 Welcome viewers to our ongoing program focus coming to you from Burlington, Vermont to this the Channel 17 studio, the Center for Media and Democracy. Here we are and my guest I'm your host Margaret Harrington and this is our last program of focus for the year 2020 and we're going out with a dynamite book called No More Time by the poet Greg Delanti and welcome Greg Delanti coming to you from across town here in Burlington, Vermont. Hello Greg. Hi Margaret, thank you for having me both Kevin and Margaret. We've been here before but not on the Zoom but this is great and I'm very grateful to be helped in the book. Oh it's so good to see you and welcome to Kevin Harms who is directing the show. We're so happy to be able to do it today. So I'm looking at the cover of your brilliant and wonderful book on the climate crisis and it's a very interesting cover. It says No More Time and there's a little animal there. What is that animal Greg? It's actually the I.I. it's called it's a little linear that's in trouble that's been we made extinct really. Oh it's okay that well that's a theme of the book right the theme. Well before I say anything before we say anything about the theme of the book it was done by Fabulous artist Amber Geneva who lives in Vermont and who I asked to do it sort of for me and she did a great job really and the creature has a long middle finger and the first poem is about the I.I. well the first poem of the main part of the book there is a promp poem and the beginning introductory poem before that. You asked me there something Margaret excuse me. No I will let us read why don't you read the prom the introductory poem and then go on to read I.I. I would love that. The first poem was in my selected actually but it's a kind of an epigraph poem to the book and using the loose strife it was never an individual volume so I'm using it as an introductory poem here loose strife you know the kind of very attractive and beautiful really a little plant that goes wild and kills the it came probably well it did come from Europe and we don't really know how in the boats or in the ballast or whatever and was even brought perhaps for healing purposes but it's it's grown now here and it's killing a lot of the the local the native plants and it's a it's an American sonnet and which in other words means that it's 14 lines and it doesn't rhyme and it doesn't look you know it doesn't sound it's not 10 syllables etc and but that's what it was called it was published in the Atlantic and that's what they called it the sewage I laughed like an American sonnet but anyway loose strife you have become your name loose strife carried on sheep spurting up out of ballast the cure brought across the deep to treat wounds sooth trouble there have been others like you the roller dendron the cat tails that you in your turn over run voices praise your magenta spread your ability to propagate by seed by stem by root and how you adjust to light to soil spreading your glory across the earth even as you kill by boat by air by land all before you the hardy iris the rare orchids the spawning ground of fish you'll overtake the earth and destroy even yourself all loose strife purple plague beautiful us so I poem really I thought it ends with us with significant but you know it's homeboat overpopulation it's humans taking over everything which is the big problem one of the big problems that's causing the planet to be in such a state for all the living creatures including ourselves this is the II and that's the start then of of the book which is really one poem you know but it's the fact that the first poem is a sequence of 26 poems sonnets dealing with animus plants uh creatures and plants that are either in trouble that are being um extinct made extinct are are are thriving the first two there would have been harmed by human beings the why they've gone extinct or were in trouble is due to human beings it is really made up of a kind of a poor good heaven the hell of the hell porgo tree and heaven plants the the plants that are gone is hell porgo tree is the one third in trouble heaven and trying to mirror Dante Dante's divine comedy which is um um it's all human centered which is significant because it's christianity the western world is built against the backdrop of christianity it's kind of base and therefore um I want to put the elements of plants because that's where we fall aside in the christian world thinking of human being as centered at the only that everything else is to war uh is is is we can use it to where we want that's not true of course we're all connected and need them and they need us and so forth and so I put a heaven hell and porgo tree and I made the poems into Dante's terzarema um sonnets 12 lines three three lines each in terzarema the same as Dante used in the divine comedy for heaven porgo tree and hell and then a couple at the end these are really silent love poems as well as poems of yonderworld which are really poems about our world okay sorry I hope I haven't gone on too long the ii is one of the creatures that are in trouble and uh the name of this lemur which is an unusually long middle finger is derived from a person's alarmed utterance and seeing the anime you can see there like you know and I mean that's that's correct drawing you know I mean it's it's true to that so the start of the terzarema sonnets so that's how the name came about ii solitary shade spirit of the night your face caught in the light seems to ask why you're given no quarter shot on sight the picture shows your battered head large as a baby's staring in fright your extraterrestrial wide eyed dread and manicured long nails scare magnifying to nightmare folks are misled by their imaginations to needless fear you are the bringer of bad luck happened your of death ii you continue to glare back your face a mirror terrors dead ringer with a long middle finger you give the finger the middle digit I made a mistake again with a long middle digit you give the finger okay and they're we viewers we have the humor that's also within this dread seriousness of Greg Delanty's poetry yeah I mean the humor is important well humor is the is kind of I mean it makes it buoyant I mean this is a dark subject and it's probably the gracious as you said yourself I think sometime to me that is it is definitely the greatest crisis human kindness ever faced and the world has ever faced the animals and plants and so entire right about it you know and without but but humor is a refuge and a kind of a way out and and kind of a holiness really and it's another interesting fact of course that I mean I grew up in a creature world but we lack a bit of laughter and Christianity and there's no laughing even Christ has never talked about as laughing and I think it's one of the holiest things and I think in other religions like Hinduism it's it's never been there there should be a god of laughter there should be because laughter in its best form is a way into understanding and accepting and knowing something now there are different types of humor like you'd see on television like I remember Johnny Carson and so forth yeah it's humor did not the president where it was Regan so forth but actually it was letting the Regan off it was releasing a valve for watchers so that they felt all right about the president and forgot about it you know and and that's not my humor here I hope certainly it's not I know that and more of your humor do you want to read chimpanzee next would you read chimpanzee I love that I love them all Greg yeah again so you know you know they're alphabetical it's a kind of alphabetical plan system it's all the way true yes chimpanzee as a chimp usually the adult male approaches on the roar of the water booms louder you see him without fail hurry up his demeanor starts to alter hair bristling arriving at the fall he stands swayed from one foot to the other bows geniflex answering some call he dips his hand as if in holy water clashes head and shoulders in the flowing prayer shawl tests the ropes of draping vines lashes his body securely to several takes flight over the deafening water as it crashes he swings like a durable above that veil of white the spray is the incense of the monkey's water right and that that actually is taken from sighting by the great environmentalist you know she lived gen good all yes yes she made up when she was with the gyms and you know we're just we're you know coming quickly into our general airwaves that animals feel and think creatures or the idea of bored brain the stupid I mean so many crows crows are so clever and they communicate and they have whole family situation and they talk to each other in their way I mean I'm not romanticizing this this is just a fact you know they feel and so forth we know this now but you know Margaret so what can I do now next but it's it's wonderful here now in your language you use the thurable and a lot of people Greg don't know what a thurable is and but that is is from the the Catholic Church it's yeah yeah yeah well it would be from the church in general you'd have it in the Russian Orthodox churches a Greek Orthodox as well the thurable that they shake and the incense comes out and that smell that beautiful sacred smell to make kinds to make things sacred really and when I was growing up there was always one used at the end of the more major ceremonies at a funeral of course and so the yeah that that is the spray becomes the durable you know the the the incense it's brilliant I love it and Greg would you go on to elephant I know we I hate to skip any of them at all but there's also an irony in this one yeah and this is a record of of an elephant in Dublin and zoo um Arcus you know this is just the underworld another word for the underworld Greek and Roman underworld sometimes you see something so dire so dreadful that the mind's camera instantly shoots a video of the scenario a close-up lasers it into your retina a replayed flashback for as long as you live a teacher thrashing a child or the trauma of an elephant we saw given a sedative so she could rest that time in Dublin zoo the aged female was trapped in our repetitive back and forth on her haunches unable to stop ourselves her keeper explained to us that for years she had been confined locked into a circus van her only way to move in this Arcus was to rock rescuing her was our unforgettable bonus a creature I mean it was terrible to see I remember seeing Dublin's you know I was just so shocked that the creature couldn't stop back and its haunches up and over I had my son and we just sad to see the creature tormented really but it it brings to mind you as the poet see things with with new eyes because I was thinking that you were a child looking at this but you were with your child with your with your son when you saw this elephant that's so touching as a as an augmentative fact regarding this poem I hate to skip that as we go along but which one do you want to read from the the the first book the jellyfish tree do you want to skip to that how about the honeybee I would love that yes it's not that I want to skip them but you know we can just give the same yes and this is written also partly to the poet George Caligeros a Greek poet who gave me actually honey from Speely which is a part of Greece but honey was this picture honey was used in in Delphi by what were the intermediary spirits which were women actually mostly that that these the seers are the future Delphi would read the future out of through their visions at Delphi so it also the two as I said the two great sort of bases and scaffolding of western civilization western europe and western america and so forth are christianity and also of course the greek mythology and roman mythology honeybee it is time anoint thy tongue with honey local time honey from Speely a gift from the greek poet Caligeros amusedly musing honey to give your wards wing lift back in the day it was taken by the Delphi bee wake up get busy make a move a shift apply propolis pronto impossible not to be a drama queen nowadays without apis the abyss will take over unbloom mani a garden field and wood the honeybees are more waning than waxing warms apiology queens drones nurses guards whole communities protect them the amber labor force of ecology already this world comb is a fossilized apology such connections in depth and that is is it the abyss without apis is it the abyss or the abyss yeah it's a it's a play on words yeah without abyss which is the the study of the bees themselves the lack more for bees the abyss yeah yeah well we're destroying the bees and they keep that so much a part of nature alive and replanting and pollinating and so forth yes without the apis without the bees the abyss will take over it this that makes sense yes of course and oh you know what i'd like to read now is um i never read it actually and me can i read um i would sorry i should what would you like me to no no please please greg it's up to you what what next um the lion also there too you know i mean okay i have it right here page 22 oh 16 okay sorry okay but i see the lion on on the e-book oh sorry excuse me excuse me yeah okay um the lion has the humorless bearded face of a amish elder as he patrols the edge of the pride females north the cobs the strictness that is tender the young gamble snap at each other's tails relapsarian oblivious of threats typical of youngsters e-catalogs details sniff the humid atmosphere threats something alerts him a hunter or roguelain in the tops of anagras whatever upsets the pride is unknown but like a wagon train they form a circle as if with one will the same that earlier brought down cool the main an elephant with the natural savagery of the kill the savannah draws taught finger on the trigger still that brings me all over the place in in that poem i mean every location from the amish to the the uh the savannah and uh and the gun and can i read the monochrome one which people tend to like oh of course i love that one and and of course right outside my window here in burlington i've seen the uh the disappearance of the monarchs you still see them doing summer but they're they're getting less and they aren't they're getting rarer and rarer as you come down from canada down down to mexico all that long long journey these creatures and and it's kind of also playing and talking about great well the greek idea uh and roman that the word for that butterflies were supposed to be spirits you know human spirits gone going out into next life or another world and uh there's a lot of greek let it the uh house of adreus is you know the house where in greek the house of adreus where all the trouble or estes and so forth started and were ultimately led to trey and deliad and so forth so um a monarch has landed on the rainbow dexter presumably taking a breeder from her odyssey of thousands of miles hear soul rest there soak up the sun we know that your journey has its own cyclops sirens shilia that you will need elias's assistance see to think mit maps apply solely to us human crew the blueprint of the house of adreus is imprinted in our molecules we seem to ignore the house is coming down around us that nature will enforce its own inhuman laws the heated gods rally on mount olympus do for the v of your wings hold them in a pause in prayer then open and close them in applause so that's the end sexual moon well um and that that's broken the 13th sonnet which there's not a 13 coming on the other side but the middle part is breaking news which is more of kind of a commentary a news commentary on how we're going to handle how we do handle how the situation we're in and then it goes back into the second set of 13 solids with all our trans creatures and situation um but i would do will i read some from um the breaking news section yes and which would you choose then i don't know really um i love them all but but uh um you could read the red eye i like that okay that's good that was an idea that's that's a good one to do um actually some of these are also and i are and her terserema but that's another story i won't go into too many details the red eye um admittedly it's woman weeps down the aisle rests her head against the window pane her dyed loom brown hair is out of style gray creeps back at the roots i wrack my brain she reminds me of someone i can't put a finger on who knows why in the world she cries what pain or hurt i want to ask her if i can help if she's okay perhaps she'd not be embarrassed welcome concern while actually shelly she closes her eyes nowhere else to go now but sleep the angle of her head on the pane reminds me of the tilt of the earth bingo i know she looked familiar gaya leaning on the window great i can't tell you this red line here by the way wait what's that i miss let i miss red a line but which one was that i do not remember no but i know i remember it's just the wrong got inverted just a matter it's fine okay because i was i wanted to tell you that the the poem moves me so much but it moves me physically when you say the angle of her head on the pane reminds me of the tilt of the earth i can feel the earth tilts with it with reading this poem and then then your then your illumination bingo i knew she looked familiar gaya leaning on the window oh i love this poem i love them all now where will we go from here do you want to go you pick it which one would you like more map it well will do you want to read on viewing the roses of helio gabalus yeah sure that that that if you look down the side and it's t it's uh the caustic t the first letter of each t or u m p trump d or a donald on underneath the second verse i'm upset thank you we'll just talk to my own have no laugh really and well but also i mean it's such a character i mean he's and but helio helio gabalus was uh one of these drunken edpers that sort of outdid nero uh any terrible things like um like the the thing like the story in the poem i've actually changed you have to figure out why at the end i said pink roses at the end in the in the book but i've changed it i should have had red roses that's a mistake but you figure out why and but there is an epigraph to the poem it's a short poem and emperor gaelic but helio gabalus and his cronies sought to confound the order of seasons and climates to sport with the passions and prejudices of his subjects and some vert every law of nature and decency it's from edward gibbon anyway this is the poem the emperor and his hobnobbing retinue recline on the high desk everyone gazes up at them from the floor he wings to his chosen few mothers watch this for a trap follows let's play bring on the grand finale brings his cup the sign to drop the false ceiling of flowers on everyone below you can feel nauseating petals catching noses and crying thoughts levels rapidly rising drowning everyone in red roses i mean it's extraordinary he killed people by dropping this he's from a roof double a trick he played just to watch people die in this convupseen way and i don't know what else you'd like me to do now um well let's let's so because we we have limited the time unfortunately but i love the trees would you read trees please um yep i've stood in i've stood in many silent vigils over the years down outside the church and outside city hall and so forth but anyway this is i don't know what page is it only page is it on my breast i have it i have it well it's on mine it's on 46 so yeah no sorry i forgot i have it trees yeah okay stand in silence the way citizens stand outside a church city hall or party office in a speechless vigil saying listen wake up you are our sisters and brothers without us you're nothing without us you will be nothing save us we are the ventriloquists of silence like that that was kind of shoved in at the that poem i wrote right at the end and i put it in and would you like me to read our form i'll just just go on really okay no no read it read earthworm and then canticle of the sun if you would i know that we're we might not get to we want to get to section three we maybe won't know the section three i mean there's no and should we skip to the section three now yeah whichever you like okay so we'll choose choose choose at least two from section three do you want to do the northern gastric frog no not that one i don't and you know after trees let's do four of all tropes which are all the things that give us oxygen green trees and so forth so much more and i i sometimes de familiarize the names at the tops well why didn't i just call them trees well that's actually more than trees give us oxygen i mean and so much more but this is the all that what the oxygen givers are called and and it's good to come after trees the little trees or all tropes or this comes also from my life i used to lifeguard in the beaches and carry maybe i'm for that and i did save one young woman and he gets into the poem who's no mother herself have you ever been given the kiss of life you have you know you're getting it right now every five seconds or so depending what you do going for the bus swimming reading feel how the green leaves press on your mouth and nose your chest falls and rises they silently bow on their knees above you you're lost in the daily throws unconscious as the gare at the time i resurrected back to life in my beach guard days she insists she owes me the rest of her years emailed again lately reiterated thanks updated news of her kids who'd be nowhere without you they're a breath of fresh air she restated wanting to to stand me a beer i raise my downed pint here propose a toast to the glass brimming with nothing but air and she still writes to me i haven't heard from her for a while now but you know i hope i can i hope that kevin kevin our technician if that is coming through okay the sound okay because it's breaking up on thank you kevin so so let's let's choose at least two from the third book okay okay maybe um maybe finish up with a another beautiful um in the x poem you know page 61 which is also set in perry which is where i when i gave that the young woman a kiss of life and i pulled her out of the water and also i went out to swim uh with the famous dolphin there who's just actually disappeared and he's not it looks like he's gone he's he's died but he's been coming into dingle harbour continually and basically he prefers humans than dolphins it's extraordinary i mean um they call him fungi like it's also been a tourist thing but you know it's the open bay there it's a huge bay right in the next on the atlantic and i i went out to try and see because i see him and i swam out maybe a half mile right over to the channel and of course i did not win really we were going to dingle and i the next thing he came up so amazing down by my face and stood and he let but i'll give away the poem too much now but um and it was uh special see the creature looking in your eyes like the way you look at a dog look at the horse but that's probably a little bit more unusual for me to be and i'd know i'd know gear like i'd know i just had goggles and i was in my swimming club uh i don't like to give him a name like i think that sometimes we humanize everything and there's an orderness of both of this well even though he was given a name surely there are others in your life who make you feel worthwhile are a safe haven i am lucky enough to have a stable view and know this other a befriending dolphin i swam out deep again to me i can't tell even myself what i felt when i first saw the fin slice through the surface the swell then to see this undine stuck still at my feet we hooked each other in the eyes for well over a minute a millennium his sweet kind gaze i wonder what he made of me in only my pelt and goggles what a treat to be allowed to touch his greening head before he undulated back across dingle bay the channel's leafy a minute a millennium i love that well there was a special timeless i went down again and he came out again which was special you know i left like that and greg would you want to read zanzibar leopard from the book three and then finish up with the with the uh the one which is the uh the fugue no more time yeah and zanzibar leopard i actually had left it out there are lots of poems they're actually all pinned up in my garage like there was about i wrote maybe a hundred of them and i put them all down to 26 and had to figure out which that could maybe cdf and so forth but um there is a note to the back of the book this is one of the ones that with me made extinct uh and it ties to how presidents and everywhere use religion as a reason to have the right to kill things and so forth but um and it wanted they think one has been cited in recent years like in the last few two years but they're not sure so i have ignored in the back of the book that's that knowledge is that but they had been said to be extinct the zanzibar leopard and then there's a little lore about the zanzibar leopard and a tagline lore about the zanzibar leopard included the belief that waifu which were that's the award for witches in zanzibar sent them to harm villagers and so the zanzibar leopard were killed on site um after the zanzibar revolution in 1964 there was a leopard extermination campaign which sealed the leopard extinction he's a tiny he's a small animal like him he fears looking scary anything this is it kill evil incatenate kill kill kill the zanzibar leopard this island devil this vampire vermin obeying which will dispatched by the waver to bedevil villages you know the old strategy demonize and the demonizer will revel in playing god the paw of the almighty this leopard survived since the ice age slowly shrunk itself into a dwarf cat royalty even changed its to outward human categorizing yes it is daft but this cat hardly likely to be found in a cage or ruling the night forest now when statecraft bands with religion there's no better witchcraft i just noticed a typo here what is that what was the typo cats yes it is daft but this cat oh no no it's all right no no it should be this is oh it's fine it's fine sorry i thought it was good good that last line hits me with a big bang in the then in my chest when statecraft bands with religion there's no better witchcraft i mean i you've seen all how many times we've seen that in our lives northern and in america god is on our side so we can do what we want abdillon but on our side other religions doing the same killing people and being they're right to be they're they're they're right and everybody else is wrong so yeah and i read the the last poem that you say and well before that before that i i want to tell people that you're donating any proceeds from this marvelous marvelous book of poetry no more time to 350.org and people should check out 350.org and of course one of the people who who supports your poetry so much is bill mcgibbon so let's hear the last the last year the last one you'll read and and our our our helper here Kevin probably maybe have it in in the beginning too this poem is a sound a soundscape isn't it you know it's a sound no matter what way you look at it read the title of the poem as any way you look at it and even down it reads the same as across no more time is down all the way down it's repeating it's another way you look at it reads the same it reads the same thing so um i have i have i don't know i'm not sure about how to read this poem yet i think i actually think it could be song and i'll try and sing the end of it in any way at all it could be it could be some traditional Irish music it could be song and jazz it jazz it could be blooms it could be it could be changed different all the way through but we'll try it anyway and and listen Greg i'm going to say goodbye thank you Margaret say goodbye and for now say goodbye but and we know there's no more time and and you've awakened us and you've illuminated us and we love you for it and so you come back again to channel 17 center for median democracy but but we'll we'll say goodbye with this this poem and you're wonderful may i say sorry that that there is some hope in the poem that's real hope not just the token gesture hope the no more time it's no more time for lots of animals now it's just they're gone and and it may be no more time but it will be for other creatures there's thousands been wiped those extinct every year and but not just that or owns the planet and everything so there is hope and there are hopeful poems that are realistic and i live my life like that as Kevin has mentioned he sees me on my bike i have no car i go everywhere even during the snow and all through the air on my bike right downtown and into work and i my house is solar and i i try and live my life put my money where my warbs are as of what and that's we should all have to do really and it's not hard it's actually get out of our comfort zone but i actually got all of my comfort zone and i find it actually more comfortable i can enjoy my wine at night and so forth and the boss is nice to sit in that and be driven places rather than killing yourself driving places anyway sorry for that party political speech anyway you listen and then it's just all let it rip i can have the book no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no more time no No more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time, no more time One more time! One more time. No more. One more time. One more time.