Marilyn McCabe and Gail DiMaggio are original members of the Boiler House Poets Collective, which is how we met. I am pleased to reblog this post from Marilyn’s blog, O Write, in which she offers her reflections on Gail’s poem, “Metta for Judy who Loved a Biker”.
I don’t want to steal any thunder from Marilyn or Gail here, but urge you to check it out.
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Join us for Linda’s Just Jot It January! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2024/01/23/daily-prompt-jusjojan-the-23rd-2024/
When I saw that Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week was “prime,” the first thing that leapt into my mind was Gail DiMaggio’s first book of poetry, Woman Prime, which won the Permafrost Prize from the University of Alaska.
Gail was one of the original members of the Boiler House Poets Collective, now retired from attending our reunion residencies, but still a much-admired legacy member. I especially admire her ekphrastic work and her remarkable ability to write about difficult topics with insight and grace.
I invite you to check out Woman Prime or Gail’s other work and experience its power for yourself.
You’re welcome!
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Join us for Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays! Find out more here: https://lindaghill.com/2023/10/06/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-oct-7-2023/
I am so excited to share this blog post from my poet-friend Gail Dimaggio!
Gail is one of the Boiler House Poets, the inaugural group of poets who gathered at MASS MoCA for a poetry residency in collaboration with Tupelo Press. It was my privilege to be part of this intrepid group of nine poets who shared an amazing, complex, rich, and creative week together.
This month, Gail is participating in the 30/30 fundraiser for Tupelo Press. She is among a group of poets writing and posting a new poem every day. Poems and sponsorship information is available here: https://tupelopress.wordpress.com/3030-project/.
Today is day 11 and Gail has posted a poem that I sponsored, asking her to write about our experience together. She wrote an amazing poem using the technique of found poetry, in which the poet uses words from another source to create a new work. Here, Gail uses fragments of poems from the Boiler House Poets’ video in her poem “Poets Gather in the Boiler House to Read Their Work”.
Most of the Boiler House Poets will be gathering this fall for a reunion at MASS MoCA. Gail and I will both be there.
I can hardly wait!
Last November, I attended my first-ever poetry residency/workshop/conference at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, known as MASS MoCA. It was held in conjunction with Tupelo Press, a non-profit independent press located just down the road in the Eclipse Mill loft.
It was amazing, difficult, intense, valuable, exhausting, overwhelming, and dozens of other adjectives. (Poets don’t use many adjectives. Bloggers are allowed.) Anyone who would like to read more about my experience can check out the November 2015 posts in my archive.
One of the many lasting benefits is that I have written a series of poems about art. I had written a few before that residency, but not nearly as many as afterward. There is a fancy name for poems about art, ekphrastic. Note: spell check does not know what to do with the word ekphrastic.
Some of these poems, along with other poems about North Adams, the city where MASS MoCA is located, and the surrounding towns, will become my first-ever-attempt-at a poetry collection.
It’s complicated.
I grew up in a town about twenty miles from North Adams and went to high school in North Adams. We went there to shop and to visit relatives. The city has changed a lot over the years. I’ve changed a lot over the years. The poems deal with generations of our family, small towns and a small city, home, change, geography, and art.
It’s a lot.
It’s also a new experience.
I am about to print the poems that are completed and assemble them into sections and a manuscript, leaving space for some poems that aren’t yet written. I’ll look for holes that need to be filled. And try to fill them.
I am hoping to have a reasonable working draft by the time our group of poets, who were the first group to experience the Mass MoCA/Tupelo collaboration, return for a reunion residency in October.
We call ourselves the Boiler House Poets, after an art/sound installation at MASS MoCA where we made a video of us reading poems.
I am giving a shout-out here to one of the Boiler House Poets, Gail Dimaggio, who is embarking on another exciting collaboration with Tupelo Press. She will be one of their 30/30 poets in August. She and a small group of poets will each write a new poem every day for thirty days, which will be posted on a special section of the Tupelo Press website. Everyone is invited to follow along! Gail has a new blog to accompany her journey: https://gaildi.blogspot.com/.
Come join the poetry/blogging fun!
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is “art.” Come join us! Find out how here: https://lindaghill.com/2016/07/29/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-3016/
Joanne Corey 