LaDonna Witmer is a 29 year old writer of poems and mistress of the cinepoem in the fair city of San Francisco.She is the author of two books of poetry and presently finds herself in fine company with her husband and dog.She recently took the time to sit down and answer some of my questions.
AD:Hello LaDonna!! How are you doing today? You have such an interesting name, is there any story behind it? LW:I always say "Thanks!" when people compliment my name, but I can't really take any credit for having such a cool name – my parents picked it out. It means "The Woman" or "The Lady", and I actually inherited it from my mother. Her first name is LaDonna, but she's never used it – she goes by her middle name, Sue. When I was in grade school, I hated having an unusual name because of all the nicknames it created, but as I grew older I was really glad I wasn't one of a thousand Tracys or Heathers or Jennifers. Of course, in college lots of guys thought it was hilarious to say, "Madonna? So you're, like, a virgin?" when they met me. It never got any of them anywhere. AD:I have read that you graduated from Northern Illinois University with a BA in Journalism. Do you work in that field presently? If not, how do you spend your time? LW:I worked as a newspaper reporter for 3 years after graduating from Northern. But I never really enjoyed it. When I was a freshman, trying to decide what to study, a magazine editor who had published a few of my essays told me to major in journalism because it would make me a better writer. He was right, in a way – I learned to write quickly (on deadline) and concisely. But I always hated the ambulance-chasing aspect of it. I won a Pulliam Journalism Fellowship and spent three months in the fellowship program right after I graduated from college, and I think that's why I stuck with journalism for 3 years. I felt some sense of loyalty to the Fellowship and I wanted to make them proud by being an award-winning reporter. But then I had to cover a really tragic story for this suburban Chicago newspaper, and that was the last straw for me. I just felt like the media, my newspaper included, were exploiting the families of these high school kids who were killed when a commuter train hit their school bus. I hated being a part of the media coverage of that story, and I quit the business shortly thereafter. I was planning to go back to school and get a Master's in English, pretty much because I didn't know what else to do. But then a friend hooked me up with a Chicago graphic design company, and they hired me as a copywriter. I've been copywriting ever since. I enjoy it because I get to hang out all day with artistic people and use my writing skills to make a living, but it doesn't take too much out of me creatively – I can still go home and pound out a poem. AD:What lured you from Illinois to San Francisco? Do you think the change in environments and ways of living has had any influences on your writing? LW:The thing about growing up in the Midwest is that it's a great place to be a kid. But then you get older and feel like you can't breathe – you just want to get out. After high school, I began a very slow migration to Chicago from the small town I was from in northern Illinois. I was drawn to the big city lights and all the opportunities they seemed to promise. But I wanted to see more – I wanted to go to New York, to California, to Europe and beyond. I just never seemed to have enough money or courage to do it on my own. The catalyst for me was a guy named Bruce. We met in Chicago, but he was originally from California. We started dating, and one night we had this very serendipitous discussion about where we would live if money were no object. We both said "San Francisco!" At the time, I'd never even been to San Francisco, but I had read so much about the city and just felt like it could be my home. Two years later, right after we got married, we packed our stuff in a moving truck and drove three-and-a-half days across the country to San Francisco. From the first time I set foot in this city, I knew I belonged here. It's hard to explain – I felt a sense of freedom to be myself that I had never known before. San Francisco has definitely been a big influence on my writing. Everything about this place is inspiring, from the ocean to the architecture to the legacy of poetry that lives here – even the smell of the eucalyptus trees in the park by my house. I think this city gives artists the desire and the freedom to be wildly creative, whatever that means for you. spei captiva sumOne: on location
Hope is a knife edge sharpened on steel a silver-tongued thread stretched between before and behind. And here you’ll find Despair and I, wretched and wingless waiting our turn to walk the wire again to stand heel to toe on this rope on this hope swaying without hinge or harness without safety or spotter-- nothing but air to lessen the fall. (There was a rumor of angels, once but I have never seen one here and I should know...) Two: The Backstory When they talk of the trinity (Faith, Hope and Love) they say, “The greatest of these is Love.” And Love, she would agree. There’s a woman who knows her worth. She’s a preening showstopper, a calculating catwalker. Love knows you’re always watching. You’re her fan club clutching head shots between the bus and the stage door. Will she look at you, will she smile, will she pose? Every trio has to have its own darling diva and Love is Diana. Beyonce. Farrah with the hair. As for Faith, she’s five by five. She’s got plenty of believers. She doesn’t need you, too. Her livelihood is lifted hands and foxhole conversions. She makes a feast of unleavened wafers and toasts your health with transubstantiated wine. She sleeps like the dead in sanctuaries on beds of crimson choir robes. Her dreams are lit by votives and the whispers of the faithful. Faith, she’s doing just fine. But as always, it’s the quiet one you should watch out for. Hope is the wallflower. The party rages on all sides and nobody thinks to invite her. But if she went missing, if she were gone, the entire world would be papered with posters, her face blurry in black and white. The National Guard would form a search party and start invading suburban neighborhoods. Warring nations would lay down arms and hold all-night vigils, light candles and pray. You don’t realize what’s missing ‘til she’s gone. Hope is the cruelest noun and the gentlest verb. Her kisses draw blood. Her blows make you blush. She is cyanide and salvation. She is arctic conflagration. She is a knife edge. (And I should know. I am her prisoner. She blinks an eye and I live and I die.) Three:The Plot Thickens
There are two types of tightrope walkers: those who have already fallen and those who are going to fall. When my number is finally up, I am not graceful. (I never was a ballerina.) I fall like a stone. It takes forever. And all the long way down, I look for her. I tumble end over end, see sky see land and sky and land. There is Love, holding court on a ledge with bougainvillea in her hair. And then farther down I see Faith, downward dogging with her ass in the air. But the sky gets further away and the land rushes up and I begin to believe Hope has finally abandoned me. The smell of gravity is sweet and slightly cloying but not enough to slow me down. I fall to pieces in the end and I feel it all. Every break. Every crack. Every splinter as I come undone. She’s waiting for me when I finally crash, waiting with a wicker basket to hold all the pieces. She’s tied a pink ribbon to the handle, as if it’s Easter and she’s hunting for candy colored eggs. She gathers here a toenail painted red, there an earlobe hung with silver. It seems I am scattered almost everywhere. She takes me home and sews me together with invisible, glittering thread. And it is not infinite pricking of the needle, the endless in and out, that pains me. It is the common thread. It is the coming together. Four:Roll Credits When she brings me to the wire again, I do not say goodbye. I do not look up. But I don’t look down, either. I stick one foot out, then the other. I fling out my arms, imagine wings. I make plans to pirouette. (I push Despair to his death.) I feel the thread. I stretch the seams. And promise myself that I will do this. I will hope continually.
AD:The above poem comes from your most recent book of poetry and photography called "The Secrets of Falling", can you tell me a little bit about this collection and how it differs from your first collection, "Shedding The Angel Skin"? LW: I wrote "Angel Skin", my first collection, when I was still a kid, really. I was just finding my voice. The poems in that book are full of fear and longing and more than a whiff of lovelorn desperation. They were written over a period of time in my early 20s when I was completely self-absorbed and equal parts brash and terrified (as are most people that age).
Fast forward 7 years to "The Secrets of Falling", and I'm much more settled into who I am as a woman and as a writer. "Angel Skin" was a bit scattered, but "Secrets" is focused on a theme. The whole book, actually, is built around a four-part poem called “spei captiva sum,” which is latin for "I am a prisoner of hope." It's a phrase I have tattooed on my right wrist because it’s kind of a motto for me. I've been really struck by the absolute power of hope – you're damned if you do and damned if you don't, and that's what "spei captiva sum" is about. It’s certainly not a unique tale, especially for a writer, but I've struggled with depression and gone up and down over the years. I have two very dear friends who both went through the worst times in their lives a few years ago, and both of them tried (unsuccessfully, thank God) to kill themselves. A lot of the poems in "Secrets" were written about, for, or because of these two friends. The book as a whole is written for "all the girls who fall" – to remind them they are not alone and to give them some sense of hope for the journey back up. The other cool thing about "Secrets" is that I got to collaborate with a very talented graphic artist from San Francisco named Kathy Azada. She and I created this book together, using photography from my friend Patti Monaghen, my husband Bruce, and a few of my own photos, too. "Angel Skin" contains a lot of photos, as well, because I believe in the power of images to bring words off the page and give them a whole new dimension. But with Kathy's artistry, "Secrets" went to a whole new level – it's not like any other poetry book you've seen. Pink Strip Blame it on the genes. They’ve betrayed you. Curvaceous Helix Traitors. Deoxyribonucleic Renegades. And if you think proteins and sugar phosphates can’t have an ulterior motive, a sinister agenda, the last laugh, you have not done your homework. It’s a biochemical mutiny, and you’re walking the plank. Blame it on the boy, if you want. He double-crossed you, too. Malefic Civilian Informer. Treacherous Morrissey Fanboy. You should know by now that you can’t trust a man with magnets for eyes. He carves your initials into his arm just to infiltrate the psych ward to find you. It’s so bloody it’s almost romantic. But then he doesn’t just push your buttons, he threads a needle and sews them right into your skin. He’s a card- carrying member of Nicole’s Black Cotton Mafia and you are his heroin moll. It’s a Dark Boy conspiracy and you need witness protection. Blame it on Jesus. Everyone does. Isn’t silence a breach of good faith? Deficient Deity. Inadequate Savior. Just when you’re ready to seek and to find, that’s when he goes into hiding. He goes into stealth mode, radio silent. He goes incognito. He goes away. (It’s almost like he wants you to beg for it.) So you do. You get down on your knees in the bedraggled back bathroom of Andy’s Chinese. You assume the position and you say “Our Father, pretty please.” And you wait for heaven to crack wide open and spit out an angel but you’d settle for something smaller and less brilliant. You’d settle for an answer. But all you see is the ceiling the white paint falling in flakes to reveal a yellow sheen circa 1973 hidden underneath. You start to think the colors in this room have formed an alliance against you. White is never as innocent as it first appears. There’s always a secret seeping through like a yellow disease. And this pink in your hand, so nauseating so Pepto Bismol so far from pretty. You never did like the pastels. So you’re left with the pink strip and the absolute absence of divine intervention. Jesus is busy. Boy is oblivious. And your genes, well, they’re just too dangerous. So you blame it on yourself, finally. You make such a good villain. And villains don’t make good mothers. (The defects are hereditary.)
AD:How did you discover cinepoetry, and what made you decide this was the best way to display your work? Are there a community of cinepoets out there? LW: Well, in the beginning I thought my friends and I invented it, but I was wrong! The whole idea came about in 2004 during a conversation with my friend Carly Putnam. I had been pretty active in the poetry scene in Chicago, reading at open mics and poetry slams at The Green Mill and doing a lot of poetry performance stuff, but once I moved to San Francisco I just stayed home. I was still writing, but I wasn't performing. Carly and I talked about it and she was the one who had the idea for the cinépoems. Basically, we thought it would be cool to shoot a music-video style performance, but with poetry instead of music. Now I’ve been doing cinépoems for 3 years – 17 in total so far, with two more on the editing table right now. As far as a community of cinépoets, the only thing I've really found is the Cambridge Cinépoetry Society in the UK. They contacted me last fall to get permission to show two cinépoems (“Alice is my middle name” and “Abattoir”) in their Cinépoetry Festival this March. Other than that, I haven't met any other cinépoets. AD:Michelle Brown does your videography for these cinepoems and also some editing, How did the two of you begin to collaborate? LW:As soon as Carly had her brilliant idea, we enlisted Michelle Brown's help. Michelle was one of my first friends in San Francisco, and I knew her to be an excellent camera operator and video editor. She's pretty busy because she's a professor of media, but she was really into the idea of having a creative project on the side. "Freezerburn" was our first-ever cinépoem, shot on a rainy January day in 2005 without any real plan. We've been refining our craft and trying new things ever since. We try to make sure that every cinépoem shoot is different. We’ve had a core group of dedicated friends who have helped us create each cinéepoem, but it's really evolved into a shared project between Michelle and I. We both bring our ideas to the table and the result is usually a nice blend of my original vision based on the poem and Michelle's visual expertise. Michelle is the one who discovered the term “cinépoem,” and found out that we weren't the first to have this idea – people have been creating cinematic poems since the 1920s. (Michelle researched this topic at length for her website at www.cinepoetry.com). Much of the more recent cinépoetry we've found is not live action, though – it's either words on a screen in front of a moving picture or some sort of animation. So we like to think that we kind of stand out in the small world of cinépoetry. For me personally, it's been a great way to perform. I always think a poem doesn't fully live until it's read aloud, and this brings so much more breadth and depth to the reading than your typical open mic experience with bad lighting and a rickety stage. With cinépoetry, I get to bring my words into a whole new world and give them breath and movement. Every time we finish a new cinépoem, it's my favorite until we shoot another one. AD:Who have been your biggest influences in writing? LW:I didn't hear much poetry growing up, but I read a whole lot of books. As a kid, I read The Chronicles of Narnia series (C.S. Lewis), the Anne of Green Gables series (L.M. Montgomery) and the Oz books (L. Frank Baum) over and over. I was also a big fan of Greek mythology, Grimm's fairy tales (the original, creepy ones), and folk stories from India. My formal education was sadly lacking in good poetry. For years I remained pretty ignorant about the whole genre, although I remember reading Emily Dickinson and Maya Angelou in high school, and also John Milton (my English teacher was a big fan of “Paradise Lost”), but none of them really made a huge impression on me. By then I had started to write poetry myself, but I didn't think I could legally call it poetry, since it didn't have rhyme or meter. I just called it “writing.” Actually, I always said I didn't like poetry at all until I read Charles Bukowski. He blew my definitions of poetry away. That was the first time I realized how powerful, how raw and real and visceral poetry could be. I was enthralled. Then I began to realize that I liked some Robert Frost and some e.e. cummings. Of course, Sylvia Plath completely overwhelmed me. Her "Poppies in July" moved me to tears – "If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!" More recently I've rediscovered some gorgeous Auden, and come to love Galway Kinnell and Billy Collins. As far as poets of my own generation, I really love Nicole Blackman, and I'm a big fan of two of my poet friends, Melissa Fondakowski from Oakland and Graeme Udd from Chicago. AD:I have been recently discussing with a friend the state of the poem in today's society and I wonder if you have any opinion on this subject? Do you think the quality of poetry written today is in a position to elevate the poem's status? LW:Wow. That’s a tricky question. I’ve been to a lot of open mic poetry readings here in San Francisco recently, and if I were to base my opinion of the state of the poem today on the material at those readings, I’d say the situation is pretty dire. Because of the whole Beat Poet legacy here in San Francisco, there are a lot of poets, especially those from the hippie generation, who are trying to pretend like it’s 1967 all over again. I have a hard time sitting still through those kinds of readings without rolling my eyes. And then there’s the whole Poetry Slam scene, where most participants these days seem to think they have to use a sing-songy “slam voice” to fit in. It drives me crazy. Sometimes you’ll hear a pretty good poem, but it’s so wrapped up in this slam schtick that you can’t really hear the actual words. You’re too distracted by the performance. I just want to grab those poets and say, “Use your own voice!” Yes, the Poetry Slam is about putting on a good performance, but you have to start with good material, you know? And even more than that, you have to be genuine, not contrived. You have to be yourself. When I lived in Chicago, I used to read (and slam) regularly at The Green Mill. The Poetry Slam scene was actually started there in 1987 by very cool man named Marc Smith (or Slam Papi, as he’s often called). As at any open reading, you got your share of sub-par work, but overall the poetry I heard there seemed to be of much higher quality simply because the audience demanded it. If you sucked, you got booed off the stage. Literally. I was at a writing conference in New York last month and I attended a lot of readings. I found myself particularly drawn to the older generation of poets – Galway Kinnell, Charles Simic, Billy Collins, Laure-Anne Bosselaar – they just seem to take themselves far less seriously than the poets of my own generation. They are brilliant poets, and they don’t have a gimmick – they just let their words stand on their own. It’s inspiring. That’s a very round-about answer to your question, but I’d say overall I’m not very impressed with the state of the poem in today’s society. I think most of the poetry I hear at open mics could benefit greatly from some pretty heavy-handed editing. But more than that, I think we younger writers (myself definitely included) have a lot to learn from those who have paved the way for us. That’s not to say there’s not any good poetry out there from younger writers – you just have to wade through a lot of rubbish to find it. …That’s all just my personal opinion, of course! AD:Do you have any projects planned for 2008 that we can look forward to? LW:I do! 2008 is going to be a much more mellow year for me than 2007 – for one thing, I don’t have a book coming out this year. But that means I can turn my attention back to making some really great cinépoetry. Michelle and I are actually editing a new one now. It’s called “Strange”. We shot it in January in the Superstition Wilderness outside of Phoenix, Arizona. I was there to run a half marathon, and couldn’t pass up the chance to shoot some cactus cameos! We have another cinépoem called “Yellow” on deck, too. We actually shot that one last November, but haven’t had a chance to edit it yet. Both of those cinépoems will be up on my website and YouTube in a month or so. {http://www.ladonnawitmer.com/cinepoems.php and http://www.youtube.com/user/ladonnawitmer} I’m also hoping to release a DVD of cinépoetry with some outtakes and extras. That probably won’t happen until 2009, though. As far as the printed word goes, my biggest plans this year are for some artistic collaborations with Kathy Azada, who designed “Secrets”. Right now we’re working on this really cool print that combines photography with poetry. We’ll put it up on our Etsy store {ThisBlankPage.etsy.com} when it’s done, so you’ll be able to find it there. AD:Thank you for taking the time to talk with me. I look forward to seeing more work from you in the future. LW:Thanks so much! It’s been a pleasure.
LaDonna has published poems in these fine zines: Shades of Contradiction, PoetrySuperhighway.com and Subter.com. LaDonna Witmer has won numerous awards for her cinepoems taking Best of Festival for Arts in the Berkeley Film and Video Festival in 2005, the Grand Festival Award for Arts in the Berkeley Film and Video Festival in 2006, and Best Female Filmmaker Award at the Poppy JasperFilm Festival in 2006.Her cinepoem “Slippery Shiny Feathery Things” is slated to have a screening at the Sacramento International Film Festival in April 2008. Books and Chapbooks: “Shedding the Angel Skin” self published in 2000 (www.ladonnawitmer.com/books.php) “The Secrets of Falling” published by Blank Page Productions in 2007 and can be purchased online from Amazon (www.amazon.com/Secrets-Falling-LaDonna-Witmer/dp/142328802/ref=sr_1_3) and at Etsy (www.etsy.com/shop/php?user_id=5312482). “She is a Death Star” published by Scintillating Publications in 2007 (www.freewebs/scintillatingpublications/titlesnowavailable.htm) “The Secrets of Falling” can also be found in these fine book stores:Powell’s in Portland, OR, Quimby’s and Myopic Books in Chicago, IL, Books on First in Dixon, IL, Red Jasper in Decatur, AL, Logos Books in Santa Cruz, CA, City Lights in San Fran, and No Alibis and Bookfinders in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
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