John Brantingham
This project's first feature is one of the brightest, most influential poets working in Southern California today, and I'm happy to say one of my best friends. John Brantingham's poetry is wonderfully sweet, poignant, and intimately tied to the geography and environment of his region. His work explores the human condition, it can be joyful and humorous, risky, and always feels like it is part of a larger conversation. It is an honor to feature him in the launch of this project.
This photoshoot was done on Mt. Baldy, near the area John grew up in and has known most of his life. The poem featured here is the poem he was writing during the shoot.
"9 Ways to Locate the Ghost of Yourself
in the High Sierra"
by John Brantingham
Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp
The first featured poet for the month of April is Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp, of the Costanoan-Rumsen Carmel Band of Ohlone Indians. Over the past few years I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Michaelsun as he has honed his craft and made quite a name for himself in the literary scene. His ease with words is matched by a keen eye for art, which makes him expertly suited to explore so many of our vast cultural spaces. He is able to then link these worlds in his work with apparent ease, leaving the listener and the reader amazed.
Michaelsun is an MFA candidate at the Institute of American Indian Arts, with a BA in English lit from CSU San Bernardino, and two AAs from Mount San Antonio College. Nominated for a 2016 Pushcart, and winner of the Muse Times Two Poetry Award, he is also a 2016 Periphery Poets Fellow, poetry editor for Mud City, and has curated the Claremont West Reading Series. He has published over 80 pieces across the United States and Internet, and his most recent publications are in the Yellow Medicine Review, and Red Ink.
"Discovery of Gold"
by Michaelsun Stonesweat Knapp
Jo Scott-Coe
Jo Scott Coe, April’s second feature, is a remarkable educator and author. I’ve known Jo some time now, originally through mutual friends and through SoCal’s writing scene, where she stood out as an author of uncompromisingly powerful, and at times emotionally challenging works of nonfiction. In her writing Jo explores a range of human experience, from her own time spent in the classroom, to her reflections as an observer of some of the darker facets of humanity.
What really amazes me about Jo is her steadfast courage in exploring these “darker” sides of life (some of her work examines themes such as mass shootings, domestic violence and suicide) within the guidelines of nonfiction. Whereas some writers might shy away from these themes, or only delve into them while shielded with the protective veil of “literary license”, Jo challenges the reader to face and reflect on some of the uncomfortable realities of our world.
Jo’s books, Listening to Kathy (Big Jacaranda Press) and Teacher at Point Blank (Aunt Lute), are both available for sale from Amazon. She has just finished a new book, titled MASS: A Sniper, a Father, and a Priest.
She is a fearless, sensitive, creative author of the not fictional, and I’m proud to say, a good friend.
"My Place for Misfits"
by Jo Scott Coe
T. Anders Carson
T. Anders Carson is a poet I have known and admired for some time now, so I'm very pleased to have him as the first feature for the month of May. Trying something different I have asked a mutual friend, someone who has known and collaborated with Anders for some time, to write a few words about him.
You can read a poem here that Anders wrote about the day we did this photoshoot.
T. Anders Carson has spent his lifetime wandering the planet and getting to know as many people as he can. We are lucky in Southern California that Los Angeles is one of his favorite places to land. He has become an important influence to so many of the poetry students in this area who come to the poetry events he can make it to. His work developed out of a deep appreciation of the poets of this area, people like Gerald Locklin and Charles Bukowski. His own work is often set in places as diverse as rural Canada, to India to New Orleans, but what every poem has in common is a fundamental and deep love for the humanity of everyone he writes about.
His books include I Knew It Would Come to This and A Different Shred of Skin. Tonight, if he is not driving his kids to soccer practice or helping them with their homework, he is reading poetry to a group of people absolutely enthralled by his humor and intelligence.
—John Brantingham
You Can't Hear the Freeway
by T. Anders Carson
Thomas R. Thomas
If you are at all familiar with the Southern California poetry scene then you probably know Thomas R. Thomas, Tom. A tall, usually bearded guy, often found under a hat who makes an extra effort to attend readings in support of other writers and who has established himself as a distinct figure as both a poet and a publisher. Tom was one of the first people I met when I started becoming involved in poetry, he was around at readings, as a participant and as part of the audience, always encouraging the readers.
Tom economizes when he writes, exploring the tanka and haiku forms, in a few lines he can quickly deliver emotional blows and narrate vivid passages. A native of Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley, his work often evokes the area’s unique character. It is after one of the geographical features of this area that he names his publishing venture, Arroyo Seco Press.
Focusing on chapbooks by previously unpublished and upcoming authors Tom has given several poets the opportunity to present their work in print to a wider audience, and I am proud to say my own chapbook Seaglass is an Arroyo Seco title. His own work has appeared in various publications, his books include Scorpio published by Carnival, Five Lines published by World Parade Books and Climbing Eternity by Weekly Weird Monthly. Arroyo Seco Press' newest book Seven Countries is available now and can be purchased from Amazon.
Tom is a frank, sincere guy who seems to be always cheerful and willing to offer a helping hand. I'm honored to call him a friend and to have him as the second feature for the month of May.
"Sweeping" and "Untitled Short Poems"
by Thomas R. Thomas
Cynthia Adam Prochaska
Writing has never come easy for me, and poetry in particular has always been greatly difficult. It is precisely because I’ve struggled so much that I hold the teachers who have helped me in such high regard. Cynthia Prochaska, June’s first feature, was the first poetry teacher I had in college, in the first poetry class I ever took. Many, many years ago I walked into a classroom with a satisfied sense of knowing what poetry was. In my backpack were probably a dog eared copy of some generic beat collection and no doubt a Bukowski title. I was eighteen and I knew that I was going to take the writing world by storm. Cynthia was patient. Thank God above she was patient.
Cynthia is a fantastic teacher, but perhaps more importantly she is a wonderful person. She has the keen ability to encourage and promote natural talent in people while at the same time nudging them to push past boundaries in their own writing comfort zones. In that first class I learned there was so much I needed to read and learn and relearn. She helped me understand that rewriting was a critical part of the process, despite how tedious it might seem. I learned it was ok to be critical of my own work, and how to listen to the voice of others when they read theirs.
I ended up taking several more classes with her. Poetry, fiction, literature, and in each class her unique style helped me grow as a writer. But I hadn’t read her writing. It wouldn’t be until years later that I first read one of her short stories in the Santa Monica Review. Cynthia’s writing is, for lack of a better term, spellbinding. Deeply personal yet wildly imaginative, touching, funny, and every bit as human as you’d expect from her. It has been almost two decades since I first walked into her class and still I continue to be impressed by her. She is a wonderful teacher, and a good friend.
Cynthia Adam Prochaska's fiction has appeared in the Santa Monica Review, the Florida Review, Angel's Flight, LA Fiction: Southland Writers Tell Southland Stories, and Literary Pasadena. In a previous life, she taught English and Writing at Mount San Antonio College. Scroll through to read her flash fiction story.
"L&M Auto Body"
by Cynthia Adam Prochaska
Natalie Morales
In maintaining this digital photography exhibit, one of the things I enjoy the most is getting a chance to write about each month's feature, how I know them and what makes them unique as people. This month, though, I've decided to try something different and have asked June's second feature, Natalie Morales, to write a brief reflection on what the shoot we did meant to her and the symbolism behind it. It's my hope that this glimpse into the writer's character and thought process adds another layer of dimension and individuality to these photographs. A poem of hers appears in this gallery.
"When I began to envision images that symbolize my poetry, I knew the setting would have to be intimate, complex, and introspective, as much of my poetry centers on the themes of love, lust, and loss. I often find myself writing from a place of compulsion rather than desire, motivated by a need to purge inner darkness and replace it with sunshine — or, at the very least, some sort of light....
The book collection you see is a physical embodiment my life. I’ve lugged it with me from room to room and home to home since childhood. It contains my education, family, friends, past lovers and future paramours, quarter-life crises, dreams, failures, obsessions, and the profound beauty that allows me to wake up each morning and believe, with only a little bit of doubt, that everything will be all right."
—Natalie Morales
Natalie Morales began penning poems and short stories at the age of 10 and has published dozens of pieces in the two decades since. Her work is often focused on the themes of love, lust, and loss. Writing allows her to survive as an overly-sensitive female in a petroleum-based, masculine society. She is a fiction editor of Pomona Valley Review and teaches English at various community colleges.
"Nine Times I Found Myself in Pomona"
by Natalie Morales
Eric Morago
For the month of July I had the pleasure to collaborate with Eric Morago, a well known poet in the Southern California writing scene and publisher of Moon Tide Press. I've known and admired Eric's work for quite a while now. I asked him to write a bit about about the theme of the photo shoot we did. Scroll through to read one of his poems.
"I have spent most of my life with my head down in a comic book—I gravitate to the heroics and drama of it all. As I have grown into the poet I am today, I have tried to bring those same elements into my writing, drawing from pop culture and superheroes the way past generations of writers would allude to Greek gods and Shakespeare....
What I have written above, while true, is also just fancy-speak for: I’m a geek. I read comics and science fiction, I play old school video games, and—the icing on the geek-cake—I write poems, sometimes about those things....
The idea behind this shoot was to show me in my natural habitat. A bookstore. More importantly the comic book section of a bookstore. I love spinner racks. The first place I ever bought a comic book was in a bookstore with a spinner rack—an old bookstore that smelled of musty old paper and wood, the way a bookstore should....
If I ever became a famous celebrity with my own line of fragrance, it would be the scent of an old bookstore. These photos could then appear in the ads of magazine pages like GQ, Maxim, and Wizard: The Guide to Comics.
That probably won’t happen though. I mean, Wizard has been out of print for over a decade now. Besides, what could my fragrance be called—Page Turner?"
Eric Morago is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet who believes performance carries as much importance on the page as it does off. He is the author of What We Ache For and Feasting on Sky. Currently Eric hosts a monthly reading series, teaches writing workshops, and is editor-in-chief and publisher of Moon Tide Press. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach, and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
"Thor Loses His Hammer"
by Eric Morago
K. Andrew Turner
Part of my motivation in doing this project is getting an opportunity to showcase the work of authors who I’ve worked alongside with and admired. Andrew Turner is a Southern California author and publisher who has established himself firmly in the writing scene. He and I have collaborated in several readings and I’ve had the privilege of seeing the many facets of his incredibly touching, personal poetry develop. His work is incredibly rich, at times wildly funny and whimsical, and also capable of deep heartbreak and introspection.
Exploring a wide range subjects, from romantic longing, to pop culture, to family life to lgbt issues, Andrew’s writing is wonderfully bold and complex. On a personal level, Andrew is a great friend to me and to the poetry community in general. For this shoot we decided to highlight Andrew's love of fantasy and magic in literature, something that he feels shows up in the character of his own writing. I am very happy to have him as the feature for the month of August. Click through to read one of his poems.
K. Andrew Turner writes queer, literary, and speculative prose and poetry. He teaches and mentors writers near Los Angeles. In 2013, he founded East Jasmine Review—an electronic literary journal. He was a semifinalist for the 2016 Luminaire Award, and his chapbook Gymlationship is now available on Amazon. You can find more at his website: www.kandrewturner.com
"Morning Magic"
by K. Andrew Turner
Stephanie Barbe Hammer
It has been a while since I've updated this blog. Photography is a passion, life is life, sometimes passions take a backseat to the daily routine. As I find myself being able to dedicate more time to this project again I thought I would start things off by featuring a writer who I have come to both greatly admire and hold in deep personal regard as a friend. Stephanie Barbe Hammer, February's featured author, wrote a brief reflection on the photoshoot we did.
"I have spent much of my life in train stations. When I was 4 my Russian grandmother took me on the New York City subway for the first time and I was delighted to be riding on a “toodles” train that I’d heard tell of in a children’s book. Later I took trains to Connecticut, Long Island, Massachusetts and yes, East Berlin, as well as through the entirety of Switzerland. I took trains every other weekend one summer to Washington DC to visit my new boyfriend Larry, and then when I finally got a job in academics, I commuted by train to the university, using the Long Island Railroad and then Amtrak....
When I moved to Los Angeles, the metrolink to Riverside became the mobile office where I wrote my first novel, composed endless poems, and sometimes had encounters like the one that is in the poem included here. I have come to feel oddly at home at those spots near the track where I might find a seat and where I can pause for a moment in the eye of the transit storm. From that position I more or less impatiently scan schedules and traffic lights, awaiting the arrival of the train car with its whine and roar....
I love it when the train comes in and the poignant strangers descend while I wait for my chance to board and rumble with that big machine forward. Towards something that feels like freedom, yeah, I know that’s sentimental, but seriously that sudden jerk when that giant mechanism shudders into motion feels almost always like it's promising some kind of luscious future."
Stephanie Barbé Hammer is a 5-time nominee for the Pushcart Prize in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has published work in The Bellevue Literary Review, Pearl, the James Franco Review, and Hayden’s Ferry Review among other places. She is the author of the chapbook Sex with Buildings (Dancing Girl Press), a full-length collection, How Formal? (Spout Hill Press), and a novel, The Puppet Turners of Narrow Interior (Urban Farmhouse Press). A former New Yorker, Stephanie now lives in Coupeville ,WA with interfaith blogger/author Larry Behrendt. She is working on a poetry collection about a relentless urbanite navigating a rural habitat, and a novel about 2 mixed up women on a train to Montreal.
"going to the metrolink/june 9th"
by Stephanie Barbe Hammer
Irene Sanchez
Poetry has always been political. A means to raise a voice that needs to be raised. For this month's second feature I am happy to feature a writer who has established a presence for her literary skills as well as her passion as an activist. Irene Monica Sanchez is a fantastic writer, academic and educator. I asked her to provide a brief rundown of who she is. Scroll through to find a poem she wrote about the vibrant city which she is closely tied to, Pomona.
"Irene Sanchez is an educator, poet, public scholar, and writer committed to social justice. She engages with people through projects she works on and centers social justice in her work by producing stories, essays, talks, presentations, workshops, poetry, and academic research/writing...
Irene has spoken/presented/keynoted at: University of Washington-Seattle, Highline CC, Everett CC, South Seattle CC, Reed College, Chapman University, Harvard University, Adelante Mujer Latina, University of California, Riverside, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies, El Mundo Zurdo (Society for the Study of Gloria Anzaldua), OC Ethnic Studies Summit, Mujeres Activas en Letras y Cambio Social, Mira Costa College, Fresno State University, UC Students of Color Conference, UC Davis and more."
She has had her work/writing featured by KPFK 90.7 Los Angeles, KPCC-Southern California Public Radio, Latino Rebels Radio, Telesur English, Inside Higher Education, NASPA, and The American Federation of Teachers. She is the co-founder of The Southwest Political Report and Xicana Ph.D. Blog where you can find some of her writings. She is a danzante of the Aztec/Mexica tradition. She is also the co-host of a monthly poetry open mic at Café con Libros in Pomona, CA called Poetry y Pan.
Now based out of the San Gabriel Valley in LA County, Irene teaches high school Latinx Studies and can often be found at a community/cultural event with her family."
"Pomona"
by Irene Sanchez
Kevin Ridgeway
Kevin Ridgeway is a writer with whom I’ve had the honor of sharing a stage with. He is incredibly talented, prolific and has become a rather recognizable face in the Southern California poetry community. I was really excited when he agreed to be part of this project. We agreed that shooting in Whittier, a city he considered a sort of “home town” and part of his essence as a writer would be a good choice. I asked him to reflect a bit on the experience.
"I was born in Bellflower and raised in Whittier, CA, at the southern most end of Colima Road. My life in South Whittier growing up came without kids my age, and I mostly isolated in my own little imaginative world with my mother working, my father in prison, my older brother at a different age than one I'd understand and a great-grandmother as my constant companion. I watched movies and read obsessively, also pacing back and forth with great intensity as I daydreamed my own works of art. I left when my mother died and we sold the house in 2015. My uncle is leaving in the summer for Boise....
...My family is no longer in Whittier. I never belonged here. Maybe on its theater stage, in its record and bookstore aisles and over at St. Matthias with the misfits, a place Fred Voss wrote about in his poem "Toy Trains & God". I grew up in Whittier, where I missed out on too much beyond make believe with the community theater, funeral eulogies and a longing for a dream deep inside of me that is far away from the streets of Whittier."
Kevin Ridgeway was born in Bellflower, CA, and raised in Whittier, CA. He is the author of six chapbooks of poetry, including All the Rage (Electric Windmill Press, 2013), On the Burning Shore (Arroyo Seco Press, 2014), Contents Under Pressure (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2015). His latest book is A Ludicrous Split alongside poems by Gabriel Ricard (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Recent work has appeared in Slipstream, Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Spillway, Plaingsongs, The Cape Rock, San Pedro River Review, Lummox, Misfit Magazine, Suisun Valley Review, The Mas Tequila Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, 48th Street Press, Thirteen Myna Birds, Trailer Park Quarterly and Cultural Weekly.
"The Original Unsung Hometown Zero"
by Kevin Ridgeway
Chiwan Choi
I have spent most of my adult life living in Los Angeles. I identify as a Los Angeles writer. Because of this, it is particularly fulfilling to be able to feature artists whose work I feel strongly reflect the character of this city. Chiwan Choi's work does just that...and then goes beyond. As a writer and publisher Chiwan has become a fixture in the LA writing scene, through his own powerful work and by putting forth and the work of others through his press Writ Large. I asked him to write a brief reflection after the photo shoot we did.
"I will be 48 this year, in 2018. I left Korea when I was 5. It’s weird because when people ask, I tell them Los Angeles is home to me. And I think I mean it when I say this. I really do. But not a day goes by where something or someone, a memory or a movement, a building or a person or the sound of voices or music, a taste of a food, there’s not a day that goes by where I don’t lose track of where I am and my body braces for the relocation to come....
....I used to say how moving was just tiring. I also say how fun it is to travel back and forth from coast to coast. But the truth is—I will be 48 this year and I don’t think I’ve ever recovered—no, scratch that. I don’t think I’ve ever recognized, therefore ever reconciled with, what leaving Seoul at 5 did to me."
Chiwan Choi is the author of 3 books of poetry, The Flood, Abductions, and The Yellow House. He wrote, presented, and destroyed the novel Ghostmaker throughout the course of 2015. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including The New York Times Magazine, ONTHEBUS, Esquire.com, and The Nervous Breakdown.
Chiwan splits his time between Pittsburgh and Los Angeles.
"untitled (work in progress)"
by Chiwan Choi
Scott Noon Creley
I was very happy to be able to feature Scott in this blog. He is not only a great personal friend, but a poet whose work I have admired and enjoyed for a long time. His words are moving, full of meaning, and often evoke a sense of familiarity with shared human experience. I asked him to write a brief reflection on the shoot we did.
"I wrote some of my first real poems in Claremont. The courtyard in this photo set is like the places I would go to when I ditched my high school classes and smoked cigarettes while I evaded Claremont PD (which is harder than it sounds, they don’t have much to do). It’s amongst the places where I made my first attempts at writing about the forces that seemed to lurk below the pretty surface of things. That’s the direction I’ve tried to take my work ever since. I want to catalogue what might otherwise be forgotten or unnoticed....
Despite the immense privilege they represent, the campuses of the five colleges have seemed a bit dark and occult. You can feel the prestige and secrets and symbolism, you can sense the lives that have passed through here, and that’s always been something that’s intrigued me. Having grown up in Pomona, where gentrification or neglect often overwrite the past fairly quickly, this was a place that fascinated me when I was a teenager because you could feel both the history the powers-that-be wanted you to see, and then, below that, you could sense some of the secret history of the place -- the fact that people ate and made love here, that they got high and cut classes.
For me, writing is about cataloguing place as much as it is people. For a while, at least, we leave the remnants of our ideas upon a place -- We become part of it, it holds some existential echo of us, and we carry a bit of it when we leave. I used to hang out in a haunted stairwell near where these photos were taken. The folklore is that this was where a Scripps college student jumped to her death from the top flight, vaulting over the bannister and then crashing into the courtyard. The students say that her spirit roams around the halls and offices there. They say that you can sometimes catch a glance of her in the mirror of a tiny, forgotten bathroom on the third floor.
Even before I knew the story of the place, I felt it. Maybe I noticed the way people hurried through it, or the sad art around the place. Maybe it was something else. Regardless, there was something there beyond the ordinary physicality of the architecture, or the garden, or the artwork dedicated to regents—The place was made into a story by the people who inhabited it, and that makes it fascinating to me.
Now I carry the ghost of that girl with me to all the places I’ve lived in. Even decades later, I often think about her in the still hours of the morning, and she makes me wonder about the stories under my feet, about the ways all of us haunt the world. Most of my writing is about unearthing those stories and preserving them, so this seemed like an excellent place to take photos that might represent some small piece of who I am as a poet."
Scott Noon Creley holds an MFA in poetry from California State University, Long Beach, and a BA in writing from UC Riverside. His work has been featured in the collections Bear Flag Republic, One Night in Downey, Cadence Collective: Year Two, as well as in quality journals as diverse as Sentence, Miramar, Spillways, Cadence Collective and Carnival Literary Magazine. His most recent book Digging a Hole to the Moon debuted in the top 50 on Amazon.com’s poetry section.
He recently returned from China, where he read for Beijing Normal University, the Lu Xun Literary Institute, and Yunnan University as a featured visiting reader alongside Pulitzer Prize winner Gregory Pardlo and Pushcart Prize winner Tony Barnstone. He is the founding chairman of San Gabriel Valley Literature Festival inc., a non-profit literacy foundation that holds monthly free writing workshops, monthly readings, and an annual community literature festival. He lives with his wife, painter & photographer Carly McKean Creley, in Los Feliz.
"Ashes, White Noise"
by Scott Noon Creley
Peter Cherches
As this blog has been on hiatus for the last several months, it's my pleasure to revive it by featuring the wonderfully talented and insightful Peter Cherches. I first met Peter several years ago through my brother, with whom he shares a passion for jazz and avant garde music. Since then I've discovered that Peter and I share a common circle of friends and colleagues in the literary community, and I've been lucky enough to see him read on a couple of occasions. I asked him to do a shoot with me when he was last in town, and to write a bit about his background.
"I've been a writer literally since I could read and write. In elementary school and at summer camp I wrote humorous skits. As an adolescent I made satiric zines about my neighborhood. I published protest poems in my junior high school literary magazine. But I really got serious about being a Writer when I read Pinter's The Birthday Party at age 18. It gave me license to write 'weird.' From there I discovered Beckett, and Kafka, Borges, Gertrude Stein, Henri Michaux, Julio Cortazar, Kenneth Patchen, surrealism, dada, OULIPO, and on and on.
"As I honed my craft, I discovered my true metier was what I'd call 'mindfuck minimalism.' Much of my creative work is inspired by the pitfalls of communication and the perils of identity.
"I've been a foodie since I was about 11 or 12, a self-defense response to my mother's dreadful cooking. I became an avid traveler in my thirties, and have traveled extensively in Asia, Europe and The Americas. For five or six years I wrote a food and travel blog called 'Word of Mouth.'
"In 2013, about 25 years after my previous book, I started publishing again, with the Upland-based imprint Pelekinesis. Lift Your Right Arm is a collection of minimalist prose sequences that inspired Billy Collins to write, 'To Gödel, Escher, and Bach we might consider adding Peter Cherches.' A few years later we released Autobiography Without Words, stories about real and imaginary Peter Chercheses. My third Pelekinesis collection, Whistler's Mother's Son (and other curiosities), will be published this March.
Stylistically, this one is all over the map, except for a place called Normal.
"Since I was coming from Brooklyn on Memorial Day weekend to visit and work with my publisher, Mark Givens, a stone's throw from where Elder lives, we decided to finally do the photo shoot we'd been discussing for two years, in nearby Pomona and Claremont. We agreed that we'd try to catch my culinary, traveler and literary natures in the shoot. I had a ball playing the character known as Peter Cherches.
"The piece of mine I selected for this project is from the new collection. It is, to a degree, a self-portrait and a complement to Elder's photos."
Called “one of the innovators of the short short story” by Publishers Weekly, Peter Cherches is a writer, singer and lyricist. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he is the author of three short prose collections from Pelekinesis: Lift Your Right Arm, Autobiography Without Words, and Whistler's Mother's Son (available March 23). His first recording as a jazz vocalist, Mercerized! Songs of Johnny Mercer, was released in 2016. He is currently working on a book about his relationship with music. A short piece from Peter's new book, Whistler's Mother's Son, appears below. His books are available from Pelekinesis press.
"An Unfamiliar Method"
By Peter Cherches
George Hammons
This month's first feature is a particularly important one for me as I got the chance to photograph a fellow photographer. I've gotten to know George Hammons over the past few years around the Southern California literary scene. A poet and photographer, George is a keen observer of the human character, as is reflected in his own impacting, powerful work. He isn't at all afraid to be deeply personal, as well as delving into themes that might make others weary such as history, religion, race and violence. I asked George to give us a brief rundown of who he is and his connection to the city of Pomona.
"I originally moved to Pomona because of its central location and proximity to L.A., the O.C. and the Inland Empire. Since arriving I have come to appreciate the fact that the city has a tenacious and eclectic vibe, punctuated by its Antique Row and Arts Colony. The city is flush with art galleries, museums, concert venues and restaurants. Every 2nd Saturday of the month is an Arts Walk where you can stroll the Arts Colony and get a taste of why Pomona is a haven to artists. I am particularly fond of the “dA Center for the Arts,” because, for me, it has become a touchstone for poetry. The “dA” hosts several poetry events regularly each month and it also provides daily classes covering a wide range of creative activities."
George Hammons is a proud graduate of Verbum Dei High, in Watts, CA. George attended Cal State Fullerton University, and Rancho Santiago College (Santa Ana, CA.) where he studied radio and television communications. He also attended Cal State University San Bernardino, where he earned a certificate of completion, in English, Creative Writing, with emphasis in poetry, while he worked as a staff member for CSUSB’s Public Safety department.
George has written poetry since he was in elementary school and attributes his fascination with language, especially poetry, to his early admiration for Muhammad Ali, Langston Hughes and Gil Scott-Heron. George writes about family, the African American experience, and love. George has had poems published in American Mustard Poetry Review, Cadence Collective, Year Two Anthology, (Sadie Girl press) and the Pacific Review (California State University at San Bernardino). George’s work can also be seen in his chapbook Hungry to Bed, Love Poems by George Hammons (Arroyo Seco Press 2017).
George is a devoted, amateur photographer and rarely goes anywhere without his camera.
"North"
by George Hammons
Some time back I came across this wonderful article by Corinne Segal describing the amazing photo work being done by B.A Van Sise in chronicling and documenting some of today's greatest living poets. What really captivated me, what made this work be more than just portraits of writers, is the great extent, the lengths to which Van Sise went to assure that each poet's individual nature, their essence, was captured in their portrait. Each photograph as elegantly unique as each subject's poetry. Charmed and a bit enamored with this concept, I've set out in similar fashion. It is the intent of this ongoing project, Portraits of Poetry, to create an online gallery featuring photographs of contemporary writers and poets along with their written work. In doing so, I mean to narrow and blur the gap between the visual and written arts and maybe even expand on the meaning of "poetry".