Last month along Eighth Avenue, I spotted Phillip, who had a ton of traditional ink. In fact, he had just had work done on his neck, rocking these two tattoos:
These two sparrows combine to represent a take on the good versus bad consciences that people have.
Phillip says he has "hundreds" of tattoos, and he credits Baz at New York Hardcore Tattoo with these pieces.
Thanks to Phillip for sharing these tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!
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Well, it’s May, which can only mean one thing here on Tattoosday - I’m exhausted.
Every year, I put together the Tattooed Poets Project in the month of April and it’s a labor of love. Toward the end of the month, however, it’s more labor and less love, and I am relieved when another National Poetry Month has passed.
So, I’m going to take a deep breath, and pause briefly, before we resume our normal programming here on Tattoosday.
However, before doing so, I want to take a moment to thank everyone who helped out with this year’s installment.
First and foremost, I’d like to thank all of the poets for their contributions. For a list of this (and previous) year’s inked scribes, you can visit the index at www.tattooedpoets.com.
Next, I’d like to thank David Lehman and Stacey Harwood from the Best American Poetry blog. They’ve been supporters of the project since its inception, they help publicize it every year and, in 2012, they helped even more by re-tweeting several of my posts.
Part of my process is to reach out to poets in the literary world, soliciting their submissions. Often, poets may not be tattooed, but they certainly know some who are. For that reason, I want to thank Tony Barnstone, Amy Newman, and Tim Donnelly, three un-inked poets who tipped me off to other poets who ended up in this year’s group of 35 contributors.
And of course, I want to thank the readers of Tattoosday, who continue to support the site through their appreciation of the site. In four years, we’ve featured 123 different poets, eight of whom have submitted work in multiple years. If no one visited, we’d be lonely indeed, and Tattoosday scored a record for April with 50,000 hits and a monthly high 89,643 page views (but who’s counting?). I am humbled by your interest and am motivated to make next year bigger and better for lovers of poetry and tattoos, everywhere.
Our final installment of the fourth annual Tattooed Poets Project is from a repeat contributor, Puma Perl. Puma graced us last year with this contribution.
Puma wanted to share her newest tattoo with us, and I couldn't possibly turn her down after I saw it:
Puma explains:
"This tattoo was just finished ... on Saturday 2/18/12. It is a companion piece to the mermaid with the Wonder Wheel on my back, which I sent you last year. I guess the Coney Island Theme will continue as Coney Island is torn down, or 'redeveloped.' Both pieces were done by Emma Griffiths, who now works out of Tattoo Culture."
As I live in south Brooklyn, near Coney Island in Bay Ridge, I can't help but be partial to Coney Island-themed tattoos.
Puma sent us a Coney Island-themed poem, to boot:
CONEY ISLAND FEBRUARY He leaves, the sounds of a concrete boardwalk trailing behind him and I dream of bass players and Coney Island, broken benches and Coney Island and I dream of warm peaches and Coney Island burlesque babes and Coney Island I dream I dream of Coney Island and I wake, hands filled with pussy, unsatisfying, but I go on because progress must continue.
~ ~ ~
Puma Perl is a NYC-based writer, performance artist, and curator. Her poetry and fiction have been published in over 100 print and online journals and anthologies.
She lives and writes on the Lower East Side and has facilitated writing workshops in community based agencies and at Riker’s Island, a NYC prison. She is a founding member of DDAY Productions, which presents poetry and performance events. Link to her blog for info about book purchases and events: http://pumaperl.blogspot.com/.
Thanks to Puma Perl for her contribution and for rounding out this year's Tattooed Poets Project!
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Our penultimate tattooed poet is Shana Wolstein, who sent us this photo:
Shana explains:
The word 'always,' was the first tattoo I got. It's on my left-wrist, facing me. The song 'Always,' by Irving Berlin, was what my mother used to sing to us when we were sad as children. My sister got a similar tattoo and when my dad asked what my mother would have said, we both had to sheepishly grin because the answer was always 'Wait until I'm dead.'
I got it while I was studying abroad in China and visiting Hong Kong, a few months after she passed away. I wrote [the following] poem after visiting Tai Shan or Mount Tai, one of the 'Five Sacred Mountains' in China. According to Wikipedia 'it is associated with sunrise, birth, and renewal.' "
My Journey of Over 6,000 Steps
The best way to cure a cold is to climb up the tallest mountain you can find. Spot as many lucky birds, rest on every turn, and when a man offers to carry you—refuse.
When you think you can't go any further, you will. Like the bird pacing the ground and shuffling dirt with his beak, you need patience.
When you close a lock, throw the key down the mountainside, it can only make the bond stronger. Forget about food, or what you thought it was, question
the safety of bottled water, watch old women climb faster than you, watch the clouds erase your time, the sun write it on the walls, the dry stones bleach.
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Our second tattooed poet today, Joolz Denby, hails from Great Britain. Not only is she a tattooed poet, she is a tattoo artist, as well, tattooing out of her shop, Studio Bijoux, in Bradford, UK.
Joolz sent us this photo of one of her tattoos:
Joolz explains:
"This tattoo is from the Dylan Thomas poem Do Not Go Gentle and it is a facsimile of my handwriting. It was done by one of my tattoo masters, Adam Dutton at Lifetime Tattoo in Derby UK where I did my apprenticeship. I had it done in memory of my father, Captain Ron Mumford of the Highland Light Infantry and the Territorial SAS. I loved and still love him very much indeed. He was a soldier, a scholar and a gentleman."
Here's Joolz performing a poem:
You can also read and hear more of her work on her website here.
We're honored to have Joolz contributing to the Tattooed Poets Project. As one can tell from her wikipedia entry, she's an accomplished figure in England both in poetry and tattoos.
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On this, the penultimate day of our fourth annual Tattooed Poets Project, we will be featuring a pair of tattooed spoken word artists.
First up is Ali Jacs, who shared her tattoo in its sketch stage
and in its final state:
Ali explains:
"I got the ... tattoo in January 2010 after a bit of a dark yet very enlightening stage in my life ... The tattoo artist Elton Buchanan is trained in the Maori style of the Te Arawa tribe in New Zealand. There is fair bit of symbolism in this - frangipani flower petals symbolize personal awakening, of which I did a fair amount in 2009! There are fish scales which symbolize the 'taniwha', or mythical Maori protector who dwells in the ocean, there is weaving to symbolize strength in family and friends and there are two Manaia - guardian spirits of the earth, sea and sky. Blending in some contemporary culture, there is a treble and bass clef to highlight my connection with music.
Which ties in quite well with my poem, which I've provided [below] ... most of my poetry these days is focused on performance poetry and this particular piece focuses on the music that we hear in every day occurrences and the sounds that bring this world alive."
Here is the poem that Ali has shared:
Ali Jacs is a performance poet from Wellington, New Zealand. After getting involved in the spoken word community in the Canadian prairies, Ali returned home to New Zealand in 2010. She won 2nd place in the 2011 Going West Writer’s Festival Poetry Slam in Auckland and in October 2011, won 2nd place in New Zealand’s inaugural National Poetry Slam. Having travelled extensively across Canada and Europe, Ali’s poetry is inspired by people, landscapes and cultures encountered on the road, exploring themes of politics, sexuality, social and environmental justice and the madness of these crazy times. Ali runs the monthly performance poetry series Poetry in Motion in Wellington, New Zealand and has recently finished her first chapbook Romantic Pragmatism. You can also check her out on her new website www.alijacs.com.
Thanks very much to Ali Jacs for her contribution to the Tattooed Poets Project!
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Our next tattooed poet is Danielle Shutt., who sent us two photos.
First is a shot from right after she got inked in June 2007:
And then, a close-up of the tattoo:
Danielle explains:
"My wrist tattoo came out of my own mindless notebook scribblings. It's two intertwined S's, representing my younger siblings' first names. We've been through a lot together. I got the tattoo when I was 23 and living in Richmond, VA. There was a particularly strong surge of family-related peril and tumult back then, and I found myself wanting something that would keep my brother and sister close to me--something less morbid than the black cloth bracelet I'd been wearing. I knew the drawing was exactly 'right,' but it took me a while to commit anyway. I'm the kind of person who needs to be bitten by impulse before I get my body involved in anything. (This includes dancing and doctor appointments.)
In this case, a grande margarita and my friend Kristen did the trick. Kristen accompanied me to River City Tattoo, where a nice guy named Reverend Bob tattooed the symbol on my wrist in less than three minutes. I was happy with it. I always will be.
I get asked all the time about what the tattoo means, which is cool because I love talking about my sibs. I still think of the tattoo as a comfort, but more often these days it reminds me of my brother and sister's hard-fought survival, which in turn reminds me to stay strong, too."
Danielle shares this poem, as well, which originally appeared in thINK, a letterpress book published by Bowe Street Press at Virginia Commonwealth University:
Sometimes I Have to Go Around Will’s Curb Barbed wire reached to scratch a warning at his window; or, the slaughter-cows flicked their tails like traffic guards, and in dusk a roadside tree flashed him old scars to beg off new bruises. But really, there's nothing looking dead there. No car parts or patches of uprooted grass, none of his teeth half-ground into the pavement. The wooden stretch of new fence isn't as stark as I'd expected. I guess he kept all the mess of it with him, smashed under his face, caulked behind his eyelids; or, it's in the red dirt and bone dust sent up by the tractor hitched to his lungs, pulling slow on these back roads.
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