 Yeah, I would like to welcome Judith Chahma to our show for an interview today. It's very exciting. I haven't known you very long, but what I've known, I've really appreciated, and so here we are. Judith, can you tell us a little bit about your background? Like, you know, how did you start writing, and where are you from, and what are your details about you? Yeah. Well, I started writing pretty late in life when I was maybe in my late 30s, and it really happened kind of serendipitously. You could say I had, at that point, thought that I wanted to be a feature article journalist, and I just didn't know I'd get started, and one day I saw this ad for a poetry workshop at a women's center in Montpelier, and I thought, well, you know, I don't know about poetry, but it'll probably loosen me up, and so I went, and I just will never forget going home from that, that first day, and saying to myself, I've been waiting for this my whole life, and the person who was teaching it, Nadelle Fishman, was so good, she sort of stayed with me after the eight weeks were done. She's now, you know, became a mentor and now is a dear friend, has remained a dear friend ever since, and from there I went on to get an MFA at this program that morphed in where it was located from the Vermont College to Norwich University, and then to what it is now, when I graduated, it was Norwich University. Yeah. Is that what brought you two from Vermont, or were you here previous to that? No, I was here for quite a while before that. Again, I seem to bumble my way through into just about everything, so it was the very early 70s, and I didn't have a job for this summer. I was going to school at the University of Toronto, I came here, stumbled on a job on the long trail as a caretaker, said to, I was married at that point to a man, and we just said to ourselves, we just never want to leave here. So, you know, I dropped out of school and came here, so I had been, and then got an undergraduate and finished my undergraduate studies at Goddard in their low residency program. And you're married, right now? I am married to my darling Lisa, to whom my book Minnow is dedicated, yes. Yes, we got together in, you know, oh, approximately 2000 and re-ish, and have been married since it's been legal to be, since it's legal. Very good. So, I'm going to read what Allison Prine, who is another well-established writer in Vermont, and then I would like you to read Minnow, which I really think it's the title and your first poem in here, and here's the book, and Judith's Poems is sensuous, vivid, and richly detailed. Minnow awakes us to the urgency and grace of natural landscapes and intimate connections. And I think Minnow, for me, really spoke to the times we're in right now, sorrow. There seems to be a lot of real sorrow in the world, and the poem talks about that, but it also talks about how we can uplift ourselves and how we can be positive. So, if you wouldn't mind reading that poem. Sure, Poem Minnow, covered in mist, cover of night, the serious air, cold fog swirling around us, the Minnow that lingered while we talked, dirt surrounding us, soot everywhere, the path fringed with fungus. It takes something serious, something drastic, like leaving your bed, like finding a stick to really change. All night we stayed covered, cold, the path frilled with fungus, soot all around us, and still we smelled wintergreen, we smelled apple and berry. We made a bed that was soft in the night, the serious night. We touched hands and our breath was swirling, sticks snapped, turtles fled. We looked different to each other and smelled. It was good. It was serious. The path was fragrant with fungus. We slid a stick in the water and talked. The Minnow we saw disappearing. Thank you. That's really beautiful. And you have a first collection too that people can still get from you, your first collection? From me. It's out of print. The publisher went out of business a long time ago. But I have some, yeah. Okay, so books of translation, too. I translate with a friend from Montpelier, Michiko Uishi, who writes in Japanese and then does the first translation, and together we work on really making those poems into poems in the English language. And we have two books of those that are published as well. Great. And are you always into the natural world? I mean, your poems just are really, to me, like a combination of talking about real feelings and emotions in the natural world. And so were you always interested in the natural world and how to interpret that as into your writing, into your work? I suppose you could say so. I grew up in Buffalo in a very urban setting. But actually my favorite place in the entire city was the zoo. And that connection with more than human. And I have memories of places like the side of the railroad bank where the milkweed was, of the mud in a construction site. I mean, those are the urban versions. But yes, those are my strong memories. And then of course, when I came here, it was overwhelmingly amazing. I know, I found that too. So you came directly from Buffalo with your ex to Mont? Yes. And then had a series of pretty, I feel like I've had wonderful work in my life. Well, one of the first jobs that I really loved was, I was a typist B for the state. And I was working for, well, this was pre OSHA. I was working for what was then the division of industrial hygiene. And working with a bunch of people who were just so labor positive and so proud of making conditions for the dusty trades, you know, grant it's late marble, best is talc clay, making that safer for workers. And I, it was, it was pretty inspiring work to be part of that, to learn how to take X-rays and meet people from all over. And it was in Barry to learn from the person who was supervising me about Barry's rich ethnic heritage. And a bit later after I got my MFA, I became, I taught in a number of such a number of circumstances, one of which was an art space senior center in Morrisville called the out and about center. And that was, I did that for 12 years leading first writing workshops. And then as the funding changed for senior centers and people with more profound disabilities were there, we changed to what we were doing to storytelling. And I just again, it was such deep cultural learning for me in terms of getting to know people who had lived through all the enormous changes of the 20th century. And what was essentially Northern Appalachia making their livings and subsistence farming and logging and mining. And I, then I was also teaching non-traditional college age students through a given that set of programs, undergraduate programs that were at Vermont College and then Norwich University and then Union Institute. And lastly, my beloved work and such deep learning for me of being the executive director of what was then VSA Vermont and thankfully now has a better name, much better name of inclusive arts Vermont, which is engaged in arts and disability and was just such incredible joyful work. And I know from talking to you that your Jewish community has always been a big part of your life and your work and your being in the universe. How did that have an effect on your writing? I know you had a reading at the synagogue there. And how has all of that influenced you? Do you feel? Yeah, it's certainly profound. I grew up in a family that not only was highly identified Jewishly and but was part of a really intense immigrant and refugee community. One part of my family were Holocaust survivors. And I also experienced some quite a bit of death early on in my life. And that led me to the kind of existential questions that children and people of all ages struggle with. So the combination of sort of the cultural, ethical background that I grew up in, again, highly labor positive, labor oriented that sort of connection. And the spiritual questioning is in the community. Just I really love the community. I also love the same way I love what people do that is richly engaged, everything from cooking to singing to making beautiful ceremonies. To me it's just part of the way I love what human beings can do. And so the poems in Minnow, there's quite a few of them that reference Jewish tradition in one way or another. And yeah, it's part of the way I am in the world, you know? You're full, yeah, you're inner self, maybe you're, yeah. So I would like to request that you read one last poem before we have to leave. And I want to thank you for being here. It's wonderful to see you. And thank you so much. So well, Linda, thank you so much for your wonderful show in the first place. And for being your wonderful inquisitive, positive self. Thank you. This is really, it's really fun to be here with you. I'm really honored. I think I'll read the point. My neighbor's footprints frozen on yesterday's path, softened today to flush, and even the leash lies slack in my hand. The beach is bare again, the gulping surf testy in its winter thaw, the sand here and there, a sudden soup. Grace and drizzle have left us the place to ourselves. I think I must be late considering death and purpose, the sky and all that's beyond bearing. The dog races to a lingering goal. The clouds begin to break apricot at their evening edges, then deepening to pink. It seems a long wait till spring and the possible. You know how it is each year settling in unfamiliar, uncertain. In a few months, the sun on our arms will shed a layer, put our backs into our paddles. There's always a point, the boat slipping from shore, the air's sharp, the lake's still too cold for swimming, woods full of moss and fungus. When we're tugged into a bewildered hope, with nothing beneath us, but a whisper. Thank you, Jared. That was wonderful. And we'll see you soon. Take care. Thank you so much, Linda. Bye.