Artemis Speaks Podcast

Artemis Speaks

Jeri Rogers
By making the world a more beautiful place, Artemis Speaks interviews writers and artists from the Appalachian Region of the Blue Ridge Mountains and beyond. This is a time we need to write and make art for the sake of healing our souls and enriching our communities. This podcast is a production of the Artemis Journal, a charitable organization now 43 years old and has evolved to be an all inclusive yearly journal with essays, poetry and art.
Linda Atkinson, artist
Linda Atkinson is a sculptor living and working in Botetourt County.  She taught art history for 21 years at Virginia Western Community College, as well as studio courses for University /Santa Cruz, Hollins College,  Roanoke College, and Radford University among others.  Her work has been exhibited in museums and galleries in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, and Atlanta.  She spent 15 years in California and taught sculpture and 3-D design at the University of California/Santa Cruz.  “I believe that the artist is an envoy of the human spirit whose job it is to reestablish the “enchanted” dimensions at the core of human existence—poetry, myth, passion, imagination, true love, magic, the marvelous, dreams.”[email protected]
Jan 23
33 min
A.J. Gnuse, Artemis Journal Literary Editor and Writer Girl in the Walls
A. J. Gnuse is the bestselling author of Girl in the Walls, published in 2021. He received an MFA in fiction from UNC Wilmington, and his writing has appeared in the Guardian, Gulf Coast, Literary Hub, Los Angeles Review, and other venues. A native of New Orleans, he lives in Texas, where he is a literary co-editor of Artemis Journal alongside his wife, Donnie Secreast.“The novel begins as an eerie meditation on grief, family dysfunction, and things that go bump in the night. But about halfway through, Gnuse’s masterfully crafted slow burn ignites into a hair-raising thriller that is as unnerving as it is unexpected.”            - Atlanta Journal-Constitution “Girl in the Walls poses the question — how well do we really know where we live? . . . Gnuse tugs the seemingly insignificant into the spotlight and holds it there. He makes the forgotten and easily brushed-away threads of the story crystal clear while entwining a narrative of growing up and learning to live with, while not clinging to trauma. It is a story focused on the psychological without prescribing itself as such; it entertains while providing a mirror to analyze the fears that make us leave our lights on just a little bit longer each night.”            - Southern Review of Books 
Dec 26, 2023
35 min
Javon Jackson, Jazz Saxophonist collaborating with acclaimed Poet, Nikki Giovanni
The Moss Center in Blacksburg, Virginia presented a live performance and historic collaboration between renowned poet and Virginia Tech legend Nikki Giovanni and saxophonist-composer and former Jazz Messenger Javon Jackson. Their collaboration for over a year has yielded the CD The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni. For an intimate jazz performance, Jackson brought his bold-toned, Trane-inspired tenor lines to bear on a series of hymns, spirituals, and gospel numbers hand-picked by Giovanni. The live performance also included jazz singer, Nnenna Freelon. This collaboration with Nikki Giovanni produced Jackson's fifth album for his Solid Jackson Records label. With a remarkable career as a Jazz saxophonist, Jackson released a potent tribute to a towering influence, Celebrating John Coltrane. His inaugural release on Solid Jackson Records featured the venerable drummer and former Coltrane collaborator Jimmy Cobb. He followed later in 2012 with Lucky 13, which featured the great soul-jazz keyboardist Les McCann and included a mellow instrumental rendition of Stevie Wonder's "Don't You Worry' Bout a Thing" along with a version of McCann's 1969 hit, "Compared to What." That same remarkably productive year, Jackson received the prestigious Benny Golson Award from Howard University in Washington, D.C., for recognition of excellence in jazz. Jackson's debut on the Smoke Sessions label, 2014's Expression, was a live quartet recording from the Smoke Jazz & Supper Club in Upper Manhattan. https://javonjackson.com/
Nov 7, 2023
37 min
Dr. Sandee McGlaun, Poet, Reading by Skip Brown
River Sequence (a Meditation)1. RiffleThis moment: like a fat round plum smooth as stone tumbled downstream, at the edge of stillness poised to roll. How long does it take a rock to travel the length of a river? How long does it take a mind to wind its way through a memory? Hold the present, juicy and heavy, in the palm of your hand. Loosen the fist of time and lean back, eyes closed, into turbulent water. Let the current lift your feet.2. RunA river begins at a clear, cold spring and flows one direction, riffles, runs, pools, and again. Time, too, moves forward in its eternal current, past-present-future. We try to contain it in rows of tidy boxes: line follows line, page follows page. A map draws a blue line we can trace with a finger on folded paper. When you stand in the river and look to its future, the current presses hard against the backs of your legs.3. PoolYet we live days that feel like minutes, minutes that enlarge, engulf years. The river too seeps sideways into the soil of its banks, spreads wide and flat and far when it floods. Water evaporates up into mist and fog, falls back down as rain, each drop rippling out, mosaic of many circles. Still we float along, certain we know where the current will take us. Still we say: the river flows to the sea.4. RiffleAt sea’s edge time passes more slowly than in higher climes, the scientists say, more slowly for feet than head. Are we drawn toes to tide because its pulse stretches our narrow days? Time: a wave rolling back on itself, a company of shimmering hourglasses that curl continuously toward the future until they end where they began. There is no time, the scientists say. Things happen. What if there is no time? Hard truth. Strange comfort.Sandee McGlaun
Sep 26, 2023
3 min
Lara Taubman, Songwriter
New York-based country-soul singer/songwriter Lara Taubman delivers sobering subjects like mortality, mental health, spirituality, survival, and finding hope in an exceedingly turbulent & traumatized world on her sophomore album, Ol’ Kentucky Light, out September 16th on Atomic Sound Record Company. Taubman clearly didn’t just stumble upon her muse. She channels her earliest influences—the classic country of Patsy Cline, the great gospel of Mavis Staples, The Staple Singers, and Mahalia Jackson, and the contemporary folk largess as filtered through Joni Mitchell. She reveals herself in her music. http://www.larataubman.com
Sep 26, 2023
34 min
Bob Rotche, Artist
https://www.bobrotche.com/Bob Rotche is a Virginia-based wood artist. He has worked with wood in one manner oranother for most of his life but it was exposure to the lathe and its ability to create smooth-flowing curves that really captured his imagination. He continues to use the lathe extensively but is now recognized more for his work with carving, color, and texture. He states, ”I try to keep a very open and curious mind in my attitude towards wood art. There are so many approaches and techniques being pursued today that the opportunity to tell a story with wood has never been greater." Bob is involved with a number of local and online galleries and his work has been featured in numerous juried exhibitions and several magazines."
Aug 16, 2023
36 min
Page Turner, Art Editor Artemis Journal
Page Turner, an acclaimed artist, recently showed her art at the "Affiliation Show" at the National Arts Club in New York City. Page has worked with Artemis Journal for three years, and her ability to pair art and poetry is phenomenal! In this interview, Jeri Rogers explores how the layout comes into being with her creative skills. "This year's theme is "transformative nature"Change is the only constant, as they say, and to begin envisioning a more equitable, weird, and wonderful future for all, our journal encourages work that moves beyond narrow conceptions of both gender and environment. The Greek Lunar Goddess, Artemis, is our journal's perpetual muse. She protects wild animals, the wilderness, women, and children. This year, allow Artemis' light to illuminate new pathways prioritizing the wild over the well-tread.Artemis Journal has many artists and writers, some first published, and others are well-known in their fields. We are honored to include the work of former US Poet laureate Natasha Trethewey, Virginia Poet Laureates Ron Smith and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda, and artists Betty Branch, Steven Kenny, Michele Sons, Starroot, Sam Krisch, and Susan Saandholland.         Artemis donates 10% of journal sales earnings to a women's shelter for abused            women in Southwest Virginia.
Jul 24, 2023
28 min
Susan Saandholland, Artist
The arc of Susan's career is amazing. Besides her commitment to Photography, It includes a six-year term as President of the American Kidney Fund. She has been represented in three galleries and continues her desire to be of creative service to artists, dancers, and musicians.  Her video skills helped numerous artists worldwide to have virtual shows during Covid isolation. Artemis Journal is pleased to publish her latest work, "Wilderness" in the 2023 Journal.
Jun 16, 2023
35 min
Susan Hankla, Poet
Susan Hankla Poet has s long history with Artemis. Back in 1977, as a young writer, Susan's poetry appeared in the very first edition of Artemis Journal. VA. For many years she worked as a traveling poet-in-the-schools working with underserved communities in Virginia, through generous grants from The Virginia Commission on the Arts. This made her love of teaching creative writing grow into reaching out to the Richmond community offering adult writing classes at the VMFA Studio School, The Visual Arts Center, & The University of Richmond. Her debut collection of poems, Clinch River, was released in 2017 and her second poetry book was just released, titled I'm not Evelyn published by Groundhog Press.
May 8, 2023
33 min
Nikki Giovanni, Poet
From Harlem rooftops to the drumbeats of the Congo, the poems in "The Women and the Men display in full measure the gifts that have made Nikki Giovanni one of the most important, appealing, and broad-reaching American poets: her warmth, her conciseness, her passion, and her wit.As a witness to four generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni's poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.http://www.nikkigiovanni.com
Feb 15, 2023
39 min
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