Between the Lines: Poet Traci Brimhall

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Traci Brimhall

Traci Brimhall

CREDIT FRESHWATER PHOTOGRAPHY

Poet Traci Brimhall is well known and much loved in Kalamazoo’s literary community. One of the reasons her readers seem so drawn to her work is that she has the courage to say what others think but keep to themselves. “I like to be brave with poems,” says Brimhall. “I like to be brave when I sit down to write, and, occasionally, I like to do something brave at a reading, which is what I hope to do when I return to Kalamazoo.”

Brimhall, along with poets Adam Pasen and Heather A. Slomski, will read as part of the Gwen Frostic Series on Thursday, November 19, at 8 p.m. at Western Michigan University’s Bernhard Center, in rooms 157-159. The event is free and open to the public.

“Recently I started a Google group for people who want to write one brave poem a month,” Brimhall says. “We would share with each other the bravest thing we could think to say. Sometimes it’s the only poem I get to write all month…I try to confront something in myself and/or something in the world when I sit down to write.”

Brimhall says writing with courage is how she pushes herself forward as a poet. What that brave thing is can change with every day and every moment. “There are things you don’t want to admit that aren’t popular or kind to say about yourself, or aren’t good to say about the way you feel about your family or your spouse or what you do for a living. There can be things you don’t want to confront. The bravest poem I wrote most recently dealt with ...

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Between the Lines: Writing Combat

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Dick Westerman and John Dean


Writing certain words can trigger memories. Words like helmet, boots, and shrapnel. Military veterans gather at the Portage District Library on the second and fourth Tuesday every month at 6:30 p.m. for the Combat Veterans Writing Group. They write down memories for ten minutes and then sharing them. The process bonds and heals.

The group was founded in 2009 by Margaret von Steinen, a marketing specialist at the Haenicke Institute for Global Education at Western Michigan University, to help veterans process memories of their war experiences. Dick Westerman, a veteran of World War Two, is one of the group's original members. John Dean, who served in Vietnam, is a new member. Different wars and different times, but the two have bonded with what they share, as have all of the group's members.

“Uncle Sam said I want you,” Westerman says, recalling his draft into the Second World War. He served for 30 months, including with the "Army of Occupation" in Germany after VE Day.

Dean's entry into uniform was different. “My older brother invited me to live with his family in California when I was 15 and go to school there,” he says. “Three days before I graduated, he asked me what I was going to do after graduation. He told me I could (only) stay there until I graduated.”

With no place to stay and no money, and no plans for the future, Dean enlisted with the U.S. Army and the Airborne Infantry to go to Vietnam. He ended up in the military for 20 years.

Dick Westerman and John Dean

CREDIT ZINTA AISTARS

Dean and Westerman say they had no previous writing experience, but joined to connect with other veterans. Other members of the Combat Veterans Writing Group served in Korea, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

To commemorate Veterans Day and honor those who did not come home, the group and ...

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Between the Lines: Ladislav Hanka - In Pursuit of Birds

by Zinta Aistars
for WMUK 102.1 FM
Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate



Between the Lines is my weekly radio show about books and writers with a Michigan connection. It airs every Tuesday at 7:50 a.m., 11:55 a.m., and 4:20 p.m. (or listen anytime online), on WMUK 102.1 FM, Southwest Michigan's NPR affiliate. I am the host of Between the Lines.

This week's guest: Ladislav Hanka

Lad Hanka with his collaborative art with live bees (Photo by Zinta Aistars)

Ladislav Hanka of Kalamazoo is no ordinary bird watcher. His ventures through former Soviet military zones in Eastern Europe pursuing birds sometimes led to his arrest. Some of his bird watching tales are sobering, others are hilarious. Those stories, and Hanka's visual art, are collected in his newest book: In Pursuit of Birds: A Foray with Field Glasses and Sketchbook.

“There have been moments in my life when birds have played a pivotal role as omen and sign,” Hanka writes. “There have also been moments when splendid and otherworldly apparitions of great art have intruded, like signs from above, and changed the course of my life. Occasionally they have come packaged together.”

Hanka’s fascination with birds, and nature in general, began in childhood. His roots are in the Czech Republic, although he's lived in southwest Michigan for many years. Hanka says respect for the earth is deeply intertwined with the Czech culture. He earned his bachelor’s degree in biology and zoology from Kalamazoo College; a master’s in zoology from Colorado State University; and a MFA in printmaking from Western Michigan University. His artwork, mostly prints and etchings, have appeared in galleries and museums worldwide.

In his new book, Hanka has collected nearly 200 drawings and etchings created in 35 years of printmaking. His drawings are based on field studies and on specimens preserved for study in museums. He describes his first encounter with the art of Carel Fabritius at The Hague, in Holland, mesmerized by the beauty of Fabritius' reproductions of birds — to the point of losing track of time, returning again and again to look at a famous drawing of a goldfinch.

"The goldfinch…became a mysterious doorway. I was opening up and learning to see.”

With his own artistic renditions of raptors, warblers, sparrows, nuthatches, juncos, woodpeckers, flickers, owls, vultures, and many other birds, Hanka shares his love of them in line and in story. In his stories, he expresses a respect for the bird as a bird, not as a symbol or metaphor, but for itself. He shares his philosophy of life: to move gently across the earth without disturbing its rhythms but becoming one with those rhythms, including those of birds.

During a trip to Tibet, Hanka discovered the practice of ...

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