shira erlichman

Yay!

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 03:56:10 GMT

Check it out, loves.

New song, "Bronze"
- unreleased,
not yet recorded,
& live at the CLPP Conference 2009
at Hampshire College!

<3.

It's Time.

Thu, 01 Jan 2009 05:39:12 GMT

Artwork by Shaun Tan

Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:20:19 GMT

Does anyone know --- if one is asked for a clip of one's music for a major motion film (created by an independent film company) --- how much to charge for having the music in the film? Or, specifically, if one wrote score music FOR the film? If not----can you refer me to someone who might know?

Thank you!

Be-come. That compound word might almost be as good as the etymology for window: Wind-eye.

Wed, 26 Nov 2008 06:41:32 GMT

I am home and I am remembering what it is I am in love with. I'm in love with my bookcase. My bookcase in Northampton is a pretty glass apple, but the real deal, my bookcase here in Brookline, is a woolly mammoth whose hair I brush, whose neck I stroke, and who I've learned to trade languages with. It opens up to me, such a sweet animal. Poems and diagrams of hearts and brains (a.k.a. poems), strange hippie books that literally led to my falling apart - because books have been like Gods to me - I had to learn how to question them instead of just say yesyesyesIdo, maps of violence maps of peaceseeking, shelves of lives lived on tongues, I am so lucky. The feeling of thumbing through a collection of instincts I've had, lights and warmths my parents have guided me towards, and pages of autumns turned, somehow, summers. The feeling. I am in love with my bookcase which is the wall, pinned to it, white as the wall, born from it, taking up half of it, ugly gorgeous, mine!

I am in love with my childhood room. In love with the big paper snowflake dangling from the ceiling that Allegra and I made one night after splitting and spilling a pomegranate. In love with the birds everywhere, the tiny red paper ones flying over my window, the realistic ones Wolfie bought at the plant store and attached toa real branch dangling from a hook on my ceiling, the geese from the picture book over my bed, in flight, in flight. I am in love with how this room holds me. I feel safe and remembered and remembering. Reading an old chapbook discovered on the woolly, I have the courage to face myself and let myself be who I was and love myself for it. What more of a feeling can I ask for? There is pride in me. I haven't always let myself feel pride. Like so many artists, I am always pushingpushingpushing forward, whatnext, whatnow, whatcanImake, whoamInow, whereamIgoing, dotdotdotdotdot. Tonight I sit with my family, I hold them close, I do not ache, my chest is not suffering winter, my emptiness is not amplified.

A photograph of my parents from their wedding day hangs over the dresser. My brother and I searched it tonight for our own features. You look like mom, I look like aba, you look like aba there, you look like mom. Pictures of me etched in metal filled with ink and then pressed against paper hang on my wall. Wolfie made them of me back when everything was so different and I was hiding inside myself like a pit in a peach and I couldn't say everything that was in me and then everything took over and I lost myself and is that what lunacy is? They hang on my wall and I can look at them and say that was then and I stand now and Wolfie and I are okay and life is moving, life is always a river.

I want to understand so much. I want to belong. To myself, and to those I love, and to the places I want to love again. Sometimes the world feels like a blur of people too blurred to be real. They have so many voices and faces and ideas about me and themselves and the world around them. It can be hard to find myself, solid, among all that.

Mom says I should take time and just appreciate myself, all I've done in my twenty four years. So often I feel nostalgic, an ache for something, gone, the goneness of so many good things I feel I'll never touch again. So often I feel consumed by worry and regret and anxiety and self-doubt. So often I am trying and trying, reaching and reaching. In this room, everything that is, is. Everything that was, is. I see so many people I've loved and that have loved me. I see who I was and who I am, and let who I am becoming come.

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 05:04:06 GMT

"You belong to what you understand." - Mirah

Tonight I saw Mirah at the Iron Horse here in Northampton. I have heard scraps from an album - that one Cold, Cold Water song that everyone seems to know these days - and that's what I knew too. The Iron Horse is an incredible space. I had never been there. Open staircases and round tables and an igloo of a crowd right up front and a stage viewable to all. Felt like everywhere was a good seat. It was just Mirah and her guitar. I was disarmed by her lyrics. They were tender and honest without a curve of bitterness and hopeful and round-clouded and giving. I would love to challenge her to write a performance poem. I would love to see what she came up with. I can see it. Subtle and kind and wooden-kitchen-table-esque.

"So teach yourself how to demand the monument that you deserve, for rising up in a beaten down world" - Mirah

Before that, I sat at Amanouz restaurant, which just might be my favorite spot about town, in fact, yes, I know it is. I love their Moroccan Mint Tea. I sat for hours. I had a lot of feelings and thoughts tonight that I wish I could keep with me for a bit longer, if not a long, long time. They feel like shells in my pockets. Beautiful, and brittle. They are not stones. They must be what they are in order to be what they are. Maybe I'll write them down, maybe I won't. I met a man on the bus the other day and we were conversing and he said something particularly poetic and I said "wow, you should write that down" and he said "no" laughing, and then said, "I keep it here" - pointing to his chest. I laughed. It reminded me of something my father would say. Startling in its simple, un-self-conscious honesty. My aba is like that a lot.

"Love just might be an economy, but I don’t believe in property. We don’t own nothing. We don’t owe nothing." - Mirah

I like today.

And it's nice to feel that way. I pet a cat, it even stayed. It was orange and white. It was not grey. My housemate Kelley came out to play. Even though she was down, she still said 'Hey!' I made a strange fruit concoction, it turned out less than okay. It got burnt in the oven, so I tried the microwave. I wrote a poem yesterday. I wrote a song "With Empty Hands, But Standing" - I made what I made. I think sometimes my expectations make my head winnie and neigh. I think that somedays all that you can do is make what you make.

Numbers and Names and Unspeakable Things Spoken

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:58:01 GMT

One. I graduated Hampshire College in May. I was nominated and then picked to MC the Graduation. That was really nice. I smiled a lot. It was interesting staring out at so many seats filled with so many people. The people had on newly ironed clothes. They put their hands together, then seperated them, really quickly and constantly, to transmit their excitement. Then I went to California to work at an overnight summer camp and be around a girl that I really like being around. Then I went to Chicago and did really silly things for a good cause. In Chicago, I stood in front of a green screen in too much makeup. In Chicago, I became a hot air balloon. In Chicago, I sipped margueritas while sitting with Alvin, and Mike Mc-golly-gee, and Alvin's nice friend. Then I went up to the 18th floor of the Hilton and played the Kalimba (thumb-piano) that the girl I like being around got me for my birthday. My room was transformed into a music box, all because of my thumbs. Speaking of thumbs, I recently (during the camp era) read a wonderful book which revolves around thumbs. It's called Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and it's by Tom Robbins. I recommend it if you like: things that are funny, lesbian cowgirls, living on the edge, and learning. Oh yeah, I turned 24. Not in that hotel room, but in San Francisco. I ate a key-lime pie with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and the girl I like being around who also likes being around me. I love key-lime pie. It is a pie of significance for me. So far I've eaten it on two major events in my life. You know about one, and that event is thrilling - therefor, can you even imagine, dare you conjure, what the other event was? Then I flew back to Boston until I was out of breath and my arms were really tired and I landed in the airport where Kit, Casey, Kate Lee, and Shai picked me up and carried me all the way to the Whitehaus. Before that, we attempted to navigate the airport back to our car for about a whole nother Paleolithic age. I liked seeing my friends and my brother. I missed being enveloped by that feeling only they can bring. The feeling is like lots of pillows, and lightning in the distance, and you're safe and warm and laughing. Then, only days after kissing Boston hello, I had to kiss Boston goodbye. Now I'm spending my days in Northampton, where I have a new room full of sun and two beautious house-mates who make beautiful pictures and movements and really, truly are inflating me. It was, despite my perhaps overly-casual tone, a rather torrential summer. Yes, it had it's calm, but it also had freakin' floods. Being surrounded by these two bright bulbs and eating dinner with them each night and talking about life and art and being a person is really special. I am trying to find a part-time job in the area until mid-December (See "Two"); my other part-time job will be standing on the street and playing my Kalimba. I want to turn the planet into a music box.

Two. Hi, are you seeing Two before reading the rest of One? I recommend going back. I mean you only have one more sentence and then you can move on to Two. Plus two ends so soon, really, with maybe four or five more words, and then three begins, so what will you be missing out on anyway?

Three. Where were we. Mid-December. In Mid-December I'll be going back to Boston to hug my parents and live in my highschool room while POETRY X-TRAINING. IT'S GOING TO BE AWESOME. Danny Sherrard, Ken Arkind, and Jon Sands are on my team. We're going to travel around the country as the uniformed quadruplet "The Spilljoy Ensemble" sharing our thoughts and feelings in poem form with other humans. We're going to move our mouths and sounds are going to come out in the shape of strange mythical animals (See "Danny"), smoky-throated harmonica-hearted shades of blue (See "Ken"), and bashful brewery of beauty bubbling bountifully (See "Jon" and "Too Much Illiteration") and hopefully some "honest man's poems" (See "The Meaning of Shira's Name"). In order to do all this, we have to train. Half of December and half of January will be devoted to running in matching sweat-suits and sweat-bands, lifting all sorts of heavy objects like Truth and Wisdom, shadow-boxing until all hours of the late afternoon. AWESOME SQUARED CARRY THE COOL DIVIDE IT BY SWEET EQUALZ I HAVE HIGH EXPECTATIONS C'MON WORLD AND GIVE ME WHAT I DREAM OF.

Danny. I'm excited to find out more intimately whether the myths are true. Does he make moths come out of his sleeves when he starts "spittin' fire"? Did Mick Jagger sue him for stealing his mouth? Man, I wish they taught you they stuff in school but they don't. I'll have to go on tour with him to find out. Late night Bickford's conversations, here we come.

Ken. Aw man, when Ken personally invited me to tour with these cats, meow meow meow, he played me his electric toothbrush over the phone. The toothbrush was of some cartoon super-dude equivalent to The Hulk, though the true identity of the toothbrush escapes me now, and it said all sorts of things, all of which I heard first-hand over the telephone. Where does the compound word "first-hand" come from anyway? If you have a milk-man, does that mean you get your milk "first-hand" or "second-hand"? Would getting it from the cow be getting it "first-hand" and don't cows not have hands, so would that make it "first-udder"? If a cow delivered you milk that it got from another cow, would that be "second-udder"? If you overheard two people whispering, would you recieve their gossip "second-utter?"

Jon. Nothing is better than Jon's voice-mail messages. I feel like bees suddenly have sworn off their stingers and just want to chill with me and I'm like "Man, you're so fuzzy, and bumbling, and make good jokes with 'bee' puns" and they're like, "Yeah, I know, nobody ever wants to get to know us 'cus they think we're gonna get 'em with our poisonous stabbers. Man, it blows." Not to say with this strange scene I've set that Jon is something potentially threatening that then loses its danger and becomes sweet and cuddly. No, no, but rather, that Jon makes the world feel less thorny, more rose.

The Section Formerly Known as Shira. Section "Shira" went up to the counter of this too-hip-but-I-can't-help-but-sit-down-for-the-whole-day-typing-and-sipping-crackaccinos coffee shop and ordered herself something chewy. So, the Section Formerly Known as Shira will be replacing her. This section is sponsored by impressive caligraphy, the letter J, and the moment when your blinkers sync up with the car ahead of yours. Oh, I think I was supposed to tell you what the meaning of Shira's name is, but the letter J is getting all posessive and wants in on the news flash, so, here we go, J, take it away. Jrlichman jeans jonest jerson jin jerman jand jhira jeans joem jor jong jin jebrew. Jretty jweet, jright?

Three? Section Three? is unsure of whether it belongs here, or whether some other oddly titled heading should be here about some other poet like Section Kit Wallach, or whether J should just take over, or what. It's a bit insecure, but don't say that in front of it. It's best to comment on it within earshot at parties so that J can not know what you said for sure and just brew until it gets home and sleeps in its jed and then stay up all night wondering whether you said "J is SOOO insecure" or was it "secure"? J can't quite remember, and that's all the more frustrating, cus what if he really is confident and he just didn't hear it? So Three? is devoted to questioning and insecurities and the sharing of such dangerous weapons. Yes, they become weapons. When overused, or turned against one's self, insecurity and questioning can become extremely dangerous. Albert Einstein was all about questions but he also never answered anybody when they asked him why he didn't wear socks. What I'm trying to say is you can ask questions, but don't weild them wildly. They can get out of hand, or out of udder...I wouldn't want to leave anybody out. So here we go: Where are the Spilljoyers going? Can I learn more about it on the space that is mine? Let me guess, would that be at www.myspace.com/thespilljoyensemble? Will that tell me about ways I can get closer to Ken's beard? Is Shira spending too much time crafting a website which will tell me more about her where-abouts? Is where-about another really cool compound word?

Wolverine. This section is the name of the toothbrush I was introduced to over the phone via Ken. And what a toothbrush it was. Triple sigh with a cherry on top.

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:33:16 GMT

Hi everybody!

I got picked to be a part of a program for Borders (yes, the bookstore) called Open Door Poetry, that will reach approximately 23 million viewers. My poem THE PIANO SPEAKS is now on the site at:

http://www.bordersmedia.com/home.asp

The other good news is that one of my best friends, Brian S. Ellis, also got picked - I am performing alongside him in his poem STEPHEN RADIO.

Also, another cool thing is that a few months ago Brian and I were each nominated for the Pushcart Prize (http://www.pushcartprize.com), which is the best of the independent presses, by our publishing company, Destructible Heart Press (http://destructibleheart. com/).

To have 2 young Boston poets representing our scene on something that reaches that many people is so frikkin exciting I can't even wrap my mind around it. To think that we unveiled these poems at our home venue, The Cantab Lounge, for our friends that feel like family, and now the population of California (8% of the US) gets to see it, is so smile-worthy that I think I'm gonna' puke.

I love poetry!

YAYZ!

STAY KEWL, KIDZ!

More 2 come sooon!

FAMECAST.COM

Sat, 02 Jun 2007 18:58:05 GMT

Hi everybody!

I uploaded a video onto famecast.com and would really appreciate your support. Famecast is an online competition with 12 categories of performance and arts, all in a video showcase. Spoken Word is one of the categories. Folks register online and check out different artists and then vote for their favorites. There are four rounds, top 50, top 25, top 10, then top 5. Believe it or not, the top 5 are brought to the NPS in Austin to compete for 10 grand.

I uploaded the video of DADDY'S PARKING LOT SERMON. If you all would visit the site and vote for me, I would buy you a (1) a hug (2) undying love (3) a chihuahua named I Love You who dances on his hind legs at the sound of ice cream truck music and/or (4) eternal happiness. I hear all of these things cost a lot of money. In other words, please take five minutes and register and vote for me!

You can register at http://famecast.com. (Check out the top right) My video is at: http://famecast.com/contest/stage.php?stage_id=15&round_id=73&artist_id=3499

There are four rounds. The first round of elimination ends on 6/6, noon.
You can even vote and check back in to vote again, voting more than once, I believe. Thanks to any and everybody who votes - it means a lot to me. Spreading the poetry I work on in my room to folks outside my room is exciting. If you want to support me as an artist, this is a great way to do it. If you want to make out, this is not a great way to do it, as the screen comes between us. One day technology will find a way. I am sure of it. Now go and vote, beautifuls! Please? Delightful! And check out other folks too - there's some really amazing footage up!

Love,
Shira

Thu, 12 Apr 2007 17:06:59 GMT

The real work of art is the result of a magnificent struggle. - Robert Henri (quote in my pocket last night)

After a long and brutal night of poetry, the Cantab Lounge 2007 team has been picked and I'm on it! I couldn't be more thrilled. In score order aka scorder:

Simone Beaubien
mwa
1two5
Brian S. Ellis
J*Me

It was a long and close night of poetry. For the rare few of you who care, I performed, in order, "This Me Thing" (the call and response poem), "Nefertiti #2" (new poem about high school devilishness such as throwing hot dogs and eggs at Eliza's cheating ex-boyfriend's house because they looked like a weenie y huevos), "The Piano Speaks" (about the piano at McLean's Mental Hospital in Belmont, meant so so much to me to read), and lastly, "Daddy's Parking Lot Sermon" which you can see me doing here: http://lettersofmarque.blogspot.com at the Providence Finals last week.

Hot damn, so I made this journal to keep everyone informed as to my poetic whereabouts but this feels a bit like narcissism, me this, me that; but then again, one great poet-friend-man-beast I adore once told me to "invest in yourself" and so here I am talking to you about my slamtastic vida, my ups and downs and shake it all arounds. I am so excited about this summer, the potential for growth this team presents, the joys ahead, the road we are embarking on. Brian is growing to be one of my best friends and to be on a team with him feels like sitting in a private planetarium where we get to pin up our own constellations and sip strawberry daiquiries on a picnic blanket together while telling our favorite jokes from the second grade. Yes, a lot like that. Exciting and adventurous and full of laughter.

For those of you around the Jamaica Plain area, you should come to the Hootenanies that happen every friday at Brian's house aka the Whitehaus; it is full of music and poetry and magic. More info at http://www.myspace.com/treehaushoots.

I woke up at six am today and Leise was still asleep (total reversal of the usual) because I was just so damn pumped about last night. I lay awake thinking of potential group pieces with Brian because I am a nerd. An alert nerd. An early morning nerd. Then the cat and I had a staring contest. Then I slid around Leise's kitchen (soon to be my kitchen too? ooo foreshadowing!) in my socks while she made breakfast. Then I crawled back in bed and dreamt about horses. Then I woke and e-kissed you all. Truee storreeez!

After such a hard fall (and literally such a hard Fall) I am glad to say I'm up on my feet, forcing the audience to repeat after me things they don't want to say but I need to hear, talking smack to friends' former ex's and generally thrashing my body around an invisible maypole. It feels good. The air is getting lighter. Soon the heat will come and we will step outside of it and it will retain our shape. Bring on the burned back of the neck. Bring the midnight catfights. Bring the burning asphalt. I'm on a team. One down, two to go (job, living with Leise). Summer, open your firehydrants. I'm ready to go dancing.

videos up on youtube!

Sun, 18 Feb 2007 21:54:38 GMT

New videos up on youtube from the University of Santa Cruz reading. Thanks to Anna of UCSC for posting them! Here's a taste test, MOON JOURNAL. The other ones up are POWER OUT and REGARDING RED & ORANGE. Enjoy!

ARS POETICA IN 50 WORDS

Thu, 15 Feb 2007 02:54:13 GMT

Step I. Write 50 words that have to do, personally and loosely and vividly, with poetry.

FUCK. CONCRETE. TRASHCOMBER. AMPLIFY. PRECISION. CONNECTION. ELECTRIC. BLOOM. RISK. CONDENSED. OTHERWORLDLINESS. FLESH. BONE. POWER. IMMERSION. DIVE. MADNESS. VEHICLE. GRIP. HONEST. STRANGE. VISCOUS. VOMIT. SURVIVAL. IMAGISTIC. SWELL. TENSE. NEED. PULSING. THUMPING. MAGNET. PRAYER. HEALING. INCANDESCENT. THUNDER. HUNTING. UNDERWATER. SLOWMOTION. SPEECHLESSNESS. STAMPEDE. PAINTING. FRAGMENT. HATCHING. FOLKMUSIC. DINER-COFFEE. INFLATING. CAT’S CRADLE. GENTLE. PIERCING. MIRROR.

Step II. Print and cut up into fifty pieces. Pluck piece by piece and arrange combinations according to the random plucking. Some combinations I got... (Idea is to begin sentence with "Poetry is...")

Strange pulsing mirror, underwater Cat’s Cradle, hunting vehicle. Folk-music connection. Condensed thunder-prayer. Viscous vomit. Electric fragment. Incandescent trashcomber. Slowmotion stampede. Speechlessness magnet. Hatching fuck. Piercing precision. Concrete painting. Honest dive. Gentle flesh, thumping risk. Bloom diner-coffee. Amplify need, swell bone. Survival power.

Step III. Create 50 word ars poetica based on phrases you dig.

Strange pulsing mirror. Such a gentle honest dive. Both hunting vehicle and folk music. You amplify need, swell and bloom around bone. You’ve got survival power. Condensed thunder-prayer, incandescent trashcomber, electric fragment, heal me. You slowmotion stampede me, hatching light, hatching fuck, hatching 3 AM diner-coffee, exactly what I need.

Sun, 11 Feb 2007 20:46:07 GMT

Back and proud and happy. Spent the flight back scribbling poems and sitting next to a six year old who appreciated friendship as much as I do. The trip was full of bagels and new friends and learning and the pouncing of a cat named Miso. Lots of watching, taking in, and learning. Lots of conversations about poetry and performance and craft.

Performing with Roger Bonair-Agard was an honor. That man moves like a ninja; his poems feel like I'm squeezing my way in through a party with good rhythm. It feels like dancing bodies, the smell of spice, the leaning in of a grandma about to lay it down and give you some sugar as she does. His poetry flexes and grinds and spits up sparks at the sky. You know, I like, I enjoyed it.

I feel fully rejuvinated to make a new chapbook - as most of my set was new; so that should be out this summer if not sooner. My set felt wonderful. Some clips/poems will be up on youtube soon; I'll let you know when they appear. Highlights include reading The Piano Speaks and seeing a crowd of hands raise when I asked who in the audience knew someone who has been in a mental hospital, the comraderie I felt, the hugs I got after my set, the audience's response, performing This Me Thing (a call and response poem) and hearing three hundred voices thunder back.

I am working on setting up shows at Sarah Lawrence, Mt. Holyoke, Ithaca College, and possibly a mini-tour this June. Yay!