 Hi, welcome to the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show where we interview LGBTQ guests who are making important contributions to our communities. All Things LGBTQ is taped at Orca Media in Montpelier, Vermont, which we recognize as being unceded indigenous land. Thanks for joining us and enjoy the show. Hi, everybody out there in Vermont and All Things LGBTQ welcomes you and Stam Sam Stockwell, who is running for mayor of Barrie. Hi Sam. Hi Linda, thanks for having me. Well, this is very exciting. You are the third woman I think to run, two others lost. Is that correct? And the first queer or lesbian candidate to run in Barrie ever. Yeah, the first, certainly the first openly queer candidate to ever run in Barrie. Yeah, that's great. Congratulations. Thank you. And you got some reading reviews from the former mayor, Jake Hammerick, who says he couldn't be happier that you're running and that he can't think of a better person to run and he's in total support of your running. So that's a great endorsement from the outgoing mayor. It is a great endorsement and I really appreciate what Jake has done, what he's tried to do. And he's just been such a great tutor for me and a great support. And so people, there's a little confusion, I think, about when people are actually voting. So in March, they're not voting, right? But they could vote for you in April or? No. No. You're kind of close. There is, tomorrow is town meeting date number one. Right. And that will elect the school board members and it will vote on the school budget. And then on May 14, there'll be a second town meeting and that will be to elect a mayor, council members and pass the city, the very city budget. So the reason this happened is because the flood was so devastating, the town, the city could not be sure of, you know, what was going to be lost for revenue, what was going to be help we receive from the legislature. So putting it off a little until we knew where the legislature was going to maybe pump in some money to help flood damage cities. That was the reason we delayed. That's the reason we have two town meetings. Because you didn't previously to this, correct? Have two towns? Oh, no, never. I mean, it's confusing for people. It's confusing. Yeah. So okay, great. So people can vote for you on May 14. So if they wanted to contact you or volunteer or help, where would they do that? I have a Facebook page, which is still titled Sam Stockwell for Ward 3. And that would be the best way to contact me. I'm working on a website to get that up and running. I hope to have that up within the next week. But messaging me on Facebook is probably the quickest, fastest way. Okay, great. Or you can text me or call me because my cell phone is on the city website. That's great. And you'll need people for phone calling and walking door to door and whatever it is that people can volunteer for. And money, of course. All would be welcomed. I would take any and all volunteers, yes. So tell us a little, I know you so I know that you're a fabulous poet and have numerous amounts of books out there. And you know, in other countries, I think people are poets and writers are revered as public politicians or speakers for the culture and, you know, are really respected in, you know, I think that's less than the United States, but, you know, unfortunately. But I think that puts you in a kind of unique group of people who make changes, you know, whether they're artists or whatever. So why did you decide to run? I decided to run because I'd had a vision of the city when I was first on council. And a lot of the my vision of the city is based upon my experience as a home visitor and working in human service programs and seeing how hard it was for people to make a living. For people who are doing what we, you know, we used to consider working class jobs or entry level jobs, they simply cannot get ahead. It's not like it was 20 or 30 years ago, because the disparity between what minimum wage should be and what it is, it just makes it impossible. So I had this vision that we could do low-end condos in the city, we could do low-end condos in tiny houses and we have a variety of housing options. So that people who have low incomes or fixed incomes could still have a capital investment. So my vision was that someone who's an LNA, right, and they're working at buried gardens or they're working at any of the nursing homes, they could have a low-end condo and we could have great and excellent and affordable childcare available to everyone. So their child is in a good childcare program. The mom's got a capital investment that's going to work out for her and we have public transportation that works so she doesn't need to own a car to get three miles up the hill. So that was my idea was that then we stabilize sort of a generation of folks who work so they can have better lives and at this point that's really virtually impossible. That's one of the reasons I'm running. There's 121 children who are homeless in the various city schools. That just breaks my heart. And so housing continues to be at the top of my list. We have to do all kinds of housing. Whatever people want to do for housing, short of creating another housing development, you know, another subsidized housing project, I think is good. I know that I was reading some way that there was a project, I think it was Colorado or somewhere where people were selling a portion of their land for people to build on a small house or a trailer or, you know, whatever it was. And, you know, and so people are coming up with some really good ideas. And I think yours are fabulous. Are you going to have a hard time trying to push this agenda? Do you think or? I think I was having a hard time pushing this agenda when I first started and so was Jake, who's very knowledgeable about housing possibilities. And what you're talking about, the accessory dwelling unit. That is, that is now in the state of Vermont, anyone can do an accessory dwelling unit in their backyard if they wish to. Thank you. And that's great news, right? But I think now it's become such an issue for everybody, but the hospital can't hire people because there isn't a place for them to live. And the school has difficulty hiring people because there isn't enough places for them to live. And the motel program is not. It's just not a good option for people. It tends to move people around from motel to motel. It's not very stable. And I convinced that stability of housing security, knowing you have enough food, knowing that you have some stability in your life, is necessary to have some sort of intellectual emotional life that's not focused on your immediate survival. There's a Ted talk by Louise Fresco, and she was talking about how people idealize when we were all farmers, you know, when everyone raised their own crops. And she said, you know, that was actually a terrible life. If you were farming, you worked from sunlight to sundown, and you could never tell what was going to happen to your crops. And it's somewhat the same, and therefore the intellectual life of people or their potential to contribute to their community was limited by the fact that they were physically exhausted. We have a similar situation, I think, now with people working two or three service jobs to try to make enough money to pay the rent. And then they can't do other things that, you know, like, you know, make sure their kids get a good education, that they're there to help. And, you know, if you have family members out of the house all of the time, it's really hard. And, you know, I think those are all really important. And I can't believe a hundred and something homeless children in very schools. In very schools alone. That's an amazing statistic and very sad. Yeah. And when I, when I started living in the very about eight years ago, the, the poverty rate was about 22%, which is really high for a lot. But now it's heading up towards 24%. So this isn't the trend that I think I don't want to see it. I don't think anybody else wants to see that trend. And how do you differ from, you know, maybe you may have a Republican opponent, do you find there's a split in Barry the way there is in the rest of the country in terms of politicians and how they view the future? Things are certainly polarized on the council and in the city. And it does reflect the nation as a whole. I don't yet have an opponent. So it's hard for me to say, I would say that my experience in home visiting has made me able to understand how difficult it is to make a living if you don't have some sort of family support or family help or a little bit of money somewhere or a break somewhere. And I think for the people who are more conservative Republicans, they just don't see that either because their experience, they haven't experienced it personally, or they don't know people personally who have that, would have those challenges or they can't imagine it. I think sometimes people think it's just like it was, you know, it's just like it was many years ago and they want to turn back to an earlier Barry city, but that time is gone. And Barry city has to face the real challenges of now, which the flood I think has brought home to everybody. The flood has made clear that the future direction of Barry city has got to be quite different. We can't just develop anywhere we feel like it. And Barry, you know, has. I always had like real potential to be a vibrant city. I know there's been a lot of projects like Rainbow Bridge and restaurants that are going to bring some vitality to downtown. So are there other things you envision for downtown that will make it a more vibrant city? Well, I do think childcare would be an enormous help, or at least nearby childcare that that everyone in the in the city could use. I think converting some office space to housing would be really would help bring some vibrancy. Fox Market is coming and I don't know what their timeline is, but I think that will be really exciting. A couple of new places have opened. Tally has opened recently, and that's a sort of analog old fashioned games place with pool tables. I think all these things where people have different reasons to come to Barry City for different activities that helps. You know, people are walking around your streets. Your streets are safer. They have different things to go to your streets are better. City planning means you try to create these vibrant places where, you know, there's a sports field nearby and there's a there's the Barry Opera House and there are three or four restaurants and there's a movie theater. So I think the more different kinds of activities you have for people. The greater cross section of people you draw, which is what you really need. I think of White River and White River Junction has transformed itself. In part, that's been due to the arts. The theater there is really important. Some of the visual arts there are really important, but it's drawn a ton of different people to White River. And of course, I think they must have at least doubled their housing in the downtown. Yeah, the housing is is well, it's a struggle for the whole state well, for the whole country, really, is there just is not enough housing for people to live in and to afford. And, you know, it's such a complicated thing too, because, you know, you have people come and then, you know, the prices keep going up, you know, people can pay cash for places. So they just buy them and that really locks out people who are working hard, saving their money and trying to buy a house. It just locks them out of the market entirely, which is which seems really unfair. Yes, it's unfair. And that's part of what happened. You know, the flood is the flood affected people who got homes on the lower end of the scale because they were in the flood zone and it was affordable. And for many years, it worked pretty well. And maybe it would have continued working well if there was more of a. If there was more of a river buffer or, you know, the city invested more in raising breaches and increasing the size of the culverts. But it didn't. So the people who are affected by the flood mostly were people of low to middle income. You put them up on stilts. That's part of the plan, although I know a river scientist who says no, no. Well. So on day one, you're going to get in there and get going, right? Like hopefully before day one. You know, like you you plan ahead and you talk to people. And the good thing about me running at this point in time is that I know a lot of people in the city and I know their level of expertise. So I had people I can go to with my ideas and say, is this possible? Is it doable? And the city, the city manager has just been just been terrific. And so the city staff throughout this, the crisis of the flood. So there's a lot of people to draw on for figuring out the next steps for the for the path ahead. So when you get into office, what are you going to what are you going to start with? Do you think? When I start with, well, I'd want to make sure that I mean, I pretty much continue the direction that the mayor is already pointing things in and the council is pointing things in because you can't just say, OK. I am not queen. But I want to make sure we're doing everything we can. And not losing sight of people with low incomes. It's so it's so complex. Like when you think about housing, it's such a complex issue, right? Because you want to make it available for people. But you but I think part of the problem in most of our cities is that we have these huge separations so that people don't know each other. People who are upper middle class in in Ward one don't necessarily know anybody in Ward three who is working at Cumberland Farms. So at the housing in the city design supports integration of all kinds that I think would break down some of those barriers. But it's not easy to do. So when when we're talking about planning for new development to replace some of the some of the properties that have been destroyed, we're thinking about like, how can we do that in an inclusionary way? How can we make it so that there's in any one apartment building there's some market rate and there's some affordable apartments so people aren't like saying those people over there. Yeah, we don't not not not in our backyard. Right, not in our backyard. And what about like, I know, Montpelier has a very active senior center and Barry has a senior center. And I think, you know, that's really important for people to to be you know, they have those kind of resources in a center. And you know, how is Barry doing with that? You know, I'm I don't know much about the senior center in Barry City. I've been there and we got a spaghetti dinner there once. But I don't know. I think, you know, like all of the nonprofits, it could certainly benefit from more funding. And that's dependent upon having more people in town. So all those things relate to each other. I'm sorry, I don't know more about this in your center. I should. Hey, I just was, you know, it's just like another group of people that are sometimes overlooked, as we know. Yeah. And I think the city's walkability is, you know, that's something that makes a huge difference for people who still need to be out and be active. And but if you have any sort of, you know, visual impairment or physical impairment, if your cities are not easily walkable, it makes it much harder. And then you have people who cannot easily join activities and you really want them, right? You want everybody. Yeah. And I know you. So I know from your background and also mine that, you know, there were some hardships growing up and some, you know, reasons for why we ended up where we did. And I think, you know, how did that? Did that growing up make you much more sensitive? It would seem to me that you are two class issues and fighting for the underdog and making sure that people have what they need. And I really respect that in you. And I think it's a really, really important place to be coming from. So do you want to speak to that at all? All right. Or sure. I think class differences are huge and becoming huge. You're up when my parents moved around because my father couldn't always make a living. And they would, yeah. So they would I grew up most of what I remember is growing up in rural Maine. And then we moved to a really wealthy suburb in Connecticut. And we were not. We were living in this old farmhouse that sometimes had running water and sometimes didn't. And there was no refrigerator and it had a wood stove, which my mother was so depressing. It was like going back to her childhood anyway. So we were living this incredibly, incredibly wealthy town where the houses like across from us would have maids and maids rooms. And, you know, I was like walking into that school was just so different. It was it was like a different world because it was a different world. Like the kids went to France for their summer vacations. You know, we went to see my grandparents. They were half an hour away, really pretty different. And we at that point, sometimes my parents are really poor. As I got older, they got more solid working class, really. My father got solid working factories. But at one point, these. Wealthy people invited us over for dinner. And they really did. They had a maids room. They had three floors. The kids had their own floor. Their own each child had their own bathroom. It was very nice. And we were fed, you know, we weren't starving at that point. We weren't we weren't really hungry. But I was we were playing a game. And I was running through the house with the child who was my age. And I went through the kitchen and there in their kitchen was the leftovers of their dinner, which was this huge roast. Right. It was like the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. And I just stopped. And I know, like, like my mouth fell open, it was so gorgeous. And and the mom was there and my mother was there. It was really sort of awkward. You know, we weren't starving. I just want to stress that, but we weren't eating anything like that. And probably had never eaten anything like that. And she said, are you hungry? And I said, oh, no, I wasn't hungry. And my mother said, no, no, we have we have plenty of food. So it was this awkward moment. But it was also a moment of such depth, you know, of like the divide that. You know, we we would not dream of having that kind of meal ever. That was not going to happen for us. So that whole year for me was an astonishing revelation of how other people lived. And it wasn't just on TV that people really could have these lives while the people next door to them could be hoping that they would get a refrigerator. At that point, my mother had a I have a sister who's 10 years younger and she was she was a little baby then. So I'm not having a refrigerator meant that the milk had to be kept in a cooler. And my father had to lug home ice. You know, it wasn't terrible hardship, but it was a little difficult. And especially when there was no running water, because, you know, whatever the water, the well was dry or got clogged up, it was a hard way to live and isolating. We stuck out a bit. We were not like the others. So that brought you to where you are now. Yeah, it really did make a lasting impression that that there are huge divides and that people who looked on the other side of the divide weren't necessarily cognizant of how great a divide it was, right? Because they're not. They can't see the lives of people who are invisible to them. Just like people can't see the lives of the work that serves them at Christchopper. Yeah, yeah, just invisible lives. Well, I for one am really glad that you are here and champion champion. The cause of working class. People, I mean, I know you're working for the whole city, and that's really important. But, you know, that you have an eye on the equalities that sometimes come in a city and a culture and that you're there to fight for people, their rights, their ability to speak and be heard. And I think you're going to be a dynamic, wonderful mayor of Barry. Do you have do you have any last party words for our audience? I know, get out there, help, Sam. That'd be great. Yeah, I would just like to say the experience of being queer is another experience of being invisible in many ways. Yeah. And. And it brings to mind how do you know you're welcomed, you know, in a city and a building and anything that that those experiences of being poor and those experiences of being queer and especially in the time. I'm really helpful for developing a lasting empathy for. For everyone who doesn't feel like this is about them. This election, this city, this country, it is, it's deeply about everyone. Well, thank you, Sam, and good luck. And and I will certainly be there with the phone banks and whatever else you need. So take care and good luck. We'll see you later. Thanks. Bye. Hi, everybody. I'm here with Kim Ward, who is a local Renaissance person. I'm sure the audience has seen her in many incarnations. She is an occasional sub on our show, but also she's very renowned in the theater world and now has a new collection of poetry that we're here to talk about and celebrate. Welcome, Kim. Thank you. Nice to be here. It's great to have you. Let me start, if I may, by reading your bio just for in case just to remind the audience of your many roles that and perhaps that you wear. Kim Ward is a poet, playwright, visual and theater artist. She is the founder of the Vermont Playwright Circle and received her MFA in performance poetry from Godford College in 1998. Her poem, Angel in the Fire, which is included in this collection, received the 1999 Playwrights Showcase Award by the Vermont Actors and Theater Artists Association and was also accepted into the New Frontiers Conference in 2000. And now it appears in this collection. She has lived in Montpelier for over 20 years and teaches English at Norwich University. Very impressive. I first met you, I think. Maybe I was introduced by one of your colleagues who is an actor and playwright, Devorah Zipkin. I think maybe. But maybe because I know you've been following poetry for many years and I might have met you at a poetry reading. Let's switch immediately to this wonderful collection that is due to appear on April 23rd. It's called Fire on a Circle. And let me read you a short prescription of that. Hopeful, passionate and full of sharp discoveries about the dangers of the world. Fire on a Circle is an exploration of the fires we traverse to become our true selves. Written in free verse, verse, monologue and ancient Nordic formats that's so cool. We'll talk about that. These poems date for the roots of the spirit through exploration of survival, self-discovery and a passion for connection to the author's ancestors and landscape. Landscape plays a little bit of a part in this collection and it's not the pastoral landscape often associated with Vermont. That's one feature I love about the poems. Grounded in years of poetic and runic studies Ward weaves the mothers of her family, the struggles against addiction and pagan practice throughout this debut poetry collection. And we'll put a picture of the cover of the collection up right now so that viewers can look for it and purchase it. I assume as it comes out. And let's start out. You're going to do a couple of readings in the near future of what we want to announce. You're going to appear at the Kellogg Public Library on April 8th in a Queer Poets Read Panel involving a couple of other queer poets and they're going to read in honor of poem city. And that should be great. And you've done group readings before in those kinds of contexts. And then a launch really is going to occur on April 13th. Also at the Kellogg Public Library. Can you tell us a little about that? Yeah, three of us have books coming out from Rootstock in April. And so we will all three be reading as a bit of a book launch that day. And people can always with my book isn't technically up to the 23rd, but you can pre-order it on the Bear Pond Books website right now. And then I can sign it if people want. But there's three of us and I don't have everyone's names in front of me. But I think it'll be a nice collection of readers. It sounds great. And the Queer Poetry reading sounds great, too. I'm going to facilitate. I'm going to moderate. And I think it's a great lineup, including you. Let's start by, if you wouldn't mind just reading a poem for us, just get us off on the right to set the tone. OK, this is the first poem in the book. It's called Movement in D Minor. It's only a dark stage, a bright circle clinging to her yellow skirt, gray words upon her palms. It's only a twisting body, knives of light. Slice out and away from her small frame. It is only one short step out of the safety where she sways to the chanting of the crowd. She leaps off the wooden cliff into the darkness, yellow skirt lifting above her head like a leaf storm. That's a short one. And that brings me to my first question. The title of your collection is so intriguing. It's called Fire on a Circle. And I looked it up and I saw images of fires on circles. It's very numinous and strange and almost pagan and otherworldly. So tell us a little bit about how you happen to tell the collection that. Yeah, so it's interesting. Angel in the Fire was the name of my master's poetic play. And then I when I started writing the Rune poems, there is a line in one of the poems that says the pursuit is fire on a circle. And so it talks about this pagan. It is absolutely pagan. It's this pagan practice of casting a circle. Fire is very cleansing. It's, you know, sort of appropriate for this time of year, because it's about the south and spring and, you know, energy. So that's why I decided to use that phrase from there. And because each section, I oftentimes use fire imagery in my poetry. Yes. And the third section is called Fire, if I'm not mistaken. Yes. Let's go back a little bit. How did you happen to start writing poetry? I've been writing poetry since I was very little. I very much got influenced by Shakespeare on PBS, you know, watching that and then we'd get these little printings of Shakespeare plays and love them. And I've always like, you know, some people say, oh, I remember when I learned how to read, but I don't remember learning how to read. I joked that I learned in the womb because my mother was very into reading and I just loved it. It captured my attention. And so at eleven was when I wrote my first poem and I tell people, I rewrote the story of like, you know, I grew up in a very Christian household and I rewrote the story of Christ to be like a little girl coming in a spaceship to save the world. I don't know, because I like science fiction, too. So it's a little weird, but you know, I like that. Yeah, that's how I and I was very much focused on that a lot when I was younger. Where's the women's voices? Right? That was important. Yeah. How did you happen to put together this collection? Because, you know, a lot of the time I knew you. I knew you went to poetry readings, but I didn't realize that you wrote poetry. I knew you were a prominent playwright and active in theatrical circles. But how did you happen to put together this collection? Yeah, so, you know, I was just so focused on writing poetry most of my life. And then I got through those two hard years of working full time and creating sixty five pages. You had to do sixty five pages of poetry to get your manuscript. It was so intensive that and it was I was very focused on doing plays with poetry that I decided to set the poetry aside for a while and do playwriting and thus Vermont Playwright Circle was founded. And that's how we met. DeVora had you guys come to a workshop, you and Linda. And I was writing poetry, you know, place, place, place. So people didn't know I was a poet and it was good. I needed that sort of reset to do something else. You can't. I felt like I couldn't write poetry and get dialogue out of the page. It was, you know, poetry so dense and images that it was like, what are you writing? So, yeah. And then what happened was I finally started turning back to poetry during the pandemic and after, you know. So it was it was returning to my roots, really, and going to these readings. And then it's again, it's DeVora and Linda, because Linda said, DeVora, I'm looking for some queer poets for a reading. And she said, well, you should talk to Kim Ward. And she said, Kim writes poetry. So it was a thing where people just didn't know and think, God, she said something and I began going to readings. And I was at the last year's poetry, Montpelier poetry, poem alive, whatever the heck they call it. And people were like, well, Kim, where's your book? Where's your book? I've got a book. You need to have a book. And Linda said, Kim, you need to have a book. And sure enough, that sort of proceeded from there. And I've known Sam at Rootstock for a long time. And poof, a year later, I've got a book. So it's a good book. It's a great book in fact. So it's a great addition to the literary community here in Vermont. And it's great that you're writing poetry again. You're still keep up your theatrical involvement. Yes, absolutely. Theatre is one of my first loves as well. They're neck and neck with each other. So. So we've talked about the title a little bit. Is there anything more you want to say about the collection? I mean, the collection is broken into three sections. That first poem that I just read, I literally read, I wrote that as a student in undergraduate school in the 80s. And so there's this whole section of poems, which are in the beginning, sort of these, their love poems and these impressions of artists' moments. And then they move into different sections for different types of poetry that I write. So the first is pursuit. The second is Green Mountain Roads. And the third is fire. How do you happen to sort of come up on that structure? Yeah, so I I kept looking. What what seems to be thematically connected? Where can I put these poems? Because I have different, so many different types. The room poems are so very different. The the fire poems are more like monologue, you know. And the front poems are shorter and more sort of short and sweet. And they're about that younger energy and pursuit of whatever it be, maybe art, maybe love, you know. So that's why I separated in these three sections. And we ended up calling them pursuits, Green Mountain Roads and fire because that line within that poem pursuit is fire on a circle. So there was this kind of a tying it all together now. That's great. Well, a very unusual feature is the second section. It's Norse Runes with explanatory footnotes. Could you talk a little about this section? Maybe read a couple of them if you wouldn't mind. Sure. The other thing that started happening for me as I got into middle age was I became a practicing pagan and I took a year off from doing all the work I had done for decades. I worked as a proofreader and I hated it. But I it was good money. And I took this year off and I as we were participating in with a local pagan group, I said, everybody had their studies. Some people studied, you know, Anglo-Saxon history and some this and some that. I said, you know what, I really tarot cards. You know, what am I going to do for divinatory work? And I said the runes because the runes are about these secrets, these words, these, you know, it's a magic that's writing. And to me, writing is magic. So I started diving really deeply into it. And the German Futhark, which is kind of like you say, alphabet is alpha and beta, right? They're the two Greek words. The Futhark stands for the first few runes. It's sort of an an acronym for the first few runes in that in that 24 number set of runes. And I just started learning them. And then I said, you know, the Germans use these these runes for very terrible reasons. And they really mutated them. They I mean, the swastika was based on the the rune for harvest. Terrible, I didn't know that. And so as I was learning, I thought, oh, my God, do I keep using these runes? But they also most of them are in the Norse tradition and it's the Norse gods that I followed. So Freya, you know, of course, Freya is a very strong character in the Norse. And so I liked the structure that they used within those Norse poems. And I decided I would try to internalize the meanings of each poem by making them. Making a poem that connected them to who I was living in Vermont in modern days. So that's where all these poems come from. That's a long explanation, but that's that's where they come from. And that's that's where I ended up with most of them. For the longest time, I I didn't do there's. So there's 24, there's three sets of et, but they're eight each. So each section has eight runes. And one is for the physical one is for the intellectual and one is for the spiritual. And I haven't quite got through the spiritual. And I keep saying that's because you have to you have to go through the journey of your whole life to really study these. So oh, that's a lot. Yeah, this is and it was a passion of mine for a very long time. So yeah. And so I don't know if you what you might like me to read. But I tried to create a poem in this collection that is not connected to a specific rune but talks about runes in general. So I could start with that one. Yes, please. OK, it's it's called dried ghost. A small cave smoke on the water. An empty longboat once filled with settlers. The rune secrets itself inside her chest. The men gather trumpeting for war. Hunting dogs sniff the carving knife. A dried ghost curls under her tongue. It's leaf of death dislodging teeth. Waiting to spring into fruition on the end of the spear. And the rune she carves bloody handed. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And so the word rune in Scottish literally met secret meeting or secret. So that's why I say the rune is a secret. Yeah. And yeah. And in trying to connect him to me, I felt like they had to be green mountain runes, right? They had to be about Vermont. Of course. And so within the book, because people don't know the words, each each each rune has a definition. So the next poem is the first in the section. It's called Fahoo. And that's F is in Frank, E-H-U. And Fahoo literally met cattle or prosperity. So Fahoo, fussy calf, short pink tongue questing, Fahoo, prosperity. Your cattle are huddled in the field. Fahoo, that fuzzy at the horn root calf. You know, if you come close to the fence, I will offer my hand as a sloppy sacrifice just to feel your slick tongue seeking. Look upon me, Fahoo, with your dark eyes. The fields are still wet with dew and my head is full of dreams. Oh, nice. And, you know, Vermont cattle, for me, growing up, my uncle had a dairy farm. You couldn't throw a rock without hitting a dairy farm. And that's what baby calves will do, right? If they have no teeth and you come up to the they will suck your hand. They're like, oh, can I get some food? Right. So it's kind of this give and take. Like Fahoo cattle can give you prosperity, but you also have to feed them and feed farms to keep them going. So that's great. Thank you. What we still have some time on. Tell us a little, if you would, about Rootstock Publishing. Rootstock Publishing is a great group. They work in a hybrid capacity. So you have, like, you know, big, huge places that publish and they have, you know, slush piles a mile high and you might not ever get read. And then you have what used to be called vanity printing or what a lot of people know of as online printing or on demand now. And they do a little of both. So you have an editor who walks through the manuscript and helps you hone it and they help you do tons of the publication work and the press. And then you put together, you give them the book if they think it's worthy to work with you on it. And then we print it together. So for the first, you know, people can preorder the book and it comes right through, like, you know, once the main publishing houses, you can just order it online. I was kind of giggling one day because I showed up on Barnes and Noble, you know. I showed it. I giggled this whole thing. Yeah, you're really well worth it. I'm there, right? And at the same time, they go out and they get you your ISBN number, which is what you need to sort of order and you go out, get your copy right. I got a little certificate in the mail that said my book was copyrighted. Yeah, so it's a nice combination. And so it's a small press and it cares about the work and it's doing a lot of local people, but that, you know, they're doing folks from far field as well. And Samantha Kober, who owns it, she worked there. And then she bought it out from the other owners. She really knows her stuff, you know. And just God bless. So they're doing a print run like 500 copies. They don't do it that way. No, so I could have if I wanted. But I pay for the way I'm doing it right now as I'm paying for the print run. And then there's a certain percentage, each of us, the printer. And I mean, the root stock and I get back as we sell books. So it works very well. And there's, you know, they have a couple of different models that people can look at. But a lot of local writers have used them. Ava Zimmett, she had her book, The Lost Grip, which was one of the reasons I get interested in root stock. She didn't really. Yeah, I have it on my shelf. I have all my Vermont poets right here. I have a good poet. I like her work and I love her. Yeah, so this is her book and I got it. I said, beautiful. And she does haiku work, which I love, you know. Yeah, they did good stuff. So, you know, they're really good, good group. And they have a big local presence and you say they're national as well. They're they're printing stuff all over and they're doing it in that same way that a larger company will do. You will you will be out there on all the places you need to be in, where if I self published, I'd be on the corner selling them, you know. I don't have time for that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let me ask you for some concluding commentary. And then I'd like to go out with some poems. OK, OK. So what are your final words to our audience? Oh, well, let me ask you one more question. What would you say to poets who are just starting out or want to get public? What's your advice? Yeah, when I was young and, you know, when I was an undergraduate, I was, you know, 18 and I'd gone to college and I'd finally started working on my work. I said, that's it. I'm going to have a book of poetry when I'm 20 and I'm going to be 58 in May. So I would say the biggest thing is not only be patient, but be persistent. Just put your work out there. Make sure people know you do the work. Right. You know, that's the way to do it. And, you know, just be involved wherever you can. There's a lot of amazing things happening in central Vermont with poetry between the LGBTQ readings and Rabbit and Wolf, who are doing tons of readings around central Vermont. And just get out there and enjoy yourself, but also just push to do it. I mean, it is an incredible poetry scene here in central Vermont. You're absolutely right. It's really an opportune place to be a poet. And, you know, yeah, it's really growing. And I think that's really important to have people around you that you can just commune with, you know, because it's a writer's group or as you know, the one writer's group I meet with the most is the Vermont Playwright Circle. We meet monthly and although we're a playwrights group, I have brought, you know, I brought poems to them before. And there's also a local place called it's the Montpelier Moot, M-O-O-T. And they do all different genres and they do have a website if you look them up. And they do a lot. They actually came off of the Burlington Writers Group. There was a Burlington Writers Group. Then I got very small and the Moot sort of reinvigorated themselves. So they do everything from sci-fi to poetry to other fiction and memoir. Isn't there a Green Mountain Writers Group, too? I think there is. And there's also the Vermont Poetry Society. That's right. That's right. Which, yeah, Joy is now who runs the Robin and Wolf is now the president of the Montpeliers of the Poetry Society. So that's great. That's great. Yeah. Are you joined? I have not. And I told her I'm going to now because I went many years ago and I felt I was very shy and I just felt I don't know any of these people. And I laughed and I never joined it. So I'm definitely intrigued to join it now. She's bringing a lot of young energy to the group. That's great. That's great. I know friends who are members. Linda, for example. Yeah. Yeah. Good. So let me ask you for last words and then we'll go out with some wonderful poetry. Nice. Thank you. I will say, I think I should read Angel in the Fire because Angel in the Fire is a play that I wrote about my grandmother, my mother and my sister and I, these generations of women in Vermont. And, you know, the dedication of my book goes to my mother first because of the love of reading. So an angel, it has more fire in it. So why not? Right? Absolutely. All righty. So Angel in the Fire. I am the girl you brought through the fire. I am the singing angel in the furnace. The voice of the hunting owl as she kills her prey. In the beginning, I was the silent face, all questing eyes and limbs. My early body ready to fling this world off. You are mother of mothers, voice of the ages, soothsayer to the aged. Your life stretches to the top place of crones become infants and daughter become keeper in the stone of your hearth, beat the hearts of tree frogs and the wings of youth while I return to the girl in the tree. The one who lost her voice winter after winter so that I would start up in bed fever, shaking the voice out of me while out in the hall was warm light and the sound of your deep song drifting. Yeah, I got a lot of vocal, like upper respiratory infections as a child. And I would always hear my mother's voice in the hallway. And I would know that everything was OK. And go ahead. It's interesting because there's long poems like that. And then I mentioned haiku earlier and I got very interested in haiku when I was in graduate school and how it began with Renga, which was this party game where you would create a stanza and someone else would do the next stanza. Right. And so some of my poems are very, very tiny as well. We have time for that more. All right. So this is called Harvest Time. And I will tell you the explanation will take longer than the poem. But it's about my grandmother. She grew up on a 250 acre farm in Richmond, where speaking of floods, which you can see my flood painting behind me. When that 19 whatever flood happened way back in the 27th, everyone came up to their farm when it flooded, because it was the only place that was above the water line. But she was like harvesting stuff at eight years old, driving the team. So this poem is called Harvest Time. Red Moon this morning, I am walking barefoot in puddles and find the hogs have been killed uphill. So there you go with that one. So, yeah. And then, you know, what else? So you mentioned, should I read Still Life with Foam? You could or my favorite is Vermont Calendar. Vermont Calendar. Oh, here it is. Yeah, this is one of my newest poems. And I've always said I'd make my own Vermont calendar that doesn't look anything like National Life's. I love it. Vermont Calendar. I wanted to write a poem about Vermont, but no one wants to know about my Vermont. The streets of the trailer park, flooding and freezing in winter. The boys tripping me mercilessly as I crawled my way across that rippled expanse of ice in a dress I've been forced to wear to school. The man whose trailer was the first one at the third entrance, who chopped his wife to pieces as if he could fling her up and make ruby stars by which to navigate his broken heart. Our neighbor, Billy, who decided not to come to the bus stop on Monday because he had a date with a tree and a rope he could not break. I vowed at 16 one day I would make my own foliage counter and send it to Vermont Life for publication with a January full of rusted trailers instead of collapsing, bucolic barns or tractors in an October full of tortured souls falling in the bright air in reds and blacks and blues and a December filled with the panoramic picture of my neighbor running from his father's rusted truck at midnight, cast in a green, sickly night vision. And buyers would get a special greeting card with a microchip playing the song of his adolescent voice calling out, Dad, no, don't stop, please. While the growl of the engine can be heard rising and falling like a roaring fire truck. The byline would say no rural poor were killed in the making of these memorabilia. David only broke his leg that night. Thank you for joining us and thank you for your poems. Thank you for having me. Thank you for joining us. And until next time, remember, resist.