Gratitude for My First Job Revisted

I am at the main branch of the library still digesting lunch from Santa Café with Anne Valley-Fox and Stanley Noyes.

When I was longing for poetry in any form, volunteering at my kids' school, John Hyson in Chimayo, coolest place on earth to send out kids and presided over by Julia Hudson, I met these two folks. I had nothing published, or maybe a poem in the New LIfe News, the newspaper of the food co-op.

This is circa 1981. Stan Noyes was the literary person at New Mexico Arts Division where we had a wonderful and serious Poets in the Schools program where the real poets, including Arthur Sze, Harold Littlebird, Anne V-F, Jimmy Santiago Baca, John Brandi, Jim Sagel, Miriam Sagan, Judyth Hill, and I think Mei Mei Bressenbrugge all worked. They called it PITS. It paid something like $60 a day, and then $100. Big bucks for an artist beginning.

Each year fledgling me would apply to Stan and New Mexico Arts Division. Two years I got rejected, and kept on volunteering with John Hyson and the kids, made a book of their little Chimayo poems on copier and construction paper covers. By the third time I applied, Stan took me on, though I had little other experience than volunteering. I got work at two schools, Capshaw and Alameda Middle Schools and with my first income from poetry, put a down payment on a stove. It cost $500.

I am still working as a poet-in-the-schools through New Mexico Culturenet though I am happy passing it on to the young poets, the Slammers, the up and coming. The other poets from the above list of PITS poets in Stan's coterie have gone on to be life long poets, win major awards, work tirelessly with children, and two of us to be Santa Fe Poets Laureate, Arthur Sze and I.

We presented Stan with a Poetry Gratitude Award from New Mexico Literary Arts, a small and grassy roots tribe of which I am co-president of the Board. We wrote him an award check for $500. I think, no, I am sure it is the same $500 I originally got paid, circling and spiraling around above Santa Fe and the minds of children. Today Anne and I took Stan out to a nice lunch, my birthday lunch as well, and presented him with a plaque that spoke to our gratitude for what he gave the literary community. The plaque is handsome, by Cirrelda Bryan, and has a big THANKS. It is a way that we hope he remembers how much he has done for all of us, not to mention the countless school kids who got to work with the likes of John Brandi and Jimmy Baca and even me. His work is still rippling.

I told Stan a story about finding a poem written by an Alameda kid, Joe Ray Sandoval in about 1982 in David Gonzales' English class. I kept it as I did a few good poems. Joe Ray has gone on the be a performance poet and write the full length movie, Spoken Word. He didn't remember writing poetry in middle school, but I sent him a copy. Stan commented that it is very important to influence kids when they are young. Just hearing him say that took me back, dreamtime, to being at his home and being trained a bit in what works in the classroom.

I want to pass on what I know about teaching writing to kids. I want to pass on gratitude for when there was federal money in the arts, and to Stan Noyes, and to the poets who have kept on the sacred path of writing and giving. I have gratitude for Alex Traube who made his own PITS program, based on the old one which also employed him as a photographer, as well painters, dancers, potters, muralists, sculptors. It was called The Artist in Residence Program way back when.

All sorts of Gratitude, and Happy Birthday to me. Glad I got born and got to have this day.
JL for the PL

The Year of Living Poetically

So far as Poet Laureate of Santa Fe I have had two and a half poetry emergencies, one public appearance in a bowling shirt that makes me look boxy, and one writing on site where I was so moved. The two emergencies occurred in La Puebla, NM where I live. My friend, Julie Bennet, has a sort of B & B set up called Air, Bed, and Breakfast. Two, not one, but two separate guests were poets and so I had to don my bowling shirt which reads "Santa Fe Poet Laureate: Joan Logghe" on the front and "City of POems/City of Poets" on the back and rush over. Two nights. Poetry was discussed and shared by all. I didn't know house calls was part of the deal. Then in a nursing home in California, I met a 97 year old who is a former Santa Fean. When told I was her Poet Laureate she asked for a poem. I gave her a small one and she applauded. I count that as a half emergency since she is 97 and wheelchair bound already.

The boxy bowling shirt appearance a gratitude moment. I went to Los Alamos concert series was was able to introduce singer/songwriter Eliza Gilkyson. Here's what I waned to say and didn't. A bit of a case of nerves.

In the early 1980's in santaFe, when I had just taken on poetry again, I'd go hear a singer downtown in a club below La Fonda called Casa Blanca or the Casbah, one of the "c" named clubs. She'd sing about Cerrillos, her town, about being a mom and never alone. I could totally dig it. She sang, "Santa Fe just sits there grinning under Indian blue skies" and so I'd sing is as I drove into town from the north. She showed me that writing can be intimately personal and reach others deeply. I was a fan and a groupie. I wanted to thank Eliza for being on her path so fiercely and with such determination. She moved me. And today I am Poet Laureate of Santa Fe. Here I ma with my two grandchildren. Gratitude to Eliza."

I said an approximation and my son put it on You Tube (Try POet Laureate, Eliza Gilkyson). She calls her path The Beauty Way after the Navajos and thanks to all on this knife edge. That was a Gratitude Emergency and she got it.