Artemis Speaks

Dr. Molly O'Dell, Doctor and poet

After an incredible career practicing medicine and public health, Molly decided to retire from full time work in 2016. The change was wonderful and she quickly adjusted to what it means not to hurry. When SARS CoV-2 introduced itself to our planet, Dr. O'Dell re-joined the Virginia Department of Health work force to lead the COVID response in southwest Virginia.

Her poems that have been published in national and regional journals, including;

Jama
Chest
Family Medicine
Whitefish Review
Artemis Journal

Upon retirement her immediate ambition was to work less hours. "I love to help children and teenagers find their voice and adults re-claim their core values, through writing."

https://www.doctormolly.net/

Molly's latest book
Care is a four Letter Verb
will be released in early March

Robert Bersson and Jack Greer are the editors of the new book Better with Age: Creativity, Discovery & Surprise, a compilation of essays and reflections about experiences with aging. Bersson is an emeritus professor at James Madison University and Greer worked for many years at the University of Maryland's Sea Grant College.

A lively collection of twenty-seven essays, three poems, and a song, all exploring how to make things new as we move through our later years. We hear from those in their sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties who've tackled social causes or physical exploits or artistic pursuits. Some essays share lessons learned from a lifetime. Others describe the energy or nerve required to launch into some new adventure late in life, or to revive a youthful talent long abandoned or ignored. All these stories suggest how some endeavors — or insights or encounters — can be better with age.

Ayn Cates Sullivan, MA, MFA, Ph.D. is an award-winning, best-selling mystical author. Weaving ancient wisdom traditions together with mystical experience, Dr Sullivan focuses on mythology, folklore and envisioning a new humanity. Her books include an award-winning children’s series including Sparkle & the Gift, Sparkle & the Light and the Sparkle Fairy Tales: Kachina’s Rose, Ella’s Magic and Undina’s Spell. Her best-selling fable, A Story of Becoming, won 18 literary awards. Her books on Celtic mythology include Legends of the Grail: Stories of Celtic Goddesses and Heroines of Avalon & Other Tales. Her debut novel, Nimue: Finding Merlin, is scheduled to launch in 2021. Artemis Journal is pleased to offer Ayn's poetry in the upcoming Artemis Journal 2021.

Letter from Jeri Rogers, Editor, Artemis
http://www.artemisjournal.org

As 2020 comes to a close, I want to remember a poet and dear friend of Artemis who passed. Frances Curtis Barnhart was known and loved by many in the Artemis Community. In years past, we published both her art and poems. Now, we will miss her radiant smile, everlasting optimism, and joy. Her work often spoke of beauty and her last book, The Beauty of Impermanence: A Woman’s Memoir, captured the essence of her spirit.

Our podcast features a reading of the poem, Beloved Us, by Frances’s Grandchildren. Through the magic of technology, they gathered from all parts of the world, to remember their cherished Grandmother. All ten of her grandchildren participated in the reading at her service.

Beloved Us
by Frances Barnhart

It’s beyond this world, this love,
Great Spirit that permeates our everything.

You are the pulse in my wrist,
Sweet water between my lips

You are All That Is
and All that came before.
If ever there was a before.

So tell me, Oh Permeating One,
Are we each an endless stream of humanity?
With new sets of bones and skin and dancing feet
Stepping through the generations,
Mixing it up for posterity?

Do we travel through the doorways of color, creed,
class, gender, ability, and disability?

Could this be how we grow compassion?
Do we travel among stars that hold us close
While we decide what’s next before we come to here?

Today I know something new
and that is that I don’t really know.

At last, I don’t really know your Mystery
after all these years of Certainty

Now I Am open to my Self
peering in through a burning lens
to see who that might be.

Through stillness I remember who I am not
that bundle of opinions, attitudes, and preferences
walking around in comfortable shoes,

That muddle of misconceptions about you,

Dear brothers
and sisters
Coming from some strange land in a far away place
Or perhaps that clapboard house next door.

Please know that I am pained by your wounds.
Your pain does not stop where you end.

Know, too, I turn to silk and fire from your joy.

This air that I breathe leaves my body
and wanders toward you to fuel you with honey.
And your exhale carries your glisten back to me.

You are a Christian.
I am a Jew.
You are a Hindu. I am The Tao.
You are a Muslim,

And we are Buddhists, too.
What we do and how we love
Makes us who we are
And Compassion is the name we will become.
For the sun that shines on you
Splashes down on me.


2.

Our laughter raises up the world.

And on another note this sensual body
Relishes your rice and beans,
Your samosas, knishes and halvah.

It savors your curried goat and dumplings,
your satay, kim chee and perogi.

I drink in your ragas through my skin,
I embrace your chants and gospels and hymns,

Your Ave Maria, one voice davening to fill the air,
one drum, one heart, one dream

Are we not all of That in our emergence,
Even fern, fungi, flower and moss?

And aren’t we also trees?

Are we One endless love affair,
Slender tendrils intertwining
And a pebbled river fed by many streams?

Are we all of that?
Are we one furiously pulsing,
vibrant body of love?

say YES?

Professor Gallo's teaching interests include creative writing and modern and contemporary literature. Four volumes of Louis Gallo’s poetry, Archaeology, Scherzo Furiant, Crash and Clearing the Attic, are now available. Two forthcoming volumes, Why is there Something Rather than Nothing? and Leeway & Advent, will be published in the near future. His work will appear in Best Short Fiction 2020 forthcoming. A novella, “The Art Deco Lung,” will be published in Storylandia. Chapbooks include The Truth Changes, The Abomination of Fascination, Status Updates and The Ten Most Important Questions. He is the founding editor of the now defunct Books: A New Orleans Review. His work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. He is the recipient of an NEA grant for fiction. He teaches at Radford University in Radford, Virginia.

Silvie is a working studio potter living in Floyd, Virginia. Her work is in the Collections of:
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, MN, Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC, Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred University, Alfred, NY, Art Museum of Western Virginia, Roanoke, VA. She provides an active mentorship for young potters, teaches and is an avid collector of art.

"Making pottery for me is about giving and receiving simultaneously. It is about hospitality. I would like my pottery to embody my unspoken assumptions about our heritage and culture. How and what we eat is one of the means by which society creates itself, and acts out its aims and functions. By thinking about food as identity, as sex, as power, as friendship, as a means of magic and witchcraft, and as our time controller, I see food as the root of culture: that which gives meaning to our lives. As a potter, I hope my pots will shape and dramatize the rituals surrounding food and allow me, the potter, to partake actively in the lives of those who enjoy my work." Silvie Granatelli

Governor Ralph Northam recently appointed Luisa A. Igloria as the 20th Poet Laureate of Virginia, with a two year term. Originally from Baguio City in the Philippines, she is the author of 14 books of poetry and 4 chapbooks. Luisa has four daughters and now makes her home in Virginia with most of her family. She is a Professor of Creative Writing and English, and from 2009-2015 was Director of the MFA Creative Writing at Old Dominion University. In the Spring Term 2018, she was the inaugural Glasgow Visiting Writer in Residence at Washington & Lee University. Her work has appeared or been accepted in numerous anthologies and journals, and has won various national and international literary awards which includes the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition Award for her Poetry book, Maps for Migrants and Ghosts http://www.siupress.com/books/978-0-8093-3792-7

For more information, Go to Luisa's website https://www.luisaigloria.com/

Hosted by Jeri Rogers, Artemis Editor
Co-Producer - Skip Brown
Recorded at Final Track Studio

Join the conversation with Zephren and Page Turner, Artemis Art and Layout Editors on the process of creating a literary and art journal. Get to know the Turners who share in the creative process of layout for Artemis Journal. Topics range from Sacred Geometry, art/ poetry to mushroom hunting.

Hosted by Jeri Rogers, Artemis Editor
Co-Producer - Skip Brown
Recorded at Final Track Studio

BACK IN 1977 I WAS INTRODUCED TO DOROTHY GILLESPIE, an American artist and sculptor who became known for her large and colorful abstract metal sculptures. SHE supported our fledgling idea of starting a feminist literary and art journal by donating A beautiful pastel for our very first cover in 1977. Her work of art was later painted to become Roanoke’s first downtown mural.

Dorothy created quite a sensation bakc then and now fast forward to this year...we decided to go full circle and honor her on our current Artemis Journal, since this year she would have been 100 years old. We collaborated with the Roanoke Taubman museum of Art, since they were featuring her with a retrospective of her life's work.

As a native of Roanoke, Ms. Gillespie’s international career spanned seven decades and her works of art have graced many institutions, museums, colleges, universities and public places. We are honored again to have her grace our current cover.

As Poet Laureate of Virginia 2014-2016, Ron Smith has authored several books of poetry. Running Again in Hollywood Cementry appeared this year from MadHat Press. Ron’s other books are Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, and The Humility of the Brutes. Artemis Journal has published Ron's work for 3 years and he was our featured writer for our Artemis Journal 2016.

Smith has taught poetry and poetry writing at three universities; but he always returns to the institution that first won his heart for its inspiring atmosphere and rigorous standards, St. Christopher’s School in Richmond, Virginia. Ron is the first-ever Writer-in-Residence at the school and also holds its George O. Squires Chair of Distinguished Teaching.

His poems & essays have appeared in many periodicals, including The Nation, Kenyon Review, both nationally and internationally, from London to Italy. He has also reviewed more than 100 books, mostly poetry, for the The Richmond Times-Dispatch.


Ron Smith has been a presenter at many international conferences and has given readings of his work in the US, Canada, Ireland, England, France and Italy. A highlight was attending a gathering of Hemingway scholars, celebrating poems about that author and other modernists on the Eiffel Tower in Paris France.