Archive for the ‘feature’ Category
Dream. Follow. Repeat.
I teach Adult Literacy on the Quileute Reservation. As part of my ongoing instruction and mentoring through the goal setting process, I set the goal to read 52 books in 2010. A list of the books I actually read this year follows below. I had my heart set on achieving the whole goal. I didn ‘t make 52, but I DID read 40+ books that I might not have read. A persons got to have a dream. Dream. Follow. Repeat.
From all of us at poMotion: may your dreams come true this year.
1. Gallo, Kenny & Randazzo V, Matthew. Breakshot: A Life in the 21st Century American Mafia.
2. Lansing, Alfred. Endurance: Shakleton’s Incredible Voyage.
3. Tobin, L. What Do You Do With a Child Like This? Inside the Lives
of Troubled Children.
4. Peavy, Linda & Smith, Ursula. Full Court Quest
5. Piercy, Marge. Woman on the Edge of Time
6. Crow Dog, Mary. Lakota Woman
7. Finkel, David. The Good Soldiers
8. Piercy, Marge. Early Grrrl
9. Harrar, Sari. The Sugar Solution
10. Larson, Luke. Senator’s Son
11. Craighead George, Jean. The Missing Gator of Gumbo Limbo.
12. Murdock, Bob. Untitled Manuscript.
13. Avi. Wolf Rider
14. Dorris, Michael. Guests
15. LeGuin, Ursula K. Sea Road: The Chronicles of Klatsand
16. Mortenson, Greg. Stones to Schools
17. Valliant, John. The Golden Spruce
18. Hrdlitschka, Shelly. Dancing Naked
19. Delaplane, Keith, S. First Lessons in Beekeeping
20. Akpan, Uwem. Say You’re One of Them
21. Alexie, Sherman. Ten Little Indians
22. Kingsolver, Barbara. Animal Vegetable Miracle
23. Butler, Octavia, E. Kindred
24. Seibold, Alice. The Lovely Bones
25. Paulson, Gary. Dog Song
26. Wroblewski, David. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
27. Kristof, Nicholas, D. & WuDunn, Sheryl. Half the Sky: Turing Oppression into Oppourtunity for
Women Worldwide
28. Berlinski, Misha. Fieldwork
29. Krakauer, Jon. Where Men Win Glory
30. Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love
31. Robbins, Tom. Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates
32. Ferlinghetti. Her
33. Salinger, J.D. The Catcher in the Rye
34. Pahalnuck, Chuck. Pygmy
35. Sayles, John. The Anarchists’ Convention
36. Mapes, Lynda, V. Breaking Ground: The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe & the
Unearthing of Tse-Whit-Zen
37. Atwood, Margaret. Wilderness Tips
38. Brooks, Geraldine. People of the Book
39. Halpern, Justin. Shit My Dad Says
40. Stein, Garth. The Art of Racing in the Rain
41. Rawles, Nancy. My Jim
42. Truss, Lynn. Eats Shoots and Leaves
43. Chabon, Michael. The Escapist I, II, III
44. *See above
45. *See above
46. Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own
47. Stieg, Larson. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
48. Hinton, S.E. The Outsiders
49. Franzen, Jonathan The Corrections *unfinished*
Write On! College Degree
Wouldn’t it be nice to get a doctoral degree?
To have a badass car and a big RV
To go on vacation any where you wanted (like Tennessee)
To explore our great country “the land of the free”
Or go to some ocean to water ski
To be at any store and go on a shopping spree
To go to a club and pay V.I.P
To never be concerned just worry free
That sounds fine to me
That’s who I want to be
Wouldn’t it be nice to get a doctoral degree?
By Ricky Barragan
Find other student poetry featured in, ‘Write On!‘
PoMo News: Poetry emotion
Christian Swenson preforms at the Fine Arts Center in Port Angeles, WA
In Port Angeles, Washington last weekend the Juan de Fuca Festival of the Arts celebrated its 17th year. Christian Swenson entertained crowds with his improvisation of body and voice. He read the poetry of his good friend, Lance M. Loder in between his own art: a cross-cultural synthesis of theater, dance and music and its willingness to unbridle the imagination.
The Traveling Poet AKA Apollo Poetry hit the scene in 2007 claiming many awards and appearances on MTV and the Billboard Awards. In 2009, he moved into his van and began the YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL campaign. Last month, his film short, ‘The Lost Poem’ took prizes for best director and audience choice award at filmfest21.
Posted by Sue Zalokar
Scissors
the word’s sound,
scissors,
said slowly, scissors
scissors, is
the sound of scissors doing,
metal edge shearing scraping-close
past its mate, its opposite,
its beloved enemy sword,
scissors scissoring forth the sound
of scissoring scissors,
slim metal beak speaking
its own thin metal name,
scissors,
the word, the deed, the sound, the fact
pivot into integrity together
at the swivel pin in the center joining
in smooth work
the fiercely utter opposites
of the handles’ loops and the blades’ points.
Scissors, closing,
make an opening,
declare an end there
and a beginning here,
fate and the fateful tool of fate,
open as chance, sharp as choosing,
fast as danger, smooth as beauty,
scissors still or moving,
silent or whispering,
make of the hand a hungry bird
with a quiet voice,
as time itself is
a quiet-voiced hungry bird finding
the cut of petal from bud, unfurling
of fruit from branch, falling,
of the word, scissors, cut open
to the sound of scissors closing.
By Lance M. Loder
Editor’s note: I heard a reading of some of Lance’s work this weekend. Upon his death, he left his ‘body of work’ to his good friend Christian Swenson, who has his own impressive body of work. Posted by Sue Zalokar
PoMotion Welcomes Meredith Reese
Meredith Reese is creating ripples in Portland. In the early stages of the 21st Century, in a town with a long history of radical organizing, Meredith is carrying on a torch of activism that has been passed down from one generation to the next in Portland for many years. She has set a tone for organizing, working to both educate the community and bring a diverse set of activist together through the PDX Peace Coalition and through organizing for workers rights with the May Day Coalition.
vocescubanas.com
Meredith also writes for the Socialist Worker, a newspaper and website with a long history of reporting news of everyday people from around the globe. Meridith is a working class poet. A Yale graduate who has studied poetry from both an academic perspective and from working in the trenches of urban America.
PoMotion: production of poetry is happy to welcome her to our ongoing project!
Read Meredith’s poem ‘May Day‘ and visit her bio page to learn more.
Posted by Israel Bayer
This Rock
Steve Pendleton is Makah and a life-long resident of the small Indian village of Neah Bay which is perched at the very tip of the continental Northwest coast of the United States. He gains his inspiration from the natural beauty that is this place where he lives, the joy of life lived and love lost and the challenges of every day life.
By Steve Pendleton
Rothlisberger it’s anagram time!
From time to time we receive submissions at PoMotion. This one -regardless of one’s opinion about the innocence or guilt of people like Ben Rothlisberger, Tiger Woods, that Polanski guy-really IS clever.
> lier begs her to
> beer or the girls?
> greet liers broh
> ho regret bs lier
> he, BR, Tigers role?
> oh liers b regret
> r begger holes rite?
> there, E’ robs girl
> go beer slither’r
> i greet her slober
> her globes r rite
> leer beer or hits
By Requiqui
Posted by Sue Zalokar
Write On! LiveWire
Sitting on my ass
In the grass
Trying to make a rap
I’d rather be making my brother tap
Out, no doubt
Getting in trouble by my grandma
I think she’s at her last straw
Doing nothing on this dead rez
Feel like I’m at my end
Pushing myself
For my health
And all you can think about is my wealth
When I turn 18, it’s like,
That will be the day
They stop hating me.
People say I got a stutter,
But I’m the number one stunner
The gunner, they’ll blast you
Bomb cast you
I’m the outcast
The out last
I’ll school ya, fool ya
All these people talking smack cuz they hate me
But they all know that they ain’t me
On the mat, I put ‘em down
They even tap when it’s the other way around
There’s no stopping me
I’m on fire
I’ve been trying to get on the livewire
There’s no stopping me and that’s the truth
I’m through asking my mom what I can and cannot do.
By Joel Ward, Immanuel Goodlance, and Ricky Barragan
Posted by Sue Zalokar
Write On! Fry Bread Dough
Last summer, I was the instructor for Hoh River Summer School. We did field work, monitoring the health of our streams and planted a school garden plot in the community garden.
We also explored the writing process through the lens of freestyle rhyming.
It was amazing to watch the students as they crossed mediums: writing to music. They didn’t even notice how hard they were working on their drafts and re-writes. We published their work by distributing compact discs of our freestyles and beats.
It has been a long time coming, but now two of those students’ work, Vivica Goodlance and 
AnaCleto Ward, are featured in PoMotion’s Write On! page.
poMotion poetry 