What an incredible reading last night. I arranged with a friend of mine Morris Ossias to put on a Jewish Journey program of poetry and songs. He was accompanied by JoAnn Udall, an excellent pianist. Morris sang Yiddish songs, songs in English, songs from musicals. I did my poems about my mother, my father, about my trip to Terezin (the “model” Nazi concentration camp), the Milice attack on French synagogues, and of course my poem about the Egyptian plagues and volcanoes. The audience loved it — it was an overflow audience already — people had heard we’d be performing and they came out in droves. I really appreciate everyone who attended. Morris is over 90 years old and has a beautiful voice and can really sell any song. When I perform at Laguna Woods with my poems about the Holocaust, I am very sensitive to the fact that many people in the audience are survivors themselves or else the children of victims. It is a humbling experience every time I do this, and an honor when they come up to me afterwards and say my words resonated with them.

Drove all the way out to Pasadena for a wonderful afternoon with Don Campbell and the poets at the Santa Catalina Branch of the Pasadena Library. Don was very gracious and funny. I loved his fortune cookie poem. I featured with two other poets. Maria Arana was a new poet who writes in Spanish and English. She said to me that she writes a lot about agony. I liked her poem Mi Nombre Sombra -- my name is dusk. The other feature was Peter Justus - wow, such incredible stories that weave all over the place. I'm Going to Miss Tigers and Back in the Day. He reminded me of the poetry of Robert Service, that same rhyming, roaming storytelling mastery. Somehow the topic got onto the brain and mind, so I pulled out my Bicameral Mind poem. Never can tell if people are horrified, stunned, insulted, or just plain confused by the significance of the underlying theory behind this poem. It attests to man's arrogance that the theory is even questioned.

It’s always a trip being at the Ugly Mug in Orange. Steve and Ben are most inviting, they create an environment with a warm atmosphere and a great sound system. One is reading in the living room of an old Victorian house. One expects Emily Dickinson or Virginia Woolf to sit down and join you

People liked my reading. I love doing these readings, talking about contextual poetry. When people read the poems, they are amazed by how the contexts relate and make you think. So many people that don’t like poetry are telling me how they like these poems. These poems. These are the poems I jumped into the Aegean Sea for. Yes, I am passionate about these poems.

Thea reading

These contextual poetry readings are intense. I didn’t realize it when I started what it would be like. Writing poetry is a challenge enough — how to convey something with just the right words so as to not be prosaic or trite. Add to it all the research to do the contextual side of the poem. And now, add to it the presentation. In the past, when I tried doing the reading with a Powerpoint presentation, I thought that was working. I don’t feel like doing that at the moment. I feel disconnected from the audience. I want to connect. I want people to want to buy the book. It was a lot of work and I love sharing it with people. I am loving the feedback.

I’ve done two readings now. In both, I decided to do the full performance version of some of the contextual poems. This means that I am doing excerpts from my one-woman show “The Only Thing Greek About Me Is My Name.” Because that’s how I wrote the play — I combined information from the contexts with the poems and pushed out a story using characters. Plus using my great director Karen Aschenbach’s brilliant touch on the material. www.karenaschenbach.com

Last night at Cafe Alibi, I read with Eloise Klein-Healy and Gedde Ilves. It was quite an honor, and a great evening. Three different styles. People seemed to enjoy it. I did.

I’m traveling across country at the moment. I think about context. I think more people should think about context. We travel through land that used to be the home to the peoples that came here originally, that came across the land bridge from Asia, that came by small boats from Micronesia and parts elsewhere. People came here to this country and some developed certain values where no action would be taken without considering the impact on at least seven generations into the future. As I travel through Texas, I see huge oil rigs driven on 20 or more wheels, so close to the ground not a piece of paper could fit under it. I see the destruction the patriarchy creates wherever it grows, always without regard to its impact.

I will be back in California for my reading at the Cafe Alibi in Pasadena at 5 pm on November 13th. www.secondsundaypoetry.com

And then I’ll be reading at the Ugly Mug in Orange at 8 pm. www.poetryidiots.com

These will both be contextual poetry readings. I will have books available for sale.

I am very excited about my publication party this Friday night at the Tebot Bach reading at Golden West College. I feel like I cannot do an ordinary reading. This is, after all, contextual poetry. (see www.TebotBach.org for directions and time)

The Evolutionary Record

How does one present contextual poetry and make it interesting? Reading an essay is not so exciting. I remembered this morning how I have tried various formats. I gave a lecture at a class at USC a few years ago and did a whole interactive powerpoint presentation, complete with pictures, music, animated text. And then last year, I gave a contextual poetry reading up in Ventura, again with a powerpoint presentation but this time without the interactivity. I just took the context and summarized it into bullet points and added some graphics. I had fun doing it and it really got me thinking about what I am doing. And with the context up on the screen, it gave the audience something to look at while I read the poem.

Context for "The Evolutionary Record"

I keep wondering if anyone actually finds this interesting.  Charles Redner, the poet and publisher, had this to say about it:

“A new work by Thea Iberall, The Sanctuary of Artemis deserves serious study. History lessons of the ancients are combined with verifiable science and told with the heart of a poet. Iberall presents her writings in a near forgotten genre: contextual poetry—an art form mostly ignored since the time of Erasmus Darwin, Charles’ grandfather. Rusty on Greek gods and mythology, “Artemis” will refresh, enlighten and delight even the most scholarly on the subject. The book proves useful as a textbook but just as worthy reading for pure pleasure.  Divided into three sections; Birth, Death, and Rebirth it covers diverse topics such as the etiology of “Abracadabra,” to a discussion on, “When Civilizations Die,” and reviews world shaking events that transpired on Lesbos Island from the time of Homer’s epics to the era of Sappho. This is an important work. Suggest you read, The Sanctuary of Artemis” before others begin telling you about it.”

Last night, it was a last minute thing, I was invited to a luncheon today and it was suggested I bring some books and maybe I’ll be able to share a poem. Well, I walked in to the luncheon, there were other poets and writers there, they were most interested in my work. And after lunch, I stood up and was asked to speak. I hadn’t prepared for this. Or else I’ve been preparing for the last ten years. But I talked about how I came to the idea of contextual poetry — how I was at a convocation at USC and one of my engineering professors was on one side of the stage and one of my poetry professors was on the other — and I realized I had to find a way to integrate the two sides of my brain, my love of science and poetry.

I talked about where the poems came from, and how I spent the summer in Europe in 2001, first studying at Charles University in Prague and going to concentration camps. Then going to the Greek islands, to Samos to recover and to write. How I experienced why Samos is the birthplace of Hera. Then I read one of the poems. Which they loved. They asked me to do another, and since today is September 10th, I talked about my experience working in the World Trade Center in the ’70s when it was being built. I read the context to my poem “When They Go” which talks about the B-25 bomber that hit the Empire State Building in 1945, and then I read the poem which talks about being in the World Trade Center when it still existed.

Thank you, Margot, for arranging this impromptu reading today. It meant a lot to me. It’s something I’ve been dreaming about for 10 years. Today it became real.

I’m rather stunned. For so long the book has just been in my possession. I was the only reader. Some of the contextual poems were published and people here and there said they liked the idea. But this is different. People are reading the book, and they are reading the poems.

Your book came today, and I am overcome. I read the first section —before the poems–and then went to “My Father”  (was it as good as I remembered?)  and was moved to tears.  And then “This Is A Poem About Birth” –and cried again. I have not finished the book, but everything I have read (including the Contexts) has been so intense and thought-provoking!!!!  Thank you so much for looking so deeply inside yourself and sharing these poems. – Madge Levinson

 

“Your poetry book is beautiful, very knowledgeable.” — Joann Ross

I  forget how the poems on the page can affect people. I’ve been doing readings too long of my performance poems. It’s like I’ve been the only one knowing a secret and now it’s out. And people are taking it in. It’s great.

It took a long time. There were so many things to think about in order to make it right. And I got involved in other projects that drew my attention away from it. I want to thank Mifanwy Kaiser of Tebot Bach for her hard work and her willingness to stick with me on this project.

But now is the right time for it to be published. People are hungry for knowledge. It’s hard to know what is true anymore. To find the truth, one has to dig deep and really question. I’ve been sitting with this book for 10 years now, reading and rereading it, thinking about it, talking about it. People heard me, they said, yeah, contextual poetry. But what is that? Some said, I don’t even like poetry. When I started, I didn’t either. There’s no story in poetry, no good guy, bad guy, great chase, final kiss. It just is, it just sits on the page. But I think contextual poetry opens all sorts of directions, takes the writer of the poetry anywhere they want to go, takes the reader on a journey. I think that’s the big thing — contextual poetry takes the reader on a journey. So thank you for taking this journey with me. Hope you buy the book — you may like it.