The Tattooed Poets Project: Lisa Marie Basile Launches Our Seventh Annual Installment

We are launching our seventh annual Tattooed Poets Project with Lisa Marie Basile. Lisa and I have been talking about her participating since the fall of 2012, so I was delighted when we were finally able to get a post together for Tattoosday this year.

Lisa Marie has six tattoos, and shared four with us, starting with this one:

The tattoo on her forearm reads "recuerdo la eternidad," which roughly translates to "remember eternity," comes from a line out of a Marosa Di Giorgio poem. "She's my favorite poet," Lisa Marie explains, "and I find the way she talks of nostalgia and good/evil so beautiful." She adds,"This line immediately hit me, and I wanted to always have it with me, in its original language."

Her other arm has a couple tattoos:

Lisa Marie's ampersand (&) sits on her wrist and she explains, "I not only love the shape of this little one, but I think the idea of the ampersand connecting this and that is beautiful."

As for the phrase, "le soleil et la mer," translated as "the sun and the sea," Lisa Marie elaborates:

"[It] comes from The Stranger by Camus. This is one of my favorite books, and I felt very connected to the rage and fear and sorrow the protagonist felt when he was on the beach, under the sun and near the sea. This was my second tattoo and I feel closest to it."

Then there's this word on the back of her upper arm:

Lisa Marie explains:

"witch is a playful one that I got with a friend at midnight in Miami on Friday the 13th. It was all very kismet, actually. We both have the same tattoo (poet Joanna C. Valente) and it, for me, represents the idea of women living through being hunted, scarlet-lettered and hated. It was an impulse tattoo."

She believes that the "&" and "le soleil et la mer" pieces were inked at Whatever Tattoo in Manhattan. The "recuerdo la eternidad" tattoo was done at Eight of Swords in Brooklyn.

The "witch" tattoo was from Salvation Tattoo Lounge in Miami.

By way of a poem, Lisa Marie sent us this work, which first appeared in Stone Highway Review:

Lisa Marie Basile is the author of APOCRYPHAL (Noctuary Press, 2014) and a chapbook, Andalucia. She is the editor-in-chief of Luna Luna Magazine and her poetry and other work can be read in PANK, Tin House's blog, Coldfront, The Nervous Breakdown, The Huffington Post, Best American Poetry, PEN American Center, Dusie, and the Ampersand Review, among others. She’s recently been profiled in The New York Daily News, Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, Poets & Artists Magazine, Relapse Magazine and others. She’s been nominated for the Best Small Fiction 2015 and Best American Experimental Writing 2015 anthologies, and she holds an MFA from The New School.

Lisa Marie's first full-length just came out: Apocryphal can be purchased on Amazon or at Small Press Distribution.

Thanks to Lisa Marie Basile for helping launch the seventh annual Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

And? Michael Robins Punctuates the Tattooed Poets Project

Next up in the Tattooed Poets Project is Michael Robins, who sent us his Ampersand tattoo:

Michael shared some thoughts on his tattoo:

"I trace my history with typefaces as others might relationships or the cars they’ve owned: Palatino after one too many pints at the Low Brow Lounge; Garamond keeping me warm through graduate school; my current adoration of Perpetua. Perpetua is what I wear on the days I don’t leave the house. On most days, I know the chance is slim that my published words—the ones I’m typing now—will appear in my chosen typeface. We do not control language for long, if at all.

Yet we try. When I’m writing a poem, I painstakingly gauge the length of each line and adopt the ampersand, which consumes less space than 'a-n-d.' When it comes down to it, the ampersand offers flexibility for the remaining language and punctuation. There’s aesthetic pleasure in the shape of a single poem, and the energy I give to line lengths can reach the point of obsessiveness.

And new obsessions arise. With the birth of my daughter, I feel compelled to celebrate her life in my poems and, eventually, with a tattoo. A large 'Emerson' on an outer forearm? The letter 'E' between the elbow and shoulder? The skyline of Chicago floating over the roman numerals of her birth? Time marches forward as I wait for that perfect image to arrive. As a male living in the United States, this year (2014) marks the statistical midpoint of my life and the beginning—if lucky—of my second act. Hence, in Perpetua, a new tattoo: '& ______'

The ampersand is an acknowledgement, the empty line a challenge. How will I finish the phrase? With what outlook will I navigate each day? What adjective? What noun? Who do I want to be in the next chapter? What type of husband and father? How much an artist?

Less than a week after conceiving the design, I walked through the door of Deluxe Tattoo [in Chicago]. After learning that I teach creative writing, the tattoo artist, Stephanie White, shared how a high school teacher showered her writing with praise, but ultimately gave the failing grade that kept her from graduating. This story, like any in which someone is disheartened by a teacher, upsets me. I believe, however, that the past shapes who we are in the present, and Stephanie seems to love the route she’s travelling. Because our routes have crossed, I also believe that her story is now partially my own: On a cold, February night, a gifted artist inks an ampersand in the middle of my life."

Michael sent us this poem:

from In Memory of Brilliance & Value (Saturnalia Books, 2015); first appeared in Redactions

Songs from the Second Fiddle

Wagons arrived uninvited, introduced
powders & spade to the flora & fauna.

They set up fences, they tested smoke
inside a cage. Praising as well cascaded,

set in a postmodern pattern. My own
plans held in place with glue, balanced

& threaded & droppings like dimples
into middle age. I stood for blindfolds

erasing the bruising story. I led a horse
to a waterboard but couldn't make him

shrink: not a secret plan, no thimbling
where the pianists vanished into grain.

The sky overhead was green, the land
blue, owls flew in a storm approaching.

We felt a cleansing presence on behalf
of pining. My own heart lit & remained.

~ ~ ~

Michael Robins was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of three collections, including Ladies & Gentlemen (Saturnalia Books, 2011) and In Memory of Brilliance & Value (Saturnalia Books, 2015). He is also the author of chapbooks Circus (Flying Guillotine, 2009) and Little Felons (Strange Machine, 2013). He teaches literature and creative writing at Columbia College Chicago and lives in the Jefferson Park neighborhood. For more information, visit www.michaelrobins.org.

Thanks to Michael for his poem and tattoo, shared with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Raena Shirali

Our next tattooed poet is Raena Shirali, who shared several of her tattoos:

Photo by Raena Shirali

The first tattoo is the umbrella that appears to be falling from her right shoulder. Here's another look:

Raena explained that "the umbrella is taken from album art for the album "Illuminate" by the band Lydia."

Raena elaborated, "More than being a symbol of the band or my dedication to their music, for me it symbolizes protection--specifically self-protection--and its placement under my right collarbone makes it kind of a second, parallel heart of sorts." She added, "It's about being your own shelter, or making your own shelter."

The leaves in this piece actually float over the shoulder and can be seen with another of Raena's tattoos:

Raena said that this peacock feather on her shoulder is meant to honor both her grandmother, whose favorite bird is the peacock, as well as her Indian heritage. "I was interested in the feather being rendered such that it mimicked the shape and gesture of the leaves around the umbrella," Raena explained.

She credited the umbrella and the peacock feather to Kelly Borders in Savannah, Georgia. Borders is currently at a shop called The Butcher.

Raena also shared this literary tattoo on her ribs:

This was Raena's first tattoo and it was also inked in Savannah. The handwriting is that of the artist amd "Where are you going, where have you been?" is the title of a Joyce Carol Oates short story. You can read it here.

And finally, here is an ampersand:

Raena explains:

"The ampersand was created by Alison Reber at Short North Tattoo in Columbus, OH. I didn't want it to be entirely filled in, for it to look too much like font, so there are finely drawn lines throughout that indicate a sketchiness. I like that idea: that punctuation--really that anything we write--is sketchy. In both senses of the word."

Ampersands are popular tattoos among poets - click through the tag at the bottom of the post to see other examples.

Raena also sent us an unpublished poem:

typewriter complex

when you left, you bought me a royal, & i thought,

letters.

 i thought,

artifact.

it was unwieldy without a case,

with a spool that didn’t belong.

more white space now

that this is a musing &

i am out of ink. if i could measure

your absence, i would stop writing

in conditionals; i’d say

to speak of erasure

is to speak of the past.

in response, you would thrum the lip

of your mug, cold coffee.

you would

shift. noiseless.

you’d write me

tell me

not to cringe—my ears ringing

in the aftermath of enter’s trill.

tell me

to accept it:

the spool only had red ink, so everything

we wrote all weekend felt like a blood oath,

& we are not brothers.

& when you said

era, prototype,

we were not lovers,

either. & i know now

that keys are lies with names, that                          press always means

force—

soft clicks you made on the sheet of printer paper

when you sat             content at my kitchen counter         typing                                     hello owner

~ ~ ~

Raena Shirali is originally from Charleston, SC, and is currently living in Columbus, OH, where she is earning my MFA in Poetry from The Ohio State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Banango Street, The Boiler, Boston Review, Fogged Clarity, Four Way Review, Muzzle Magazine, Ostrich Review, Pleiades, and The Nervous Breakdown. She recently won a 2013 “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, and is Reviews Editor for The Journal.

Thanks so much to Raena for sharing her poetry and tattoos with us here on The Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2014 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another web site other than Tattoosday, without attribution, please note that it has been copied without the author's permission and is in violation of copyright laws. Please feel free to visit http://tattoosday.blogspot.com and read our original content. Please let me know if you saw this elsewhere so I contact the webmaster of the offending site and advise them of this violation in their Terms of Use Agreement.