High Above Grand (Poet Jane Ellen Ibur)

Jane Ellen Iver, a St. Louis poet, has been involved in teaching literacy through creative writing and poetry. She has worked with various organizations and groups, including prisoners, veterans, and mentally ill individuals. Jane believes that poetry is a powerful tool to help people express themselves and discover their own inner thoughts and feelings. She teaches different forms of poetry, often making it a fun and playful experience. Jane has published several books and continues to share her work through readings and performances. She reads a poem dedicated to a recently deceased friend. Hello, welcome to High Above Grand, my name is Brett Lars Underwood, I'm a poet, and I know a lot of people, so we're going to be talking to a lot of people, including St. Louis poets. And we're here today in CBGB below the Killswitch Media Studios on South Grand with producer R.W. Smith with St. Louis poet Jane Ellen Iver. Hi Jane, how are you doing? Very good, how are you? Very good, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. Yeah. Man, we could go on and on and on about all the important things you do in St. Louis, being the poet laureate, but before that, I mean, you've been educating people from kindergarten all the way into, I don't know, death row, but definitely prisoners, veterans of war, and all this good stuff. And that's, I mean, talking about the loss of literacy in our society, I think what you do is incredible. How did you get started with that exactly? You started teaching right out of college, sort of? I did start teaching right out of college, but that was different. I started teaching, this is so weird, because I just moved down the street from the school I started teaching at over 51 years ago. Oh my God. Okay, so that was English, I was teaching English, I taught English in middle school for two years, and then I had to leave that behind, I had to let it go. You know, I could not stand the grades and the politics of being in the school, in that capacity. I ended up spending a whole lot of time in school beyond that, as it turned out, but by then, I was a guest poet, and I was teaching poetry to kids, which was a whole lot different than teaching English, and I was in and out, and that was just a whole different world. But how I got into it, I'm trying to remember how this started exactly, but we were talking about Ann Hawbrook a minute ago, and Ann was definitely involved in starting my dream, which was to live a life of literacy. So it was connected to working on the radio with her, but she's the one who gave me my first gig. Right on. She was running the Writer's Voice out at the Chesterfield Y, and she invited me out there to teach a class for women, and I did not know Ann. I think I'd seen her at some readings, and she'd seen me read, and so she asked me to come out there, and I called her the day before I went. I lived in the city, so I was going to be driving far west, and I asked her how many women had signed up, and she said seven. So I decided I had nothing to lose. This was not going to work out, obviously. So I dressed in all cowgirl attire, boots, chat, everything, everything. There were 35 women there, 35 West County women, and I had a cap gun, and I called the class to order my, you know, shooting up a cap gun. So we took, the class went for like eight weeks there. It was phenomenal, and we took it out of the Y and took it to a church, and it ran for like 14 more years. So that was one role, and then when Ann asked me to do the radio show with her, we're talking about literature for the halibut on KDHX, that, our first guest was a woman named Diana Schmidt, and she ran and started an organization called Lift, which stood for Literacy Investment for Tomorrow, and Diana hired me. And I started teaching in what were then called housing projects. My first one and the one I spent the most time with was Cochran Gardens, I believe. I was all over the place. I was all over the place, teaching literacy through creative writing, and teaching literacy through poetry, and trying to make it, because I was working with adults. There was a time I was working with adults in their late 20s who had little kids in day care, and so as the day care, as part of the day care, the adults were passing their GED. And so I was teaching the essay portion, but I was doing it with ridiculous topics that they had to prove, and stuff to make people who had dropped out of school enjoy fighting their way back to learning their GEDs. And they were doing it, and it was working, it was fantastic. So I worked for Diana for like 17 years. I always did long gigs at places, and then Anne, again, started the Community Arts Training Institute, and that was part of the Regional Arts Commission, and she brought me on board for that as well, and I stayed there over 30 years. So I did stay long at different places teaching. And in the meantime, people called Anne, and said, you know, like the Father Support Group called Anne and said, we need a poet, maybe it wasn't a poet, we need a teacher to teach creative writing down here, for these fathers getting out of prison. And Anne told them to call me, and I went down there. Did you know Halbert Sullivan? No. Okay. Well, Halbert was great, a cool guy, and he said to me, I'm looking for a black man, and I said, well, okay then, and I started to get up, and he said, but Anne said you were the best, and I said, wow, I am. I had confidence for a minute, and he hired me, and it was a great class. So you're teaching creative writing mostly to people who... Who weren't expecting it. Right. So from what I understand, you talked a little bit about how it was so different teaching English to children, and having the overhanging politics of school boards, and of course parents and everything else too, but now you're teaching creative writing to people who don't know that they can even write, right? Is that correct? Yes. And so how does that relate to, I mean, to everybody, to getting out of their own place, just getting out of the way sort of through creative writing, and maybe, you know, a lot of people say, oh, you know, you should write what you know, but I think it's like with poetry, you know, maybe you write what you don't know, right, the unconscious sort of like bring up the poetry. But is that what you don't know, or what you unconsciously do know? Well, you know it, but you don't know you know it, right? Okay, okay. So poetry is a way of bringing it to consciousness. Yeah. I think poetry is magic. Yeah, sure. And in my career, I have been lucky enough to teach people who never were expecting poetry to come into their lives. Right. All of them. I taught a lot of mentally ill organizations like ADAPT, Safe Connections, and the veterans, you know, I mean, I was teaching, and I still have a couple in class. I was teaching Vietnam vets. And do you think they thought they were poets? And the first one I started with, I want you to write from the perspective of Superman at 75. Mm-hmm. And they were writing about themselves, you know. Yeah. But they didn't know that at that moment. They were able to get the distance to be able to write about this and what that might feel like, to either not or have lost your superpowers. Yeah. What is that like? Well, they're living it. Yeah. So they were able to do it as a poem, where straight out, you couldn't have asked the right question to get that answer. Yeah. You know, there was no other way to get certain answers out of people than through art. Yeah. And poetry is my venue, so. And it works. It's magic. I mean, do you feel that when you write? Oh, of course. Yeah, yeah. I don't really start from, I think, if you're teaching, you probably start with a prompt or maybe, and you teach form and everything else, too, sort of. How does that work with, because I've never studied form, and I don't even think about form a lot of times. Sometimes you end up with it, but do you start with free writing and then have people get into that, or do you teach the form first and then? Oh, I go back and forth. Okay. I go back and forth. But the form, and I have never said this way before, but it's finding patterns. Sure. And just keeping up with these patterns. And if you can start seeing these patterns other places, like knitting. Those are patterns. Two rows like this, two rows like this. Well, there's a sonnet. Two rows, two rows, you know? It's, I try to take it apart and make it as simple as possible and make it a game. For instance, one form is a villanelle. Okay. Sure. Well, I have found a way to write a villanelle out of order. Okay. And have it come out perfectly. I like that. I don't know why, but it is so much fun. Yeah. Because you're doing it and you're breaking, you're doing rules while breaking them at the same time. That sounds great. And if you don't like rules, it's the best thing to do. All right. I can do it with sestinas as well. Okay. Write them out of order and the poem works. And there's visual poems like the Fibonacci, little short pieces that you can build by adding stanzas and now it's a visual piece too, instead of just one stanza up here. And there are certain poems like the Pantoum that are elastic poems. They can either be very short or very long. Okay. I make it as games. Sure. Just make it as games because we're not going for grades here. Yeah. We're on basically what we're doing is we're on an inward journey. Right. And I'm saying, I have been on a couple of these journeys in this way. Come and follow me. We're going to see some amazing things. Sure. But you've got to try some things that I'm going to suggest that you do. And I'll tell you magic things will happen. Yeah. And so you, with willingness, try to do them and you're just like, wow, did I write that? I want you to surprise yourself. Sure. The first time it happens, you know, I want to be like, wow, that was great. So you've got a couple of books out. I do. Obviously you've been in dozens of anthologies and journals by now and done dozens and thousands of readings. But I was going to ask, do you want to read something? Maybe read a couple of pieces from what you have published already from your own books and tell us about where they came from and. OK. Yeah. Well, thank you. Yeah, sure. OK, this, you know, I want to read this one today because our friend and realtor just passed away last week. Oh, OK. And so this is for Kay. And it's called At the Havens. It's actually, well, I'm not going to tell you where it is in the book, but it's in the first book, which is called Both Wings Flappin', Still Not Flyin'. Oh, right. Yeah. And it's a big book of poems about the woman who raised me. Yeah. And and then trying to survive her death. We're talking to Jane Allen Iver. You're listening to High Above Grand in the Killswitch Media Studios with producer R.W. Smith. Actually, we're live in CBGB today with Janie, and she's going to read to us. It's going to be great. All right. Thank you for doing that. And yeah, hit it. Thank you. OK. This is also, we were talking about forms a second ago. This is a Tersonelle. And what that means to you as a listener is that it has both rhyme and repetition. So you can listen for those things. How much grief do we owe the dying? We wait with them but never leave the shore. Deep into the night they sail away and we wait crying. We fear the tunnel of time, the lonely hours we abhor. We think we want to follow them, but our feet freeze. We wait with them but never leave the shore as if their living makes our life complete. We wonder, did we ever do enough? We think we want to follow them, but our feet freeze. So how do we respond? Withdraw or handcuff? If we drop their hand, we flail into the future. We wonder, did we ever do enough? We clamp our hearts down tight, stitched with fancy sutures that pretend to hold us steady, turn our faces to the sun. If we drop their hand, we flail into the future. If we're happy, is our love for them undone? Pretend we're holding steady, turn our faces to the sun. How much grief do we owe the dying? Deep into the night they sail away and we wake crying. That was from which book again? I'm sorry. Both Wings Flap and Still Not Crying. All right. And that book all together was about an old friend or acquaintance you had about maybe someone you were caretaking with? Is that true? Or am I just mixing stuff up? No, you aren't actually at all. Okay. So Mary worked for my family initially. That's how I knew her. And as a child, I promised her that I would take care of her when she needed help. And I was able to fulfill my promise. Even though it was a grandiose promise for a child to make. And I was young in my 20s and 30s at the time and did not have the funds, you know. So there are some adventures in there about how one gets away when one doesn't have the funds. Yeah. And how wearing the mask of whiteness can really help a situation. So I ended up taking care of Mary for the last 11 years of her life. Wow. And that book is about that as well. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. That just didn't happen right away. Probably had to wait to publish that over the kids, you know. Right. Yeah. It took a long time. Yeah. It took a long... Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times I ask people like, what are your experiences with the readings and how the scene in St. Louis and everything? And like, are you bothered by all the delineations of all the scenes? But I mean, you're just breaking down walls just by all the people you teach. I mean, you're taking poetry to people that haven't even ever thought about it. So, but how has this, I mean, you've been at it since you got out of Webster in the 70s, right? Yeah. So like, and then you knew Castro and of course, Shirley LaFleur. Now you're the St. Louis Poet Laureate. I did know them. So I knew Michael since the 90s and I knew... Michael Castro, I should say. Michael Castro, sorry. That was me. Sorry, we're acting like everybody knows what we're talking about. Michael Castro, our first Poet Laureate and a friend of mine for well over 40 years. And of course, I knew Shirley back in the day with all the backup music that she played with, J.D. Perrin. Yeah. Arthur Brown went to Webster when I was there. He was my first TA in a philosophy course I took. So I was reading with them. I was reading with Danny Spell. Yeah. I read a lot at Duff's over the years. Yeah. And then I was co-director with Michael for a while of the Duff's reading series. Yeah. That I brought people in. And one of my favorites was one I brought in for my own personal self for my birthday. It was Yusuf Komunyakaa. Oh, yeah. The place was packed. Yeah. And he said, is this really your birthday? And I said, yeah, it really is. And I wanted you to read to me for my birthday. Oh, wow. And he said, and I'm going to do it. Yeah. Oh, God. I had chills just remembering that reading. Yeah. Because Glenn Papa Wright did. He was playing the chairs. Yeah. With his drumsticks. He was playing the chairs. Papa's still at it. I know he is. He was amazing. So back in the day, it was fantastic. Yeah. Michael and I ran into each other. It was the Siouxland Culture Squad down in the Sioux. Sure. We were all over the place with them. Deb Stewart was in there. Um, Lenny Smith. Yeah, Lenny's kicking. Yeah. I know it. Yeah. It's good. It's good. Yeah. Uh, a lot of, yeah. Some of the people aren't, uh, Bill Green. Some of them aren't still kicking. Yeah, right. Yeah. But, but we had a good time back then. Yeah. Between Duffs and, and, uh, down there we ran a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the scene is kind of, I mean, obviously it's changed here and there. Duffs is gone, unfortunately. But, uh, um, it's, it's still vibrant and different. And, uh, I guess the, the academics and the street poets are still maybe not as connected as they used to be. I don't know. Because, you know, you and Castro and not, I mean, at least you came from, you know, I taught in academia and, uh, I mean, you came from university. Not, not all the poets that I know sometimes don't, but I don't know where I'm going with that, but, um, but, but. Would you, would you agree that there's like academics and street poets? There, yeah. And there's, yeah, there's, I think there's a division. All three poets have been street poets. Okay. All three of us poet laureates. Okay. And I, I don't mean to insult Michael about being educated and, and teaching at, at, uh, Lindenwood all those years at all. Yeah. Um, I just, I just think we were more, all three of us down in the trenches. Yeah. In a different way with, with different audiences. Sure. Than at universities. Right. Not that we were better, just that we were different. Yeah. That's all. And Michael had an incredible show on KTHX2 called Poetry Beat, which really changed a lot of things I thought about. Yeah. He was often a guest on Literature for the Alabama. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Boy, then we could go off on another tangent about KTHX, but we won't do that today. Um, I don't know. What else are we going to talk about as far as writing goes? So you've been doing all this immersive, I don't want to call it immersive. What does that word even mean sometimes? But, uh, you've been teaching people in all kinds of different communities. Uh, how has that changed your writing? You know, like, or has it? It does because for, I'll give you a quick example. I have an international class and one of the women in my international class, well, out of, out of this group, three of them never follow the rules. Okay. I know they're not going to follow the rules. Sometimes I do the rules intentionally so they won't follow them. You know, I mean, it's, it's a tug of war. These classes aren't what you think. It's down and dirty. You know, if it hadn't been for, for, uh, for COVID, we would be mud wrestling. Okay. That's the way it is. If it weren't for COVID, we'd be mud wrestling. What does that mean exactly? With poetry. Oh, okay. I see what you mean. For my students and, and in, in a way that they break a rule is something I haven't tried before. Like for instance, maybe they try a reframe. It's like, I haven't tried a reframe. Why would I try to reframe? And then I start writing poems with reframes. Just, I'm doing it once a week with them, but I'm doing it every day with me. Yeah. So I, if I'm doing the reframe, I'll tell you, I have never written an ode. So if I write an ode, I will write at least seven odes because I've got to do it all week till I start getting on the bike and being able to ride. Sure. I've never written a ballad. So there's some things I haven't done and I'm learning from students that if they take over and do a night, they're going to do one of those things. And I'm learning that from them. Yeah. So they definitely affect me. I had another woman in my Tuesday afternoon class and, and I'm sorry, I hope I'm not embarrassing her to say she is over 80 and she is the best driver on the planet. And I am going to say her name. Willistine Robinson is the best driver. All right. Oh my gosh. They're, they're slanty. They're excellent. They're excellent. And I'm very jealous of her. And I'm, I'm trying to buy these, these rhymes from her to use in my own poems. But so far, she's hanging on to them. Slanty. Slanty. You talked about writing every day and you're known for having written a poem every day for how many days? I mean, you've probably done it a couple of different times in different sessions or? I just passed 12 years. You've written a poem every day for 12 years? Yeah. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like a spiritual practice for me. Yeah. It's great. Yeah. And it's how I process things. It really helps. In terms of? Anything. Yeah. Um, I can only swim for 20 minutes right now because of a medical thing. Yeah. And I'm really bummed out. What can I do? Well, I can write about it. Yeah. And, and I can get it all out in the poem and it might be funny and I'm laughing by the end of it, you know, or I'll give myself a more ridiculous assignment than that and say, okay, today I'm going to write, I think I'll write a villanelle about teeth. And I do my villanelle and you know, then the, the pain is gone. I'm not worried about that other, that other deal anymore, whether it's back pain or whatever it is. It's now taken a back seat because the poem has come forward. Yeah. It is great. I am literally working on a talk called, uh, mental illness and the medicine of poetry. Oh, so. Yeah. Is that going to be, that's going to be, you said you're working on what for, in terms of that? Kind of a talk. Oh yeah. I'd love to see that. Yeah. That'd be incredible. Yeah. Great. No dates, you know, no dates set. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I think a lot of us have like started journaling and trying to get ourselves out of our heads as early as possible. I mean, when you've discovered that it is magic, even if you're not writing in any form or anything like that. So, yeah. Right. Exactly. You are writing in a form in a way because free version is a form, isn't it? Well, yeah. Free writing is, yeah, that's where I started. So, well, no, I didn't, but that's where I, that's how I got into poetry. I'll say it that way. Okay. Yeah. Um, hey, um, you know what? You've only read one piece so far. Maybe we should hear some more. And where's that coming from? All right. From, uh, St. Louis Poet Laureate, Jane Ellen Iver is here with us at, um, we're listening, you're listening to High Above Grand. We're listening to it too, I suppose. We're in CBGB, live at CBGB, three stories down from where we usually are, the high, the, uh, Killswitch Media Studio. And we are still here with producer R.W. Smith. And like I said, St. Louis Poet, Jane Ellen Iver, she's going to read to us another piece. Okay, I'll read one from my second book called Mrs. Noah, two weeks out. Okay. So the second book is called The Little Mrs., Mrs., oh yeah. And it's women who exist or don't, uh, in mythology and, uh, westerns from the 1950s. TV, black and white. I remember these now. You go back to Eve. I do go back to Eve. And Mrs. Noah. And Mrs. Noah. So here's Mrs. Noah, two weeks out. I'm going to have to look at this because I did not blow up the font enough. Okay. Today I decide to inventory. I keep a strict log of everything from rations to rashes. Believing sanity comes from organization, routine, ritual, business as usual. Once that's established, which I did immediately. So much chaos and disorder, grief and fear reign. I choose chores to sandbag the tidal waves of emotion. And here we are two weeks out doing pretty well for ourselves. Horses, oxen, hooved beasts working in the mill. Bees build a hive. Worms churning soil in the agricultural wing. Goats donating for cheese in the dairy. Antlered beasts in the kitchen for hanging utensils, pots and pans. My daughter's-in-law in managerial positions. That's a first. Noah sits fat and wet on the deck. Daily he appears to be swelling. I never see him eating, but things turn up missing. Like the dodos, the minotaurs, the harpies, unicorns, chimeras, nymphs, satyrs, gorgons, cyclopses, sirens, phoenixes, griffins, dinosaurs and dragons. Perhaps this accounts for the unbelievable fullness of his morning breath. I love it. Yeah, there's something about like, you know, you're teaching a poetry and trying to get poetry out of people who've been through some serious, serious consequences and to be able to keep the humor in there, you know, and, you know, be serious as a heart attack and still make people laugh or make yourself laugh, you know? Right. Yeah. Right. Again, we're talking to Jane Allen Iber in the Kill Switch Media Studio. We're actually there today. We're live at CBGB downstairs looking out the front window on the grand, popping wheelies out there. It's Sunday afternoon. We're here with producer RW Smith. You've been the poet laureate since August of 2019, and it was supposed to be before that, right? Remember? I mean, I guess they're building, the Zaldermans are trying to get that soccer stadium built and all that good stuff. I don't know what happened. It was Louis Reed. You never know. But anyway, like I said, we're not going to get into that. So that, yeah, it's been amazing listening to you talk. And like I said, we could talk for six days or six months about all the teaching and all the places, all the people you've touched. And, you know, I got to know you through Literature for the Halibut on KTHX when I was popping around there back in my Magnolia studios. But yeah, so thanks for being here. And do you have anything coming up? Where are you teaching and how do people like maybe connect with you? Otherwise, is there a way to connect you through? The office or? They can't connect it through that way. They can connect me on the Poet Laureate Facebook page. The STL Poet Laureate. That's maybe what I was thinking. Oh, they could contact me that way. They could contact me. I mean, I don't know. Should I put my email out here? I don't know. I mean, I mean, in terms of where are you teaching? I was just thinking. My classes at the moment are all on Zoom. Oh, OK, cool. Yeah, I was going to wonder about that. That has been because of COVID. Sure. But it's been great because I do have some out of towners. Yeah, so I am open to talking to people about that as well. Sure. So check me out. Look me up because I do have people find me for projects. Any readings coming up or? I don't have a reading coming up at the moment. That's what I'm kind of working on. All right. But I do have a couple of manuscripts. So soon. Oh, OK. That's great. Again, I'm Brett Lars Underwood. I'm a poet. I know a lot of people. So we're going to be talking to them. And today we've been talking to St. Louis poet Jane Allen Iver in the Killswitch Media Studio. Again, we're in the Killswitch Media Studio. We're in CBGB Live with producer R.W. Smith. This has been High Bow Grand. Thanks for listening.