Artemis Speaks

Donna Polseno is a sculptor and potter living in the mountains of southwest Virginia. Donna will be featured on our next 2021 Artemis cover to be released in June. 

She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design and has been honored with 2 NEA Artist Fellowships and a Virginia Museum Artists Grant. Donna has shown her work in major exhibitions in museums and galleries, nationally and internationally. Her work has been published in many books and magazines. 

Donna has taught seminars at many schools including  Penland School, Haystack Mountain School, Anderson Ranch, Jingdezhen University in China, La Meridiana School of Ceramics in Italy. She lives and works part-time in a small village in Italy. She was a ceramics instructor at Hollins University for 15 years, where she created and still directs the "Women Working With Clay" Symposium.  

                       Winner of "Women Hold Up Half the Sky" SciFi Contest

                                           "Never turn your back on water"

                                                          by Courtney Watson

Partnering with Los Angeles Light Bringer Project, Artemis encourages SciFi short story writing with a strong female leading character.

Courtney Watson is a fiction and travel writer who earned her Ph.D. in English from The Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. A scholar of women writers as well as travel writing and literary tourism, she is always dreaming of her next destination and she is deeply inspired by the stories told in the places she visits.

She lives to tell her own stories about places like the haunting beaches of southern Iceland, where she wrote the first lines of the winning story “Never Turn Your Back on the Water," to be published in the upcoming Artemis Journal 2021.

Courtney is an Associate Professor of English at Radford University Carilion in Roanoke, Virginia. She teaches courses on women writers, health humanities, American modernism, & communication in the health sciences. 

Artemis is pleased to have acclaimed poet, Nikki Giovanni to join our publication. She has been awarded an unprecedented 7 NAACP Image Awards, nominated for a Grammy; has been a finalist for the National Book Award, authored 3 New York Times and Los Angeles Times Best Sellers, which is highly unusual for a poet. She is a Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech. 

Artemis has had a long journey with Nikki. She has been our featured guest poet for our journals in 2014 and 2017. In 2017 we dedicated our journal to her as someone who has served as a beacon to those of us who believe in the power of art. From the 1980s until today, she has given generously of her time and talent to nurture and support the work of artists and writers in her adopted home here in Southwest Virginia. We welcome her as our Honored Board Poet.

Nikki Quote:
"My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer:  my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of.  I guess that’s why I’m a poet.  We put things together in ways no one else does."

A natural blend of Music and Poetry

In this podcast, Host, Jeri Rogers will be speaking with a composer, musician, whose music, Slow Down is our Podcast theme song.

Jordan Harman creates music with soul that retains a unique style pulling you in before you know it, you are dancing and singing along to his unique brand of music. His vocals are smooth with rhythmic guitar playing and infectious hooks that add up to a performance to please any crowd. His music certainly pleased my co-producer, Skip Brown and me in choosing our theme music.

http://jordanharman.com/

This interview will dig a little deeper and ask Jordan to describe the songs he writes and why.

Jeri Rogers, host
Skip Brown, Co-Producer
Recorded at Final Track Studios

This past fall, Justin published his first collection of poetry and short stories, every grain of sand, expanding his artistic reach from his  currently-paused career as a stage manager on Broadway.

We talk to Justin about turning this corner and sharing his process on multiple platforms: an eight-part blog, Instagram readings, and a YouTube book launch event called "The Showing," (https://youtu.be/D4Ke67ipvLA)where he collaborated with several artist friends to create five original pieces in their own mediums, in response to pieces from his book.  
https://justinscribner.com/

Tune in to our latest podcast to hear him and his also recently-published mother, Diane Scribner (Pray Attention Ministries) reflect on their writing processes.

Part of our mission at Artemis Journal is to publish up-and -coming artists and writers, and Justin's poem, the age of a river will appear in the next Artemis Journal 2021.

Dr. Molly O'Dell, Doctor and poet

After an incredible career practicing medicine and public health, Molly decided to retire from full time work in 2016. The change was wonderful and she quickly adjusted to what it means not to hurry. When SARS CoV-2 introduced itself to our planet, Dr. O'Dell re-joined the Virginia Department of Health work force to lead the COVID response in southwest Virginia.

Her poems that have been published in national and regional journals, including;

Jama
Chest
Family Medicine
Whitefish Review
Artemis Journal

Upon retirement her immediate ambition was to work less hours. "I love to help children and teenagers find their voice and adults re-claim their core values, through writing."

https://www.doctormolly.net/

Molly's latest book
Care is a four Letter Verb
will be released in early March

Robert Bersson and Jack Greer  are the editors of the new book Better with Age: Creativity, Discovery & Surprise, a compilation of essays and reflections about experiences with aging. Bersson is an emeritus professor at James Madison University and Greer worked for many years at the University of Maryland's Sea Grant College.

A lively collection of twenty-seven essays, three poems, and a song, all exploring how to make things new as we move through our later years. We hear from those in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties who've tackled social causes or physical exploits or artistic pursuits. Some essays share lessons learned from a lifetime. Others describe the energy or nerve required to launch into some new adventure late in life, or to revive a youthful talent long abandoned or ignored. All these stories suggest how some endeavors — or insights or encounters — can be better with age.

Ayn Cates Sullivan, MA, MFA, Ph.D. is an award-winning, best-selling mystical author. Weaving ancient wisdom traditions together with mystical experience, Dr Sullivan focuses on mythology, folklore and envisioning a new humanity. Her books include an award-winning children’s series including Sparkle & the Gift, Sparkle & the Light and the Sparkle Fairy Tales: Kachina’s Rose, Ella’s Magic and Undina’s Spell. Her best-selling fable, A Story of Becoming, won 18 literary awards. Her books on Celtic mythology include Legends of the Grail: Stories of Celtic Goddesses and Heroines of Avalon & Other Tales. Her debut novel, Nimue: Finding Merlin, is scheduled to launch in 2021. Artemis Journal is pleased to offer Ayn's poetry in the upcoming Artemis Journal 2021. 

Letter from Jeri Rogers, Editor, Artemis
http://www.artemisjournal.org

As 2020 comes to a close, I want to remember a poet and dear friend of Artemis who passed. Frances Curtis Barnhart was known and loved by many in the Artemis Community. In years past, we published both her art and poems. Now, we will miss her radiant smile, everlasting optimism, and joy. Her work often spoke of beauty and her last book, The Beauty of Impermanence: A Woman’s Memoir, captured the essence of her spirit.

Our podcast features a reading of the poem, Beloved Us, by Frances’s Grandchildren. Through the magic of technology, they gathered from all parts of the world, to remember their cherished Grandmother. All ten of her grandchildren participated in the reading at her service.

Beloved Us
by Frances Barnhart

It’s beyond this world, this love,
Great Spirit that permeates our everything.

You are the pulse in my wrist,
Sweet water between my lips

You are All That Is
and All that came before.
If ever there was a before.

So tell me, Oh Permeating One,
Are we each an endless stream of humanity?
With new sets of bones and skin and dancing feet
Stepping through the generations,
Mixing it up for posterity?

Do we travel through the doorways of color, creed,
class, gender, ability, and disability?

Could this be how we grow compassion?
Do we travel among stars that hold us close
While we decide what’s next before we come to here?

Today I know something new
and that is that I don’t really know.

At last, I don’t really know your Mystery
after all these years of Certainty

Now I Am open to my Self
peering in through a burning lens
to  see who that might be.

Through stillness I remember who I am not
that bundle of opinions, attitudes, and preferences
walking around in comfortable shoes,

That muddle of misconceptions about you,

Dear brothers 
and sisters
Coming from some strange land in a far away place
Or perhaps that clapboard house next door.

Please know that I  am pained by your wounds.
Your pain does not stop where you end.

Know, too, I turn to silk and fire from your joy.

This air that I breathe leaves my body
and wanders toward you to fuel you with honey.
And your  exhale carries your glisten back to me.

You are a Christian.
I am a Jew.
You are a Hindu. I am The Tao.
You are a Muslim,

And we are Buddhists, too.
What we do and how we love
Makes us who we are
And Compassion is the name we will become.
For the sun that shines on you
Splashes down on me.


2.

Our laughter raises up the world.

And on another note this sensual body
Relishes your rice and beans,
Your  samosas, knishes and halvah.

It savors your curried goat and dumplings,
your satay, kim chee and perogi.

I drink in your ragas through my skin,
I embrace your chants and gospels and hymns,

Your Ave Maria, one voice davening to fill the air,
one drum, one heart, one dream

Are we not all of That in our emergence,
Even fern, fungi, flower and moss?

And aren’t we also trees?

Are we One endless love affair,
Slender tendrils intertwining
And a pebbled river fed by many streams?

Are we all of that?
Are we one furiously pulsing,
vibrant body of love?

say YES?

Professor Gallo's teaching interests include creative writing and modern and contemporary literature.  Four volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry, Archaeology, Scherzo Furiant, Crash and Clearing the Attic, are now available.  Two forthcoming volumes, Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? and Leeway & Advent, will be published in the near future.  His work will appear in Best Short Fiction 2020 forthcoming. A novella, “The Art Deco Lung,” will be published in Storylandia.  Chapbooks include The Truth Changes, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct Books:  A New Orleans Review.  His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. He is the recipient of an NEA grant for fiction.  He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.