Poet | Phill Taggart | The Creative Community with David Starkey

0:00My name is Phil Taggart and you are watching the Creative Community. Welcome to the Creative Community. I'm your host David Starky and my guest this time is poet Phil Taggart. Phil, welcome. Thank you very much. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, I'm happy to have you here. Not only because you're a long time friend and it's been the past 25 years, a great poet, but you also are the person down in Ventura with whom we collaborate and caps meet it. So whenever folks see a show that has a

1:01different backdrop, it's probably taped in Ventura. You know, I want to focus mostly on your poetry when we're talking today Phil and I'm always curious how people got started in this craft that you studied for so many decades. Well, I did write poetry when I was in high school. And where was that? South Whittier. Sierra High School doesn't exist anymore. And I started writing then and I actually got published in the local or not the local the high school literary magazine, which was just a staple fold thing. That made a big difference. It kept it in my mind. You know, and I was writing different things as I was getting older. I tried to write bits, comedy bits because my cousin and I, we did radio stuff together. And it was we were really good with our comedy bits. Like what sort of stuff would you guys be doing? Okay, okay. Like one that I did that I remember a lot about I don't remember. One time he was working at radio station,

2:03Kedon in Las Vegas. And I would just walk in, talk to him, and I would bumble in and I would be the guy who lost all of his money downstairs. And wanting to know where the bus station was. Right. So yeah, that's fun. Yeah. Well, there's a certain element of like that kind of, you know, I think it's some of your poems too, like the Mothra poems. Yeah. So when you're working in radio, it talked me through how you get to Ben Trea while you were a fixture for many years now. Well, I've, you know, I went to Northern California, worked in radio up there. And then I moved my ex-wife, wanted to live by a cheap beach town. And this was the late 70s. And Ventura was a cheap beach town. And you could actually live there. You can't now. And so we lived there. I looked into the radio stations. They told me my voice wasn't deep enough. And then I found the Community

3:06Television Station. And how I got into poetry, how that worked to poetry is I found art city towards the end of, they moved in in the late 70s and I kind of found my way there. Yeah, but for people who don't know what art city is, can you? Art City is a sculpture place. It's where all, and it's an outside sculpture place. It's pretty much set up as a European one's art. It's outside and all the artists are working together in a group. And so they, so that's where I met them. The folks can wander in and pick out a piece of sculpture they love. There's a five by five by five event that takes place there. So a lot of things happening. Yeah, you were talking about the edge earlier being Ventura. And yeah, we have performance artists there. And we had a very good performance. Poetry bit at that point. In fact, one of the guys after he moved out of Ventura won National Slams. And so we had that going on. And we got to take

4:11chances. And then at one point I discovered I was doing poetry at this place called the Insomniac Back, 91. And I've actually been doing poetry readings ever since then. Yeah, for sure. And so when I ran into some language poets, but then I ran into the arcade series with Jackson Wheeler. And David O'Leverell was involved with at that point. These are two friends of ours who Jackson's passed, but David lives in Cambodia. Well, they're both very, very good poets. Really, for sure. And became friends with them. And then I then I after the Insomniac I found Cafe Voltaire and did a lot of readings there for quite a while. That's when you're that's that was kind of a high point, I think. Yeah. Well, you still have a lot of high points. I mean, you're still out there hosting. And I mean, one of the things I think that has made you so beloved by so many people is you really encourage young people to do their read their work and they get out there

5:13and they could happen. Yeah. And I you know, and I've kind of learned others is woman who's teaching had a workshop, River Talk, Joan, Joan, Joan's last name. Joan Raymond. Joan Raymond, thank you. It's a starting to disappear. Joan Raymond had this wonderful workshop where she could work with people like a light verse person like Joyce Limeres and also a kind of other poets and work with Kim Young about her really edgy poems about growing up in San Fernando Valley. And then you had Scott Struman who was, who was, had mental health issues and able to guide his reading in. So she basically could guide people but not step on them, let them have their own voice. Right, which is the hallmark of a great teacher for sure. And so I've learned that and I've not always done it perfectly, but I

6:15kept that in the back of my mind. We gone almost seven minutes there and we haven't heard a poem from you yet. So let's hear something that you'd like to read. Okay, I'm going to read a couple things out of Rick Sings because I thought that this is a poem. This is about the 10th anniversary of Rick Sings. And I actually got a review about three months ago. Okay. And so I figured that's pretty good for 10 years to still get reviews from them. The Rick was your brother. Rick was my brother and what was happening, he suffered from mental illness, he had, he was suffering from schizophrenia. And I was his only, I was the only person, only family member that was able to take care of him. And I was living, he was living close by me in Ventura for a long time. I think I live with him longer than anybody. And so I, it was very frustrating because you don't necessarily get well as schizophrenia. You just cope. I mean, it's changing now, but it didn't at that point. And I had to get used to,

7:23and it was very frustrating. And so what I did, I took my frustration and my heartbreak dealing with him and trying to, and I just started writing about it. I found out that he was in my poems anyway. I just needed to pull him out and put them in the book. And so what I did is I had I had a photography, video, and poetry thing. I would take Rick's pictures all the time. And I had pictures, I had video off and talking. And so that helped me quite a bit. I figured Rick was probably the most photographed, mentally ill, homeless guy in Ventura County. Yeah. I think he was right up there. Yeah. Well, I had a great muse for you. Let's hear a couple of things. Okay. This is one kind of an introduction to me. It's called last night. The fear woke me. A shadow raving, black out, numb, frozen at the edge, afraid to, but wanting to jump.

8:29I have never been comfortable with sanity. My mother, her body vacant electro shock medicated. My brother listens to voices on a mattress in the corner of a car port. The fear is sometimes a comfort. And inevitably it welcomes me home. Here's another one from this book. Now the problem with Rick is that he's a little guy and he was always being taken advantage of. People would beat him up and take his money. And so we were able to get him into housing. And the way we did that is he never touched money. We'd get like $20 a week. And so we found a place for him to stay. But even then people would try to move in on him. And so because you know, you have a choice. You can live outside or you can crash in Rick's apartment. And so they were always quite often they break in. And so I

9:29had to deal with stuff. But some of it was very hard to deal with people. Because you know, Rick was a nice guy. This one's called, how do you say no? Rick looks guilty as he opens his door. I know someone's here and not supposed to be. The Wizard of Oz flickers on a bad set, bleeding color and lighting the room. Lita wrapped in a blanket huddles on the floor. Face swollen dark blood dried arcs prominent over her eyes. The notice to stay out is posted on the door. My name printed at the bottom. This is not Kansas. Anti-M's promise of warmth and safety is long gone. This is home. People crashing in Rick's room has been the reason for many evictions. He says she got beat up last night. I thought she'd feel better as she stayed here. Well, you know, this is for people, Rick sings,

10:36a book I would highly recommend picking up online however they can get it. But it's a book that's full of compassion. It's also full of frustration. Homelessness is one of our great problems, especially here in California. Did you learn anything from all those years with Rick that you would say are these are things that can make it a little bit better? Yeah, I don't see it a trend for it getting better because I think with the population growing and all the rents going up to an absurd amount, it's going to be hard for people to live here. And it's frustrating. But what I learned with Rick, I got to know his friends because I would walk around with him all the time. So I kind of knew the homeless and homeless middle-eal people. I knew them and they would come up and talk to me and never ask me for money. In fact, I remember David O'Leverell was visited one time and we were walking down the street. We're going to walk down to Main Street from the avenue.

11:40And he said, how come all the homeless people come up and talk to you? What's that about? And that's because it's the Rick's friends. And so I learned a lot about that community. And it helps me. It helps my empathy. I understand what's going on with them when I see it. So Rick passed and that's a different environment for you now, right? It would assume? Yeah, he passed in 2017. He passed at 60. So he lived a pretty long time for himself. But yeah, it has changed. For a long time, it was like I could see him. I thought I could see him or someone like him in the parks because whenever I was driving around when he was alive, I was looking for him. Right. Well, it's a heavy bullet. There's moments of of levity. At least there's moments of hope and light shining through. I think, you can just end up on the straight. There's a lot of moments of kindness between

12:44strangers and people who don't know each other maybe that well. Yeah, Rick was a kind man. And he also was a, he was very funny. He would tell jokes in his way. And then when he hit the punchline, he'd say the punchline, they need laugh. That's how you knew it was a joke. And sometimes they made sense. Sometimes they did. But he was, he was having a good time. Let's hear from the walking the dog in a time of raises. Your most recent collection published by our friend Christopher Buckley's friends. Yeah, Chris Buckley. I've been very lucky with Santa Barbara authors. David Oliver published my first book. And then my middle book was published by Art Life. And my last book was published by Christopher Buckley again, along with Rick Sings. So this one, I'll start this one. This book, I put it together. I was kind of frustrated at the time because of, well, politics and the anger that was growing with that. And the anger that was

13:51growing with society as a whole. And it was kind of frightening. And so I thought, well, I think I'll write some poems about it. And so this is where these came from. Okay. This one's called Walking the Dog in a Time of Rage, which is. That title poem. The Minivan Screens by Horn Blaring, Angry Fist Out the Window. I must have done something wrong. Rage has become our discourse, our answer, anger, our voice, sputtering away in the ether, on the highways, in the ballot box. We're driving past a park, not a very big one. Only one entrance, one parking lot. We're both approaching. I wonder if he's going to the farmer's market too. My friends online nip at each other. Clever quips bite. I pass his vehicle, drive to the other side of the parking lot as far away as possible.

14:54The anger swirls inside. We don't know what to do. A white man in his forties gets out of the van, sets his docks and down, pulls a baseball bat from the back seat. Looks at me. Marsha and I go look for Brussels sprouts, but part of me wants to stay. I'm angry too. Walk over to him. Isn't that how it's supposed to be? Celebrate this rage, consecrate it with our blood on the ground, flowing. We find yellow squash instead. On the other side of the park, there's the man, his docks and his baseball bat. Wow. Yeah, that happened. Just real close to my house. I look here at least one more poem from this book and then I want to talk a little bit about the other things that you do before we circle back here. Maybe some newer poem.

16:01I'll do this one. Go see Cal. Calworthington. If you live in California, you've heard of Calworthington. He was a very interesting guy actually. He was really was part of the Western movement that happened after World War II. What a guy. He loved the cell cars. Yeah. He loved the cell cars. So it's go see Cal. And here's an epigraph. Old Jalapis on the blink. Go see Cal. It's later than you think. Go see Cal. Calworthington TV commercial. He calls back to us through the ether across the somatic divide. You too can have this American dream by this car drive this asphalt. I will stand upon my head to sell a car. I will stand upon my head till my ears are turning red. Go see Cal. Go see Cal. Cal drifts west across the desert from the heartland to the promised one.

17:08Heat shimmering visions of Azzatlan, Angeline, Surf City. Giant blue pyramids and single family tracked homes. He touched us in this holy land, sealed in concrete with bikinis. And once upon a time tattooed across dreamy blue raster abundance. Complete with palm trees shimmering, swearing. Actually, swearing, no swearing. With this dog spot. No swearing, that's a beautiful palm. You know, I'm wondering about your influences, Phil, when as you were learning to write poetry back in the day and then as you as you've gone along, who are the people who kind of shaped your voice? Would you say? Well, actually I read Charles Olson. Okay. It's one of the first people I really read. And so I read him. And of course, Emily, who could not. She's our she's our seer.

18:09And one of the best poets we've ever had. I've read I've read a lot of poetry. Alan Ginsburg of course, I got to meet him. And we'll see who there's a lot of them. What's interesting is Olson and Ginsburg read the poet of the big poem, you know, Olson especially in Maximus poems. And Emily Dickinson writes these little short, crystalline things. Your poems tend to be shorter. Where does that other, the Olson Ginsburg influence come from? Kind of the idea of language. You know, for many years I was doing language poetry. And the idea of the modernist vision Olson with the trying to break down language, trying to bring language work. And I had the other part of it help me is that I talk with my brother all the time. And my brother, he spoke schizophrenia. Yeah, it accessed to a different type of language.

19:09A different language which because I was his brother, I understood we was talking about most of the time. And then there's television. And I learned that my that language, which is its own language. I mean, we teach it. We're writers. We get focused on that. But really it's a visual language. You know, like one of the things in my class, I tell the kids, turn up, watch a commercial, turn out the audio, tell me what it's about. Because that's really what's happening. It's almost under. We've got about eight or nine minutes left. I want to talk a little bit about your work with Caps meeting. You're talking about kids and teaching. You mentioned that earlier coming into Ventura being involved with that scene. Tell me how that's kind of influenced what you've done as an artist. And also just kind of your attitude towards community, I think. Well, you know, I worked in media for a long time, 40 years maybe. But then I got involved

20:13with community television. And then they wanted to start a TV class for the high school. And I was the one who ended up teaching it. And it's been close to 10 years now. And so I teach it out of a TV station, which is rather unique, which is unfortunate, but it is unique. And it's taught me that how important community is. Because I've used my old, you know, my old reporter skills. And I was able to use that in the class. And I could also teach the actual, the actual, how do you work? It's a how to do class. And I get to teach them things that I love to teach them. Right now, we're teaching, we're looking at AI. But how we're learning AI is we're looking at political stuff. Like for instance, there's this new thing that I was just reading. You know, they had the fact checkers. Well, there's this new category and fact checking. And it is what's

21:16it called altered image. Because that's what's happening now. And so here, here are the people that are running the stuff or they're are talking about, they're defaking it. They're writing it, photoshopping it or AI in it. And I want them to understand about that. But then we have a lot of fun too. We do parades. We do all the graduations for high school. You do the creative community. And we do the creative community. And this is what I'm doing. I do this so that they learn how to work with an outside producer. Because you know, how difficult they can be. And I want them to know how they work with that. Well, no, because they're, you know, they're going to go in the real world. The real world, you have to work, you know, how to work with people. Well, what I, there's a lot of fun though. So we're here in our studio in Santa Barbara. There are two individuals behind the cameras when we are there in Ventura. There's this a mob of people. Always working, you know, they're inside the booth. They're in the, in the studio. They're also

22:21in other parts of the, of the building doing other things like having the podcast class. But, you know, I think, I also think that while students are good at learning things like what you're teaching, that sort of brings up to themselves, right? I mean, they're very digitally native to a lot of, probably what the things that you're teaching. Well, everyone is native to what they want to teaching. You know, I mean, it's sort of like they, they know more, they like they, I found, I've got two kids that for fun, they play with this thing called Blender, which is a very non-user friendly program. And they know it. Right. You know, they're already working on it. And they edit videos on their phones. And so it's, and I would imagine a lot of kids outside of my class are doing that too. And so just trying to get them to figure out things like a fact today, I'm going to go have a meeting with my at El Camino High School about digital citizenship.

23:23Because that's has to be something that's taught now. Right. Well, let's, let's maybe just have about five minutes left. I want to circle back now to your, your poems just maybe some newer poems that you've been writing. Can you tell us a little bit about what's been on your, what's been on your way politically? Well, I still, you know, I write environmental stuff. And I write about, now's I'm getting older, I write about me getting older. That was a good topic, that. And then other things. So I just read a couple. But this one is, actually, this is a political one. I find that my voice isn't really that important anymore as an old person, but I can't write poems. And this one is, it's called the Rumors Pink. And it's an epic, it's a, it's a freckistic poem from the photo I saw in the LA Times. It's an Israeli soldier stands in apartment in Gaza during the, the problems that they're having there. And I looked at the

24:25picture, I thought it was a stage one because of how everyone was standing. But I realized it was a little girl's room. He was standing in. And so I thought, well, okay, I'm going to do a freckistic thing. The Rumors Pink. Bullets, holes, broken windows, ransacked, deserted, soldier balances, a galleo assault rifle on his knee, machines, solid steel, increased structural integrity. Rose and pink painted walls, mirror frame, this rifle clearly based on the AK design. Two straight, two-stage trigger, clean and smooth, 35 round magazine. Soldier invades this pink room, extra magazines, belted around his stomach, mirrors smashed, lavender window curtains, pulled from the wall, a little girl's room, closet and dresser, left open, abandoned on the bed, two dolls.

25:27Like pointing at last image, that's one of your great strengths as a poet. I think it's finding those images that really speak and call out to the listener, the reader. We have time for one more, could you? Okay, I'll do that. Okay, I'm going to leave. One of the things that this is something I wrote before Rick passed, but I finished it after Rick passed. It's called Dream Time in the 101. It's about us. And it's got an epigraph. Let's take a trip down with your boulevard, D-Midnighters. That's what we were, that's where we grew up. Just passed the 405 going south, a neo-Darma bum-stickered hybrid SUV passes us. Last night, I dream of Rick, in the upstairs room on the left, a hidden room, always there. Passing vivid, the Ford theater, I saw the pokes there, graffiti crosses, knocked down road signs. In this dream, Rick is leaving.

26:31I gather up what is needed, our paths are so close, brothers. We cross into Hollywood, the Nicarbocker, the Beedle capital, more crosses, the Shangri-Laudge destiny in, the crush of downtown. We are on parallel paths. Like moving sidewalks, drawn close, we touch, then drift apart. Grunk in Spring Street, J-Town, Azzatlan, Brue 102, and beautiful, beautiful bridges. Rick, Rampart, and Tommy's. I wave. The car hurdles down past the 605, South Whittier, and on. Rick is observed in distance. He waves back. Goodbye. We just have about 45 seconds left, so I'm asking you to do something really quick.

27:31Santa Barbara, Ventura, especially the poetry scenes. What's your thumbnail version of how they relate? I think the thing with the presently is because we've got such a growing population, we don't come back and see each other too often. Where we used to. I remember when David O'Leverell would show up just about every week, along with Jackson down LA, and same thing with Inard Osborne, and a few others. We'd go up there and read, and we were different, but we were tied together. And I think we still are, but they're different scenes because there's different people in which you'll always be the case. But I think I feel very fortunate to be a part of that, and being a part of both scenes. It really is lovely. Yeah, those are kind of great words to end on. I feel the same way I would agree. Well, Phil Tagger is been a great pleasure. I will see you probably

28:32very soon, but it's great to talk to you on TV. Thank you so much for reading the show. Thank you, David. The Creative Community is a co-production of TVSB here in Santa Barbara and Caps Media and Ventura. I'm your host David Starkey, and we'll see you next time.