The Essential Doug Holder, New & Selected Works

The Essential Doug Holder, New & Selected Works 

Doug Holder 

Copyright © 2020 Doug Holder 

Big Table Publishing 

Boston, MA and San Francisco, CA 

172 pages, $15, softbound 

Review by Zvi A. Sesling 

The first time I picked up a Doug Holder poetry book I immediately connected with the author on many levels. I read five more of his collections which, with this newest volume of poetry,  that numbers eight books. What I discovered in all this reading is that while Holder is humorous-- he still has insight into the human condition. It is always there, as are his keen observations of all that he encounters, people, animals and almost everything on the streets of greater Boston. Take for instance one of his earlier poems from Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: The Back Bay To The Back Ward.”  

A Moose in Boston 

I saw it trot 

down Commonwealth Avenue 

its majestic head 

dour and pinched 

with patrician bearing 

covering the same ground 

that horses of lesser lineage  

plodded over years before. 

It strode  

alongside the subway car 

with the precision of dancers’ legs 

looking discreetly at the window frames 

of peoples’ faces 

like a museum of surprise. 

I heard it snort  

in the humid air 

its head up turned 

fighting and assault to its dignity 

gracefully disappearing in the bush 

as if to shake a patch of persistent flies 

the police 

hot on its tail 

 The descriptions of the moose-- like a ballet dancer--  appears  near royal in its bearings,  as it looks at people in the subway car -- perhaps viewing them as a lower class, spying on his upper class royalty. 

In another book Holder  shows how some people might feel at a party, meeting  

on an overcrowded bus, or trolley or street. Here is “Unknown in a Crowd” from Dreams At The Au Bon Pain: 

And that’s when 

you felt most at peace— 

lost in the cornucopia. 

Feeling 

like the multi-eyed 

fly on the wall 

away from the claustrophobic intimacy. 

Observing 

not observed 

owner of your own dialogue… 

You think— 

for once— 

you can— 

almost— 

tolerate  

them all 

Holder has placed himself inside our heads. We have experienced this feeling of not wanting to be there but yet “almost/tolerate/them all.” He knows how much better it is to be observing/not observed.  Holder knows the dynamics of a  faculty or business meetings, a rush hour crowd in the subway, or even standing in line at a play or movie theater.  

In Wrestling With My Father Holder pays a loving elegy to his father-- who was a public relations executive in New York City. His wishes for his father reflect the feelings many people have for a parent’s final departure from the living: 

 When Father Dies 

When Father dies 

let it 

be in the midst 

of the frenetic rush 

of Madison Ave. 

Let him fall like 

a weathered pit bull 

in a three-piece suit. 

When father dies 

stage his swan song 

in a dark bar 

with a dry martini 

and an old pal. 

When father dies 

let it be on the rush hour 

train home 

his face buried 

in the Post 

his last breath involved 

with the world. 

When father dies 

let it be 

in front of the fireplace 

with his wife, 

talking to her 

like she’s still 

the virginal student teacher 

from the Bronx. 

In another book, The Man In The Booth In The Midtown Tunnel one particular poem flashes Holder’s love of literature and ironic humor with an unexpected ending. It is a trademark of his style throughout  his poems. 

Book Seducer 

You have revealed 

your subtext to me 

in a hushed 

intimate encounter. 

I seduced you 

on a train 

lovingly 

folding your 

pages 

with dog ears, 

highlighting what 

I loved about you 

with 

heart-red ink. 

And even now 

I talk you up 

with people 

I meet, 

yet I abandoned you 

on some commuter 

rail seat. 

Some of the titles in Eating Grief At 3 A.M. also hint at the playful content of his poems, such as “Eating Grief at Bickford’s,” “Father Knows Best—Mother Does the Rest” and “Curiosity Killed the Cat.” 

Holder’s  Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Poseur, Boston 1974-1983 displays his prose poetry skill with a series of written pictures of Boston’s iconic, mostly disappeared  establishments such as Jack’s Joke Shop, Milner Hotel, Chinatown, Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller and Rexall Drugs. This theme carries over into Last Night At the Wursthaus a lament for women in bars, his mother, lottery tickets and death.    

The final section “New” is a collection of Holder’s recent poems --a variety of subjects including, “Meeting Allen Ginsberg (Buffalo, NY, 1975),” “Texting In Class,” on the demise of the Jacob Wirth restaurant in Boston, “Marijuana” and “Dreaming on the Senior Line at Market Basket” and “In My Mind I Swam to Spectacle Island.” 

Holder’s newest book concludes with “If We Froze with a Fork in our Hand” that leaves us asking an important question about our hurried lives. 

Before we took the bait 

and just before the bite 

before we enveloped it with 

our hungry breath 

before the mindless flap 

of our coated tongues 

before we smashed it 

with a new set 

of porcelain teeth, 

and the day to day 

grind of our cracking jaws 

How about, 

if we just 

took a second 

to simply 

pause? 

Doug Holder is an inveterate walker. Hours or miles do not seem to matter. From his home in Somerville, MA he has traversed most of his hometown, Cambridge, Boston and other areas accessible by foot. The cover of his new book shows him in his cocked hat, a newspaper tucked under his arm pounding the pavement of some neighborhood. He could be a business executive, a homeless person or a private detective. But the telltale clue of Holder’s existence is on the front cover and was written by the late poet Sam Cornish, Boston’s first Poet Laureate: 

“Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. Hie is living in the poem rather than the poetry.” 

Doug Holder is a poet I admire. His poetry has often inspired my own work and many other poets.   Moreover, “Essential Doug Holder,” is a must for every poetry lover to read and cherish.   

___________________________________________________ 

Zvi A. Sesli 

Author, War Zones &The Lynching of Leo Frank 

Editor, Muddy River Poetry Review 

Editor, Bagel Bards Anthology 7, 8, 12  

Catastroika : Charles Rammelkamp

Catastroika

Reviewed by

Carolynn Kingyens

Catastroika

Author: Charles Rammelkamp

Apprentice House Press

ISBN 978-1-62720-298-5

As I read Charles Rammelkamp’s glorious new book of poetry – Catastroika, I was, at times, reminded of the powerful ending of Schindler’s List, when we see the Jews, particularly “Schindler’s Jews,” finally free, sitting together on train tracks. But even after they were free, a new dilemma quickly arose, where could they go that was safe?

“Where should we go?” asked one of the Schindler’s survivors to a military man on horseback.

“Don’t go East, that’s for sure, they hate you there,” said the military man.

“I wouldn’t go West either, if I were you.”

“Isn’t that a town over there?”

In one of the last poems entitled “Catastroika,” we learn where Rammelkamp’s unique

book title derives:

“The wordplay in the press on Perestroika,

Gorbachev’s program of economic reforms –

Catastrophe.”

Catastroika is part catastrophe, part narrative poetry, part history, part human condition, and a whole lot of resiliency, especially on the part of its two main characters – Maria, daughter of the infamous Grigory Efimovich Rasputin, and the fictional, Russian Jewish refugee, Sasha, who newly arrives in Baltimore, where he quickly finds a job, learns English, meets his wife, Riva, and starts a family.

Our first introduction to Sasha comes in the first poem, “Call Me Sasha” –

But still, I knew better

than to pursue a friendship

with his daughter Maria,

a lovely fifteen-year-old when I first met her,

fresh to the big city from “The Sleeping Land” –

what “Siberia” means in Tatar, after all;

“The Edge” or “The End” in Ostyak.

“Alexander Federmesser,” I introduced myself,

noting my parents had named me for the tsar,

“but you can call me Sasha.”

Maria Rasputin, like a lot of daughters, loves her father, despite his pariah-like reputation in Russia, and later the world. She was industrious enough to capitalize on her last name to become a dancer in Paris, and later, a lion tamer with Ringling Brothers, touring America until she was mauled by a bear.

In “Maria Rasputin, Lion Tamer” –

            “I still remember that reporter

            for the Associated Press asking me why

            I learned to tame wild animals.

            “Why not?” my arch reply.

            “I have been in a cage with Bolsheviks.”

In “Big Top” we learn how popular Maria Rasputin had become by Maria herself:

            “More popular by far

            than the midway freaks –

            Miss Alainna Bennett, “Half Girl,”

            whose body ended at her hips;

            or Miss Dorothy Herbert,

            “World’s Most Daring Horsewoman,”

            Freddy the armless wonder,

            Fat Lady Doris Bleu,

            Midget Lady, the snake charmer,

            the strongman and the trapeze artist

            the aerialists with their Hammock Act!

            Forget about Chang and Eng,

            the original Siamese Twins!”

Rammelkamp covers a lot of years and ground over the span of the book’s 123 pages –  from Siberia to Kiev to St. Petersburg to Petrograd to Berlin to Paris to Crimea to Baltimore to New York to Miami to Los Angeles. There are main characters such as Maria, Sasha, and even Rasputin himself, but also a cast of minor ones as well – mothers, wives, husbands, sisters, daughters, sons, the princesses from Montenegro, an antagonistic priest with a grudge, a tamed tiger, an unpredictable bear, and even a brief cameo from the Royal Tsars, themselves.

In “Operation Former People” Sasha says:

            “And oh, how relieved I felt,

            slipping into bed with Riva,

            our American children nearby,

            safe to the extent

            Jews are ever safe in this world.”

I read Catastroika in one sitting, and simply could not put this book down. Each poem, a new puzzle piece. But with any riveting story, there are lots of plot twists and turns, and of course, some serendipity along the way.

The characters in Catastroika will come alive for the readers, each with their own hard-earned autonomy and distinct dialect. You will hear them. I promise.

Charles Rammelkamp is a master poet and storyteller. He not only has a deep understanding of Russian and Jewish history, but also human catastrophe.

Carolynn Kingyens’ debut book of poetry — Before the Big Bang Makes a Sound (Kelsay Books) — is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Greenlight, Book Culture, and Berl’s Poetry Shop. She’s been a guest author on two literary radio programs. Today, Carolynn lives in New York City with her husband of 20 years, two beautiful, kind daughters, a sweet rescue dog, and a very old, happy cat

The Art Beat Festival: July 10 to 18: 'Chance' it and visit!

Recently I spoke with Rachel Strutt of The Somerville Arts Council about the Art Beat Festival coming up July 8-10. Because of the pandemic--most of the events will be virtual, but there will be some live happenings as well.

Strutt told me the festival was found in the late 1990s before her and Gregory Jenkins' ( Director) tenure. The mission statement of the festival was as it is now: to bring the community together through engagement with the arts.

Last year's theme was "consumed," this year's is "chance." Strutt told me, " The theme last year was a bit heavy--we wanted to lighten it up a bit." And indeed, the wonderful graphic for the festival, created by Paula Champagne, of a young and beautiful African woman, walking on a sort of tight rope certainly fits the bill.

Strut told me the council is following the strict rules of social distancing as established by the CDC,  as well as state and local officials.

Strutt said there will be musical events at venues like The Burren, The Jungle, and the Arts Armory. There will be no audience of course, but the virtual performances will be streamed to the public. Better yet--the musicians get paid. Strutt added, " We have a Brazilian drummer Marcus Santos, who will appear in three different unannounced places--to minimize the crowds.

Well, I am a poet so I certainly was interested to hear what was in store for that end of things  Thanks to the efforts of the council and Somerville's Poet Laureate Lloyd Schwartz, select Somerville poets will be streamed from the festival's website. Also there will be signs, with each poet's poems posted around the city.

Strutt said the festival will address the atrocious treatment of people-of- color in this country, as it will be manifested in the art, installations, poetry and music that this event offers.

Go to http://somervilleartscouncil.org/artbeat  to watch the festival.

Doug Holder interviews Matthew E. Henry author of "Teaching While Black"

Fly Fishing in Times Square by William Walsh

Fly Fishing in Times Square by William Walsh

Cervena Barva Press, 2020

Reviewer: Zachary Cook

In Fly Fishing in Times Square William Walsh contrasts the difference between nature and city, boyhood and manhood and the importance of generational differences.  With a variety of skills, and an array of job experiences to draw from, he is an author who moved into the foray of writing, and into different disciplines which gave him insight as to what to write on and how to write about it. In his past, he has repaired swimming pools, owned a restaurant, been a private investigator and programmed computers. It seems his passion relies on these former occupations and has considerably to do with his memories concerning childhood, his early adulthood, and his ability to redeem himself by imagining that what may have been is better than what could have been. 

There are many different structures and several themes in this collection of narrative poetry. Some of these poems are written in couplets, others in stanzas, and others free verse.  His characters are rife with the adolescent insecurities people of a certain age have. The abandonment of the wayward life experienced by the city folk in favor of the mystical beauty of nature will result in the banishment of the importance and unimportance of the lives they have chosen and the ones that they are destined for. One is a pinnacle of beauty, and the other is tantamount to monotony and less than pleasurable experiences. The poem which gives its name to the collection underscores that something is missing in Times Square: in it you can do many things, but you cannot go fly fishing there.

All of the poems tell a tale, whether true or imagined, the reader cannot always know. For readers of generations which follow Mr. Walsh’s, it helps to have an internet browser opened.  And so this reader was able to discover that, Kenny Powers, who is key to appreciating “Baptism in the Ascension Pool,” was indeed a real person, who actually attempted to jump the St. Lawrence River in a jet powered Lincoln!  An indelible memory must have formed for the child, William Walsh, as he and his buddy watched on the Philco television the daring, but ill-fated stunt. A more recent memory is captured in the sensuous “Wine Tasting at Rudy and Wilbur’s.” It is a real place whose location will be fondly recognized by Georgians nowadays.

A very prolific author, Mr. Walsh has written four novels, four books of poetry, three screenplays, a collection of interviews, an anthology of contemporary American poetry and a collection of essays. In this collection of poetry, time stretches from his youth to the present in an America that underwent a wide variety of changes during that period. Referring to the numerous occasions in which poverty reigns supreme, the decades which throughout half a century have not spun on a dime will remain in the minds of the elderly, an unquenchable thirst whose parched throats cannot be alleviated by the passing of time. Only in the minds of the old folk will their traditions and the minds of their fellow man of a certain demographic be the emperor of the time that they inhabited.

Geography is important to these poems. Sometimes it is possible to know where these memories and stories take place, for example: Illinois, north Georgia, Kentucky, Montana, Texas, Tennessee, Wyoming and New York City.  Other times the location may be more general. For example Fairview, Lakewood and Villa Park could be in any number of states. Through these poems the reader travels throughout the United States, encountering both humans and the wild in their natural habitats.

Overcoming obstacles, presented by both nature and man, is an important theme for Mr. Walsh.  For example in the poem, “Last Days of Friendship with Shawn M.” the nasty neighbor, Martin Turner, left for Nebraska and so Shawn M. had no more worries. In this instance it is just luck that Shawn prevails, even if it may only be in the author’s imagination. In other poems, the characters survive by escaping or reshaping their difficult situations themselves.

With humility, Mr. Walsh approaches poetry, and his words flow smoothly and viscously until the poems’ conclusions, and there he often ends with a swift finish. The delicate and harsh reality of what he writes moves from journey to adventure, and fate exacerbates the sometimes unfortunate subject of the poem.  Suffice to say, each poem has a barbed and wiry introduction, while some end with an escape from the less than desirable life, resulting in tearful living becoming an unstoppable destiny. 

The deliberately beautiful and eruditely woven sentences of Fly Fishing in Times Square result in a salty and tart revelation to the reader. Realizing the importance and distinction when juxtaposing city life to those obsessed with the beauty and symmetry of nature, it is needless to forsake from one’s soul the importance or insignificance of either setting.  It is apparent in Mr. Walsh’s writings that each adversity faced by the people who are the subjects of his poetry, has to be overcome with steadfastness and resolve, determination or grit.  A thrilling, and at the same time, sobering read, Fly Fishing in Times Square is a symposium of bad luck, good chance and hard work ethic.

First Generation Krikor der Hohannesian

First Generation

Krikor der Hohannesian

Loveland, Ohio: Dos Madres Press, 2020

93 p.

ISBN 9781948017817

Review by David P. Miller

djamangeen gar ooo chagar: an Armenian invocation, the introduction to storytelling, sits quietly on the cover and title page of First Generation. “A long time ago there was and there wasn’t.” The almost insupportable tensions between the death and life of a people and culture, the reality of genocide and the viciousness of denial, infuse Krikor der Hohannesian’s first full-length collection of poems. It is dedicated to Armenag Nazar, “who fled Turkish Armenia in 1910 to escape the Armenian genocide along with his wife Gulenia and four young children, one of whom was to become my mother.“  At least in part, these poems are his attempt “to slide beneath the shield of that which he kept to himself.” Vivid paintings by the abstract expressionist Garabed Der Hohannesian (1908-1992), the poet’s father, serve as cover art and as introductions to the book’s sections (see http://garabedderhohannesian.com/).

Although the poems aren’t in a strictly chronological sequence, there is movement from the poet’s youth into adulthood and later age. This is intertwined with the complexities of bringing a partially suppressed heritage to light, more fully realizing it, and striving to carry it forward. Part One, The Bearer, begins with “our first naked thrust / into a blue and eerie world” (“Entrance”). As the child grows, he begins to hear “the stories… Zeitun, / Musa Dagh—strange sounding names / not easily rolled off the tongue.” This poem, “Death March: Deir al-Zor,” shows us something of the boy’s struggles to grip the past, paralleling his difficulties with place names. With time, his knowledge deepens; he speaks to his grandparents in retrospect:

Now, nene, I understand that which

as a boy I could not comprehend. [ … ]

It was told that many, knowing their fate,

threw their babies into the amniotic waters of

the Euphrates, then joined prayerful hands

to leap in behind [ … ]

It was told that others, half-crazed by thirst and hunger,

too paralyzed to resist, submitted like docile sheep

to the cruelest sexual perversions. [ … ]

Now, mairig,

the words we could never share.

In this section, der Hohannesian intertwines memories of his childhood with muted hints that came from his elders. In “The Attic” he finds “crazed sepias / of austere gentlemen / in over-starched high collars / and ladies bedecked / in lacy décolletage.” These curiosities reverberate with what the living both show and hide: “Old Armenian men, hunched / on cane-backed chairs, / drinking Turkish coffee in dim, / smoke-blue cafes – sotto voce / exchanges punctuated / by a knowing nod or /arched eyebrow [ … ] eyes now and / then misting over …” (“The Secret”). The loving bond between him and his grandfather does much to catalyze his emerging consciousness, particularly as he watches his grandfather write:

a river of discourse

flowing in strange, squiggly-looking characters

of Armenian script. I was awash

in his serenity, basked in his aura,

smelled the sweetness of his presence,

wishing to spend the rest of my life

in that room. (“The Birth of a Poet”)

The final poem of the first section recounts the poet’s night visits to a local cemetery. Although he can’t account for his fascination to skeptical friends, or even to himself – and although the place isn’t clearly identified with his ancestry – he can’t help but ask of the stones, “alive with family sagas,” the question “Who were you?” (“Requiescat in Pace”).

In Part Two, Passages, we see the adult der Hohannesian’s full-blown awareness of the genocide perpetrated and its continuing resonances in daily living. Despite an inherited sense of Armenia as “a corpse veiled … a derelict of history best forgotten,” the poet’s generation took on the burden of making the history manifest:

To us

fell the task of giving voice to the ineffable –

to erase the shame that murders the psyche [ … ]

We scour freighter manifests

for clues, badger Congress for acknowledgement,

devour memoirs of survivors, thirsting to know

as our forebears thirsted at Deir-al-Zor. (“The Stain”)

This is an emotionally contradictory burden to bear, however, as several poems in this section attest. “Passage to Ararat” witnesses the struggle of a friend whose father renounced his Armenian heritage, even to the point of ridicule: “he chose / anglophilia, changed his name, / became an English dandy [ … ] Worse yet, / the mocking of his forebears as ‘quirky’ / and besides, ‘the language was impossible.’” The friend’s return to his origins therefore means acting against his father. In Yerevan he tosses “a yellow rose / into the burning oil, your tears / a cascade down your cheeks / like snowmelt from the slopes / of Ararat.” The poet himself is torn over the possibility of return, conflicted over what he may claim: “I fear the ghosts. I fear mourning / what was never mine, the grief / that belongs not to me but to those / who gave up their birthright” (“The Cherry Tree”).

And yet grief is certainly his. In “Hear the Wind Blow,” written in memory of the poet and steelworker John Beecher, der Hohannesian sets his friend’s fate during the McCarthy era against the hell of polluted factory towns during that period. The deaths of seventy from the notorious Donora smog of 1948 – “gagged on smog from steel / and zinc plants, the inversion of air, / the trapped poisons without a breath / of wind to purge the valley” – find an echo in the unspecified “accident” which ended Beecher’s work in the mills. “Old Man John the Melter,” though he “stood tall for steely men … was blackballed / in the witch hunts of the 1950’s / for not signing a loyalty oath.” Even more stark, perhaps, is the eruption of heartache chronicled in “Soul Brother.” After three days of celebrating the life of a deceased friend with food, drink, and music, the inevitable arrives:

The day-after tears – not the choked back kind but

full-bore gushing – finally swamped me

like a rogue wave. I am lost,

marooned on an isle of mourning.

Part Three, The Eternal Flame, opens with a poem that poses one of the book’s central questions: “What do you do / with the weight of the unspeakable, / the grief which you could not lift?” (“What Do You Do?”). First Generation takes a great step toward making this weight both speakable and spoken, and many of the poems in this final section address the question how to move forward with the knowledge the poet bears.

“Walking Toward the Edge” grapples with the burden of a lack all the more devastating for having no particular shape: “How do you measure silence, / its vacuum of sound, dead air / absent before the storm?  / What happened to the Armenians? ” In reply to someone’s well-meant but inadequate advice – “’You need to grieve,” she says” – the poet replies that the conditions for grief have been undermined.  The possibility of achieving grief feels liberating, but the reality is illusory:

How does one grieve absence,

its nothingness? I have walked

toward the edge many times,

excitement in my step [ … ] Yet

a hesitation as I near,

the fear that I will no longer

recognize myself, that I am

staring at death, the paradox

of its comfort.

The devastating realization is that grief is “the cold ash / from a fire that never burned.”

Nevertheless, der Hohannesian is able to express some of the marvels of his own life. In “These Hands,” he takes a look at those extremities so often taken for granted, and how they bear the deep traces of a long life with guitar playing, holding newborns, planting roses, dancing with speech, and, of course, writing. He sees “Wrinkles / like wind-blown ripples on desert sand, / veins the blue-gray of the river, / knurled knuckles, nails ridged like bark …” – eloquent, elegant marks of aging.

In the book’s final part, we also return to der Hohannesian’s family, with elegies for his parents. “Saying Goodbye” concentrates our attention on the final scene in his father’s hospital room. These last moments are burdened with “the unsaid” that “shall stay unsaid … It can’t be helped in the few hours left.” The continuing trauma of genocide is felt even here: he arranges for cremation because “Mother didn’t believe in funerals – / after all, none of the 1.5 million / dispatched by the Ottomans were so graced. / She was two years old and had survived.” “Requiem” begins with the death of his “dear Mother – last of those from home,” and develops toward an unexpected, perpetual vengeance. The slaughtered Armenians cannot be eradicated, despite rumors that “Osman’s descendants intend to plow under / all vestiges, once and for all to silence the screams”:

Anatolian breezes

will forever betray them, bearing bone dust

and blood motes into every fissure and crevice

where Armenians once lived.

Where you, Mother, once lived.

“How long does the spirit linger / in dust motes dancing / in cones of sunlight / before it is all forgotten?” This key question is from “To the Author of my Epitaph,” the book’s concluding poem. In First Generation, Krikor der Hohannesian presents us with a deeply vested inheritance, intertwined not only with sorrow but also with friendships, love, and the possibility of realizing joy. He takes the essential risk involved in any bold creative act: asserting his voice against the inevitability of disappearance we all share. We should pay attention, with gratitude.

Thursday June 25, 2020 Newton Free Library: Rabindranath During Physical Distancing

https://www.facebook.com/ChakrabortyMaitreyee/   ( Like this event on facebook)

Interview with Somerville's Stephanie Scherpf, Executive Director of the Center for Arts at the Armory

I was lucky to catch up with Stephanie Scherpf, the director of the Center for Arts at the Armory on Highland in Somerville. I have attended many events there, ranging from theatre, music, and poetry. A good friend of mine Gloria Mindock, founder of the Cervena Barva Press has a small studio there where she sells books, conducts workshops, and hosts readings. Timothy Gager and I held some of our Somerville News Writers Festival events there a decade ago. It has been a vibrant center for the arts, here--in the--Paris of New England--for years now.

How has the armory adjusted to the new social distancing culture?

COVID-19 has impacted the Center for Arts at the Armory in every way. Events in our main hall and Cafe came to a halt as of March 13, 2020. Our Cafe stopped operating and we had to furlough event and Cafe staff. Administrative staff have been working from home during this period. Only our Operations Manager, Joe Botsch, goes into the building on a regular basis. Our Board has taken up weekly Zoom meetings and we also conduct staff meetings either by phone or video chat. There are a few other tenants in the Armory building who have continued to use their spaces during this period but many have remained closed. Admittedly the current situation is challenging for us as social distancing is the antithesis of what the Armory is all about as an inclusive and accessible public space for people to commune through the arts, culture and community. Donation to Arts at the Armory can be made here: https://artsatthearmory.org/donate/

On your website you have a statement about the killing of George Floyd. What role does the arts have in fighting racism?

The Arts have the power to illuminate social justice issues, to make visible the invisible, to communicate our stories and to bring diverse peoples together to reflect on shared concerns about race, culture, identity, equity and justice. The Arts are also our hope, our weapon and our medicine. The type of arts, cultural and community programming found at the Armory promotes an exchange of ideas, information, art, language and other aspects of culture in order to foster understanding, admiration and support. This type of programming can combat racism, homophobia, sexism, anti-immigrant hostility and xenophobia, and ultimately build a sense of global community by giving voice to diverse artistic and cultural expression.

What programs have you recently presented? Do you find Zoom an adequate medium for presentation?

So far we presented “Saturday at the Armory” on May 30th from 10-5pm, which was a free event livestreamed on Instagram. The concept behind this was to feature programming that one might find on a typical Saturday at the Armory. A lot of the presenters were part of groups that use our Cafe space for events--like New England Poetry Club and Somerville Songwriter Sessions.  

We’re also getting ready to do a virtual fundraising gala on July 30th. 

So far we have only used Zoom for our internal meetings. 

Have you opened the physical space at the Armory yet?

We are planning to open our Cafe back up in early-mid July. We are rebooting with a new concept--ROOTED: Armory Cafe & Farmstand. ROOTED will build on relationships we have with local farms and vendors that participate in our Somerville Winter Farmers Market. Our mission will be to source locally as much as possible, supporting our local farms and businesses and also providing our community with access to farm fresh produce and gourmet grocery products. We will also accept SNAP (food stamps) payments and offer outdoor seating for up to 20 people in accordance with our zoning. ROOTED will offer a new menu, initially available for takeout and online ordering, featuring our locally sourced products. 

Opening up the main hall is more complex. First Somerville needs to reach Phase 3 of MA’s Reopening Plan. Then we need to see what’s possible to do inside the hall in such a way that follows guidelines and is also financially viable. We provide the space--we don’t host our own events so it will be a question of whether or not the groups and individuals who book us think it is worth it to do an in-person event and run the risk of whether or not people will feel comfortable enough to attend. 

Do you think your mission statement has changed?

Interesting question! I started in my role in September. A few months in, I realized that our operative mission statement does not adequately represent what we do. Thus I have proposed the following mission statement, which needs to be adopted by our Board, ideally through some type of strategic planning process: The mission of Arts at the Armory is to provide free and affordably-priced space for arts, cultural and community events and programming, and thereby bring diverse audiences together, enrich and transform lives, and promote the creative economy. I don’t think that mission statement has changed because of COVID-19. We remain committed to being able to reopen when it is safe to do so as an accessible space for arts, cultural and community events and programming, and to bringing diverse audiences together, enriching and transforming lives, and promoting the creative economy. ROOTED is focused more on the community and creative economy aspects of our mission, and it will allow us to generate much-needed revenue so that we can operate in the short-term.