Facebook conversation (photo) Lyle Daggett & me on Bukowski, Black Sparrow Press, Doubiago

This was too good a Facebook thread to toss.

Long ago, and far away, at the Port Townsend Poetry Conference 1980. I was with Sharon Doubiago, Linda Macaluso, Tobey Kaplan, and Leonard Cirino. In this photo I'm listening to Meridel LeSueur, sitting on the floor at her feet. Her daughter Deborah LeSueur took the photo with my camera. I found it much later among some old slides. We crashed the Centrum conference—oh, how they tried to bust us, and Meridel said, “the California poets stay or I go.” Jane Bangs, whose middle name was spite, backed down fast. But then she spent the rest of the conference vociferously bad-mouthing us, and generally making our lives miserable. We were sleeping in the empty dorms, she had the janitors lock the doors, so we had no place to stay. We wound up sleeping on the beach in our sleeping bags. But it was the full moon, and then the tide came in, nearly floating us away. But the upshot was that Sharon Doubiago read from her new ms, Hard Country—it got published, and the rest is history. Meridel said, "I've waited all my life for this book and before I die I'm going to get it published."

Shout out from Sharon Doubiago on the publication of Hard Country.

CAC/CPITS teaching journal, Working with continuation students, Bill Bradd

Working with continuation students, Bill Bradd

I work in small groups 10 to 12 kids, we create non-public poems, there’s no censorship. The ratio is more boys than girls, it’s usually 12 to 1. There’s always rebellion, you’re entering into a conspiracy. Bill uses the blackboard for anything, any thought. Class consciousness, he says, is a good place to start, but you can keep on writing if something strikes your interest. The way to love the thing you’re doing is to get to know it best. Overview—write a poem about it. Overview—kids know geography well. Start with their geography. Climb up a mountain and look down at your town like a bird. Write a poem about it. Maybe you’re looking down through time itself. Bill says, I introduce them to their own terrain, their own roots. Bill takes a piece of paper and marks all over it and then tells them that it is not holy. Not an icon. Does it work with them? On editing: Bill cleans their work up with them and throws words away correct spelling and grammar right there with them so that they see the process. Bill says, being eccentric helps. It intrigues them. The one-to-one attention I give them is all important. Bill says he is not there to sell them anything and they accept it. Bill likes to work without the teacher in the room. Says it hinders their creativity and self-expression.

6/1982