The pics accompanying are unfortunately not as fine as I’d like, but adverse conditions–high winds for the photo shoot, swarms of biting gnats, a dark work space–conspired against us in all our attempts.  We did what we could under the circumstances, which are always somewhat haphazard at Casa Karamesines.

William and Katherine Morris’ mother Linda actually conducted the interview.  It was a great pleasure to meet the source from whence sprang these two unique and talented blogging associates of mine.  I’ve known William (whom I’ve never met)  for several years now and often wondered where in the world he came from.  At last, more clues!

At WIZ’s companion blog A Motley Vision, I’ve posted, at Katherine’s suggestion, three questions and answers cut from the interview to trim length.

The winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff’s Admin Award is Gabriel Aresti Jr. (aka Ángel Chapparo Sainz) for his poem, “Nospringland.” For his prize, he chose to receive Warren Hatch’s Mapping the Bones of the World.

All the poems submitted to the Spring Poetry Runoff form a stunning garden of springtime delights and more than fulfill the celebration’s intent to welcome spring via communal voice.   The fine language of many of the poems attracts my attention sharply.  But I had to choose one.  I chose “Nospringland” for the Admin Award for its heart, its sentiment, and—against all its appearances of being a simple poem in language and form—the intricate way it threads into a complex tapestry—the Basque separatist movement in the poet’s homeland.  “Homeland,” of course, is the matter the conflict holds in question.  Also at the heart of the conflict—preservation of the unique Basque language.  The poet’s choice to write and send an English-language poem reflecting the conflict’s effects upon him personally is itself a complex act, not the least of it being the sharing of heartfelt experience with an English-speaking audience.  Furthermore, given the Basque language’s importance to the decades-long conflict and to the poet’s identity, seemingly obvious lines such as “There is no more poetry for your fight” acquire iceberg-like ironic depth and weight.  As I mentioned in the comments on that poem, the use of punctuation—another seemingly simple pattern of choices—also intrigues me for the effects it exerts on the poem’s tone.

While “Nospringland” ran counter-clockwise to the general tone of the Spring Poetry Runoff, I found the poem’s language a deeply moving and necessary reminder that spring does not appear the same to all eyes.  What I might take for granted as a season to gather in communal festivities can in another invoke, in the changing of light and flowering of warmth and spring colors and in shared language, painful ironies of separation and the continued intrusion of the killing season into a celebrated time of rebirth.  Thanks, Ángel, for sending that poem.

But here at WIZ, our nearly six-week flow of sparkling verse has finished.  The last poems have posted, and voting to decide which one wins the Spring Poetry Runoff contest will begin Monday, May 3rd,  and run through Friday, May 7th.  Poets, please come back and vote, and let your friends and family members know about the voting, too.

I’d like the thank–happily, exuberantly–all the poets who contributed to the Spring Poetry Runoff not only for participating beautifully but also for exceeding my expectations for the number of poems submitted.    There really was a spectacular turnout, and I’m in awe of the quality of the poems.  Very well done, folks.

The poll to determine the winner of the Spring Poetry Runoff Popular Poem Award will close Friday. May 7, but winners of both the popular vote and the Admin Award will be announced Monday, May 10th.   So keep an eye on WIZ to see how matters settle out.  Also, clean off your reading glasses.  Twenty-one poems qualified for the voting, any one of which can cause you to linger.   Another matter to consider: Each voter will be able to vote for his or her three favorite poems!

Again, good work, participants.  Stay tuned.

The Rancher Speaks

I was in the sheep business for years.
Sold off my sheep and got into the cattle business and now I have friends.
The cattle men talk to me.
I suppose what finally drove me out was the predators.
The eagles swooping down and taking newborn lambs
and there was nothing we could do about it.
We tried noisemakers and other things.
Finally we heard about Great Pyrenees dogs.
You put 2 in the pen and they protect the sheep.
Well, my cousin and I drove up to Idaho
and the fellow wanted $500 apiece for them.
We each bought two.
We put them in the pens and they started right in doing what they were supposed to.

Bringing the sheep in from the spring field we found 30 head and a dog missing.
We had a higher pasture so my wife and I drove up there.
We found the 30 head and the dog
– limping and thin and shaggy.
It was apparent he had fought off some predators,
and he had worn out his feet.
I put him in the back of the truck,
but he wanted to get out so I tied him in,
and my wife started down to the lower pasture to put out food and water,
and I walked the sheep,
but she stopped.

The Great Pyrenees was hanging over the edge of the bed.
Well, I tied him in tighter,
but he started hanging over the side of the bed and he managed to slip out of his collar.
He wasn’t going to let anything keep him from his job.
When we got down to the lower pasture he barely stopped for a drink,
then went back to his sheep.
He died a few days later.
I was a sheepman, he a shepherd.
The cost to be a good shepherd is everything.

II

The Rancher’s Wife Comes to the Pulpit

Not a shepherd? Perhaps, but let me tell you about his ducks.
He bought a new batch of chicks and ducks, keeps them out in the garage.
He’s really good about keeping them fed and watered and the box cleaned out.
He had them in the same box but the ducks weren’t being nice to the chicks.
He told me one day. “I’m worried about this one. Its feet are cold.”
When he worries I worry.

Going down to the basement I heard water running in the bathroom.
He was washing the duck’s feet.
I thought about the Savior washing Peter’s feet
And how at first Peter didn’t want it.
Sometimes we let our pride get in the way of what the Savior needs.
When Peter understood this he said, “Lord wash all of me,
Hands, head, feet and all.”
But the feet suffice to warm the duck.

________________________________________________________________

Harlow Soderborg Clark grew up in Provo, spending many an hour on the living room carpet listening to a couple of Smothers Brothers albums.  He thinks of their character, “poor, dull, mediocre Fred,” as an alter ego. He also has an altar ego writing a fiction called Sacrament Meeting in the Alzheimers Ward, which includes a character who turns peoples’ talks into poems. Harlow is on hiatus (soon to end, he hopes) from blogging on AMV about Book of Mormon textual changes. He thanks Leslie Norris for ideas about simplicity which allowed him to recognize this poem when he heard it.

*Contest entry*

Daffodil has become again
small-pusher-of-earth-and-snow,
light-out-of-stone,
seawater-turned-sunshine.

This morning has its own name,
separate from all other mornings,
fire-in-the-clouds
waking-in-the-folds-of-mountain,
joy-of-long-shadows.

And now spring has brought
mist-in-my-breath,
shining-on-the-rocks,
quick-and-noisy-in-the-canyon,
to make soft soil in the garden
where I kneel for the first time
on the almost-warm-gift-to-growing
and work my spade toward summer.

_____________________________________________________________

For Sandra’s bio and other poems submitted to WIZ’s Spring Poetry Runoff, click here and here.

*Contest entry*

They were in the hole
under the beet dump,
flooded with spring sub water,
little frogs, noisy and so many
we ran home, using the road,
using big steps and racing
so we could bring back
a shoe box.  We filled that thing
with frogs and took them home,
taking turns carrying.
We knew what we needed,
but we had no plan.  Only later
we discovered big sisters
do not understand a throbbing
shoe box Monday morning
under the clothesline.

_____________________________________________________________

For Sandra’s bio and another of her Spring Runoff Poems, click here.

*Non-contest submission*

Silver gray brush bears yellow blossom cascades.
Stands of ocotillo—no longer barren,
barricaded with thorns—
blush tiny green leaves until
burnt orange petals burst from their fingertips.

Drying mesquite scents air
alive with the rush of rabbits, cooing doves,
the hawk’s hunting cry, coyotes’ eerie babble,
silent lizards thawing on hot rocks,
a snake’s mysterious rustle.

In desert’s spring, even the tough-skinned saguaro,
that towers through time—scarred, but sustained—
blooms pure white perfection to celebrate
the joy of renewal, hope of rebirth,
cleansing rains of sorrow,
and seeds of forgiveness sown
precious drop by precious drop,
beneath a verdant olive
for me.

____________________________________________________________

Young adult novelist and poet, Angela Morrison, graduated from Brigham Young University and holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of the Arts. She grew up in Eastern Washington on the wheat farm where her debut YA novel, TAKEN BY STORM (Penguin/Razorbill 2009), is set. TAKEN BY STORM is a collage of poetry, dive log entries, and online chat transcripts and stars an authentic LDS girl. Her second novel, SING ME TO SLEEP (Penguin/Razorbill 2010) features a lyric writing heroine. “Beth’s Song” from the novel was recently released on iTunes by Primus: Amabile Men’s Choir. Angela wrote the lyrics for Harriet Bushman’s choral jazz oratorio, “Gideon,” that premiered in January, 2010 in Kuwait and was a contributing poet for Harriet’s 2006 concert opera, “1856: the Long Walk Home” performed on Temple Square to commemorate the Martin/Willie Handcart Tragedy Sesquicentennial. After eleven years abroad in Canada, Switzerland and Singapore, Angela and her family are happily settled in the heart of the Sonoran Desert in Mesa, AZ.

*Contest entry*

Home for spring break,
I’d overheard
that it’s filling up good this year.
(Was it at Terry’s Merc?
Or at the Relief Society Birthday Ball
where I watched a former cheerleader
dance in maternity clothes?)

No matter.

It’s enough to watch
water swell like metaphor
while I remember
that my father grew up
soothed by its flow
past his bedroom window
into small-town gardens.

It’s enough to taste
sagebrush in stories
of cold crawling days
that a wind captures
and shivers away.

It’s enough to hear
this birth of cascades
answering the question
now asked below:
wonder if it’ll run over
again this year?

____________________________________________________________

For Nani’s bio and another of her Spring Poetry Runoff entries, click here.

*Contest entry*

I am stone, too–stone
And one hot wick of life
Fusing me to the first generation,
Flaring forward from me to the last.
Stone, thread, and rain

One March, Grandfather held
A forked stick by the prongs
And walked slowly back and forth
Across the lava–back and forth
In small steps and watched
The stick dip and writhe.

That was how we got our garden,
Dragging a hoe beside the string
Stretched between two sticks,
Marking rows in dust of rock.
The wick was in the seeds.
That was all–rock, thread,
And Grandfather’s water.
Days and nights came with the rock.

It is spring again.  A stone vireo
Sings his hymn from the top branch
Of brittle sage.  I touch nothing
Only watch the waiting fortress
Clad in the shadows of clouds.

When I am divided into my elements,
I will be all stone,
Except the water and the thread.

____________________________________________________________

Sandra Skouson won the Utah Arts Council prize in poetry for a book-length manuscript in 2004.  In 1996 she won the Arts Council prize for ten poems.  Her poems have appeared in Petroglyph, Ellipsis, and Great and Peculiar Beauty: A Utah Reader. She is the mother of nine children, the grandmother of 30 really adorable grandchildren.

“Beginning to Rain: At Monument Valley” was originally titled “Another Spring.”  It was published in Petroglyph 4, 1992.

*Contest entry*

E noho:
I see hunger squirm beneath
your skin. Break bread. Dip it in butter
heavy as afterbirth. Let the excess glide
across your tongue, drop
into the well of appetite, filled with milk
fresh from the coupled Void. Sidle toward
the breast. Press between her skin and his.
Join the sextuplet gods waiting to suckle,
mouths wide against emptiness,
hunger sliding between lips chapped
from too long in the womb—

ora mate ora mate ora
Ply your flesh
in this orgy of mythologies. Mix spittle
with the grammar of desire
shorn from Adam’s side. Slip on
this red clay like spirit slips on nakedness.
An infant its mother’s breast. Meaning,
the itch always just out of reach. Slide
from this amniotic tide into the metaphor
christened body. Meaning movement.
Meaning legion. Meaning drink
from this cup and we’ll help you forget to

breathe.

______________________________________________________________

Definitions (from Māori Dictionary Online: http://www.maoridictionary.co.nz/):

Te Kore (pronounced “teh KO-reh”): (n.) realm of potential being, The Void.

Haere Mai (pronounced “HI-reh MY”): (interjection) “Come here!” or “Welcome!”; a greeting.

E noho (pronounced “EH no-HO”): (v.) sit, stay, remain, settle, dwell, live, inhabit, reside.

Ora (pronounced “OH-ruh”): (stative) be alive, well, safe, cured, recovered, healthy, fit; the principle of life.

Mate (pronounced “MAH-teh”): (stative) be dead, sick, ill, ailing, overcome, beaten, defeated, in want of, lacking, overcome, deeply in love; the principle of death.

______________________________________________________________

Tyler Chadwick lives in Idaho with his wife, their three daughters, and their Miniature Schnauzer. His poetry has appeared in Metaphor, Dialogue, Irreantum, Salome Magazine, Black Rock & Sage, and on WIZ (here and here) and AMV (here and here) and many of his poems and his Mormon Poetry Project can be found on his personal blog.

*Non-contest submission*