“The Fish,” a poem, comes from my forthcoming chapbook, San Agustinillo. I wrote it in the winter of 2020 before a pandemic sent the world into upheaval and my sons came home from school to stay. I had been working steadily on the chapbook, then set it aside. I’m now Read more…
Overview: Yassine Diboun is a professional ultramarathon trail runner, coach and entrepreneur (Wy’east Wolfpack) in Portland, Ore. He’s also nearly 17 years sober. In this conversation, we talk about Yassine’s story of addiction, which started at a really early age. And we talk about sobriety. Serious topics no doubt. But we Read more…
Overview: In this solo episode, Adam Williams kicks off an occasional series called “A Poet Was There.” Adam reads his poem, “I Want Poets,” which is his kernel of inspiration for the series, praising poets as essential truth tellers, the ones who are most equipped to help us understand the Read more…
Overview: Victoria Stracke is the curator and publisher of “The Last Hundred Miles: The Diary of Larry Waite.” And she has remained anonymous in that role. Until now. Larry was a gay man who grew up in the Midwest during the 1950s and 60s. He prolifically documented his life for Read more…
Overview: Isabelle Gelot, a French illustrator and designer, and the heart of Isatopia, has shifted, at least for the time being, from a world traveling, semi-nomadic flow of life to one of home renovation and growing a vegetable garden, from light-filled cultural capitals to small-town life in Maine. We talk Read more…
Overview: Imi Lo is a psychotherapist, art therapist, and consultant for emotionally intense and highly sensitive people. She is the founder of Eggshell Transformations and author of the book Emotional Sensitivity and Intensity. In this conversation, we talk about Imi’s turbulent childhood in Hong Kong and the false safety of conformity. Read more…
Overview: Adam Williams, creator of Humanitou, goes it alone in this episode and shares one of his simplest, most private practices for breaking away from conformity: mismatching his socks. He’s been doing it for years, and has been influencing his two sons in doing it, too. Frivolous and weird? Maybe. Read more…
When I recently talked with artist and illustrator Rukmini Poddar for the Humanitou Podcast, one of the many things we talked about was the creative value in producing quantity as a means of getting to quality. I’ve struggled with this idea in years past, at least in certain areas of Read more…
Overview: Rukmini Poddar is an artist and illustrator who describes herself as an essence seeker. She believes in the value of imperfect work, prizes quantity as a means of getting to quality, and sees art making as an act of revolutionary love. In this conversation, we talk about her growing Read more…
When the artist Taylor Spence, a.k.a. Savannalore, recently joined me for the Humanitou Podcast, we talked about conformity and breaking free (among other things). We talked about paths to being our true, full selves. That’s a topic that comes up over and over, in some form or another, with many Read more…
Overview: Savannalore is an artist, writer, “creative hype-woman,” and “bad art” advocate in Austin, Texas. In this conversation, we talk about why she makes art that she calls “beautiful trash,” and how it’s been a process for overcoming a life of conformity and perfectionism. We talk about blowing up on TikTok and Read more…
Circles have been regarded and created as spiritually significant for several hundred years, at least. They especially are connected to Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhists create mandalas. Mandala, in Sanskrit, means circle. Zen Buddhists create ensō. Ensō, in Japanese, means “circle form.” In the first line of the foreword written by John Read more…
Overview: Big Samir, the bilingual lyricist and emcee of The Reminders, grew up in Belgium and the Congo, and in a single-mother home with the images of MLK, Jr., Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X on the wall. We talk about his rising above the challenges of his youth, and the Read more…
The path of learning and growing as a creative being is as much one of unlearning as anything. Or as Julia Cameron describes it, recovery of who we really are. In the process, we get to shed the answers and definitions we were handed and come to believe as true. Read more…
Overview: Ruben Rojas is a muralist, designer, poet and activist who was on a path to becoming an orthopedic surgeon, then left it behind for big money in the real estate game — and then lost everything. In this conversation, we talk about that hero’s journey, the ups and downs, Read more…
My eight-year-old son, J, beat me at a game of G-L-A-C-I-E-R the other day (it’s H-O-R-S-E but we like to choose a different word each time we play). It was his first victory over me in, I think, anything. And of all things, basketball? For decades, that has been my Read more…
In the era of smartphone selfies and social media sharing, I have found myself questioning the intentions of the selfie-maker, including, on occasion, myself. Why do people fill their social feeds with photos and videos of themselves posing and puckering and exposing, and even dying to get that special, envy-inducing Read more…
Overview: Steven Pressfield is the best-selling author of The War of Art, The Artist’s Journey, The Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire and, his newest novel, which was published earlier this month, A Man at Arms. In this conversation, we talk about Resistance with a capital-R, that diabolical enemy within Read more…
Editor’s Note: This profile series called “A Poet Was There” highlights poets from around the world who through their verse convey the kind of intimacy, truth and connection with place and experience that only exists because a poet was there. Read “A Poet Was There: Introducing A New Blog Series” Read more…
“No words to describe it. … They should’ve sent a poet.” ~ “Ellie Arroway,” in Contact I published a poem, “I Want Poets,” in 2018 with this opening line: When another’s world, another’s life, another’s tether to all that is is frayed and on fire, I want a poet to Read more…