By Jonathan Burger, Craven Arts Council & Gallery, Inc.
Where are you from and how did you end up in Eastern North Carolina?
I grew up in Alabama and graduated from Mississippi State. I worked for a newspaper after college. Because of my interest in environmental issues, I was encouraged to apply for the Southern Coordinator position with the group organizing the first Earth Day in 1970. I also was one of the editors of the group’s newsletter which after Earth Day became the Environmental Action magazine. I worked as a writer and media producer for 40 years in DC and New Jersey before retiring to New Bern. I began to view my Social Security check as grant to the arts so I could concentrate on some creative projects.
You do both poetry and visual arts, including photography. What relationship do you see between these different artistic avenues?
My writing on environmental issues led me to photography and I wrote several articles for Smithsonian magazine that featured my photography. This led me to create a nonprofit that produced instructional, informative and organizing media. I also produced several independent films (yes before video there was such a thing). One, “Radiation Impact on Life,” won Best Didactic Film at the European Scientific Film Festival. I had to look up didactic and discovered it meant media that teaches without pounding people over the head. I realized my film work and freelance articles were didactic. After I retired from a corporate media production job, I started writing poetry because the right phrases in poetry can create images in our heads and may change the way we see the world. Although I write poems about a variety of subjects, I tend to focus on environmental issues. For example, my poem “Urban Tumbleweed” describes a plastic bag blowing across a road and creates a new image of the horrible problem of plastic in the environment. I run into people who tell me they can’t look at a wind driven plastic bag tumbling on a street without thinking of a tumbleweed rolling across a desert landscape.
Does your work have a central theme, or several themes? Do they cross over mediums?
A lot of my work focusses on cultural, social and environmental issues. I also use my past media production skills to create short videos of the poems that I post on YouTube, Facebook and my website.
Some people can read a poem and visualize the images, but others need a literal image. Adding images to my readings opens the static poetry up to a population that won’t read a poem.
Do you have formal training as a poet or artist, or are you mostly self-taught?
I have a background in journalism which led me to writing scripts for instructional and marketing media. We are lucky in North Carolina to have the North Carolina Writers’ Network that organizes wonderful workshops with great instructors. I have taken advantage of their seminars, conferences and workshops for years and it has really helped shape my work.
You actually did some live virtual poetry readings during the pandemic. Can you talk about what inspired you and why that was important?
So much stopped in my life during the pandemic and I found it hard to get inspired since it looked like the world was falling apart for so many. I decided to pull together a poetry manuscript of my environmental poems that had been published all over including on the web and in print. Some even found a home with publishers in England. I had a vision one day an archaeologist would uncover my book and marvel at how I chronicled our environmental destruction. When my book Earth Resonance got accepted by The Poetry Box in Oregon, I produced some poetry videos and did some virtual readings on Zoom to promote it.
Is there another artist (poetry or visual) whose work you admire or inspires you?
As part of my poetry adventure, I read a lot of poems. Walt Whitman has to be at the top of the list because he broke from so much of the classical poetry. Also, he self-published the first edition of Leaves of Grass so I could identify with that. I have also marveled at Peter Makuck’s poems because he is a master of succinct descriptive images. And of course, I heard Allen Ginsberg live several times and he planted some seeds that later flourished. Also, for the last six years our local Nexus Poets group has sponsored a monthly poetry reading that has created a platform for some amazing poets. After our Featured Poet reads, we encourage poets to participate in the Open Mic and the local and regional talent continues to stimulate me. It is now hybrid with both live and Zoom readings. See www.nexuspoets.com.
What piece (poetry or visual art), award, or exhibition are you particularly proud of, and why?
No doubt my fourth book of poetry Earth Resonance: Poems for a Viable Future is the one I am most proud of. I also made one of my poems into an illustrated children’s book My Little Plastic Bag. I worked with Samrae Duke, an incredible local illustrator, and it helps educate children about what happens to a plastic bag thrown into the environment. I even have a Spanish version that has been used in a literacy program in Mexico. My books are available in New Bern at the Bank of the Arts and at the Next Chapter bookstore.
In one sentence, what is art to you?
Really inspiring visual, spoken and printed art transforms reality and gives form to our subconscious.
Do you have any advice for someone looking to become an artist or poet?
Believe in your work and don’t be silenced by those that reject you because they don’t share your vision.
I know you’ll be in the Coastal Photo Club Exhibition at the Bank of the Arts in September, but where else can people find your work?
Check out www.samlove.net.