November 8th, 2007
The Writer Profile Project is charmed by Hilda Weiss
Hilda Weiss is the co-founder of Poetry L.A., an online project featuring videos of poets reading at Southern California venues. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Ekphrasis, Nerve Cowboy, Pacific Coast Journal, Poem, Rattle, Salamander, and Tar Wolf Review, among others. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Hilda now lives in Santa Monica.
First off, I feel obligated to disclose that Hilda and I are related. She is my aunt on my mother’s side, and has been a writer for as long as I remember. Since we’re speaking of family ties, I’d like to start by asking you, Hilda, about the history of writers in our family, whether published or not.
The best known writer in our family is Harry A. Overstreet who was my paternal grandfather. He wrote more than 10 nonfiction books. The early books (written between 1925 and 1956) are on human relations topics. You might call them early self help books. Some of the titles are: Influencing Human Behavior, The Mature Mind, and The Mind Alive. Between 1958 and 1969 he wrote a number of books on political issues, including What We Must Know About Communism which was a national best seller in 1958, and The FBI In Our Open Society. He started off as a philosophy professor and later made his living as a writer in collaboration with his second wife, Bonaro. I didn’t know my grandfather very well and only realized after their death that Bonaro had written several books of poetry.
Actually, I’d say that my grandfather’s brother, Louis Franklin Overstreet, had more influence on my writing. Crazy Uncle Louie was an unpublished poet. I never met him, but my parents had some of his books including the combined edition of Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer which I read and reread as a child.
I know others in the family have kept journals including my paternal grandmother, Elsie Burr Overstreet. And I have a wonderful poem that my mother wrote for me on the day of my high school graduation. But I don’t know of any other creative writers in the family except you and me.
You’ve been writing poetry for a long time, but before being published in this form, you co-authored several non-fiction books about self defense. Talk about your work in this field, both as an author and a former teacher.
In 1975 my former husband, Bernie Weiss, and I started a karate and self defense school. Bernie passed away in 1998 so I discontinued the school in 2000. But during those years we both taught and wrote about self defense and karate. The martial arts were always an avocation for us; Bernie was a professor of Psychology at Pierce College and I held a variety of marketing, PR and technical writing jobs over the years. Nevertheless, we put out a little magazine called Karate Profile and we published several books. One of them, Self-Defense for Everybody, was a basic reference book for the karate classes we taught and included pictures of various techniques such as kicks, punches and blocks. Another one, Crime Fighters’ Psychology, is a guide to self defense which I used as a textbook for the self defense classes that I taught at local community colleges.
Also factoring into the non-fiction equation is your job as a technical writer. Has the task of writing every day for a living helped you be disciplined about your creative work? Do you maintain a personal writing schedule?
I’ve worked as a freelance technical writer and instructional designer since 1989, primarily creating training programs for companies like the So Cal Gas Company. While I was running the karate school most of my personal writing was in the martial arts field. But more recently I’ve turned most of my writing energy to poetry. When I’m on a job/project, I usually work three days a week and keep two days a week for my creative work. And, yes, I’ve found I can be very disciplined on my two “writing” days. When I’m not on a work project, I have more flexibility. It feels like less discipline, but I’m reasonably successful at my goal which is to produce at least one somewhat finished poem or poem draft each week. It gives me a lot of working material.
Poetry is your first love, however, isn’t it? Do you recall what age you were when you first started reading and writing poetry? Do you have any plans to put together a chapbook?
Lots of children’s books are written in verse. I have a beautiful, blurry memory of my grandmother Elsie stopping as she was reading with me and saying, “You could write a book like this.” I might have been six or seven at the time. I did have a story published in the San Francisco Chronicle when I was about eight. It was about twins playing badminton. I know I was reading poetry in high school and getting gifts of poetry books for birthdays and holidays. I still have a Phyllis McGinley poetry collection that I received when I was 14 and The Complete Poems of Robert Frost that I received when I was 15. I also have some haiku that I wrote that same year.
I haven’t started working on a chapbook yet. Mostly I’ve been sending poems out to journals and doing local readings—both open mic and features.
Tell us about Poetry L.A., the website you co-founded to showcase poets and the venues in Southern California that support them. Browsing through the site, I must say I’m quite impressed by the number of poets participating. Can anyone show up and read?
Every poetry venue is unique. Usually if there is an open mic, poets sign up before the reading starts, and both beginners and more experienced poets are encouraged to take the mic. I’ve often heard a good poem at a reading and wanted to listen to it again. So Wayne Lindberg, my partner on the project, came up with the idea of videotaping the readings. When we started the website, Poetry LA, we were only taping the open mic readers but soon we added feature readers as well. Our goal is to bring poets and poetry venues to a wider audience and to help build the poetry community.
What do you mean by feature readers?
At a poetry venue, a “feature reader” is a poet who has been asked to be part of the program on a specific date as compared to an “open reader” who just comes early enough to sign up. The features get a longer block of time, often between 15 and 30 minutes, to read their work. The venue usually announces and promotes their upcoming feature readers as a way to attract more audience. As the Redondo Poets say on their calendar, a feature is an “invited, noteworthy, acclaimed poet.” One good way to become a feature is to be a regular open mic reader at a venue that you like. It’s quite a delight when a host says, “We liked your poetry; please come back,” and really a delicious surprise when you find they are interested in featuring you.
When did you first start reading your poetry to an audience? I’ve seen videos from readings you’ve given, and you appear 110% comfortable behind the microphone. And your voice! It’s like cashmere. Do you ever get nervous?
I did my first open mic reading in December 2003 at Beyond Baroque which is a well known poetry venue in the LA area. (It’s actually in Venice.) I had my first feature readings in May and June of 2004. My teaching experience really helped me learn to project my voice and feel reasonably comfortable in front of a group of strangers. Nevertheless, I find I am much more nervous reading poetry (even to a small group of say 10-20 people) than teaching self defense (even to a large group—I once did a self defense presentation to a high school assembly of about 300 teens).
In August, you were interviewed on BlogTalkRadio along with poet Bernandene Coleman. This is a fascinating project. Tell us what you know about it, and how you got invited to participate.
Several of the poets that we videoed for www.Poetry.LA have started doing radio programs via BlogTalkRadio, which is basically a radio broadcasting system that uses the internet for distribution in a similar way to how YouTube uses the internet to distribute videos. Anyone who has access to a phone and an internet connection can broadcast their voices internationally via BlogTalkRadio. You can connect to BlogTalkRadio programs via the internet website and the show ID. I was delighted to be interviewed by poetry colleagues for the program.
Early last month you went to Spain on a pilgrimage. What were you seeking during this journey? Do you plan to write about it?
I went to Spain to enrich my experience of poetry and spirituality. The trip was an immersion into the lives of four saints: Ignatius of Loyola, Bernadette of Lourdes, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. To me, the mystic life is similar to the poetic life. It’s a constant search to connect and surrender to a greater reality in order to become more authentic.
I was particularly interested in St. John of the Cross who wrote The Dark Night of the Soul and who is the patron saint of Spanish poetry. I had also just begun to discover St. Teresa of Avila whose book, The Interior Castle, is a guide to knowing god/your soul. It was written in 1577, is still very readable, and has recently been used by Caroline Myss, a well-known contemporary author, as the basis for her new book, Entering the Castle, which I am exploring.
One of the highlights from the trip was visiting the Center for Mystical Studies in Avila. I have lots of journal and poetry notes from the trip and already a couple of poem drafts. But I think, sometimes growth is a process of letting yourself be changed by your experience; letting the experience in. It takes consciousness to do that, and writing poetry helps me be conscious of my consciousness at the same time that I am being open to the muse.
A few years ago, you traveled to Ireland. Was this trip also a pilgrimage? Where else have you sought spirituality?
The trip to Ireland and Scotland was a more eclectic pilgrimage partly because there were just two of us, my sister, Betsy, and I, so we could choose destinations that were seemingly less related, such as Dublin for its writing life, Findhorn in Scotland for its demonstration of how spirit manifests, and various ancient Druid sites in both Ireland and Scotland for the sense of the endurance of spirit.
When I began to consciously ask for spirituality to come into my life, I began to find more and more examples, including people who are interested and engaged in having a spiritual element in their lives.
What is the difference between spirituality and religion?
Spirituality or mysticism is the inner experience of God or ultimate reality. Religion is the outer experience of God. Religion is where the rules and beliefs and traditions are kept. It is the external structure for approaching the experience of God. Spirituality is the experience of God. It’s unique to each person but essentially the same across religions. It often includes a sense of surrender, of knowing the unknown/unknowable usually in tiny glimpses, of being overwhelmed by love & beauty and having the experience of union. Prayer, meditation, yoga, music, dance, poetry, these are all ways to step onto the path of mystical or spiritual experience. As Rumi, the great Sufi mystic, says, “Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.” (From “Entrance Door” in The Soul of Rumi translated by Coleman Barks.)
Name one thing you’ve found true of life.
Surprise.
First off, I feel obligated to disclose that Hilda and I are related. She is my aunt on my mother’s side, and has been a writer for as long as I remember. Since we’re speaking of family ties, I’d like to start by asking you, Hilda, about the history of writers in our family, whether published or not.
The best known writer in our family is Harry A. Overstreet who was my paternal grandfather. He wrote more than 10 nonfiction books. The early books (written between 1925 and 1956) are on human relations topics. You might call them early self help books. Some of the titles are: Influencing Human Behavior, The Mature Mind, and The Mind Alive. Between 1958 and 1969 he wrote a number of books on political issues, including What We Must Know About Communism which was a national best seller in 1958, and The FBI In Our Open Society. He started off as a philosophy professor and later made his living as a writer in collaboration with his second wife, Bonaro. I didn’t know my grandfather very well and only realized after their death that Bonaro had written several books of poetry.
Actually, I’d say that my grandfather’s brother, Louis Franklin Overstreet, had more influence on my writing. Crazy Uncle Louie was an unpublished poet. I never met him, but my parents had some of his books including the combined edition of Modern American Poetry and Modern British Poetry edited by Louis Untermeyer which I read and reread as a child.
I know others in the family have kept journals including my paternal grandmother, Elsie Burr Overstreet. And I have a wonderful poem that my mother wrote for me on the day of my high school graduation. But I don’t know of any other creative writers in the family except you and me.
You’ve been writing poetry for a long time, but before being published in this form, you co-authored several non-fiction books about self defense. Talk about your work in this field, both as an author and a former teacher.
In 1975 my former husband, Bernie Weiss, and I started a karate and self defense school. Bernie passed away in 1998 so I discontinued the school in 2000. But during those years we both taught and wrote about self defense and karate. The martial arts were always an avocation for us; Bernie was a professor of Psychology at Pierce College and I held a variety of marketing, PR and technical writing jobs over the years. Nevertheless, we put out a little magazine called Karate Profile and we published several books. One of them, Self-Defense for Everybody, was a basic reference book for the karate classes we taught and included pictures of various techniques such as kicks, punches and blocks. Another one, Crime Fighters’ Psychology, is a guide to self defense which I used as a textbook for the self defense classes that I taught at local community colleges.
Also factoring into the non-fiction equation is your job as a technical writer. Has the task of writing every day for a living helped you be disciplined about your creative work? Do you maintain a personal writing schedule?
I’ve worked as a freelance technical writer and instructional designer since 1989, primarily creating training programs for companies like the So Cal Gas Company. While I was running the karate school most of my personal writing was in the martial arts field. But more recently I’ve turned most of my writing energy to poetry. When I’m on a job/project, I usually work three days a week and keep two days a week for my creative work. And, yes, I’ve found I can be very disciplined on my two “writing” days. When I’m not on a work project, I have more flexibility. It feels like less discipline, but I’m reasonably successful at my goal which is to produce at least one somewhat finished poem or poem draft each week. It gives me a lot of working material.
Poetry is your first love, however, isn’t it? Do you recall what age you were when you first started reading and writing poetry? Do you have any plans to put together a chapbook?
Lots of children’s books are written in verse. I have a beautiful, blurry memory of my grandmother Elsie stopping as she was reading with me and saying, “You could write a book like this.” I might have been six or seven at the time. I did have a story published in the San Francisco Chronicle when I was about eight. It was about twins playing badminton. I know I was reading poetry in high school and getting gifts of poetry books for birthdays and holidays. I still have a Phyllis McGinley poetry collection that I received when I was 14 and The Complete Poems of Robert Frost that I received when I was 15. I also have some haiku that I wrote that same year.
I haven’t started working on a chapbook yet. Mostly I’ve been sending poems out to journals and doing local readings—both open mic and features.
Tell us about Poetry L.A., the website you co-founded to showcase poets and the venues in Southern California that support them. Browsing through the site, I must say I’m quite impressed by the number of poets participating. Can anyone show up and read?
Every poetry venue is unique. Usually if there is an open mic, poets sign up before the reading starts, and both beginners and more experienced poets are encouraged to take the mic. I’ve often heard a good poem at a reading and wanted to listen to it again. So Wayne Lindberg, my partner on the project, came up with the idea of videotaping the readings. When we started the website, Poetry LA, we were only taping the open mic readers but soon we added feature readers as well. Our goal is to bring poets and poetry venues to a wider audience and to help build the poetry community.
What do you mean by feature readers?
At a poetry venue, a “feature reader” is a poet who has been asked to be part of the program on a specific date as compared to an “open reader” who just comes early enough to sign up. The features get a longer block of time, often between 15 and 30 minutes, to read their work. The venue usually announces and promotes their upcoming feature readers as a way to attract more audience. As the Redondo Poets say on their calendar, a feature is an “invited, noteworthy, acclaimed poet.” One good way to become a feature is to be a regular open mic reader at a venue that you like. It’s quite a delight when a host says, “We liked your poetry; please come back,” and really a delicious surprise when you find they are interested in featuring you.
When did you first start reading your poetry to an audience? I’ve seen videos from readings you’ve given, and you appear 110% comfortable behind the microphone. And your voice! It’s like cashmere. Do you ever get nervous?
I did my first open mic reading in December 2003 at Beyond Baroque which is a well known poetry venue in the LA area. (It’s actually in Venice.) I had my first feature readings in May and June of 2004. My teaching experience really helped me learn to project my voice and feel reasonably comfortable in front of a group of strangers. Nevertheless, I find I am much more nervous reading poetry (even to a small group of say 10-20 people) than teaching self defense (even to a large group—I once did a self defense presentation to a high school assembly of about 300 teens).
In August, you were interviewed on BlogTalkRadio along with poet Bernandene Coleman. This is a fascinating project. Tell us what you know about it, and how you got invited to participate.
Several of the poets that we videoed for www.Poetry.LA have started doing radio programs via BlogTalkRadio, which is basically a radio broadcasting system that uses the internet for distribution in a similar way to how YouTube uses the internet to distribute videos. Anyone who has access to a phone and an internet connection can broadcast their voices internationally via BlogTalkRadio. You can connect to BlogTalkRadio programs via the internet website and the show ID. I was delighted to be interviewed by poetry colleagues for the program.
Early last month you went to Spain on a pilgrimage. What were you seeking during this journey? Do you plan to write about it?
I went to Spain to enrich my experience of poetry and spirituality. The trip was an immersion into the lives of four saints: Ignatius of Loyola, Bernadette of Lourdes, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. To me, the mystic life is similar to the poetic life. It’s a constant search to connect and surrender to a greater reality in order to become more authentic.
I was particularly interested in St. John of the Cross who wrote The Dark Night of the Soul and who is the patron saint of Spanish poetry. I had also just begun to discover St. Teresa of Avila whose book, The Interior Castle, is a guide to knowing god/your soul. It was written in 1577, is still very readable, and has recently been used by Caroline Myss, a well-known contemporary author, as the basis for her new book, Entering the Castle, which I am exploring.
One of the highlights from the trip was visiting the Center for Mystical Studies in Avila. I have lots of journal and poetry notes from the trip and already a couple of poem drafts. But I think, sometimes growth is a process of letting yourself be changed by your experience; letting the experience in. It takes consciousness to do that, and writing poetry helps me be conscious of my consciousness at the same time that I am being open to the muse.
A few years ago, you traveled to Ireland. Was this trip also a pilgrimage? Where else have you sought spirituality?
The trip to Ireland and Scotland was a more eclectic pilgrimage partly because there were just two of us, my sister, Betsy, and I, so we could choose destinations that were seemingly less related, such as Dublin for its writing life, Findhorn in Scotland for its demonstration of how spirit manifests, and various ancient Druid sites in both Ireland and Scotland for the sense of the endurance of spirit.
When I began to consciously ask for spirituality to come into my life, I began to find more and more examples, including people who are interested and engaged in having a spiritual element in their lives.
What is the difference between spirituality and religion?
Spirituality or mysticism is the inner experience of God or ultimate reality. Religion is the outer experience of God. Religion is where the rules and beliefs and traditions are kept. It is the external structure for approaching the experience of God. Spirituality is the experience of God. It’s unique to each person but essentially the same across religions. It often includes a sense of surrender, of knowing the unknown/unknowable usually in tiny glimpses, of being overwhelmed by love & beauty and having the experience of union. Prayer, meditation, yoga, music, dance, poetry, these are all ways to step onto the path of mystical or spiritual experience. As Rumi, the great Sufi mystic, says, “Remember, the entrance door to the sanctuary is inside you.” (From “Entrance Door” in The Soul of Rumi translated by Coleman Barks.)
Name one thing you’ve found true of life.
Surprise.
Contact Hilda
View:
Four poems
from Moonday Poetry Reading, May 14, 2007
Poetry Sampler
from readings for the Redondo Poets, February 13, 2007
Poetry L.A.
Readings at Coffee Cartel
Filed Under: The Writer Profile Project |
November 9th, 2007 at 10:51 am Kelly, I enjoy all your interviews. You are a talented interviewer! This one was special, of course, since Hilda is my sister. Thank you Hilda for your informative and interesting responses! I loved the “cashmere voice” comment - so true. And, Hilda’s comments on spirituality and religion were nicely stated. I’d like to add that our father, Robert Howison Overstreet, also wrote poetry as a hobby, usually short poems which he attached to his photograpy, poems to our mother, and he wrote me a poem on my 21st birthday which I still have. Also, our youngest sister, Lucy Overstreet, writes wonderful poetry with incredible feeling. Thanks Kelly for another great interview!
November 9th, 2007 at 3:09 pm Great interview. I enjoyed it. Poetry LA is very cool.