Ron Nash - Playwrite: I  stand for love and friendships. I want people to know they are not alone.

Chuck Taylor - Poet and Teacher:   I wanted poetry off the page and out of the mouth. I wantedv it heard more and read less. I wanted to hear poets who could project their emotions into the audience with emotion and good diction. I wanted to develop a community of poets that supported each other. I wanted poetry less academic that could reach a larger audience.

 Andy Feehan-painter: I've been making paintings with foggy atmospheres for a while, thinking somehow that they describe a state of mind...we can't see what's ahead in so many ways these days.

Jeff Woodruff - Poet and Metalsmith: Standing for a world of Joy and Wonder I  crack open syntax to reveal a deeper realm of the un-distinguished universe and  there by give access to the previously unknown

Rick Dodson - Glass Artist, Songwriter: Images flow through my mind.  I have no control.  They do as they please.  They ask no permission.   They do not stop when I ask.  I am at their mercy.  If I can catch them for a moment, and turn them into glass reality, it is a good day.

STUART HEADY - Poet and Journalist:  We have been building an infrastructure for sharing a community mind for a couple hundred thousand years. Like fish, we may not grasp that we swim in this water. Poetry is about trying to be aware and perhaps extend our built roadway beyond what is currently the edge.

Rodney Butler (poet, painter, sculptor, blacksmith): I stand where I stand, first alone and as a man. My Art is about true freedom of expression. While walking the line between integrity and creativity. I create and operate in spirit and purpose, not in public opinion. Not about what others want to see, it's about what inspires me. I don't desire to be better than anyone else, just be better than myself. https://rodneydbutlerartist.wordpress.com/

 Nancy Day - Poet: "comes from drifts of inspiration or an effort to create within a form."

 Sharlene Gilman - Poet, Journalist, teacher:  To be human isn't easy. We come complex with cravings and shadows, the horrors of histories, the light that burns us to forge a persistence and strength inside this mortal fragility. We give birth to articulate this being-ness. Some of us are compelled to do so, to sing, to cry, to holler aloud. The old get more shaded, more nuanced, more subtle and dimensional, and we still sing, our voices not what they were, but we appreciate the newer voices, discover how the young learn their songs, both different and alike. All what it means to be human.

Freida Werden - Poet, Journalist, Radio Broadcaster:  Poetic sensibility works well with radio production. A great opening line. Rhythm, imagery, emotional trajectory...  and of course, the aphorizein. I think the image for aphorizein would be the sun breaking the horizon - a modern equivalent might be making a light come on.  A sudden realization, if you can fit it in to any work of art, is a great thing.

 Steve Brammell - Poet, Wine Specialist: My upbringing in the rural Midwest still influences my work as a poet and writer, the wide-open landscape and sky that seems to have no limits imparting a humility in its literary offspring and a desire to distill language to its essence. I’ve always strived to hone my words into plain Midwestern speech anyone can comprehend, no matter how complex the subject matter, yet making the reader aware of the iceberg lurking below the surface that native son Hemingway spoke of. 

Richard Horton - Poet, Book Conservationist: The jury’s out about whether I write poetry.  I write something I invented.  One friend thinks it’s poetry.  Here’s how it works at present. Told by mouth: true or not Realia and its invisible sisters

Image grouping for resonance or recognitions Cleaning the event: remove analysis Freeing up the pace: removing numbering, excessive sibillation, stop-words & unneeded dead space between sentences.  The text is a script.1 The purpose of these practices is not the style itself, but to get the reader to jump on.

 Mark Christal - Poet, Smithsonian Institute (retired):

1. I think my best poems come from personal experiences or dreams. A larger percentage of poems come from those sources as I grow older. (I recall Albert Huffsticker telling me that my poetic output will increase when I have more life experiences to draw from.)

2. After that, poems that come from more curious or philosophical notions. Poems as theoretical hypotheses. Poems as cosmic jokes.

3. Next, poems that are fictional narratives or mythos. These last two categories dominated my earlier works.

4. I reject poems that attempt to control your behavior, like advertising jingles. That isn’t poetry at all in my opinion. Poetry wants to free you—permit your own interpretation or launch you into wonder.

Rattle

how poems come to me

start as a notion

a seed or pebble

that rattles around

in my head

the seed may grow and blossom

the pebble just rattles

but something develops

and spills out on a page

sooner or later

such notions come to me all the time

some rattle around for years

some spill out in a hour or a day

something I saw walking down the street

a strange turn of phrase overheard

a dream rolled up in a curious feeling

a memory triggered by a post

get lodged in my head

and rattle around

my head isn’t vast

it’s not like there

is an ocean of notions

sloshing around in there

let me shake my head

can’t you hear that rattle?

no?

good

I guess I’m finished here

ROY GRIFFIN - Poet: My poems are efforts to engage the mundane facets of existence, not only my experience of the world but also such flotsam and jetsum of my internal world, also mundane. Often nature crops up, both as a focus and a backdrop.I don’t dwell too much on its Wordsworthian beauty, but on its messy and sometimes problematic spectacle that it presents. Both nature and humanity have a certain willful autonomy that frequently frustrates the achievement of their respective ends, but the whole system willy nilly strives to recover a dynamic balance and harmony Much of the time this is balance is achieved, in this or that local situation, though the Whole, under the guidance of the elan vital makes whatever harmony and perfection is possible in the present moment. Some times the balance and harmony is lost in the transient eternity of the now for individual becomings. An individual entity dies or a species becomes extinct, passing into the past where it lives forever as a reenactmen, purged of its disharmony, perhaps inspiring a live reenactment in the messiness of the present moment, but at a new level as the Life Force, the Great Spirit, God, What-Have-You, seeks to establish and re-establish whatever harmony and balance (hence Beauty) is possible in the context of past and present choices made by all the the individual becomings that constitute the cosmos, including the Great Spirit itself. Poets and artists and their analogs at levels of becomings seek to do the same under the inspiration of that Great Spirit. Or as Whitehead put it, “God is the Poet of the World”—the Cosmos

 Leonard Bachman-Architect: mMy similar project is to meld everyday, sublime, and awe into just such a poetic architecture.

William Burge - Memoirist, art-car sculptor: I hate the compromise of it all and I truly believe that the only way to do it is to sacrifice yourself for the greater good through your art and actions. Embrace what you are and pursue it like nothing else matters. Do this and you will be rewarded with everything that would come with an adventure. Get a warehouse in the worst part of town and make art in it. Take a chance and leave the herd and fulfill your dreams without anybody else's influence. Dumpster dive all day long and gather art supplies or maybe something to write about. Some of it you win, some of it you lose. Both of them are valid and should be included in your story that you get to tell the universe when you leave this fucking rock. bB

 Stacy Houston - Painter: Right now, my tools are visual storytelling through image association. I’m reexamining the stories we’ve heard all our lives: our myths, legends, fairy tales and bible stories. They don’t all originate in one place or even in one book. I’m fascinated by the stories we continue to tell ourselves and I translate them into paint so that I can examine the similarities between cultures and peoples and the nuances that change over time and why.