make money off these poets. We also don't give money to the poets, but we don't make money off them either. We're here for poetry and we're here for performance. And we want everybody to feel welcome and to maybe have interest in the league of Minnesota poets. And so that's how I became part of it. And then I joined the board and then I became the performance chair. So now cracked Walnut performances. I don't want to say they feed through me because every, anybody who wants to create one, they really just have to talk to the crack Walnut team and say, this is what we want to do. Do you think it's part of your brand? And usually unless it's some crazy thing we were like, yeah, absolutely. It just, I kind of make sure that anybody who needs anything in the performance world can get it.
Speaker 2 00:45:44 Basically the venue for PO's and Pines is, is it mostly just located at this fist? Do you guys rotate it all the,
Speaker 3 00:45:50 No, it's solely it's this, the Sufis has been wonderful to us. I will shout their name to the heavens for all time, because they are very, very cool. Um, I mean, obviously they closed for the pandemic, so I kept the show going via zoom, um, from April of 20 through July of 21. So all those shows are on our poets and pints, uh, YouTube channels. So I started YouTube channel then, and now I've just been filming the show on my computer when, during the show too. So now the YouTube channel is continued on all the shows. Even the live ones now have been on our YouTube channel. And seriously, if you just search poets and pints, you'll find the YouTube channel. So giving the link great, but you won't miss it. Um, it's, it's got a big ampersand. You'll find it.
Speaker 2 00:46:36 One thing I liked when I, when I went to see the performances, it was the stable of people that did actually perform that night. You had a broad range of people who were in their sixties or seventies talking about pets to young people in their twenties, talk, going over a breakdown, a relationship. And I was wondering, how do you make this? How do you decide what your, your cast of people who are gonna be performing that night is like, do you, how do you do it?
Speaker 3 00:47:04 So the, what I do is if I know you're a poet, and I know you haven't been on the show, I'll ask you to fill out a survey. The survey takes approximately one minute to fill out. It's not a big survey. It simply tells me you're interested. And then I just try to put together a show. There's never a, I shouldn't say never when I'm putting together the show, there's very rarely a theme. It's usually just, I want to make sure there's a diverse Dez on, on the stage. So I try to make sure that there's at least one person of color. I have a whole stage full. If I could, honestly, I just don't have them in the quote, unquote hopper and I'm and I'm putting out feelers. So if you're a person of color and you want to be on a poetry show and you've never been on poets and pints, please reach out to me because we desperately want to have a diverse show.
Speaker 3 00:47:55 And for example, this month in February, we're having all people of color. It's a black history month show. I didn't put it together. Joe Davis put it together. Uh, the black Pearl Warren is the host and I'm just going to be there an audience member. But, um, and so that's another thing we do as these guests, curated shows. So that keeps me from having to plan 12 shows a year, which I would go insane. So I usually end up having to do about six shows a year, which is perfect. And you know, and I love the summer show. So I typically do those. They're just a little more fun. Um, more people come out. Um, but yeah, there's no tryout process. We don't have a gatekeeper, which is a complaint that people have a lot about citywide poetry shows. If you go to any given city, there's a lot of gatekeepers out there. And I really try not to play one. I try to, if you get out, if you give me a survey, I'll get you on the show.
Speaker 3 00:48:51 Is there a lot of people after they do it, they do. They stick around, not as much as they should really. Um, I, I constantly tell people, you know, like thank you for being on the show. Please don't let this be the only show you come to. Like, I'm glad you were here. I'm glad you've performed your work. Please come back. Please bring people we're here every month. And it doesn't work as well as it should. I, I personally, and I don't want to make this sound like a guilt trip because I'm not trying to, for me, I felt guilt and I just kept coming because he was like, you had me on the stage. Like if I don't show up, I feel bad. And I think that's just a difference on how I was quote unquote raised in the poetry world and raised, just started in that Kansas city place.
Speaker 3 00:49:36 But they're like, you go to each other's stuff. Like if, if I come to your stuff, you come to my stuff and that's how we keep this going. And so it's not always as full as I want, but since, since, uh, I got cracked Walnut legal, Minnesota posts, it's had a bigger crowd more often. And also because we plan so far out in advance, now we get to advertise. Uh, and then we always do something special for black history month. And for the national poetry month in April, um, this month we're having all poetry teachers on who will be doing their work as well as some of their students. So it's going to be an interesting show. When's the show happening? That's actually on April 20th, April 20th. Okay. And what's happening this month. This month is the black history month. So that's on, uh, February 16th and Joe, like I said, Joe Davis, who's a local person, color poet. Um, he put together the show, uh, he curated the whole thing. He's not actually going to be there because he had another gig, which is fine. So the black Pearl Warren is a number local poet. She's going to host. And then we got Jessica Winnie, Shivanda brown and Christine free. So female poets, uh, all people of color. And they're, they're doing, doing the show and I'll just be an audience member. And that's what we've been doing for black history month for, since I took over the show.
Speaker 5 00:51:00 Um, and I have a philosophy that I understand that we are all in Minnesota. And so humility is like this thing, but I think it's stupid when it comes to art. There's no reason to be humble in art. Like if you're an artist, tout yourself, tell everybody you're awesome. It's that simple. All right. So this poem is called a small amount of humility starts with a quote. True humility is not thinking less of yourself. It's thinking of yourself less by CS Lewis. The clock is ticking. The noise should be constant. It should hit the beat every time, but it's tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, and suddenly your heartbeat no longer minds up. You feel as though you're dying by the second or the half second. It really depends on when that tick happens, but feeling death or thoughts of dying is what we do after 40 rebalance.
Speaker 5 00:52:11 Whether or not this cheeseburger is worth the extra 30 minutes it's taking it is by the way, in my last 30 minutes, I'll be remembering all the cheeseburgers and forgotten meals consumed in front of the television. But people in life encourage humility. They tell you be humble in sports for it's only a game. They tell you, be humble to your family for they're the ones who will love you, whether or not you ever improve. And they tell you be humble before God, because you know, I'm not really sure. And also for that, when I die, I want people to be so shocked that they shut down like a soldier who developed a PTSD as a child. When I die, I want there to be a service. So grand that people wish they kind of edit invite. When I die, I wanted to create a whole so big that physics can't fill it.
Speaker 5 00:53:12 I want everything I've ever read written to be read again to children, even though of courts, because you can only trust people who curse. I want my stuff to have a on eBay and I want a firework ceremony so I can scare the shit out of my cats. One last time, I want to be the character that everyone is pissed is gone next season. I want a Memorial. I want a Memorial bench. So now I can support. I know I haven't told these look when all we're given is this murderous teacher named time. When all we have is what we leave behind. It shouldn't surprise you that I want some in mortality, as much as I can get who selling it, where can I buy it? You want to be loved in life and high. I want to be loved eternal. I want you to remember me smiling and then laughing so hard that it makes zero noise. And I want you to remember how blue my eyes were when the sun finally came out and I want that clock did the second. It's like it's supposed to every single time. My heart does not like the spaces
Speaker 2 00:54:39 For any upcoming. Want to be poets out there who want to be involved poets and Pines work. And they reach out to do the survey for you if they want to be involved.
Speaker 3 00:54:49 Um, well, there's a Facebook group for poets and pints. So if you look up posts and Pines and Facebook, I know not everybody's on Facebook anymore, but, um, the surveys there, uh, but also you can just put a message on there. Hey, can somebody give me the link for the survey? But if you scroll down far enough, you'll find it. Um, also the crack Walnut website has it, um, under the poets and pine section. So crack walnut.com, um, also poets and pints.com. We'll go to the crack Walnut website now. So we've, we've just routed it. So it used to be a separate website. Now it's the same. Um, so there's lots of different places. Or if you just know me or know somebody who knows me, I can get it sent to you. We've got plenty of openings for the rest of the year. So we're planned out through April issue unless you're a poetry teacher, then get ahold of me about April, but otherwise we're planned out through April. And then, you know, plenty of time for this, the rest of the year,
Speaker 2 00:55:45 As much time talk with Tony Placido, the show runner for poets and Pines. Tony, thanks so much beyond right on radio.
Speaker 3 00:55:52 Thank you for having me. It's been great.
Speaker 2 00:55:54 And now this
Speaker 13 00:56:12 You are listening to right on radio on cafe 90.3 FM and streaming live on the
[email protected]. I'm Andy Harvey. I'd like to thank our special guests tonight, Tony Placido, and all the poets involved with poets and pints and our listeners without your support and donations cafe would not be possible. You can find more news and info about right on radio at cafe.org/right on radio. Plus you can listen to recent episodes and old on our podcast. You can search right on radio on Spotify, iTunes, Google podcasts, anywhere podcasts can be found. Um, stay tuned here on cafe for bone shore, Minnesota.
