Thank you guys so very much.
We have a few minutes for questions,
and I'm going to hand these people the mic.
Yes.
How did you feel when you got your first book of poems
published?
Oh.
I asked somebody to put a rock on my head
because I was jumping so high.
I felt really, really, really good and really scared
at the same time to tell you the truth
because I was afraid that people wouldn't like it.
Do you feel that way sometimes?
Like, you're just so happy and then, yeah.
But it was so beautiful, it was like having
a new baby in my hand.
I have a related question for Jonathan.
Your book came out in 2009, so just recently,
and I like that because I'm a little bit of a late bloomer,
or actually maybe I'm just a pending bloomer.
And I just wondered if you would share your story of how
your book got published.
OK.
Briefly.
I probably-- speaking of late bloomer,
I probably started writing poetry seven years ago.
And wrote and wrote and wrote, and collected
and collected and collected, and sent off and sent off
and set off.
And upon occasion, would get somebody
to acknowledge something.
But in any event, I was told about a local publisher,
Charles Alexander, and I took my stuff to him--
not really with a sense of publishing it,
but more of a sense of, will you look at this,
will you give me feedback, help me with it,
--and we went through that for probably a year.
And at some point, I talked to him about publishing.
And actually, he's an interesting guy
because what he does is not what we
do because we're more narrative and he's
kind of a language poet.
And so he was hesitant, and we just worked and worked
and worked, and finally, one day, he said,
I've shown this to enough people and I
think it's something we can do.
And I was-- that's fantastic.
And so I owe him a lot and it just
gives you a sense of accomplishment-- and answer
to your question, it's just a sense
of putting something all together
and really feeling good about it.
Thank you.
I loved your pending bloomer.
Any other questions?
Oh, there's one.
Oh, god.
--you were an attorney [INAUDIBLE]..
An attorney, and a community, a activist, and a poet, and I
know you not through the latter role until this morning
or until I saw your book a couple of months ago.
And I just have to ask you how these parts of you live and are
they are they compartment--
I mean obviously, you're you and so you're you wherever you are,
but I'm just curious if you could
talk a little about whether there
are sort of compartments where you put parts
of your persona and your soul.
Yeah, they definitely live separately.
But in answer sort of a different question,
which is where you would find the poetry part of it.
I mean, it obviously can happen at any time
of the day, or any place, or anything you see,
or an expression that comes into your head.
But you do have to find some time separate and apart
from everything and be away from everything to focus on it
and put it together.
So yeah, to that extent, I don't stop in the middle
of the day, that's for sure.
How old were you when you--
this is for both of you. --how old were you
when you wanted to become a poet and get your stuff published?
12.
I remember writing--
I've always written and I've always sketched.
I love art and so I always carry around a sketchbook
and a writing pad.
But when I was 12, I wrote a poem-- that was probably
a pretty awful poem.
And I brought it home, and I got an A on it,
and it was like, whoa, I got an A on a poem.
And I brought it home, and my dad who was a factory worker
and not educated in those kinds of ways and literature,
read that poem and he said, you know,
if I could make anything like this, I'd be proud of myself.
And this is what I want to do.
Mine was probably a little later, but actually not that
much.
18, 19, 20 when I went to college
and started being exposed to poetry.
And thought, that would be a neat thing to do, and actually
wrote a little poetry in college and was
published in a college--
the college journals.
And then after I got out of college, I thought,
maybe I would do something like that
and then I drifted away from it.
And I really always wanted to come back to it,
so I was able to.
Yeah, I think writing is a compulsive activity.
Definitely helps to be obsessive compulsive to do
that because it's something that becomes part of your soul
and you can't not do it then.
Pam, you lived in a lot of different places.
Could you talk about how place affects your work?
I mean, you've been on the East Coast,
you've been up here in Oracle, Montana,
and now you're living in Colorado.
So could you just say something about that?
Yeah.
I can't because, Heidi, because I'm
very affected by land, and creatures, and the things
around.
One thing that struck me at a poetry reading
when I was younger was something that Gary Snyder said.
And he said, you really don't know--
You don't really know where you live
unless you know the creatures who are living there with you.
He was including plants, and the spirits
of the sky, and the rocks, and all of that stuff.
And what I'm taught by my students
all the time at Fort Lewis, because we
have 125 tribes represented in our student body,
is that connection.
That connection between the Earth,
there is nothing separated between you
and the creatures in the Earth.
So everything around me affects me emotionally,
incredibly emotionally.
I could cry when I see a hummingbird because I know that
hummingbird-- it's a bird, but it's also a spirit,
and it's also--
there's so many levels, layering and levels of things.
When I lived in North Carolina, I wrote about ghosts,
and I wrote about slavery.
And I don't know much about those things,
but it affected me--
the land itself affected me.
And when I lived in New York, it felt
like the ground was crying.
That the ground was soaked in blood and was crying.
The West doesn't feel like that to me.
I have a question for Pam.
How did you feel when your mom died?
Oh.
Well, you know, it was such a mix of feelings.
At first, I was so happy that we could all be there and tell her
how much we loved her, and we kept and we kept joking.
And this is sort of funny--
do you have a sister?
OK, so we were picking on my one sister.
I have three sisters, so my sister Val
and I were picking on my sister Judy
and we were remembering this embarrassing event
when she was young, and that's when
my mom died and so was really funny moment on one hand.
And then and it was so beautiful because she was peaceful,
and it wasn't scary.
She was just very peaceful and she went--
And then afterwards, I get very sad.
We went-- my other sisters, when we brought her down
from the mountain, we went and bought all of the roses
in the Safeway store next door and we
put rose petals all over her.
Just to honor her.
And then when they took her body away, it made me very sad,
and then I was very sad.
We have time for one more question.
Ixnay, ixnay.
I'm just wondering if you think of an audience
when you're writing in particular.
Is that something you consider?
Good question.
It's an audience of one or two.
You're writing somewhat for the page,
so you're writing somewhat for yourself.
At the same time, you've got to somehow envision a listener,
so at least my method or what I do
might be different for other people,
but it's putting things together.
And when you know you have a poem
is when you read it through and you're done after, maybe,
a lot of editing.
And you go, this is it, this is complete.
And so at that point, it's a self-satisfaction first,
and then it's a reader.
And then it's an audience, but the audience
is really I think third, to tell you the truth.
You know, it's really first for yourself and maybe one.
The best poems always come unbidden.
And they're always--
I don't like to use-- all the inspiration is breathing in,
and the voice that comes is the best possible part of myself
that escapes myself, that escapes the every day petty
person that I can be.
When I'm really writing and I'm writing well,
I don't think about audience at all.
I don't think.
I try-- I don't even try, I just don't think.
I'm in a different intuitive kind of space.
And then when I'm revising, I want to-- poems,
I want my poems to be accessible enough for people
to hear and to read.
I come from a family of real storytellers,
so storytelling is very important to me.
My grandma was Czech, my grandpa was Russian,
they're very, very storytelling kind of culture and musical.
I hear music all the time, I hear the way
that words impact one another.
And so I don't think about that either.
It's all given and I feel like it's such a blessing,
it's such a gift.
In my worst moments, I always think,
oh, it's never going to come back, you know?
Ooh, I got lucky.
But it is.
I don't think about audience, except in terms of,
why would I write unless people would understand me?
I wouldn't just want to write for
my own personal gratification, that then I
should shoot myself.
OK, thank you guys so much.
Let's give them another round of applause.