Director Paula Plum Brings Steel Magnolias to the 'Hub'

I had the good fortune to interview the doyenne of the Boston-area theatre scene, actress, playwright and director Paula Plum.  I talked with Plum about her professional experience, and the play she is directing at the Hub Theatre Company in Boston, "Steel Magnolias." ( Playing through Aug 3)

Over the past three decades, her most notable performance have been as Cleopatra, Lady Macbeth, Beatrice, Touchstone and Phedre at the Actors’ Shakespeare Project; in Miss Witherspoon, The Heiress and Death of a Salesman at the Lyric Stage ; Body Awareness, History Boys and New Century at SpeakEasy Stage; Lysistrata, Ivanov, Mother Courage, and The Marriage of Bette and Boo at the American Repertory Theatre.

Ms. Plum was trained at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic arts and is a Cum Laude graduate of Boston University’s School for the Arts, where she was also honored as Distinguished Alumna in 2003.

                                              

                          ..............................................................................................................................................................................

Well--this is a Somerville newspaper--so I have to ask you if you have any history of performance in Somerville? I think I met you briefly through Emily Singer--who worked for Jimmy Tingle when he had the theatre in Davis Square.

-Yes,  I have been Artistic Director of A Christmas Celtic Sojourn produced by WGBH & Brian O’Donovan, which had its first performance at Somerville Theatre in December 2003. 

 I see you performed at the Lyric Stage. Did you perform there when it was a little walk up on Charles Street in Boston? The founders used to live in Somerville.

-I have been working at the Lyric Stage since 1975 when the theatre was located above Ken’s at Copley Square, pre-dating their Charles St. home by several years. I played Margot in their production of Dial M for Murder, directed by Polly Hogan, and featuring Ron Ritchell, the founders of the Lyric Stage. 

You seem to embrace all facets of the theatre: Playwright, actor, director. Which is you favorite role?

-Acting for me is the most freeing and when I get a chance to fly. 

I have to ask you this because my brother Don Holder is a Tony Award-- winning lighting designer.  Do you appreciate the role of lighting in a production?  

-Lighting is everything: it can create not only mood but environment. I believe you really only need actors, text and a a great lighting plot to realize a play.


You are directing Steel Magnolias at the innovative Hub Theatre of Boston.  It is about a group of women who bond over a loss of a friend in a small southern burg.  Could this been have done equally well with men and still have the same impact?

-Seriously, no. Women and men form friendships differently. The way these women relate to each other, the way they support each other, is uniquely female.


How has it been working with the Hub Theatre?

-This is my third directing experience with Hub and all three have been a pleasure. Hub Theatre is a well-greased machine. Lauren Elias is a very skilled producer and knows how to assemble a creative team, as well as how to market the heck out of a show. She’s great with social media; the houses have been packed and joyful!


Finally--why should people see Steel Magnolias?

-I have been blessed with a glorious cast of women who expertly handle the comedy as well as the pathos. . This  cast of actresses works brilliantly together to portray the charm of these Southern women, as well as their warmth, complexity, and passion.

For more information go to  http://www.hubtheatreboston.org/

From an abandoned storefront window: art sprouts in East Somerville

( Left to Right)  Stan Eichner, June Lee, Abigail Coyle, Doug Holder

** To view these artists' work go to  https://www.eastsomervillemainstreets.org/window-s-art-project

From an abandoned storefront window: art sprouts in East Somerville

By Doug Holder

Every once in awhile I leave the environs of Union Square to get a taste of the buffet of creativity we have in our city. In this case it was East Somerville.  After all the Poet Laureate of Somerville Lloyd Schwartz resides there—as well as the renowned Mudflat Studios. On a warm June day I ventured East to meet with Jen Atwood, director of East Somerville Main Streets and her band of artists and artisans, at the innovative space called Mudflat. According to their website,

 "Mudflat is a clay studio for students and artists of all ages and levels in metro Boston. We offer a dynamic artistic community, featuring classes, workshops, outreach programming and events, plus a mix of studio rentals for 38 professional clay artists."

The Mudflat Studios is an impressive place with a huge cavernous studio, and many smaller work spaces on several floors. Atwood introduced me to three of the artists who contributed to the Windows Project—part of the East Somerville Carnaval celebration. Each artists explores the meaning of “Carnaval,” which is inspired by a traditional Brazilian street fair. For some of the artists Carnavale is a specific cultural celebration, for others it is a general street celebration.

The artists' whose work adorns the windows of the abandoned East End Grill (right down the block from the studios), include: Katherine Martin Widmer, Abigail Coyle, Stan Eichner, June Lee, and Gary Duehr. Since Widmer and Duehr weren't available I interviewed the three remaining artists.

June Lee, a refugee from the banking world, found her bliss in pottery at the Mudflat Studios. She is now on their faculty. In addition,  she works in a technical capacity at Somerville High. Her ceramic plaques are hung with the other artists' works on the storefront window.  About her pottery, she told me, "I think my pieces are fun to look at. On my pottery I inscribe inspirational quotes, while some quotes are just for fun. We need some Zen and giggle sometimes. It is a crazy world." Much of her pottery pieces  that I saw were expertly crafted with vivid imagery and color.

Abigail Coyle,  is a long time resident of East Somerville. She makes her daily nut in book production at the Algonquin Club in Boston. Coyle is a lover of plants, and she uses the leaf of a Monstera plant ( a flowering plant native to many tropical places), as an inspiration for her window display. Coyle told me, " My leaf piece is made from basic retail craft, glued with a remarkable craft adhesive call Mod Podge." This glossy leaf has been the subject of many conversations from local folks passing by.

Stan Eichner, who is a former civil rights lawyer includes a photographic image from Somerville's " Honk Festival." This musical festival expresses the same sense of joy and celebration of the Carnavale. Eichner told me, " My photography is pretty broad from landscape--to street photography. When I was at the Honk Festival my camera was drawn to the energy and excitement of the scene."

Yes, even an abandoned storefront window can sprout art--here--in --The Paris of New England.

Parts of Everything in Days & Days, Michael Dickman’s new book of poetry

Parts of Everything in Days& Days, Michael Dickman’s new book of poetry

article by Michael Steffen

With the haystack of 2019 comes the needle of Michael Dickman’s fourth book of poems,

Days & Days, a renewal, extension and honing of the poet’s vision and craft quietly polarized,

as Franz Wright recognized, with “utmost gravity as well as a kind of cosmic wit.” Over again the poems’ speaker widens our look with surprising combinations salted with colloquial signatures—“shuvit in the gloxinia on the first try” (“Butterfly Days,” page 3).

While the whole assemblage of the book would seem to stand every traditional notion about poetry, language and sense on its head—which in itself isn’t new or radical in poetry—deeply familiar notes are sounded, beginning with the title and its evocation of a pastoral awareness—

I wanted to say “celebration”—of time, fulfilled by a preoccupation in the poems with nature, urban or suburban albeit, with trees and shrubs, flowers, (pieces of) grass, butterflies and butterflies, crape myrtles, pear blossoms, deer pellets, tea and test roses, fringed tulips, something dull in the bushes is that a rabbit?…

A normal juxtaposition of terms expects Days to be followed by & Nights. James Merrill had

a book of poems with that title. And so Days & Days strikes us also with a Kafkaesque sense of the technological day we live in and cannot turn off.

I picked up everything in the house & set it all back down just to

the left of the clicker (“Lakes Rivers Streams,” page 118)

If more classically it is Hesiod’s Works & Days we are just missing here, the title Days & Days becomes more burdened and ominous, especially in Dickman’s portrayal of time’s lapses.

These conditions somewhat give rise to and affirm Dickman’s alterity, especially his mincing and fizzling of our principle sources and signs:

Some sun above the day

a squiggly light that waits round or

scribbles over

a school of Radio Cabs

& bubble letters

A doe

A deer

A female deer

Traffic moves in

the leaves & then stops

to say hello (“Scribble,” page 9)

The overall arrangement of the book, meanwhile, reveals structuring, with four poems in the first section titled “The Poem Said,” a theme of roses, actual or otherwise, central to the second section (ROSE PARADE), and the third part of the book set in a long poem Dickman calls “Lakes Rivers Streams,” with a nod to John Ashbery The long poem coheres attentively though not laboriously by way of anaphor, repetitions of “The day” personified as subject, the odd use of “ditto” here and there, and an almost robo-linguistic reprising of “For instance.”

Generally, Dickman’s is language poetry, with an insistence on the preservation of the naïve spirit of creativeness, and on the necessary failure of correspondence between sign and thing, lest the correlative archons and tyranny of the day win us over.

I would go there right now

folded up in the silence of a maple tree in the front yard

A tiara

if I could get one leaf right

& sleep in air (“The Poem Said,” page 10)

Where meaning seems insistently to elude us, it sneaks back up on us…almost everywhere. To humanize the traffic in that last strophe with “& then stops/to say hello” is a keen deflation of the poet’s method and terms. It is a stroke of humor, humility and self-awareness, a sudden grin of friendliness from the alien and fugitive procedure and manner of Dickman’s elsewhere noted austerity.

From the onset of the collection, we know our ventures of personality are not made to a facile welcome on the horizon, with—

something else

more difficult to describe

a dustup

around a brown & orange aura

or Lorca’s flowers

The page under its poem’s heading “Butterfly Days” begins in paradox already with reference to an ending: “icing on a cake”—however associated with the residual or sticky, ceremonial, artificial. Icing. Beginning ending. Ending beginning. It is as odd and yet apt this book of copious near-handed wonders (“Neighbor dogs are kind & hunt balls to death”) should conclude with an embodied image of our foremost bearings of first things,

In the morning the kids come running down the stairs (“LRS,” page 121).

Days & Days

poems by Michael Dickman

is published by Alfred A. Knopf

ISBN 9780525655473 (hardcover)

available for $27.00

Robert Smyth and the Yellow Moon Press (2003)

\Robert Smyth

BY DOUG HOLDER On a nondescript stretch of Somerville Avenue just outside Porter Square, there is an unexpected storefront. Yellow Moon Press. It is a veritable treasure trove of story, poetry books, CDs and tapes, that celebrate the oral tradition. In their catalog Yellow Moon describes itself as,"...committed to publishing materials from the various arts of the oral tradition. It is our goal to make available material that explores the oral tradition and breathes new life into it."This pleasingly eclectic small press and retail outlet has poetry titles by local poet, Elizabeth McKim to the more globally known Robert Bly and Ruth Stone.The books range from THE HUNGRY TIGRESS, that deals with Buddhist legends, to JOURNEY IN- AN ANTHOLOGY OF AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION POEMS AND HOW TO TELL THEM. Yellow Moon Press ( www.yellowmoon.com) started publishing poetry in 1978, but gradually shifted to the spoken word and oral tradition. Since then Yellow Moon books are being used in courses in many schools around the country, and they have been a recipient of awards by such notable organizations as the AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION, and the AMERICAN BOOK ASSOCIATION. I talked with Robert Smyth, the founder of the Press, in his small store on a sunny morning in June. DH: Tell me something about your background. How did you get into publishing and the retailing of books? RS: My love of poetry started in my last years of high school, and continued to college. I went to Denison University out in Ohio. When I was there Denise Levertov (once a Somerville poet) came for a week. Robert Bly came for a number of years, and in my senior year I brought Allen Ginsberg in. Soon after I got out of college I started going to Robert Bly's annual conference, THE GREAT MOTHER AND THE NEW FATHER. That is where I was introduced to storytelling. I first did a small chap for a woman out in Washington state. Yellow Moon was founded in 1979. My idea was that I would do little books of poetry now and again, when I found something I really liked. I did not do it as my livelihood. I did it because I loved poetry. Our first book was printed in Union Square (Somerville), by an old leftist press whose name escapes me. I think I found it through Ed Hogan, who founded Somerville's ASPECT MAGAZINE. Ed taught me a lot about publishing.The storefront opened up three years ago. Before that I did it out of my house. When I first started Yellow Moon Press I worked at ROUNDER RECORDS, which at that time was in Somerville. Yellow Moon publishes books and cassettes of storytelling, poetry and music. We have 53 titles in print. We have books on poetry, folklore, collections of Buddhist legends; a range of stuff. DH: Do you find that Somerville has a good atmosphere for your business? RS: The location here at 689 Somerville Ave. has more foot traffic than I thought. DH: Can you talk about some of the local storytellers and poets you have published? RS: The first person that comes to mind is Doug Lipman. He lived in Somerville but now he lives in Atlanta. Doug has been a real part of the storytelling community for years .He is one of the first artists I did a storytelling tape with back in the late 80's. I was associated with a group, Storytellers In Concert, that Doug was a part of. They put on monthly concerts for adults. Doug was the founding member of that. We did four storytelling cassettes with him. We have also published Jennifer Justice, Maggie Purse, Elizabeth McKim (Body India), and other local people we worked with. DH: Your wife Anna Warrock is a poet. How is it being a literary couple? Have you published your wife? RS: We toyed with the idea. I was willing and glad to produce something for Anna. She feels that she wants to get a publisher who is someone other than her husband. She has won a number of awards for her poetry. I have to honor how she wants to do it. We do stuff together. I've helped her with getting her manuscripts ready to go. We are currently working on a reading series, Crossing Open Ground at the Brickbottom Studios. It is a mixture of poets, fiction writers, and storytellers. The first evening we had the Somerville storyteller, Peggy Melanson. DH: You told me that you and Anna have coordinated Robert Bly's 28th Annual Conference on "The Great Mother and the New Father" Can you tell me how you became involved with Bly and the festival? RS:I became acquainted with Robert Bly in the early 70's. I was struck by his charisma. The conference is an interdisciplinary arts festival. There was an art gallery at the festival with some tremendous paintings, photos and sculptures. The conference this year was focused on the confluence of Jewish, Islamic, and Spanish culture. The conference explored the masculine and feminine. It explored this through the arts. DH: How hard is it to run a small press and an indie bookstore? RS: I don't count on the bookstore as a primary source of income. I still do freelance work, audio production and tapes, and I also do book production. I just did a book design for Joe Armstrong, who lives in Davis Square. He studied with Pablo Casals in the 50's.Yellow Moon is a nonprofit Several books are used as course texts at colleges around the country. Lesley University extension uses our books. We also sell to storytelling festivals. DH: Any future plans for the store and press? RS: I am on a push to grow the press. I've just signed up with WORDS DISTRIBUTION, out in California. Distribution is the nut to crack.

Doug Holder Interviews DeWitt Henry (2019) "Sweet Marjoram"

Aleef Mahmud: A resident of the Asylum brings artificial intelligence and poetry to Somerville.

Aleef Mahmud: A resident of the Asylum brings artificial intelligence and poetry to Somerville.

By Doug Holder

Aleef Mahmud, a 30ish young man, met me in the lobby of the Artisan's Asylum-- a hotbed for technology and the arts in Union Square in Somerville, Ma.

Mahmud is the founder of PROTYO, a concern that develops artificial intelligence for things like automated cars, robots, thermostats, medical devices, etc... Although he is located in Somerville-- in the Asylum, he has employees working all over the world.

Mahmud, who was previously located in Brooklyn, NY said Somerville is well-positioned for technology. Many of his customers happen to be in Cambridge, MA. “Somerville is fantastic for business, the arts and technology. People here have the skill-sets and the background for innovative work, and we are surrounded by major corporations,” he said. Mahmud continued, “I plan to always have a space in the Artisan's Asylum.

I asked Mahmud about his view of gentrification in our burg. “ It is a double-edged sword. There is a lot of displacement. Some of the artists at the Artisan's Asylum had to move from Somerville because of the high rents. They now commute. On the other hand, I feel it has brought a new vibrancy to the city.”

Mahmud told me he is the recipient of the Maritime Hero Award. This was presented to him by the U.S. Olympic Committee. It seems that Mahmud developed the technology that makes it possible for the disabled to enjoy sailing. He told me, “ I developed an exoskeleton—so a disabled sailor Richard ramos was able to compete in races. The technology is available for anyone to use for free. I want technologist to help people. I want it to make things more inclusive.”

Now—many people may have issues with artificial intelligence –but for the most part Mahmud does not. I asked Mahmud if all this technology will lead us to be at mercy of robots. He said, “ No I don't think it is going to be what we see in the movies. AI will relieve us from monotonous duties. It will be used for jobs that no one else wants, like bomb detecting, for instance. I told him that I know people with lower level jobs like cashiers have been losing their jobs because machines have replaced them. Mahmud said, “ Humans will always be in the loop. AI will make it more convenient to do what you want to do."

Mahmud came to this country from Bangladesh. His family lived in a cramped apartment in Queens, NY, and relied on food stamps.” So it stands to reason that Mahmud, who describes himself as an amateur poet, would pen work that is socially aware. It seems that this young entrepreneur in the Paris of New England is going to continue making technology and poetry that will be inclusive and with the good for broader society in mind.

Dreams of tomorrow:

dreams I hope will come tomorrow

dreams I hold close

shattered by a plane in September

dark days and sleepless nights that followed

dreams of my mother who struggled to stand

dreams of my father who begged for a hand

dreams become fears seeing my sister harassed

dreams become fears watching my brother's arrest

these dreams keep me steady

keep me ready against the night

these dreams of my mother,

my father, guiding lights of my life

dreams I hope will come tomorrow

dreams I hold close

for brighter days and safer nights

a better tomorrow for those who follow

The Number 5 Is Always Suspect by Bob Heman and Cindy Hochman

The Number 5 Is Always Suspect

by Bob Heman & Cindy Hochman

2019 Bob Heman & Cindy Hochman

Presa Press

Rockford, MI

Softbound, 24 pages, $8

Review by Zvi A. Sesling

This book contains twenty-four sonnets by Bob Heman and Cindy Hochman. Heman was the editor of CLWN WR (formerly Clown War) and is known for his collages that have appeared in a number of poetry magazines. He was also the artist-in-residence at the Brooklyn Museum. Heman is poet who has published in numerous magazines and authored several poetry collections. Hochman is renowned as an editor of fiction and poetry as head of “100 Proof” Copyediting Services. For those who submit poetry or read it online she serves as editor-in-chief of First Literary Review–East. Additionally, she has done book reviews for a number of publications and is on the book review staff of Pedestal. Hochman is the author of three chapbooks.

When two fine poets get together in a collaboration one might think the final results would be a tug of war. But the opposite is true. One of them write a line, then the other writes so that each line is alternated between the two. The results contain humor, sometimes dark as in Poem 2.

he arrived at that place where the foghorns don’t blow

where the rocks are deeper than the sea

you can hear the sirens’ delusory call

as real as real as the horizon’s lure

but what is real in these shipwrecked days?

only the words that trickle through us

as the captain steers in blind avigation

toward the port where the sentence ends

punctuated by ballast to batten the hatches

and let the sea crawl slowly away

like rats onboard with stowaway faces

making their own siren calls

as the vessel veers north on its unsteady course

toward a horizon suddenly far too real

This poem shows how two people in their own homes emailing lines back and forth in a set order can create a poem with a touch of humor and with an unexpected dark ending. Even though the poems in this chapbook are experimental, the quality of each poem is extraordinary as if one poet alone had written experimental lines to be published.

Thirteen is supposed to bring bad luck but Poem 13 shows the humor two people can put together:

A priest, a rabbi, and a bear walk into a bar

“Are there any stars in this story?”

No, Just some whiskey with a beer chaser.

“Is the priest a rabbit?”

No. He’s a lapsed cabbage.

“Are his sermons part of the story?”

No sermons, just poetry readings and fairytales.

“Is the bear allowed to have a meaningful role?”

Indeed! No fairytale is complete without a bear.

“What about the rabbi? Will we see him again?” Oy. The rabbi is trying to find his missing “t.”

“So then he really does believe that he’s the rabbit?”

And oh dear, he’s late, he’s late.

“Is that where the story ends?”

One cannot tell who wrote which line when reading these poems. This makes the poems enjoyable. Who thought of the rabbi being a rabbit? Does it matter? The poem unleashes some absurdist humor reminiscent of some of the jokes traversing over time. It shows that two people can be in sync to write a humorous poem.

While Bob Heman and Cindy Hochman are not married to each other, their poetry engagement has produced a poetic child, a chapbook of twenty-four sonnets, each of which is a collaboration of seven lines each. To accomplish this successfully the two poets are in tune with each other when writing these verses.

Having tried a similar collaboration with a friend years ago, I found the results immature and silly. With Hochman and Heman there is a touch of the silly, but the poems are absolutely worth the read. This chapbook a worthy addition to any collection.

From the Bloc 11 Cafe: Interview with poet Toni Bee

From the Bloc 11 Cafe: Interview with poet Toni Bee

With Doug Holder

Toni Bee met me in the backroom of the Bloc 11 Cafe to discuss her life as a poet, mother, woman, activist, African-American, etc... Bee made it clear to me that she doesn't want to be straight-jacketed into any particular label. A formidable figure, with a voice that makes sure it is heard, Bee also exhibits a great deal of warmth. But she is not one who is afraid to spit out the truth no matter how uncomfortable it feels.

Bee, who lives in Cambridge, but has many Somerville connections, said in an interview that she has an affinity for 'odd people,' and being a dues paying member of the group, I asked her about it. She told me, “I probably got that from Jason Wright, the founder of “Oddball Magazine.” Odd people are not embraced within society. I want to embrace them through my poetry and art.”

Now, I am proud to be among the band of three who created the Somerville Poet Laureate position, and as it turns out Bee was the Poet Populist of Cambridge from 2011 to 2013. I asked her what the difference is between a populist poet and a poet laureate. She said, "The poet populist is elected by ballot. Citizens of Cambridge voted for the populist poet, unlike Somerville where a committee selected the poet laureate." According to Bee her tenure in the position was a positive one. She recalled, “ The position gave me a sense of professionalism and also a chance to work with youth—always an emphasis of mine.” Bee has a TV show on Cambridge Access, she ran a venue for music and poetry at the Middle East Restaurant in Central Square, Cambridge-- among the many activities she is and was involved in.

Bee is not a native of Cambridge, but of Boston. She found that living in Cambridge was a good fit for raising her daughter. Bee reflected, “ Cambridge has its problems, but it has less of the violence than I experienced in Boston.”

I asked Bee if we could talk about her being a founding member of the Black Lives Matter group in Cambridge. She said, “No,” but then politely qualified this. She stated, “ I am a believer in 'intersectionality.' I don't want to be known only as an African American woman—because like all people I am many things. I am a woman, poet, activist, mother, daughter. I don't like to be placed in a  pigeon-hold. So I  do discuss it but with that light in mind."

Many poets from Somerville and beyond—have been a great help to Bee. She mentioned a number of them,  Chad Parenteau,  Afaa Michael Weaver, Dexter Roberts, Gilmore Tamny and of course her own mother. But she fondly recalled being a student at Simmons College. She was an older student, with a child, and a limited income-- so it was a tough stint. But she remembers taking the final poetry class that the celebrated poet Afaa Michael Weaver taught  before he retired. She recalled, "His class was inspirational—it was a catalyst for my life as a poet today.”

In her introduction to her poetry collection “22 Again” she writes, ( often in the vernacular) “ The language I use in this book is an amalgam of word rhythms I have been hearing my entire life. Me, my native country—we is an exquisite mix. I celebrate that. My Daddy made sure we met our half-African great-grandma from Jamaica. And I could neva' understand how she was speaking. Mommy, Eartha Mae, were from South Carolina. And when she called home on weekends, her accent became that sing-song I rarely heard, yet adored. R&B and Hip-hop was the background beat. And growing up in Dorchester was madd diverse. My language became otherized; it seeps in my work.”

Toni Bee is yet another creative person I have encountered here-- in the Paris of New England.

This here body

This here body should eat double chocolate donuts when it's bulk is sleepy or rather wait on the peanut butter cocoa cookie it wants this body is a berry batch, batch juice better than chocolate, body This body, is fluffy pillow needing crunches This body thrills on this Slim paper,slim paper, make body slimmer, do I care if my body swings? do that speak to my pride? In other countries they'd say I was rich, praise body for its excess, its fertileness, in this land just bulk. Yell -body move quicker- put fork down faster- stop eat cheese- leave chocolate alone-forever unless the oxiAnti kind, dear this body you pretty amazing body, don't fuss at the teen, stop wanting so very much more, Body wonders what to do next, first no eat nasty donuts tomorrow or the 30th, yawn, crunch, take stairs, Love? make it stretch you. Body fly your body flies your body is fly, fly my body be

Twoxism Poems by Claudia Serea. Photos by Maria Haro.

TWOXISM REVIEW
by Michael Markham

Twoxism

Poems by Claudia Serea. Photos by Maria Haro.
8th House Publishing, Montreal, Canada. December 2018.
116 pages. Color. Paperback.

Available on the publisher’s website, on Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

TWOXISM is a collaboration between two artists, the poet Claudia Serea and photographer Maria Haro. The basic premise is the pairing of objects in a photograph and then the pairing of that photo with a poem. The photos are essentially documentary, being of found objects paired up, sometimes in suggestive ways.

The objects themselves are ordinary and day-to-day—things we might easily overlook or take for granted as we move about our hurried lives: traffic lights, bicycles chained together, a pair of abandoned shoes. A photo showing the shadows of a table and chair on a sidewalk is paired with the following poem:

A question for you

Tell me,

if I caught your shadow

and kissed it,

would you walk only

on the sunny side of the streets

so you wouldn't lose

my kiss?

The essential art, in a book such as this, is the collaboration itself, with one art form provoking or enhancing the other. When this is successful—as it certainly is here—the image and the poem engage and tease out associations that neither, on its own, might so easily suggest. The following is one of my favorites, which reflects also on the fact that Haro (Spain) and Serea (Romania) are both foreign-born New Yorkers, exploring, documenting, and commenting on their surroundings. A photograph of two paper signs taped together onto a wall reading "WET PAINT! / PINTURA FRESCA!" is paired with the following poem:

About languages

In what language

does the house painter paint?

Does the wind in Chile

speak Spanish to the trees?

Do the gulls over the Hudson River cry

Whitman's verse?

And what about

the Statue of Liberty?

In what language does she

keep silent?

As someone who's worked in a number of artistic disciplines—visual art, photography, music, poetry—I've always been interested in art that is multidisciplinary. There's a dynamic between the various art forms that is always suggestive and open to exploration. This interest extends to artists of differing backgrounds or disciplines or attitudes who collaborate, as if in conversation. This book is an excellent example of that kind of dynamic.

*

Michael Markham was born in England, raised in Canada, and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. He received his art instruction at the Instituto Allende (Mexico) and the Vancouver School of Art (Canada). He has exhibited in Canada, the United States, Mexico, Europe, and Australia. Markham is also a published poet and an active musician. www.mmarkham.com.

Doug Holder interviews writer Phil Temples