The Tattooed Poets Project: Ali Jacs

On this, the penultimate day of our fourth annual Tattooed Poets Project, we will be featuring a pair of tattooed spoken word artists.

First up is Ali Jacs, who shared her tattoo in its sketch stage

and in its final state:

Ali explains:

"I got the ... tattoo in January 2010 after a bit of a dark yet very enlightening stage in my life ... The tattoo artist Elton Buchanan is trained in the Maori style of the Te Arawa tribe in New Zealand. There is fair bit of symbolism in this - frangipani flower petals symbolize personal awakening, of which I did a fair amount in 2009! There are fish scales which symbolize the 'taniwha', or mythical Maori protector who dwells in the ocean, there is weaving to symbolize strength in family and friends and there are two Manaia - guardian spirits of the earth, sea and sky. Blending in some contemporary culture, there is a treble and bass clef to highlight my connection with music. 

Which ties in quite well with my poem, which I've provided [below] ... most of my poetry these days is focused on performance poetry and this particular piece focuses on the music that we hear in every day occurrences and the sounds that bring this world alive." 

Here is the poem that Ali has shared:

   

Ali Jacs is a performance poet from Wellington, New Zealand. After getting involved in the spoken word community in the Canadian prairies, Ali returned home to New Zealand in 2010. She won 2nd place in the 2011 Going West Writer’s Festival Poetry Slam in Auckland and in October 2011, won 2nd place in New Zealand’s inaugural National Poetry Slam. Having travelled extensively across Canada and Europe, Ali’s poetry is inspired by people, landscapes and cultures encountered on the road, exploring themes of politics, sexuality, social and environmental justice and the madness of these crazy times. Ali runs the monthly performance poetry series Poetry in Motion in Wellington, New Zealand and has recently finished her first chapbook Romantic Pragmatism.

Thanks very much to Ali Jacs for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The tattoo is reprinted with the poet's permission. 

If you are reading this on another website other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Danielle Shutt

Our next tattooed poet is Danielle Shutt., who sent us two photos.

First is a shot from right after she got inked in June 2007:

And then, a close-up of the tattoo:

Danielle explains:

"My wrist tattoo came out of my own mindless notebook scribblings. It's two intertwined S's, representing my younger siblings' first names. We've been through a lot together. I got the tattoo when I was 23 and living in Richmond, VA. There was a particularly strong surge of family-related peril and tumult back then, and I found myself wanting something that would keep my brother and sister close to me--something less morbid than the black cloth bracelet I'd been wearing. I knew the drawing was exactly 'right,' but it took me a while to commit anyway. I'm the kind of person who needs to be bitten by impulse before I get my body involved in anything. (This includes dancing and doctor appointments.)

In this case, a grande margarita and my friend Kristen did the trick. Kristen accompanied me to River City Tattoo, where a nice guy named Reverend Bob tattooed the symbol on my wrist in less than three minutes. I was happy with it. I always will be.

I get asked all the time about what the tattoo means, which is cool because I love talking about my sibs. I still think of the tattoo as a comfort, but more often these days it reminds me of my brother and sister's hard-fought survival, which in turn reminds me to stay strong, too."

Danielle shares this poem, as well, which originally appeared in thINK, a letterpress book published by Bowe Street Press at Virginia Commonwealth University:

Sometimes I Have to Go Around Will’s Curb

Barbed wire reached to scratch a warning at his window;
or, the slaughter-cows flicked their tails like traffic guards,
and in dusk a roadside tree flashed him old scars
        to beg off new bruises.

But really, there's nothing looking dead there. No car parts
or patches of uprooted grass, none of his teeth half-ground
into the pavement. The wooden stretch of new fence
        isn't as stark as I'd expected.

I guess he kept all the mess of it with him, smashed under
his face, caulked behind his eyelids; or, it's in the red dirt
and bone dust sent up by the tractor hitched to his lungs,
        pulling slow on these back roads.

~ ~ ~

Danielle Shutt completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Washington University in Spokane, WA, where she taught writing courses and served as a poetry editor for Willow Springs. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, Redactions: Poetry & Poetics, PANK, Copper Nickel, DIAGRAM, and Hotel Amerika.

Thanks to Danielle for sharing her tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Francesco Grisanzio

Every year I meet at least one of the poets featured on the Tattooed Poets Project. Francesco Grisanzio lives in New York and I got the chance to personally photograph his tattoos, which he offered up for us here on Tattoosday:

Francesco explained:

"My tattoos are of the characters from a comic strip I draw, or at least used to draw.

It's been a few years since I made a new strip. The comics haven't been published, but I did receive a great rejection letter from the paper at UMass Amherst when I was a student there.

They said something along the lines of 'We love the art, but you know that this content is unpublishable. Clean it up and we'll talk.'

The tattoos were done in Woonsocket, RI at American Art Tattoo."

Francesco offered up this poem:

Teenage Heaven

After Eddie Cochran

The Coupe, phone, big city—
freedom, Eddie, is what it boils down to.
Sharp crew cut cardigan,
our dearest son,
patriot, toe tap child rebel against homework,
enjoy the benefits of citizenship.
You’ve earned it.
Here’s three dollars.
Have a swell weekend.
We trust you not to make a mess.

But it’s not just youthful ignorance
or innocence where you choose to do what’s right on your own.
We’ve been to the drive in show,
seen peacock letterman, gorilla arm not content on headrest.
How dare you chuckle.  She’s just a child.
My God, Eddie, there’s nothing “little snack” about six hotdogs.
That’s beyond ingestion.  Where will they all go?
What are your intentions with our daughter?
We know she’s beautiful, but show restraint.
Little lady, you’re young.  This is heaven.
You can run.  This is America.
Please.  He’s an animal.  A beast.
And, Eddie, we’re very disappointed in you.

~ ~ ~

Francesco Grisanzio is currently working on his MFA in poetry at The New School. He earned his BA in English from UMass Amherst. His work has appeared or will be appearing in Word Riot, Fawlt, Why I Am Not a Painter, Strange Machine, and Interrobang!? Magazine.

Thanks to Francesco for his contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Julie Kantor

As we wind up the Tattooed Poets Project on this, the home stretch of April, we are double-posting to accommodate the record number of submissions we received this year.

Our second tattooed poet of the day is Julie Kantor.

Julie sent us these photos:

Julie explains:

"It was a very early morning in Portland, OR. I picked up my best friend, Jess, to get breakfast. On the way to the cafe, we saw two guys, each had a shopping cart packed to the brim. They were laughing with each other, smiling these huge smiles. Jess turned to me and said, 'If we were bums, we would still be best friends. Bum friends.' I suggested, strongly, that we get matching shopping cart tattoos. After breakfast we found this small tattoo shop with no name off Glisan that just opened. Inside, we made a deal with the shop's very green apprentice to do both tattoos for $40. The 'bf' in the tattoos stands for bum friends." 

Here is one of Julie's poems:

From the series: Land 

12)
Waters flush north under concrete & steel, rods down
planted, now dry cracks through road we drive over, see
red lines run lengthen out from sky blue & darkening,
say “let's trace this back to where the sun doesn't even
want us w/it,” beam bridge can't take us across all the way
w/out drop before we stand safely or span the land’s
end to its own mirrored opposite. Those could be our feet
on the ground, but we ride this straight across the dividing
line where trains’ tracks alongside plains lead away from
& hear the river call us down, would one body’s dead
weight be enough to pull us into, first think we tie our-
selves w/knots we won't learn the names of, but tangle is
thick w/width, & water's feel enough for loss of, & if we can’t
sustain w/just us then we shouldn’t have to begin with.

~ ~ ~

Julie Kantor just completed her first manuscript, the currently unpublished, The Beautiful West. She is a M.F.A. candidate in poetry at Columbia University where she teaches in the Undergraduate Writing Program. She is also a musician and plays in the new band, Cycles. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Thanks to Julie for sharing her poem and tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project - Heather Truett

Up next on the Tattooed Poets Project is Heather Truett, who sent us this photo:

along with a shot of the tattooist at work:

These may appear as three seemingly simple Hebrew letters, but there is more to this piece than just a Hebrew word, as Heather elaborates:

“The tattoo was a 27th birthday gift from a girlfriend I have known since I was 6 and she was 3. We went together. She got a Latin phrase in a beautiful script and I chose this. I had been planning a tattoo to somehow commemorate a friend who died and my own battle with depression. The verse in scripture that speaks most to me is Isaiah 61:3, which includes the phrase ‘beauty for ashes.’ The girl I wanted to commemorate, Natalie, also loved the verse. On a whim, I looked the verse up in Hebrew. I always love following a verse back to its origin and trying to understand what the words actually meant to the writer, rather than placing all trust in modern translation. When I realized the Hebrew word used to mean beauty in that verse actually means, ‘a crown of beauty,’ as in, a young girl being crowned queen and given honor and status in society, I knew I had my tattoo.

You see, every year, on the anniversary of the day Natalie died, her friends around the world don tiaras and wear them wherever they go. We paint our toenails purple, as she loved to do, and we drink a Diet Coke in her honor. There are other rituals, but these are the big three. To find the word ‘crown’ hidden there in my verse left me in tears, good tears, the kind of crying you do when someone at last understands exactly who you are and what you mean to them. I printed and double-checked the Hebrew lettering and took it with me to Devine Street Tattoo on a visit to Columbia, SC. It's not fancy, just three letters. But those three letters say so much to me every time I look at them. I placed the word on the inside of my left ankle, so when I look down or cross my legs, I see the tattoo. I don't mind showing it to other people, and I love telling how I chose it and why I got it, but it is, ultimately, for me and me alone, so I wanted it in a place easy for me to see."

By way of a poem, Heather submitted this:

My Brother is the Poem

My brother is the poem that exists,
still busily writing itself
in the hills of my hometown.
He leaves for work, welding
in leather and heat and without
a single complaint, because, hell!
He needs the job.
He strings out verse and stanza,
tripping over the meter
on seventy acres of God's creation.
Don't let them mine you too,
Big Brother.

It's with rhythm and flow that
he pays the bills and loves the wife and
suffers the pain of parenthood that stabs
with its cliche sword, double-edged.
Who knew? Who predicted
snowflakes and razorblades?
My brother, cigarette lit and smoke circling,
is the poetry falling
to earth, right there,
in Eastern Kentucky, while I
only call myself a poet, writing
in the air conditioned suburb, pretending
I got out, when I never did,

not really, anyhow.

Years pass and miles unroll like
so much butcher paper
down the holler, but my body still grows roots
back home, there, in Nat's Creek,
Daniel's Creek, Homer's trailer,
white house with black shutters,
minnow fishing, snake killing,
coal mining with the black lung,
family and the most Primitive of
Baptist churches, where
my soul gets fed, and only then
can the poem
grow branches.

~ ~ ~

 Heather Truett describes herself as “Hill-born, a coal miner's granddaughter, a brilliant spark of brain with a wee bit of crazy thrown in for good measure, a writer, a poet, a wife in the bizarre world of the church, wearer of silver tiaras and painter of purple toenails, I am me. I have published poetry, essays and articles in the past. My credits include: The Mom Egg, The Paintsville Herald, Jackson Free Press, Slugfest Ltd, Abundance Press, The Invitation Tupelo, Busy Parents Online, Mommy Tales, Just For Mom and other publications (more info available on my website, www.madamerubies.com). I am currently a homeschooling Mom to a special needs child and the wife of a youth minister in Tupelo, Mississippi. I have taught poetry workshops in schools and for the homeschool co-op we participate in each semester.”

Thanks to Heather for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Will Roby

Today's tattooed poet is Will Roby.

It is also the birth date of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittgenstein.

You might think these two items are unrelated, but you'd be wrong.

Here is the tattoo Will selected for us:

Will elaborates:

"I am a huge fan of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, and I'm interested in covering my entire back with words. You'll notice the edge of an image of Texas, but other than that, all of my tattoos are text-based. The artist is a friend of mine, who requested to be called simply 'Heath.' The inspiration is simple: to remind me that my thoughts are capable of becoming reality if I allow them."

Will selected this poem to share here on the Tattooed Poets Project:

Stupefactive

Half a glass full, optimistic warbling grackles; they pester me.
To the dogs with them! It's abrasive, this new sweater, get it off me.
So restrictive, I'm in shackles, knuckles tickled. Stupefactive
glance along a mirror, that old meme, "coexistence or bust." Alternator
of my heart, spark plug liver: must they rust so fast? A last jitterbug
then no more jumpstarts, I'll have to quit her.  Shrug twice 
if you understand, here's a sidesplitter: never once changed the oil, bugs
all jammed up in the works, tin foil holding up the engine mount. And count
the parts you couldn't sell, the fans and belts, good for nothing, hell,
the junkman sniffs the air. There you have it, glass half full, a queasy
spare tire of a feeling. Easy, Tiger, someone says, a glass half full
might be the only thing to crack through that thick skull.

~ ~ ~

Will Roby is a poet living in Texas. His poems have appeared at 32 Poems, Tri-Quarterly, Umbrella,The  Melic Review, Karawane, Yareah Magazine and others. He's madly in love with Emily Van Duyne and their child Hank.

Thanks kindly to Will for contributing his tattoo and poem to this year's poetic adventure on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


 If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Alex Dryden

Today's tattooed poet, Alex Dryden, shared his body art with us, displaying what to many poets, and fans of poetry, is a universal image:

That is, of course, a red wheelbarrow, a common item made famous by William Carlos Williams' iconic poem:

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends 
upon 


a red wheel 
barrow 


glazed with rain 
water 


beside the white 
chickens. 

~ ~ ~

Alex elaborates:

"When we were kids, my mother made my brother and me memorize and recite poems. Though we didn't talk about it until we were adults, we were both stricken by the authority and presence of 'The Red Wheelbarrow.' 

For years we had thought about getting tattoos that worked together as a set but had never found a suitable subject. In 2010, he went back to school as English major while I was entering the first year of my MFA in creative writing. While visiting over the winter break and planning our mother's 60th birthday party, talk came around to the poems we memorized a kids and renewed our efforts to find a good set of tattoos. 'The Red Wheelbarrow,' with two perfect, ready made images, solved our dilemma. That night we drew up a pair of white chickens for him and a red wheelbarrow for me and the next day had them done. 

Because Williams made use of the rhythm and diction of the American vernacular, we choose a local tattoo parlor that seemed analogous. The website for Hell Bomb Tattoo, in Wichita, KS, displayed an index of, what we imagined to be, classic Mid-Western tattoo art." 

I asked Alex if he could send along his brother’s tattoo, as well, and he happily obliged:

And a shot of them together:

As for verse, Alex shared this poem:

Corpus 

—she was the kind of girl
you suspected

had something really sweet
written in

the braille of her
bikini line.

Something about flowers or
the uselessness

of melancholy and how good
things happen

to those who wait politely and say please. So,
I checked.

“Thanks,” it said. It was damp and difficult
to read.

 “I haven’t been fucked like that since I was an
alter boy.

Thanks.”  It was the second “thanks” that really
threw me.

When she woke, she smiled politely
I made

coffee politely and made my face look
sensible and clean.

I haven’t checked since. I don’t even read her e-
mail anymore.

Once, I held the door open for her mother, she said
thank you

and I stammered “sorry” pretty loud. It was really the second “thanks”
that threw me.

~ ~ ~

Alex Dryden is a MFA candidate in Poetry at The New School. His work was most recently published on The Best American Poetry blog.

Thanks to Alex for this contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2012 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission. 


If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.