Cartwheels on the Sky

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of Jazz poet Tony Seymour.

His literary career spans nearly five decades, encompassing poetry writing,  journalism, academic research and public performances. His collection  of over 1,200 poems has many inspirations, particularly the search for  truth, political events, the pursuit of love, world history and the  various lives a soul experiences in a lifetime.

A  performer who reads to music, his is more than “stream of  consciousness”; instead, Tony’s rapid delivery of his poetry has been  described as a “scream of consciousness”, or a “Zap Rap” featuring intra  -syllable rhyming, the use of onomatopoeia and alliteration, and a  vocabulary that has sent readers and listeners reaching for a Thesaurus.

A “poets poet” Seymour’s work  appears within several major Collections at Stanford University,  including The Allen Ginsberg Collection and the Dr. Huey P. Newton  Collection, at UC Berkeley in the City Lights Collection and the Phillip  Lamantia Collection. But, in his words, he “reached the zenith of all  honors bestowed on a poet” with the inclusion of his jazz poetry in the Hogan Jazz Archive,  at Tulane University in New Orleans, which is considered the ultimate  holding for the History of Jazz where few poets, aside from Langston  Hughes and ts elliott also have their works.

For many years, he served as the poetry coordinator for the North Beach Festival in San Francisco, and to this day, he continues to write and perform to as wide an audience as possible.

Listen live from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, May 1 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org

This week features the poems and process of Albion poet Peter Lit.  

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of of Mendocino county poet and current Ukiah Poet Laureate Melissa Eleftherion. Melissa Eleftherion (she/they) is a cis queer human, a writer, a librarian, and a visual artist. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & ten chapbooks, including little ditch (above/ground press, 2018) & trauma suture (above/ground press, 2020). Her poems & prose have been widely published, & nominated for various awards including the Pushcart Prize & Best of the Net. Born & raised in Brooklyn, Melissa created, developed, and co-curates The SFSU Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange with Elise Ficarra. She now lives in Northern California where she manages the Ukiah Library, curates the LOBA Reading Series, and serves as the 2021-2023 Poet Laureate of Ukiah.

More information about Melissa Eleftherion and her recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

This episode of Cartwheels on the Sky features the poems and process of Mendocino county poet Marylyn “Motherbear” Scott.

Marylyn Motherbear Scott, who writes memoir, poems, poetic narration, and theatre review. A founding member & editor for the online journal Coreopsis, she is published by Cauldron Press; Bantam Press, Skinner Press, Coreopsis, Green Egg, and WMC Anthologies and regularly features in readings around Northern California.

She is also published in Edward Searl’s anthology, Beyond Absence (2006), in Hill/Baker/Starhawk’s Circle Round (1998), Annette White Parks’ anthology of women writers, Word Weavers, The Dragonslayer’s Daughter and a book of poetry, Love’s Journey. She is currently focusing on gathering and writing her memoirs, Ohm. Sweet Mystery as well as on a non-fiction book, In Your Own Rite. She began writing reviews for the Brookline Times in the late 50’s. Today, her reviews and other writing can be seen in the local Press.

Motherbear also has a long history of non-violent protest and demonstration for Peace and she was on the creative edge of the Psychedelic Revolution in the early 60’s, the Harvard days of Alpert and Leary, journeyed to the Bay Area in 1967, the Summer of Love, with husband and first two (of six) children. Connecting with the Stanford Writing Group, later known as Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, she taught theatre, creative writing and dance at Peninsula School in Menlo Park.

She the four youngest of her six kids went on the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament in 1986, from California to Washington, DC. During this time, she wrote and produced an original dance/theater piece, seventeen verses of Haiku. Titled Sadako’s Dance of the Thousand Crane it was performed in town squares and church basements, at Notre Dame, Kent State; and later, in Europe, Russia, and Czechoslovakia. Her continued activism for peace and the environment brought both her theatrical and poetical presence to rallies, demonstrations and venues along the peace path.

More information about Marylyn “Motherbear” Scott, can be found via her website: MagickalCauldorn.org

Listen live from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, February 6 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of Mendocino Coast poet Jasper Henderson. Jasper Henderson grew up all up and down the Mendocino Coast. He went to school at Harvard College and later at Antioch University.

He is a writer, teacher, and designer, and currently he works as the Storyteller / Writer for Antioch University, as well as serving as the graphic designer for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference.

His poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in Joyland, Juked, 7x7.la ("seven by seven L.A."), Lunch Ticket, and Your Impossible Voice. For the last seven years, Jasper worked on the Mendocino Coast as a poet-teacher through California Poets in the Schools, bringing poetry lessons to hundreds public school students every year.

He lives both on the Mendocino Coast and in Los Angeles with his partner and their cat.

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of Willits/Covelo poet Michelle Peñaloza. Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019). She is also the author of two chapbooks, landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015), and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic Weapon Arts, 2015). The recipient of fellowships and awards from the University of Oregon and Kundiman, Michelle has also received support from Lemon Tree House, Caldera, 4Culture, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among others. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit, MI and raised in Nashville, TN. She now lives in rural Northern California, in Covelo/Round Valley. More information can be found at: http://www.michellepenaloza.com/

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky features a recording of the Mendocino Coast High School Poetry Slam from April 2011. I figured it would be nice to hear how different and the same life was in 2011, and to remind youth that they have strong voices, voices that must be exercised and heard — you are our freedom and you deserve a platform of expression. Listen, and learn, be inspired and remember to inspire the youth in your lives!

Originally aired from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, November 7 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala.

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of Ukiah poet Michael Riedell. Michael Riedell was born and raised in San Diego.  For more than two decades he has lived in inland Mendocino with his wife, Kate, and worked at Ukiah High School as a teacher of English and Creative Writing.  He also “coaches” the school’s Poetry Club and Slam Team. Michael’s first experience reading poetry in public was as a first place winner in the inaugural ukiaHaiku Festival.  Since then he has read widely in Mendocino County and often has poems broadcast on KZYX’s excellent Rhythm Running River. He was proud to serve as the Poet Laureate of Ukiah from 2016 to 2018, and–in normal times–he hosts Ukiah’s long-standing monthly literary reading series, Writers Read. He is the author of two books of poetry, The Way of Water and Small Talk & Long Silences, and in 2018 he edited Deep Valley, an anthology of the first seven poets laureate of Ukiah. His one-act plays have been produced by the Willits Shakespeare Theater and at Mendocino College.

This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky feature the poems and process of Ukiah poet Dan Barth. Dan Barth works at home mornings as writer and editor. Afternoons he teaches and does library work at the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. After that he saws, splits, mows, waters, rides his bike, walks and pokes at things with a bamboo hiking stick, just like Gandhi. His books include At the Corner of Vigor and Wisdom, The Day After Hank Williams’ Birthday and Fast Women Beautiful: Zen Beat Baseball Poems. Dan and his wife Mary live near the Russian River in the Talmage area of inland Mendocino County. Originally aired live on Saturday, October 24 on 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala.  Also streams live  on Saturdays from 7-7:30pm at: Https://RadioRethink.com/listen/KGUA

Get a preview of what to expect when you listen to Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More.