Senator John Garamendi, CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

Senator Jim Nielson CPITS Thank You letter, Sacramento Arts Day, 1988

Politicking Arts Day, NPW journal

4/27/1987

This time away from the real world has calmed me in a way that nothing else could. Easter was a bit much, overnight at my grandmother's at Forest Knolls, going to my aunt Canice's for Easter dinner in Petaluma, visiting Ken Larsen's parents in Novato, then going to San Francisco for the final National Poetry Week readings and party with Etheridge Knight. Then back to Novato, overnight at Herman Berlandt's, and then to Sacramento in the morning. A lot of couch surfing.

On Monday and Tuesday Ken and I did some heavy politicking for Arts Day at the state capital. I feel like one of those ancient ones, been in the game a long, long time. People are finally listening to me. It just takes time for the world to recognize and adjust to how you view yourself. Putting oneself out there has a lot to do with it. And for what? This this incredible resource pool I've developed, what do I want to be when I grow up? A good question for sure.

I got congratulations for all my CAC and artist and library grant, and I'm dreading the work. I'm dreading my CEIF grant, working with kids. The burnout has begun and I haven't even put the book together yet. The next two weeks will be incredibly intensive. Why, I've taken the past few days off, to be in slugabed city, just in order to survive.

Actually, it wasn't downtime. I revised several old poems on the computer. More like 50 poems. Oof. Of those 50 poems, a mere handful are even worth revising. The problem is that in my earlier work, I was moved by visual imagery, and the connections I made between my present emotional state of being, and nature were understated. The polar ice caps, volcanoes, and the ocean were my metaphor. I was developing my own mythos and my voice.

Poems that were a page and a half long, were edited down to seven or eight lines. I really learned something of the craft, I think. I hope. And it's never been obvious or anything I could even put my finger on and say aha. I understand. All of these summers at Napa Poetry Conferences, and especially with all my California arts Council grants, literally thousands of kids poems have that I've produced, have taught me the brevity of lines, if anything.

It's safe to say my first work is really awful and padded.

Kids really do write better than beginning adult writers, probably because they don't hate to write. What's missing in my early work is the engaged intellect, what I am, who I am, what is going on in my head, but the creative impulse is wailing away. More like flailing away.

Yes, the muses of my writing have abandoned me; I write less now, but before they were like cotton candy, all bulk and no substance, just sugar and water.

John says that I don't need his poetic critical advice on my work anymore, that I've learned it from him. We argue. I say I've learned very little from him as far as craft goes. He's not gone over very many of my poems. Ever.

Also, it's not something he likes to do. Therefore, to him, it all seems like he's done more than he actually has done. Because I'm in the middle of it all this trying to learn editing, I feel a little abandoned. I never quite got it right. And he's pulling out all the stops claiming turf. He claims he's taught me a lot poetically. And I'm not so certain.

When I wrote Falling to Sea Level, I had absolutely no help from John, everything was placed where I thought it should be, maybe I have learned it after all on my own. And I just don't trust it.

John is very facile at writing. I'm not. Perhaps that's why I never write in my poetry journal. It takes a crisis. Then it's more Dear Diary than poetry—and who wants to read that?

I've done about five or six watercolors in the past two weeks. I've gotten a show and a reading coming up on May 23, and I need more work – except instead of the tropics theme with watercolor crayons, the aquarelles, I'm deviating into straight watercolor and floral design elements. But I don't like most of it. So I've only got one new piece for the show after all that work.

I had planned to do several more pieces when I was in Baja, but since we didn't go, I have no new material. At this point I'm looking through my photographs for inspiration.

Out of the blue, last week, John decided we should break up, without telling me, so we held vacation plans in abeyance. He decided to go to the desert with his daughter and ex-wife. I'm enraged, but that isn't of much use. Jilted is more like it.

John gave me a writing  assignment. I find reasons not to write about it, but tonight my heart wants to burst, to weep all this sorrow into a saline river. So I make long lists. I have a fondness for semi semicolons; I like Philip Whalen's lists. He told me that he was mean to Gary Snyder when they were young; but now Gary's become a teacher. And Phil became a monk because of Gary; I tell Phillip I don't want to be a hermit. I like sex too much. He laughs. Ah, yes, the vagaries of circular writing.

John's more prone to black-and-white decisions. And I'm more ambiguous, knowing these things have their own rhythm ,and cannot be forced.  Like Whalen, I'm more of a Taoist in these matters, I think.

On the long solitary drive home from Fort Mason, the sorrow keeps bubbling up. So I distract myself with Spanish-language tapes. But it reminds me that I should be in Cabo with John. We would've been there yesterday, Ayer, entonces.

journal Tax Day (photos)

4/15-16

I need to go into the darkroom tonight, and pack up for the next six days. I'll be on the road. National Poetry Week and the California Arts Council Art Day lobbying event. Note to self: Bring Ken Larsen all those Rural Arts Services photos. Darkroom tonight.

The chemicals from the darkroom have hyped me up unbelievably. I couldn't sleep at first, and then I was  glue-eyed and sleepy. I always feel hung over after a long night in the darkroom. I don't know how much of it is being up late at night and the intense activity, or if it's the chemicals. It takes me least an hour to come down afterwards.

I left the darkroom at 12:30 AM and it was 1:30 AM before I was calm enough to think about sleep. Some funny photos of Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. One of Robert Bly as an old hag. Very appropriate. His fans won't like it as it captures a side of him that the majority of the world does not see. But I know about first-hand.

Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children

More Than Words CPITS NEWSLETTER
CALIFORNIA POETS IN THE SCHOOLS
Conspiracy in the Schools: On Teaching Poetry to Children 
by Maureen Hurley

"We are continually invited to become what we are," wrote Thoreau. What does this mean? Why do we, as poets, need to be in the schools?

Poet Gerald Stern (American Poetry Review, May, 1985), suggests that PITS is simply a device to help build future poetry audiences, to give poets Income and attention, to modernize curricula, or to discover budding Rimbauds among the masses. He expresses a certain doubt about the enterprise of "making" poets. Stern's doubts about the goals and purposes of PITS programs and their validity nationwide may come from the fact that he only worked three days with selected high school students.

As a California Poets in the Schools (CPITS) poet-teacher, I am interested in the development of similar programs across the country. CPITS is the largest artist in residence program of its kind. CPITS is successful because it's community-based. We spend more time in the classroom and we work several years within a given school or community. We start "teaching" poetry to kindergarteners. We don't wait until they're in high school.

Sonoma County poet Lee Perron sees the role of a PITS poet to be that of a disseminator of culture. In Forgotten Languages (CPITS 1985 Statewide Anthology), he writes that artists and poets represent a culture not present in schools and "its purpose is to nurture all people, especially the young." Whether or not we as poet-teachers can bring culture and creativity into the schools is a question we continually have to ask ourselves. Then there's the argument of "artist" versus "teacher." "Those who can paint, paint. Those who can't, teach," said my mother. Gerald Stern argues that one can't really "teach" poetry; only a select
few students are ^chosen" to become poets—with or without help from us. 

The philosophy of CPITS is that every child has a creative potential to become a poet because we speak the beginnings of poetry with the same tool: oral tradition. Its roots reach into the paleolithic past. Why are people with strong literary commitments working in the schools? We live in a specialized society that inhibits and negates creative self expression.

David Bromige, Paul Mariah, Allen Ginsberg, photo

This was from the Helen Luster memorial at the Luther Burbank Center, Santa Rosa

ARC/ Rural Arts Services symposium drawing

ARC Sept/Oct, 1983 4 photos front page: Mike Tuggle, CA Oranges, Ft Ross, kids, fence & rock

Boschka Layton, ARC article (tearsheet)

She has lead a colorful life. In 62 years, Guerneville resident Boschka Layton has had a full-time career as a painter, editor, graphic designer, mother and writer. Her first book, The Prodigal Sun, reflects a style as diverse as her life. The Prodigal Sun, a collection of prose, poetry and drawings by Layton, has been released in the US, Canada, and abroad, and was published by Mozaic Press, Toronto.

Winner of the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Fred Mannelli award for creative writing, Ontario Arts Council grant recipient, and Canada Council grant applicant, Layton wrote her first novel at the age of six. At seven, her second novel appeared, containing controversy all material—a how-to book for South Sea Islanders on the assembly of cod pieces—which was promptly confiscated and burned by her grandmother. She gave up writing for the next 40 years and became a painter, establishing herself in Montréal, and later, in California.

Born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, Layton, Boschka, then Betty Sutherland, spent the next 12 years traveling across Canada with her family. She later studied art at a vocational school, St. John’s, in New Brunswick.

Layton remembers the moment when she first became interested in art. Her brother John was sitting at the kitchen table trying to draw an apple. In the process of helping him, Layton became caught up in the process. John, who was an invalid, gave up art and took up writing, Betty became an artist.

In Montréal, John (Jamie) founded an avant garde literary magazine, entitled First Statement, which merged with another periodical to become the illustrious Northern Review. Layton was in charge of book design.

In 1941, she met an unknown writer who wanted to publish his work. Three days later they were madly in love. She married poet Irving Layton after the birth of their son. Their tempestuous relationship lasted nearly 20 years and produced two children, Max and Naomi.

Irving went on to become Canada’s premier poet, receiving numerous awards and grants while Betty continued designing his books, and painting. She said, “I painted all my life. I didn’t stop painting—even when I had my kids.”

Tired of Irving's megalomania, Betty finally left him, smuggling young Naomi out of Canada with an underground passport, but she had to leave her son Max, behind. In Canada, a child can’t obtain a passport without both parents’ signatures and Irving wouldn’t sign.

Arriving in San Francisco, and unable to find work in the publishing business, Layton resorted to menial jobs at department stores, restaurants, and a stint in the domestic services. She reminisces, “being a charwoman scrubbing floors for an old lady was rock-bottom.”

Betty took up an itinerant life with a man named Price, and the three of them traveled all over the US, living a few weeks in one town or another, while Price looked for work. Wanting stability, somehow, she was able to buy a small cabin on the Big Sur coast. And settled down. But Price was a wanderlust. Layton, fed up with Price's unsuccessful attempts searching for work, eventually sold her house in Big Sur, and left for India with her daughter in tow.

Layton lived in India for two years. “India changed my whole life,”  she said. “It centered me. For the first time I began to write. Obviously, I couldn’t write while I was with Irving. He was the writer and I was the painter.” She added, “I became my own person, an individual. I suddenly knew who I was.”

After Price, she never lived with a man again. “I’m not saying a woman can’t paint or write and live with the man at the same time, but for me, that’s when the change occurred.” She added, “I began to concentrate on my own work. At the age of 50, it was about time.”

Layton settled in Sonoma County in 1971, but continues to make yearly so sojourns to visit her father in Nova Scotia. She said, “I started young, traveling across the continent. In my work I’m always trying to bring the two coasts together. ”

Although she signs her paintings with her maiden name, Sutherland, Layton retained her married name for writing. When she married Irving, she had to convert to Judism. She said that Bashka was a Russian Jewish diminutive of Betty, and the spelling of Boschka was taken from the painter Bosch. (The “ka” meaning little Bosch.)

When I asked Boschka why she didn’t take back her maiden name, she said, “My half brother Donnie was becoming well-known as an actor, and I didn’t want to be smothered by that association.”

Donald Sutherland made his first big break in The Dirty Dozen, and starred in several movies such as M*A*S*H, Klute, Day of the Locust, and the Academy award-winning Ordinary People.

Layton, reminiscing about her famous half-brother, said “Donnie was the most extraordinary child. I remember when he was three years old and a beautiful woman came to visit. He came running out across the lawn without a stitch on and presented himself to her at her feet.” 

In in her writing, Layton draws heavily from her life. She has one semi-autobiographical novel finished, another 3/4 completed. Her poems and short stories have appeared in several local publications including First Leaves, Sonoma Mandala, the Sonoma County Stump, and The Red Book.

As far as future prospects go, Layton said, “I’d like to get a novel out, some poems, and a book of short stories so I can go on writing.” She concluded, “sending stuff out is the worst part of it. It takes up too much time. I think I need an agent.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in The Paper, a Russian River weekly. Guerneville Poet Boschka Layton to Read at Copperfield's Books Jan 10.

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES

ARCHITECTURE OF BONES
          —for Bill Snow

Some members of the Donner Party didn't wait for spring.

Their bones grew new coats of skin.

The survivors slept, dreaming of hot ash bonfires

remembered the earth was a vast burial ground

but did nothing.

Deep inside, the earth shuddered.

Liquid bones of molten lava tried to escape

& snow soothed the terrible thirst

from their hearts.

They say beauty is only skin-deep.

Skin stretched over the cheekbones of women

means nothing without inner structure.

Leaves are homeless without

wind-polished femurs of trees

to hold them to sunlight.

Look to the architecture of bones for strength.

Without them, holding snow would be impossible.

Mountains would bleed back into the sea.

In spring, no skin would slough off

to reveal the bare-boned mountains.

Who keeps moving the bones?

Soon they will rise up

& reassemble themselves

but the pattern is forgotten

& the earth's strength is altered.

Bare bones. Hidden bones.

For a year, Albion Ridge

swallowed the bones of young girls.

The murder was not avenged.

No one lit hot ash bonfires for them.

Their skin sank into the earth in a slow trickle

& the trees were the only ones left to listen

to the soft music

of skin falling from bones.

10/31/82

Sebastopol

rev.88

1985 Napa Poetry Review
1984 Deepest Valley Review
1983 Poets of the Vineyard, 2nd Prize
1983 ARC/Rural Arts Services
1983 Poets of the Vineyards, 2nd prize