Philip received his M.A. in Psychology from Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada. He has published five books of poetry, Mirror Images and Shards of Glass, Dark Images at Sea, I Never Finished Loving You, Falls from Grace, Favor and High Places, and Forever Was Never On My Mind. Three novels, Caught Between (Which is also a 24-episode Radio Drama Podcast https://wprnpublicradio.com/caught-between-teaser/), Art and Mystery: The Missing Poe Manuscript and Far From Here. Philip also has a column in the quarterly magazine Per Niente. He enjoys all things artistic.
I remember the Winter of 2011 when a group of local poets visited Bernadette Mayer at her home in Nassau.
I remember how cold it was.
I remember the only heating source in the converted open school house living room was a pot belly stove.
I remember thinking no one had cooler anecdotes of New York City poets from the sixties and seventies than Bernadette did.
I remember she spoke of her friend Joe Brainerd’s book I Remember.
I remember the deserted St Croix, Virgin Island beach my mother and I used to visit when we lived on the island.
I remember how I felt when I heard The Rockefellers were going to build a resort hotel on the site.
I remember thinking that Ferlinghetti was going to live forever.
I remember thinking I wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
I remember watching the Brooklyn Dodgers play the New York Giants on the first TV we ever owned.
I remember having the mumps and my cousin coming over from next door to make sure I got chicken pox also.
I remember seeing every prewar western every made.
I remember seeing hundreds of noir classics.
I remember seeing King Kong eleven times in one week on The Million Dollar movie.
I remember my cousin saw it thirteen times.
I remember watching the Joe McCarthy House of Unamerican Activities hearing live on TV and, while I didn’t know what they were all about, not really, I thought McCarthy was a bully and a dick.
I remember my mother hiding a copy of Tropic of Cancer in her secret desk drawer and sneaking looks at it when she was at work.
I remember not getting what he was writing about but that it was dirty.
I remember she had a copy of This Is My Beloved also but she didn’t hide that book away.
I remember reading that all the way through when I was like ten and thinking the fireworks he described were pretty cool.
I remember how cool the black and white the fireworks display at the beginning of Manhattan
was the first time I saw it.
I remember that one of my cocktail waitress saying she saw the movie and it sucked.
I remember she said “…and it wasn’t even in color.”
I remember knowing how to read when I entered first grade at the Catholic school in Christiansted.
I remember I was the only one who could read in first grade and how much the nuns loved me.
I remember how it felt to be the only non-Catholic in Catholic school.
I remember the first time I read, I Remember.
I remember the baseball game in 1965 I took my girlfriend to see.
I remember there was a centerfield to home to second base triple play in that gam and how she said, “That was a nice play.”
I remember that was the first time it had ever happened in a major league baseball game and it has only happened one more time since.
I remember I still loved her anyway no matter how unimpressed she was.
I remember the first major league game I took our kids too and missing three innings when Jose Cruz hit me on the cheekbone with a high foul ball while I was yelling, “I got it, I got it.”
I remember I would have been blind in my right eye if I had been wearing my glasses.
I remember they wanted me to go to Flushing General.
I remember a nurse telling me once if you have a choice between going to Flushing General or Bronx General and dying, die.
I remember burning my hand when I accidently hit my hand on the pot belly stove that Bernadette asking me to stoke.
I remember it hurt for weeks after.
I remember reading the memoir of Pasternak, I Remember.”
I remember seeing selections from Roman Vishniac’s, A Vanished World, at the State Museum of New York at Albany and crying.
I remember reading poetry at the reading Against the End of the World just down the block from the State Museum.
I remember seeing an exhibition on the Atomic Bomb age at the museum and seeing my first Laurie Anderson work for art, “The Singing Brick.”
I remember writing a poem against the end of the world called the Singing Brick.
I remember it was in a musically themed, against the end of the world book of poems called, Stop Making Sense.
I remember the first poem I ever published in sixth grade, in the mimeo class reader, The Fledgling.
I remember the poem was a pastiche of the song Old Dan Tucker.
I remember duck and cover drills in Centre Avenue Elementary School.
I remember how stupid they were given how close we were to New York City and how many huge glass windows there were in all the classrooms.
I remember the poem I published in the group photo/poem book commemorating our trip to Bernadette’s house.
I remember the title of my poem was, “Emergency Drills, Centre Avenue Elementary School, East Rockaway, N.Y, 1958.”
I remember the first time I saw Throne of Blood in grad school.
I remember the first time I saw Hiroshima Mon Amour in grad school.
I remember the first time I saw the Japanese movie, After Life.
I remember seeing four Brooklyn Dodgers home runs in a row.
I remember we didn’t get the foul ball that Jose Cruz hit me with.
I remember torrential rain on a tin roof on St Croix.
I remember playing spin the bottle and never being kissed.
I remember the high school psychologist telling me I should practice Rorschach inkblots so I could take her test.
I remember refusing to take the test because I thought it was stupid and I didn’t see anything suggestive in those blots.
I remember her telling me I second guessed myself all the time.
I remember her telling me I should trust my instincts because my first thoguht was almost always the right.
I remember how useful an observation that turned out to be.
I remember every two weeks for three years in the nightclub trying to guess which of the new band members was the drummer.
I remember I was only wrong once.
I remember thee guessing game as a process of elimination until you found the crazy one; he would be the drummer.
I remember seeing my first Bergman movie.
I remember seeing Last Year at Marienbad three time in four days in grad school.
I remember not paying attention in my first psychology class lesson in college on the Stanford Binet test.
I remember the teacher trying to make an example of me by giving me the block test graduating in difficulty as the numbers increased starting at six of ten.
I remember I did six, seven, eight and nine as fast as she could put them in front of me.
I remember how stunned she was.
I remember not mentioning having taken that test less the three years ago along with every other test they had on offer.
I remember the summer I first heard Leonard Cohen’s song, Suzanne.
I remember seeing the photo exhibit Requiem by the photographers killed in Vietnam at the Eastman House not long before 9-11.
I remember that exhibits was as quiet as a funeral and all the people who were crying at it.
I remember it was how I felt when I finally got to see The Wall in DC.
1. Eva, your poetry combines the richness of Greek tradition with a contemporary style. What inspires you to maintain this balance between the past and the present?
1..E.p.L . Thank you for this question. In Greece everything is music, from our language to the way we feel or leaving.
Poetry and every art is in our DNA. So I feel when i write that i am opening a door to the past and I go in.
I read many poets and I like when I discover a deep meaning and Many doubts about life in their poems.
I don’t know if i write poetry, but I express my feelings, my thoughts trying to keep my dignity, my respect for my past and share my ideas for the future.
I believe that Poetry will always unites people.
A poet wrote
The Angels they understand each other because they speak with poems..
2. Is there a specific moment in your life that shaped your love for poetry?
2..E.p.L. Poetry is in my life since i came to this world.
I started write words and phrases very young.
There is always an occasion to write wishes in gift cards
and give it to family and friends.
Even if i did not believe that I write something extraordinary, friends told me that my poetry had something divine…and philosophical
3. How would you describe your poetic process? Do you have a particular ritual or technique you practice while writing?
3..Ep.l . I pray when I write.
It’s a connection with what is existing beyond the humanity
I write from my heart and need to have a clean and happy mood, so i can write and express my thoughts.
Words are like energy…
When we put them in the correct order they create miracles.
4. Your poems often explore themes of love, death, and identity. What does love mean to you in the context of poetry?
4..EPL. Love is like poetry.
Death is poetry also
I believe the most important subject in all poems is about love. We get married, we write poems. We fall in love, we write poems.
Sometimes, we can’t share our feelings, we write poems.
We want to have attention from our beloved, we write poetry. Love is energy also.
We have so many words, we can put them all together and create amazing poetry.
In Greece, there is such a beautiful Poem dedicated to love it’s called Erotocritos, and is written in 12 syllables.
He became a song
He became a play theater.
It is really beautiful poem
Love, makes everything existing. We breathe with hope and love.
It’s very important to write about love because we educate also young generations to live with love.
5. To what extent does Greek social and cultural tradition influence your writing? Do you aim to write for a local audience, or does your poetry have a universal tone?
5..EPL. As I mentioned before, Greeks they write. It’s exist in our DNA. We have very important poets from the ancient Greek time,
Sapho the Greek poetess and after Sikelianos, Seferis and Ritsos. I had the opportunity to study them in school and after I discovered and read more poems, but for me by chance, I go inside the universe and my poems are reading by the people in abroad.
My poems are translated in 20 languages and I have cooperation with Vietnam, China, Mexico.
This is the greatness of Poetry.
6. Your work is marked by deep emotional intensity. How do you find the balance between emotion and artistic form in your poems?
6…EPL. I am a very sensitive person. I like truth, justice, honesty .
I like to show my real personality in my poems.
I like to inspire people
I don’t find the balance.
I stay true in my life and in my Poetry.
A poet is an artist but is a human being so I choose to feel free and put all my love and hope in my poetry.
7. Many of your poems address the theme of death. How does your personal philosophy of death reflect in your written work?
7…EPL. I started to write more poems after the death of my father. My father was my best friend and my inspiration, he was always very proud of me and telling me to follow my dreams no matter what is coming in Life.
When he died from cancer, I tried to heal my pain, writing poems and dedicated to him.
I still write poems for my father and I feel close to him.
I don’t believe that people are dying and disappear.
I believe that the souls exist in light, in a parallel world and they love and protect us
I am a Christian and I respect our custom about dead people. We have a Life with meaning but we must have a decent death also.
POETRY can heal pain and has the power to give us strength and also open our mind to several ideas and thoughts, just by reading a Poem.
8. How do you perceive postmodernism, and do you believe it has an impact on your poetry?
8..EPL. I consider my poems as surrealistic or spiritual poetry
I read poetry in several languages and I like Rumi, E.E Cummings and Jane Austen. Also, I like Kerouac and Beatnik poetry. I am inspired from life and the quotidian life, but I have my own rhythm and opinions about life.
I don’t think that we find anything similar to postmodernism.
I like to spread messages of freedom and peace in my Poetry.
9. In the contemporary world, how do you think poets can contribute to social change and be engaged in their communities?
9..EPL. Poets, they must be free from any political party.
We need to have solidarity and respect each other.
Only through respect and love we will contribute to prepare a better future.
It’s sad that in my country, literature and poetry are not inside the schools anymore.
I strongly believe we can create a person with open mind and with dignity only by art and special, poetry.
So, we must engage by ourselves and create circles or forums where we can read and discover more poets.
I believe in plurality in literature and in justice.
Everyone has something to write and he can share his personal experience and give a solution to a problem.
We need to act with poems.
10. What are your future literary projects, and what can you share about them? Is there a particular theme you’d like to explore in the future?
10..EPL. I have been contacted by a Polish person who has asked me to support his project.
So I became a Global Ambassador of the Rosetta Voice project, we try to translate the Polish Lokomotyawa poem in several languages and i am really excited about this.
I started also my second literary online magazine with Pakistani friends and I continue to support and publish poems from all over the world, with my project POETRY unites people, a project that I have created since 2010 and the goal is to unite people through Poetry.
My project is based in respect to whole culture and publish the poems from several countries so we can discover more thoughts and ideas on how other people see life.
I promote Peace and happiness.
And of course, i will continue to write poems…
Thank you so much for this interesting interview and your support
Wishing you success and happiness
EVA Petropoulou Lianou
Official candidate for Nobel Peace Prize 2024
International poet
Founder of the project POETRY Unites people
Presidente, Mil Mentes Por Mexico association International
Global federation of leadership and high intelligence
As Travis Chi Wing Lau says, Noelia Cerna writes with care about even the smaller bits of our existences in her new collection Las Piedrecitas (Pebbles). In this collection, it is those “pebbles ”that make up a full life, where a person can not only survive, but thrive.
Music emerges as a motif, from a father’s Spanish guitar to Latino pop tunes in a restaurant kitchen. The pieces have a kind of internal musicality to them, expressed through rhythm, word choice, and the placement of text on the page.
Food and drink serve as expressions of nourishment offered by family and heritage. But they also become a way to poke fun at arrogant tourists who won’t listen to local wisdom “Tourism and Soda” and a commentary on people who enjoy Latino cultural offerings but don’t treat Latino people with respect “Taco Tuesday.”
Las Piedrecitas celebrates and honors many women with whom Cerna feels a connection. Maria, an immigrant janitor, Karen, an older woman with intense confidence and presence, and her own mother, Alna,in the joint poem “A Kyrie for Dreams.”
Fathers and fatherhood come up several times in Las Piedrecitas. Cerna pays tribute to hardworking and loyal dads “An Ode to Brown Fathers.”
In the title poem, the speaker’s father gently plays with her in a park while staying vigilant against any stranger with ill intentions.
He protects his family from political violence in Nicaragua by immigrating to the United States and later teaches her not only boxing, but internal strength and perseverance. She uses that strength to navigate life as an immigrant and an abuse survivor, but also, poignantly, to separate from him and find her own way in the world, as in “Moving Away” and “Estrangement in Three Steps.” As pointed out in the last few lines of the title poem, the statues in the park see a larger world beyond his current imagination.
Learning to love oneself and live on one’s own terms is a major theme in Las Piedrecitas. That can mean vowing not to run from love because of religiously based homophobia “Theaters in the Fall” or accepting one’s righteous anger at explicit and implicit racist and anti-immigrant sentiment “When my white colleague calls me angry” or reclaiming the narrative around past sexual abuse “Sugar.”
Yet, charting their own destiny does not leave the narrator rootless. Las Piedrecitas contains many images of sturdy objects planted in the soil: stone statues in Nicaragua, to which she returns as an adult, and trees with solid trunks and roots deep in the dirt.
Religion is another aspect of the narrator’s roots and heritage. Cerna draws on the language of faith to assert the dignity and value of her body, her loved ones, and her homeland, as we see in “Volcano,” “Holy” and “Cathedral.” Yet, she also subverts the language of faith to tell her own story of personal growth, as in “Most Holy,” where she reaches the point of spiritual maturity where she can reject judgement and abuse from those who misuse religion to hold onto power.
Religion can be beautiful and can ground you in something deep and beyond yourself, but it can also be a source of trauma and danger. By using religious metaphors for romantic love, Cerna extends that dual nature to romance. We see intimate partner abuse in a few pieces: “Estrangement in Three Steps” and Advice To My College Self” and men’s sexist treatment of women in “Rust” and the cowardly abandonment of a partner in “Ghoster.”
Cerna’s narrator has survived much. Like the tree by the overpass in one of her later poems, she asserts through her writing that she is more than a “survivor” but a person living a full and complete life.
Noelia Cerna is a Latina poet based in Springdale, AR. She was born in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States at the age of seven where she received a Bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. Her poems have been published in audio form in Terse. Journal and in print in the The Revolution [Relaunch], the Girl Gang blog, the Plants and Poetry Journal and The North Meridian Review. Noelia is a book editor for the North Meridian Review and an award winning writing mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Mentorship program.
For the last year or so, poet/tech sorceress Sanya Khurana and I (Annie Finch) have been developing the meter app Poetcraft. Poetcraft will include the first AI in the world able to scan and teach a range of different English meters. I am deeply excited about this project, which aims to move the English language back towards the core human magic of metrical diversity and, to my mind, nudge the world onto a more sustainable, joyful path.
Poetcraft will be trained on 4000 scanned lines of poetry, 1000 in each of four different meters. We have now finished collecting these lines, and we are seeking people who love meter and have experience with scanning to help bring the app to the next step as volunteer Scanners. All scansions will use the classic system of scansion introduced in my workbook How to Scan a Poem and in my classes and online videos. They will use the following symbols: wands, cups, edges, and–as needed—half-wands, ghost cups, and rests.
I am excited about this project and hope you might want to be part of it as a volunteer Scanner.
Q AND A
How will the process work?
Scanners will choose a poem from the project’s Google Drive and scan it on a computer using standard keyboard techniques (forward slash and backslash for wands and half-wands, lower case u for a cup, hashtag for a rest). After saving the scanned version on the Drive, you will mark the poem as scanned on an Excel sheet. That’s it!
How many poems will each scanner need to scan?
As many as you like. We expect each scanner to scan, on average,100-500 lines.
Will I have any support?
Each scanner will be given access to a “cheat sheet” created by me that summarizes the method of scanning used in the project and the use of each of the 6 symbols, and also suggests simple hacks to help you scan faster and more efficiently—and will also soon have access to a brief video going over the same material.
How good will I need to be at scansion to participate?
You should be an experienced scanner, but you don’t need to be a complete expert.
As you go, you will find that the experience of scanning many poems will raise your skills to another level.
What if I get stuck and can’t figure out how to scan a line or passage?
If you get stuck, leave the line unscanned and type a note next to it saying COULDN’T SCAN. All scansions will be doublechecked by an expert scanner, and finally triple-checked by me personally, so we will catch it.
What is the timeframe?
You can start anytime. We hope to finish most of the scansions during the spring and to wind up no later than July 1.
Is there any compensation?
As a gesture of gratitude, all scanners will be offered six months free use of the Poetcraft app (value of projected cost is $99/month). We will also be proud to list the names of all Scanners on the Poetcraft website (if you prefer not to be listed, just let us know).
I’m in! What’s the next step?
Please email us at scansions@poetcraft.org stating your interest, and we will get you started!
