Cartwheels on the Sky
By blake more
Cartwheels on the SkyOct 05, 2021
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Youth Poet Laureate Frej Barty
Host Blake More interviews the second Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate and Mendocino High School Junior Frej Barty. You will hear Frej’s reflections on poetry, writing, the state of youth expression as well as some of his original poetry.
Celebrating National Poetry Month with Outgoing Mendoicno County Youth Poet Laureate Sidney Michele Regelbrugge
Host Blake More interviews outgoing Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate and Point Arena High School Senior Sidney Michele Regelbrugge. You will hear Sidney’s reflections on poetry, writing, the state of expression as well as some of her original poetry.
Cartwheels on the Sky Living Tribute to Poet Gordon Black
Host Blake More presents a celebration of Mendocino coast poet, longtime host of the Hill House Poetry Reading, and former KZYX classical music programmer Gordon Black. This living tribute show features the poetry of Gordon Black read by Dan Roberts, Joe Smith, Mike Edwards, Janferie Stone, Tom Roberdeau and Gordon himself.
Featuring The Mendocino Poet Laureate Selection Committee
Listen to Cartwheels on the Sky when host Blake More speaks with members of the Mendocino County Poet Laureate Selection committee Michael Riedell, Kirk Lumpkin and Larry Felson. They’ll be talking about the important role poetry plays in Mendocino County, the budding Poet Laureate program, as well as offering insights about their own work and a few poems. Originally aired on KGUA Gualala, FM.
Richard Love & Object Heavy Music on Cartwheels on the Sky
Host Blake More interviews Object Heavy front man, singer Richard Love. They discuss his music, the band Object Heavy and their upcoming tour. The show will also feature Object Heavy’s upcoming LP “Love & Gravity”.
Object Heavy is Northern California’s hardest hitting Soul sensation. While based in Arcata, this cast of musical characters has made waves up and down the North Coast of California, the Pacific Northwest, and various parts of the United States. Object Heavy has also been voted best band in Humboldt by The North Coast Journal the last 3 years in a row.
Now Object Heavy has hit the studio and cooked up a new album produced by Kelly Finnigan (Monophonics), showing off their progressive yet soulful sound. The band is proud to partner with Color Red Music to release this record in early 2023.
With powerhouse vocalist Richard Love at the helm, and backed by Brian Swislow (Keys), Leo Plummer (Gtr), and Ian Taylor (Bass), Object Heavy is heading into the future in celebration of their new album, “Love & Gravity”.
Object Heavy’s magnetic blend of classic Cadillac soul, effortlessly contagious dance grooves, vocal harmonies and blazing musicianship is a live experience you don’t want to miss.
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Mendocino County Youth Poets
Host Blake More celebrates the successful end of the 2022-23 school year with a show featuring the literary voices of K-12 students in Mendocino County. Voices you will hear include 3-8 students Manchester Elementary School, 3-8 students from Pacific Community Charter School, as well as some poems from the Mendocino County Youth Poet Laureate, Point Arena High School senior to be, Sidney Regelbrugge. Tune in and hear the kids read their poems in their own voices!
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Originally aired live from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, June 3 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala / https://kgua.org
Petaluma Poet Steve Trenam on Cartwheels on the Sky
Host Blake More interviews Sonoma County poet Steve Trenam. They discuss Trenam’s life as professor, his literary leadership and his latest book, as this fine poet weaves his quirky, intelligent poetry into the conversation.
Trenam is able to transform empty and blank spaces into places of awe that entice the reader to leave “the dark corners of our rooms” to experience not only the world he creates through these poems, but also the ways in which art, music, dance, and poetry are rooted “at the heart of things.”
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Originally airs 7-7:30pm, Saturday, August 5 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Conference of the Poets & Nymphya part 4 on Cartwheels on the Sky
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Part 4 of Conference of the Poets & Nymphya on KGUA FM Gualala
On Saturday, May 6, from 7-7:30, Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More airs part four of trip down poetry lane, featuring Silent Motif, Conference of the Poets, a compilation poetry CD put together by poet Kirk Lumpkin with Berkeley Musicians Robert Keller and Paul Mills.
Poets you will hear tonight include myself, Kirk Lumpkin, Chris Olander, Sara Mithra, Steve Arnston and David Shaddock. I will also feature a few wonderful original compositions written and performed by my dear friend Nymphya — from her album Dream Dance. This is part 4 of four episodes. Enjoy the last one!
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Originally airs 7-7:30pm, Saturday, May 6 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Conference of the Poets & Nymphya, Part 3
Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More airs part three of trip down poetry lane, featuring Silent Motif, Conference of the Poets, a compilation poetry CD put together by poet Kirk Lumpkin with Berkeley Musicians Robert Keller and Paul Mills. Poets you will hear tonight include myself, Kirk Lumpkin, Chris Olander, Sara Mithra, Steve Arnston and David Shaddock.I will also feature a few wonderful original compositions written and performed by my dear friend Nymphya — from her album Dream Dance.
Enjoy!
Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, April 1 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Conference of the Poets & Nymphya part 2 on Cartwheels on the Sky
Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More airs part two of trip down poetry lane, featuring Silent Motif, Conference of the Poets, a compilation poetry CD put together by poet Kirk Lumpkin with Berkeley Musicians Robert Keller and Paul Mills. Poets you will hear tonight include myself, Kirk Lumpkin, Chris Olander, Sara Mithra, Steve Arnston and David Shaddock. I will also feature a few wonderful original compositions written and performed by my dear friend Nymphya — from her album Dream Dance.
Enjoy!
Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, March 4 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Conference of the Poets & Nymphya part 1 on Cartwheels on the Sky
Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More features yet another trip down poetry lane, this time featuring Silent Motif, Conference of the Poets, a compilation poetry CD put together by poet Kirk Lumpkin with Berkeley Musicians Robert Keller and Paul Mills. Poets you will hear tonight include myself, Kirk Lumpkin, Chris Olander, Sara Mithra, Steve Arnston and David Shaddock. I will also feature a few wonderful original compositions written and performed by my dear friend Nymphya — from her album Dream Dance. This show is an invitation to tune your brain to what these poets and musicians have to say to each other. And to you!
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Originally airs 7-7:30pm, Saturday, February 4 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Mark Sanford Gross on Cartwheels on the Sky
He moved to Washington DC to work in radio where he sold advertising for ABC radio’s first FM Rock station, WRQX. During that time he earned his MBA in Management from Marymount University. He moved on to two other radio stations learning radio formats and audience behavior. The Washington Post took Mark out of radio and into the world of newspaper in the nation’s capitol. It was during that time mark was accepted into part-time creative writing at John Hopkins University where he earned his MA over three years of full time work and full time writing fit into part time structure.
After 12 years at the Post’s “DC mothership” he was asked to start an experimental remote home office in San Francisco to be the brand ambassador representing The Washington Post and Washington DC. “It was the first time of blending opposite ways of thinking. Silicon Valley was becoming the center of innovation and Washington, DC was the center of policy and regulation. Often one didn’t understand the language of the other”.
Over the next fifteen years Mark developed his relationship skills learning how to bring together groups and teams of individuals with all their differences.
In 2013, Mark was awarded the Washington Post prestigious Eugene Meyer Award named after Katharine Grahams father for his career contributions and principles. He retired in 2015 when they moved to Anchor Bay.
Since coming to the coast he’s been a reporter for the ICO. Volunteer for KGUA. A board member of Gualala Arts Center and the Point Arena Lighthouse. He contributed to the Lighthouse Peddler and volunteered for programs at Action Network. He started a running club. In 2022, he hosted discussion groups on James Joyce, Ulysses.
Everything he’s done so far has been a part of learning how to build community across differences. “When I left the Post I returned my laptop and computer. Soon after, I realized my skillset and all I learned about people was mine to own.”
He continued his writing development attending significant writing workshops including Cheryl Strayed’s Writers Camp at Esolen, Dorothy Allison’s workshop at Writing x Writers, Alexander Chee at Corporal Writing. Paul Lisciky at Provincetown Writers Offerings, Napa Valley Writers Conference, Summer workshop in Chamonix, France with Pam Houston and Cheryl Strayed.
In 2015 he met best-selling author Lydia Yuknavitch. It was a turning point for his writing as he became a regular in her workshops followed by one year exclusive mentorship with her. In 2015, Mark was accepted to Skidmore’s New York Summer’s Writing Institute working under Garth Greenwell and a list of incredible writers.
A little bit from him. A little bit from her. A little bit from them. A little bit from everyone including his fellow writers helped Mark put together his own format and program to help writers on every level to get the stories out of them, heard by others. When he partnered with Peggy Berryhill his role in the community grew. Peggy was unconditional in teaching and trusting Mark to help him grow into an integral part of KGUA while strengthening his own skills.
During his three cross-country drives in the past two years Mark decided to start “Let’s Go Bookstoring.” A series of interviews with independent local bookstores he discovered while driving.
“It gave me a chance to talk with unsung heroes passionate about reading and books who struggled through the pandemic to keep reading alive with people locked-down. It was a fascinating learning experience about the power giving of small used bookstores. Southland Books in Maryville, Tennessee, The Source in Davenport, Iowa, Hooray for Books in Alexandria, Virginia. Just a few.
He turned these interviews into KGUA special segments.A discussion with Kristina Jetter, Executi
Poet John Allen Cann on Cartwheels on the Sky
Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More features Anchor Bay Poet John Allen Cann. They will be discussing Cann’s poetry and how it expresses itself in his life and community. Topics include being in the moment, finding one’s voice, inspiration and lots of lots of poetry.
Born in Santa Monica, John Allen Cann eagerly acknowledges his first grand enthusiasm began with the arrival of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. Along with playing shortstop came a fascination with the stats & brief bios on the back of baseball cards; he considers this the inception of all following passions of study—at times he just wants to turn the world over & see what’s on the other side. The radio by his blue bed entranced him with songs, their lyrics knocked about his head as the figure of the poet gathered a strange, numinous nobility.
Sports in high school was joined by an involvement with the theater; soon he arrived at Cornell University during its years of student unrest, & where he received his B.A. in Theater Arts. His time in the east proved California the best place for him. As wordsmithing overtook acting, he earned an M.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, landing in Santa Barbara afterwards, where Mudborn Press published his first book, Lemurian Rhapsodies. Here he hosted a poetry show, The Unseen Rose, at KCSB, began Aetheric Press, as well as working with kids & poetry, his livelihood for the next three decades. His Dinosaurism – An Illuminated Manifesto, & Lunch – An Omnimodal Experience, were both performed before his departure to Sacramento in Orwell’s fateful year, 1984.
In the state’s capitol, he married artist-teacher, Robyn Cota, a true blessing, followed by another, the birth of their son, Dylan. Family camping on the north coast evolved into the good fortune of securing a parcel in Anchor Bay in 2002; building ensued at a modest pace. John Allen began teaching English at Cosumnes River College; surprisingly, he became an assistant scoutmaster while his son earned his Eagle. A central figure in the Sacramento Library’s 2013 award-winning Poe Project, John Allen ordered, introduced & added commentary to The Slender Poe, an anthology of the great American writer’s work. A volume of his own poetry, The Moon Over Madrid, followed from i street press. On-campus classes were suspended at CRC in March of 2020—you know why—& he finished his last semester on-line living full-time in Enchanted Meadows.
His study & writing of poetry has been steady for decades, & always he endeavors to be equal to the adage of Wallace Stevens, “Poetry is the scholar’s art.” His phantom mentors include Heraclitus, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Rilke, & Jeffers. Like many who hold dear the mystery of poetry, he already knows there’s not enough time left to read deeply all the great poems that the world treasures. But he will keep at that joyful task as he composes his own work at the edge of history.
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Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, October 1 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala.
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Poet John Allen Cann
Recorded in October 2022, this Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More features Anchor Bay Poet John Allen Cann discussing Cann’s poetry and how it expresses itself in his life and community. Topics include being in the moment, finding one’s voice, inspiration and lots of lots of poetry.
Born in Santa Monica, John Allen Cann eagerly acknowledges his first grand enthusiasm began with the arrival of the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. Along with playing shortstop came a fascination with the stats & brief bios on the back of baseball cards; he considers this the inception of all following passions of study—at times he just wants to turn the world over & see what’s on the other side. The radio by his blue bed entranced him with songs, their lyrics knocked about his head as the figure of the poet gathered a strange, numinous nobility.
Sports in high school was joined by an involvement with the theater; soon he arrived at Cornell University during its years of student unrest, & where he received his B.A. in Theater Arts. His time in the east proved California the best place for him. As wordsmithing overtook acting, he earned an M.A. in Creative Writing at San Francisco State, landing in Santa Barbara afterwards, where Mudborn Press published his first book, Lemurian Rhapsodies. Here he hosted a poetry show, The Unseen Rose, at KCSB, began Aetheric Press, as well as working with kids & poetry, his livelihood for the next three decades. His Dinosaurism – An Illuminated Manifesto, & Lunch – An Omnimodal Experience, were both performed before his departure to Sacramento in Orwell’s fateful year, 1984.
In the state’s capitol, he married artist-teacher, Robyn Cota, a true blessing, followed by another, the birth of their son, Dylan. Family camping on the north coast evolved into the good fortune of securing a parcel in Anchor Bay in 2002; building ensued at a modest pace. John Allen began teaching English at Cosumnes River College; surprisingly, he became an assistant scoutmaster while his son earned his Eagle. A central figure in the Sacramento Library’s 2013 award-winning Poe Project, John Allen ordered, introduced & added commentary to The Slender Poe, an anthology of the great American writer’s work. A volume of his own poetry, The Moon Over Madrid, followed from i street press. On-campus classes were suspended at CRC in March of 2020—you know why—& he finished his last semester on-line living full-time in Enchanted Meadows.
His study & writing of poetry has been steady for decades, & always he endeavors to be equal to the adage of Wallace Stevens, “Poetry is the scholar’s art.” His phantom mentors include Heraclitus, Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Yeats, Rilke, & Jeffers. Like many who hold dear the mystery of poetry, he already knows there’s not enough time left to read deeply all the great poems that the world treasures. But he will keep at that joyful task as he composes his own work at the edge of history.
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Poet Raymond Nat Turner
Cartwheels on the Sky features the bi-coastal NYC/SF Jazz performance poet and longtime Town Crier Raymond Nat Turner discussing the placement of poetry in community, finding one’s voice and fearless expression with host Blake More.
“The Town Crier,” Raymond Nat Turner, is a NYC poet privileged to have read at the Harriet Tubman Centennial Symposium. He is Artistic Director of the stalwart JazzPoetry Ensemble UpSurge!NYC and has appeared at numerous festivals and venues including the Monterey Jazz Festival and Panafest in Ghana West Africa. He currently is Poet-in-Residence at Black Agenda Report and former Co-Chair of the New York Chapter of the National Writers Union (NWU). Turner has opened for such people as James Baldwin, People’s Advocate Cynthia, sportswriter Dave Zirin and CA Congresswoman Barbara Lee following her lone vote against attacking Afghanistan.
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Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, September 3 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streamed live at https://kgua.org
Cartwheels on the Sky with Gualala Poet Dana Teen Lomax
Cartwheels on the Sky features Gualala Poet Dana Teen Lomax. Dana is fourth-generation Californian, who has lived on the southern Mendocino Coast for nearly three years. She currently serves as the 2021-2022 Poet-in-Residence at the Gualala Arts Center.
The daughter of a painter and a builder, Lomax began writing poetry as a child and remembers melting crayons in her bedroom and drawing poems around the swirls of color as a way of dealing with her parents’ divorce. Early on, she knew that language had the ability to help people understand experience, help us sort, uncover, and/or complicate how we see the world. In high school, she borrowed a copy of e.e. cumming’s selected poems at the local library, and the possibilities on the page shifted tremendously for her. Lomax began to see poetry as a deep conversation with form, with the reader, with ways of directing experience and connecting with others in intimate ways.
A lecturer at San Francisco State University for over two decades, Lomax has taught writing in schools, prisons, libraries, hospitals, pubs, and farmers’ markets. She served as the Director of Small Press Traffic, the Human Rights and Equity Chair for her teacher’s union, and as a traveling poet-teacher with the Performing Arts Workshop, the William James Association, and California Poets in the Schools.
To date, Lomax has published three large scale editorial projects and three books of poetry as well as numerous other chapbooks, broadsides, and discreet poems. Her most recent anthology includes work from every US state, district, territory, and commonwealth and is entitled THE BEAUTIFUL: Poets Reimagine a Nation, published by Gualala Arts Center. Lomax also edited Kindergarde: Poems, Plays, Stories, and Songs for Children which received a Creative Work Fund Grant as well as the Lion and Unicorn Award for Excellence in North American Literature from John Hopkins University Press. High points in Lomax’s career include when her book, Disclosure, was chosen by the Guerilla Girls as one of their favorite poetry books of the year, and the broadside printing of her poem “Lullaby” by Arion Press in San Francisco.
Her current project, -unnamed-relation-, considers the links and jumps between ideas, people, and ourselves in the world. Poems from this manuscript have been published in the American Poetry Review, The Elderly, and The Pi Review, among others. She is also working on completing a graphic novel with a former middle school student, Peyton Alexander, making poem-films, writing a musical with her identical twin sister, and completing a short documentary about inequity in California’s education system.
Find out more about Lomax’s work at danateenlomax.com
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Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, July 2 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Manchester School Poets
This month's Cartwheels on the Sky celebrates the successful end of the 2021-22 school year with a show featuring the literary voices of K-8 students at Manchester Elementary School in Manchester, CA. The last school year has not been without its ups and downs, so 5th grader Max and his fellow students came to me with the idea to close the school year on an especially high note. The show will air on KZYX&Z 90.7FM Philo, 88.1FM Fort Bragg, and 91.5FM Willits, as well as stream live on the web www.kzyx.org.
This year Manchester Elementary School participated in Student Led Projects (SLED,) as part of Prosolve's Nationwide education program. SLED is a national network of student chapters focused on identifying civic issues in their community and implementing sustainable solutions for improvement. With support from national Trail Guides and their classroom SLED Advisor, students in grades 3rd through 8th formed leadership teams and designed projects for school improvement.
The Sled team projects included replacing a playground structure that had broken, creating a school leadership and spirit team, rehabilitating our woodland that has been devastated by tree die off, and recruiting volunteers to lead enrichment workshops. The teams have held fundraisers throughout the year to finance the play-structure and woodland project. Many thanks to the community for amazing support at the student’s tamale sale, bake sale and lap-a-thon!
Currently the students have been preparing for a "Read-a-thon Fundraiser." The Manchester school students wrote poems and were recorded reading them. Proceeds from the fundraiser will fund Student Led Projects (SLED.)
To donate to the fundraiser drop off or mail your contribution:
In person:
Manchester Elementary School
19550 Highway 1. Manchester, CA. 95459
or
via mail to:
Manchester Elementary School
P.O. Box 98 Manchester, CA. 95459.
For tax deductible receipt include name and address.
Tune in and hear the kids read their poems!!
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Originally aired 7-7:30pm, Saturday, June 4 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Thomas Roberdeau on Cartwheels on the Sky
Cartwheels on the Sky features Elk poet, filmmaker, fiction writer and teacher Thomas Roberdeau.
Thomas Roberdeau is a filmmaker and writer living in Elk, and has been living on the the Mendocino coast on and off since the late 1970’s.
He was educated at the University of Texas at Austin. His work in film has been primarily seen on the History Channel and on PBS. His films and screenplays have won several prestigious awards.
He is a teacher who has taught in most Northcoast schools, in Santa Monica, with California Poets-in-the-Schools, and he has lectured on film at various universities. He currently teaches with San Francisco Art & Film, a private school in the Bay Area.
He has won several grants, including one in film from the National Endowment for the Arts and a teaching grant from the California Arts Council.
He has published a book with Sun & Moon Press in Los Angeles, and a variety of poems and stories with every literary journal on the Northcoast. Read some of Roberdeau’s writings at: https://hollywooddementia.com/author/thomas-roberdeau/
Originally aired on Saturday, April 2 at 88.3, on KGUA FM Gualala; https://kgua.org
Diane Frank on Cartwheels on the Sky
Originally airing on Saturday, March 5, 2022 from 7-7:30 on KGUA FM Gualala, this episode Cartwheels on the Sky features the poems and process of SF Poet Diane Frank.
Diane is author of eight books of poems, three novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Nepal Himalayas. While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems was published in 2021 by Glass Lyre Press. She is also editor of two bestselling anthologies: Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here and Pandemic Puzzle Poems. Diane lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she dances, plays cello in the Golden Gate Symphony, and creates her life as an art form. Blackberries in the Dream House, her first novel, won the Chelson Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. More info on Diane at: www.dianefrank.net
Kathy Evans on Cartwheels on the Sky
Originally airing on February 5, 2022 from 7-7:30 on KGUA FM Gualala, this episode Cartwheels on the Sky features the poems and process of Marin County Poet Kathy Evans.
Kathy is the author of four collections of poetry: Imagination Comes to Breakfast, Hunger and Sorrow (which won the Small Press Poetry Prize), As The Heart is Held, and now her latest book, nominated for a Pen award, Trespassers Welcome.
A BA from Northwestern University and an MA from San Francisco State University, Kathy has taught creative writing with The California Poets in the Schools, Marin County Juvenile Hall, and the College of Marin. She also taught composition and essay at the University of San Francisco, and was poet-in-residence at The Headlands Center of the Arts and at Bennioff Children’s Hospital in Oakland and San Francisco. In addition, she is a graphic recorder for various corporate and non-profit organizations.
She loves teaching poetry as much as she loves reading and writing it, believing that is a privilege to see revealed the imagination and feelings of a child. She has an essay forthcoming from University of Iowa Press, entitled “Read Between the Lines. In her spare time she loves to swim laps. She lives in San Rafael, California, by the library.
Poet Jeffrey Kingman on Cartwheels on the Sky
This episode of Cartwheels on the Sky features the poems and process of Vallejo poet Jeffrey Kingman.
His poetry collection, BEYOND THAT HILL I GATHER, was published by Finishing Line Press in June of 2021. His poetry chapbook, ON A ROAD, was published by Finishing Line Press in December of 2019. He is the winner of the Red Berry Editions 2015 Broadside Contest, the winner of the 2018 Eyelands Book Award (Greece) for an unpublished poetry book, and a finalist in the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk Prize poetry book competition. He has poems published in PANK, Clackamas Literary Review, Crack the Spine, Visitant, and others. Jeff has a Master’s degree in Music Composition and has been playing drums in rock bands most of his life.
Jeffrey Kingman lives by the Napa River in Vallejo, California.
Tribute to late Poet Janet DeBar
Janet DeBar began reading and writing poetry during her childhood in Beech Bottom, West Virginia. She studied English Lit at the college of Wooster in Ohio and at Stanford University but she often said that she hoped that these experiences did not make a lasting impact on her poetry. She began reading her poems to audiences when she moved to the North Coast over two decades ago. Her work appears in Wood, Water, Air and Fire, the Anthology of Mendocino Women Poets, and she was delighted to have been included with ruth weiss and the Checkered Demon in the Café Review. Also a musician, Janet played didjeridu with Cloudfire many times along the Mendonoma coast.
This show originally aired from 7-7:30pm, Saturday, October 2 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala.
Poet Dan Langton on Cartwheels on the Sky
Dan Langton was a longtime Creative Writing Professor at San Francisco State University. He arrived in SF during the burgeoning beat movement, and he held a poetry gathering (he hates the word “salon”) in San Francisco in the Haight-Ashbury that was legendary, and to this day, he is loved by so many poets and renowned as an important mentor for a new generation of poets.
Daniel Langton has won national and international prizes in England, Ireland, and the United States, including the coveted Devins Award for Poetry in 1967. He has a PhD from UC Berkeley and he taught in the Creative Writing and English Departments at SF State University for 50 years.
He will be 94 in September, and by all accounts, he is, right now, turning out some of the best work of his life. “I’m an old man in a hurry!” he shouts as he types away at his battered old Royal. Puzzling out rhyme schemes is what keeps him alive, well into his dotage. Or, as he calls it, “my anec-dotage.”
Here is an excerpt from an open letter he wrote to the SF State faculty the day he retired at 90:
I have often felt I was living near history rather than in it.
My father was in the Irish Republican Army and had to run for his life, my wife is a German Jew and had to run for her life, I was in the squadron (but not the planes) that dropped Fat Man and Little Boy, our niece was murdered on 9/11.
I have lived in four neighborhoods in my life, mostly by happenstance. I grew up in Harlem, moved to the Village, from there to Rive Gauche, wound up in the Haight-Ashbury. I am not the reason all four are world-famous.
As I said, I was middle-aged before I stood in front of a class. I also said I had had a variety of jobs, I didn’t say I was good at them, or happy with them.
But with teaching I came alive. There is no other way to say it. The kindness, the sweetness, I dare to say love, were there from the beginning. The writers I knew and know, but especially the ones for whom we can now put together a Complete Works. And the students who listened to me and went into teaching. With (always) my last words to them: After all, there are few ways to live an honorable life.
And more in Dan’s words: My father’s father and my father both published poetry in Ireland, at a time when there were few readers, let alone writers. My father gave up a rural heaven for the frightening hell of New York City, so his sons and daughters would have a chance. They took that chance. What followed for me was fifty years of teaching, seven books, friendships with poets, San Francisco — the town poets live for — and a wife I would not have met otherwise.
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Susan Wooldridge on KGUA FM Gualala
On Saturday, August 7, 2021 Cartwheels on the Sky (always the first Saturday of the month) featured the poems and process of Northern California poet and best selling author Susan Wooldridge.
Susan has held workshops on creative language and process with thousands of adults and children. Her book poemcrazy: freeing your life with words is now in a 32nd printing. Anne Lamott wrote, “This is a wonderful book—smart, wide-eyed, joyful, helpful, inspiring. You’re going to love it, and love writing poetry more for having read it.” Recently poemcrazy was number 7 on a Penguin/Random House list of the 28 best books on writing.
Susan’s chapbook of poems, Bathing with Ants, was published by Bear Star Press. Both poemcrazy and her book, Foolsgold: Making Something from Nothing (and Freeing Your Creative Process) were Quality Paperback Book selections.
For many years Susan has held workshops in rural California libraries sponsored by Poets & Writers Org. and CA. Center for the Book. Susan has worked in over 80 libraries and her workshops have been featured in Poets and Writers magazine.
Susan is now writing a book about land and language from her hilltop office in a “canned ham” vintage trailer. She lives in a co-housing village in Chico, CA. and part time in Graton, CA. For more information, check out Susan’s website susanwooldridge.com
This show aired live on Saturday, August 7 at 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala. Also streams live at https://kgua.org
Poet Gordon Black on Cartwheels on the Sky
This episode of Cartwheels on the Sky features the poems and process of Mendocino Coast poet Gordon Black.
Born in Detroit, Black is a second generation, of Polish background, American. His father was a firefighter, later Battalion Chief, and his mother a social worker and theater director in stage and radio productions, and in his words he “was expected to succeed!”
He says he stumbled out of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan with an M.A. in philosophy and pointed advice to go “get a job”.
“It took decades and luck to turn that degree into some steady bread and water, and I have been a happy adjunct as a professor in philosophy at Santa Rosa Junior College (SRJC),” says Black.
He arrived on the Mendocino Coast in 1972 and engaged with the nascent poetry community and turned from extended prose efforts to “the stand up / sit down of completed poems, written and rewritten until the creatures fly without further assistance.” He has been doing live radio during much of that time, programming classical music for KZYX, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting, and has been involved in the annual Mendocino Spring Poetry Celebration for sixteen consecutive years.
“I owe my own development in poetry to all my fellows in the regional scene, so I try to help keep it going,” credits Black.
This podcast aired live on Saturday, June 5, 2021 on 88.3, KGUA FM Gualala.
Link to hear archives of Dan Robert’s long runningRhythm Running River radio show as mentioned in Gordon's interview:
http://outfarpress.com/
and this is Gordon’s “page” poem as referenced in the show:
LACONIC TOWEL
forms and motion
gone
bright sun
loads color
signals hope
fold away
too much meaning
attend me
not I you
my life
turns away
trying to close circles
rub my blood
royal blue
make my hands
worthy
push sculptured mums
into flanks shoulders
if I fail to return
hang there
to be lowered
Gordon Black
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Jazz Poet Tony Seymour
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
Peter Lit on Cartwheels on the Sky
This week features the poems and process of Albion poet Peter Lit.
Poet Melissa Eleftherion on Cartwheels on the Sky
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.
Poet Motherbear Scott on Cartwheels on the Sky
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
Solstice Now Year on Cartwheels on the Sky
This week’s Cartwheels on the Sky features a mix of poetry, words and music. A blend of past and present, the next 30 minutes is my way of ushering in the long-anticipated 2021. We made it, and I hope you find this selection inspiring and fills you with the kind of hope we need to gather our courage, strength, and heart so we can ride off into the new new now.
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring poet Jasper Henderson
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.
Poet Michelle Peñaloza on Cartwheels on the Sky
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/
2011 Youth Poetry Slam on Cartwheels on the Sky
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.
Poet Michael Riedell on Cartwheels on the Sky
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.
Poet Dan Barth on Cartwheels on the Sky
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
Cartwheels on the Sky Trailer
Get a preview of what to expect when you listen to Cartwheels on the Sky with Blake More.
Dan Roberts on Cartwheels on the Sky
This episode features Dan Roberts is a poet, artist, and radio producer living in the redwood forest of Mendocino County for 45 years. He was born in Oakland, went to high school in Berkeley, and graduated from UC Davis in 1970 in Creative Writing and Modern European Literature. He read poetry in Davis, Sacramento and Berkeley from the late 1960’s on. He produced the Wild Sage Poetry radio program on KZYX for ten years, has taught as a California Poet in The Schools for over 30 years, and has published two chapbooks of poetry, “Hunting For The Sun At Night” (1989) and “Heresies” (1991). His paintings and photographs have been exhibited around N California since the 1970s. He currently produces an internationally syndicated radio program, “The Shortwave Report,” as well as music/poetry (RhythmRunningRiver) and national award-winning youth programs (YouthSpeaksOut!) on KZYX. He has raised 3 children while developing a homestead in the mountains NW of Willits.
Find out more about Dan Roberts at his website: http://outfarpress.com/
This show originally aired on Saturday, October 10 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala -- on the web at kgua.org.
Cartwheels on the Sky featuring Karen Lewis
This episode features Albion poet Karen Lewis. Karen Lewis lives between Salmon Creek and the Navarro River on unceded ancestral land of the Pomo people. Her work navigates themes of migration, war, peace, love, loss, ecology, and motherhood. Her new chapbook PEACE MAPS explores these territories, and is available through Gallery Bookshop in Mendocino or from Finishing Line Press. Karen holds an MFA from Antioch-Los Angeles and has taught with California Poets in the Schools and the Arts Council of Mendocino County. When she’s not writing, she’s tending garden and orchard, foraging in the forest, or scavenging local beaches to remove plastic debris. https://www.wordjourneys.org/
This show originally aired live on Saturday, October 3 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala -- on the web at kgua.org.
Cartwheels on the Sky featuring Theresa Whitehill
This episode features poet Theresa Whitehill. California poet, letterpress printer, and graphic designer Theresa Whitehill served as Poet Laureate for the city of Ukiah from 2009 through 2011 and has been involved her entire career in the production of poetry readings and literary events. Her interrelated focus on literary and graphic arts came out of her study of book arts at Mills College in the early 1980s. Since 1984 she has lived in Mendocino County, where she is well-known to local poetry audiences.
Her collections of poetry include A Grammar of Longing (2009) and A Natural History of Mill Towns (1993), both published by Pygmy Forest Press. Saudades, her culinary poetry collection on which she collaborated with chef and author Shannon Hughes was commissioned and published by Stags’ Leap Winery in 2003. Her poetry and letterpress broadsides are in numerous fine press collections, including the Getty Center for the Arts, the John Hay Library of Brown University, and the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley. Discover more about Theresa on her website: http://www.coloredhorse.com/Poetry/
This show origially aired Saturday, September 26 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala - on the web at kgua.org.
Cartwheels on the Sky featuring poet Kirk Lumpkin
This episode features Kirk Lumpkin, a poet, spoken word & performance artist, lyricist, and environmentalist. Since moving to Mendocino County in 2016 he has become a California state certified Naturalist; a singer in a community choir, the Emandal Chorale; and a Board member of the Willits Environmental Center.
Before moving to Mendocino County he worked at the Ecology Center in for over 20 years and was according to the Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review: “ . . . an important part of the Bay Area (and beyond) poetry scene for years, hosting readings in San Francisco and Berkeley, helping to facilitate the Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival [with Poetry Flash & former U.S. Poet Laureate, Robert Hass], and hosting open mikes at Burning Man.…”
He has most recently been published in the anthology Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and in Poem In Your Pocket (Berkeley Public Library). More about Kirk can be found at his website: https://www.kirklumpkin.com/
This show originally aired live on Saturday, September 5 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala, kgua.org
Cartwheels on the Sky featuring Jabez Churchill
This episode features Ukiah Poet Jabez Churchill. Former Poet Laureate of Ukiah, Jabez W., Bill, Churchill first started submitting poetry for publication in 1979, became a member of the Ina Coolbrith Poertry Circle in Berkekey, maintaining this affiliation to date. He has been a poet teacher with California Poets in the Schools since 1998, and teaches poetry at Mendocino Co, Juvenile Hall.
As a bilingual poet, he writes in English and Spanish, and he has toured Spain and Cuba with a contingency of Bay Area poets. He has also been widely featured around Mendocino County, Berkeley, San Francisco, L.A. and Vancouver B.C.
He is a single dad, but his sons now have wives and children of their own, so now he is the grandfather of five! He is an avid water person and he sails San Francisco Bay and swims with pinnapeds wherever and whenever they pop up to say hi. He wants listeners to know that he has a deep connection to the south coast of Mendocino as his great-great grandparents, John and Carrie Johnson arrived in Pt. Arena on a Norwegian lumber schooner from Oslo in the 1850’s.
This show originally aired Saturday, August 29 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala, on the web at kgua.org
Cartwheels on the Sky featuring Roberta Werndinger
This episode features the reigning Ukiah Poet Laureate Roberta Werndinger. Roberta Werdinger is a Zen priestess, poet, writer and editor. From 1995 to 2006 she studied Zen Buddhism at Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Mountain Center. In 2006 she was head student, and left the monastery to pursue the path of writing.
She has a long-term professional association with Berkeley-based writer, artist, and activist Kaz Tanahashi, for whom she edits and conducts research. She has also taught English at Mendocino College and at Dharma Realm Buddist University. Since 2010, she has served as a freelance writer and publicist for several area nonprofits, including the Grace Hudson Museum and the Ukiah Symphony. Her writing activities have included essays for the Redwood Coast Review and poetry for the online journal Leaping Clear. She hosted the show “Maps & Legends” on KZYX from 2009 to 2016, highlighting the presence of wisdom teachings in modern music. She is also a member of Northern California Book Reviewers, reading for poetry and creative nonfiction.
She is currently at work on a memoir, titled “The One Road.” It details the migration of her family across the Atlantic and her own migration West, as well as all the migrations–internal and external– that the human race is currently undertaking.
This show originally aired Saturday, August 22 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala, kgua.org
Cartwheels on the Sky Featuring Toni Burnbaum
This episode features Fort Bragg, CA poet Toni Bernbaum. Toni declares herself “a bandit of a poet” — Steeling the right to claim herself worthy of giving readings, accepting the blessing of being born with a poet’s soul, she embraces Mary Oliver as she proclaims her self to just let the *“soft fur of her body love what it loves.” Without a writing degree or teaching credit or a long list of publications, not even a chapbook, she shares that her love of language, the element of surprise and self discovery and the timelessness of writing and its revelations, are what drives her credentials.
She has been fortunate, over the years, to study ways to ride the muse in workshops with Dorianne Laux, Joe Millar, Ellen Bass and Marie Howe so she knows a good horse when she sees one. She has sometimes seen her words on the page, in an obscure journal in North Carolina, a Shamanic publication, Sacred Reflections, no longer in print and a while back, had a poem published in the online New Millennium Writings that garnered her an honorable mention. Her work has also been read by poets performing in the traveling poetry show, Rumi’s Caravan.
She has been honored to be a featured reader at poetry events in Mendocino and Point Arena. She especially enjoys offering her poems at a yearly event, Kaleidoscope, sponsored by Spirit House Center for Healing in Fort Bragg, a non-profit she facilitates and founded with her partner Ron Nadeau. Spirit House is where most of her creativity is expressed, in dedicating herself to healing and providing those who are drawn there a wider access to the wisdom within their own hearts.
This show originally aired Saturday, August 15 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala kgua.org
Carthwheels on the Sky Featuring Armand Brint
This interview features award-winning Ukiah poet Armand Brint. Holding an MFA in creative writing and English, Armand has devoted his life to teaching and writing poetry. Widely published in literary journals, he is also the author of four, soon to be five, volumes of poetry, as well as a book on writing poetry called, “Bringing Poems to Life: 16 Keys to Make Your Poems Sing.”
Amand was the City of Ukiah’s first Poet Laureate and served on the Poet Laureate Committee for a total of seven years; he is also a founding member of the Ukiahaiku Festival, which has been a beacon for writers in Mendocino and beyond for 17 years.
A popular reader in Mendocino County, Armand is the recipient of several poetry awards including a Jane Reichhold International Haiku Prize. As you will see, Armand Brint’s poems are soulful incantations to the sorrows and joys inherent in human relationships. Funny and humane, fueled by the poet’s elegant imagination, they take us on a journey that is simultaneously meditative and down to earth.
This show originally aired on Saturday, August 8 on KGUA FM 88.3 Gualala, kgua.org