I don't know what's going to happen
when we both have microphones, it could be really scary.
We're going to sing.
You could sing along if you know the songs.
I stopped teaching in 2006.
And being a person who can't leave well enough alone,
I started an imprint with my publisher.
And I wanted to do this work with my publisher
because if you know our publisher,
you know that they'll just do about anything.
They're completely entrepreneurial maniacs
and wonderful, delightful publishers.
I had been judging a lot of poetry competitions.
I'd been reviewing books, but I was never running
into lesbian authors anymore.
Lesbian poetry had kind of gone--
[VOCALIZES] pretty much was--
really not much was happening.
And so just to check it, because I didn't
want to feel like, oh, I'm probably a nitwit
and it's all I think about--
lesbian poets, what's happening to them.
I asked the editor of the Los Angeles Times
and he said, yeah, we just don't get much.
So I know how to account for that.
If you remember, there used to be bookstores.
Do you remember that?
We had places you could go and buy a book
and look at other books that you weren't buying?
They're also used to be a lot of women's bookstores
and independent bookstores.
And many people really came up as poets through that channel.
Women's cultural centers, for example,
lesbian cultural centers.
And a lot of people got their start in this small fashion
and then became authors of books.
And that was dying.
So I felt what I really wanted to know
was not so much coming out stories anymore
because I thought there were a lot of those, what
I wanted to know was, what is it like for people
to be living out?
All of you know what we look like now.
Not so bad, huh?
But I just thought what we need is
to move up to the next level of literary production.
And to bring that work into the culture
so that we could continue and enlarge
upon the conversation of who we all are to each other.
So I started in 2006 and now I'm going to be working soon
on my eighth book.
I do one book a year of poetry.
Nonfiction and fiction, I go on a cycle.
And you can go to the website and download a free sample.
It's Arktoi.com.
A-R-K T-O-I dot com.
Arktoi means little bears and the goddess Artemis
had a temple outside of Athens.
And girls who were 9 or 10 went and were in service
to the goddess of the temple.
And once a year or once every two years,
they would dress up like bears and go out and live
in the woods for two years--
I mean, two weeks.
The first outward bound was with these little arktoi.
So now I have eight little arktoi of my own.
And it's been really wonderful.
It's really great.
So that's how it happened.
And my imprint Boreal Books happened
because we have a great many--
very fine writers in Alaska.
Interior Alaska is not on the way to most places.
And there are often very large gatherings of literary types
that don't happen in Alaska.
And I thought that I should do whatever I could
to help those voices get heard.
And as I mentioned to you before,
there are several examples of what I've chosen.
Red Hen does just a beautiful job on the design.
Some of those were designed by the University of Alaska Press,
but I'm doing fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
And I hope that you'll pay attention
to those voices from Alaska because they deserve a wider
readership than they've been getting.
And art, and art.
And art, yeah.
The second one that I did for Boreal Books
features the art of Margo Klass.
She does exquisite box constructions.
And then her husband, Frank Soos,
does very brief pieces of prose in response,
and it makes a very interesting book.
And they did a beautiful job.
So I'm sorry that I can't accept manuscripts from all of you,
but you have to either have some--
the manuscript to have some connection
to Alaska or the person has to live in Alaska.
That's that.
What else is on your mind?
This is a question for Eloise.
First of all, I just want to say thank you for writing.
I'm a teacher and for three years,
I've taught your poem "Changing What We Mean" for sophomores.
And it's offered a space for students,
after I've taught the poem, to come out to me
or have some kind of conversation like that.
And I just want to thank you, first of all,
for enabling me to create that space in the classroom.
Thanks.
Second of all, the question--
a lot of students are struck by that poem
because it is focused on a particular way of life
that not all of my students envisioned or imagined
for themselves, and yet the themes that they get
from the poem are universal.
And I'm wondering how you go from a place centered in the I
to a place centered in the we and creating
a universal experience out of what
I assume is a personal experience
from the original part of the poem.
We were talking about this today in a class that met up there--
[INAUDIBLE] somewhere there.
I think every I is a we.
You are never an I, just an I. Even Gertrude Stein said,
I am I because my little dog loves me.
And I would extrapolate that out to say,
we are each and I because other people
have helped us shape ourselves.
So if my experience, as it comes through a poem,
can be picked up by other people,
even if they aren't like me, what that all really means
is it's a we experience.
Everybody loves somebody, everybody
gets disappointed by somebody, everybody wonders why
bad things happen to them when somebody they cared so much
about leaves them.
That isn't just the territory of heterosexuals or homosexuals.
That's just the territory of human beings.
And so, yes, one thing is important.
It is a specific kind of poem about a specific person's
experience in a culture that may not be the one you grew up in.
I'm going to make a parentheses here.
You say something about surprise--
I was as surprised as anybody and maybe more when I came out.
It's like, what the hell is this?
I was student body president twice.
How is this happening to me?
But they are responding to something that they know
and I think that's what happens through art.
We both can be pulled in and bring something in, ourselves.
And often, the most deeply personal poem
reaches the most people.
It's a paradox.
Thank you [INAUDIBLE].
I know you're out there harboring secret questions.
Don't be shy.
Hi.
Eloise, I just graduated from the university
you started [INAUDIBLE] so thanks for starting that.
Oh, thank you.
I wanted to check on following up with his question
about the classroom of how you hope poetry will be used
in the classroom or not used.
When you think of your own work, have you
heard of it being used in ways that you celebrate
or ways that trouble you?
Shall I start?
I never get troubled if someone buys my book.
She says "I never get troubled of someone buys my book."
[LAUGHTER]
I think both of us should answer that question because we
each have a lot of experience in classrooms and have,
both of us, been designated as people who are
supposed to be official poets.
And that means we have to go around and do stuff.
So, yeah.
Yeah.
I'll just say I am very enthusiastic whenever anybody
pays attention to poetry.
I am deeply excited when people find ways to match language
to what matters most to them.
And it happens when people write,
it happens when people read, it happens when students recite
out loud, it happens when people allow language
to matter to them.
And I think that enriches everybody who allows it.
I would hope that the way poetry is taught, particularly
in high school, could change quite a bit,
that it be taught more like music,
that the real goal is to practice something.
And maybe you learn to really play the cello well and maybe
you just learn to make some noise,
but that poetry would stop being viewed as something
that only the elites can possess,
and that if you aren't really the smartest kid in school,
you should just forget about that and leave it alone.
Or maybe if you are a scientist--
and we talked about, today, the parallels
between scientific thinking and thinking in and through poems,
but that more people would allow students to experience the poem
and not have to have an answer about the poem.
There are also lifelong opportunities for this
to happen.
I'm thinking when I was a poet in schools.
And one day, we read a poem that mattered to a little boy
and he said, oh, I didn't know poetry had anything
to do with real life.
And that was a revelation to him.
There are also people I teach in a two-week summer fine arts
festival in Fairbanks, Alaska-- the last weeks of July.
If you want to get out of the heat, come to Fairbanks.
And there are people there from teenagers to people who are--
well, one man was alive when Roosevelt was president--
gives you an idea of the span.
And they range from people who've
had no experience with writing and are
taking the very first baby steps to people
have already published books.
It is a terrific chance to just sit and, as you were saying,
practice.
See what comes and play.
And if you want to know how it is--
Anita, I'm going to pick on you, but stand up.
She's been there several years and you can just
see that she's still breathing.
[LAUGHTER]
But it's great fun.
It's terrific fun.
And Deb Liggett, where are you?
Over here, another Alaskan who has been up there many times.
So if you are wanting to practice your craft,
if you're wanting to try something new,
if you're wanting to try to do something difficult for you,
find a place in your community-- look, you have this--
and you have the opportunity to practice something that will
continue for your whole life.
We're lucky we're not like Greg Louganis.
We don't have a craft that is only for a young person,
we have a craft that goes through our entire lives.
You cannot know how lucky you are to have this amazing place.
Usually, poetry stuff, it's somebody's basement.
They picked up a table at the yard sale
and sprayed it with glitter paint and a couple
of big old, ugly pillows from the '60s
and there you've got the poetry workshop.
So this is an amazing edifice and--
Gail certainly gets a lot of things for that,
and so does Alison.
And you owe these people a tremendous debt of gratitude
because I only know of two places like this
and the entire country, in New York, Poet's House, and here.
So it's fabulous.
And there are a lot of offerings.
But also, you can begin to read a little bit more poetry
and recite it, sing it, dance to it,
however you like to experience something that's
got a little rhythm in it.
That's a fun thing to do too.
I think we have time for one more question.
[INAUDIBLE]
I especially enjoyed understanding
what you were saying.
I have a hearing loss but that's not the real issue,
the real issue is putting over the poem
and sharing it in a way that is a performance
and not just reading your words.
And I was hoping that this would somehow
come up and be a very, very important aspect of poetry,
that is, it has to be put across and not just recite it.
So I just am saying that as a wish that
every poet, when they get up before a microphone,
that they produce a performance so that the audience is moved
not just by the words but by the whole aspect of sharing
something from your guts.
So I'm just grateful that you two fit in that category.
And I thank you.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]
Thank you.
That's nice.
That's why that book has those readings in it,
so that you can take me home.
And Peggy will go along.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
I like to have--
when I hear a reading, I like to take the poet's voice with me.
And so Eloise has a way you can do it literally.
But in most cases, I just like to be
able to hear the cadences of the poet
when I'm reading a person's work.
And it's a gift because you have Voca And online, you have many,
many poets' voices that you can hear.
Thank you so much.
[APPLAUSE]