“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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.” 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 Read more…