#47. From Classroom to Laureate: David Holper's Journey through Eureka's Poetry Scene and Beyond

From the halls of College of the Redwoods to the heart of Eureka's poetry scene, join us for an inspiring conversation with David Holper, Eureka's inaugural Poet Laureate. Discover how David transitioned from teaching English to becoming a vital part of the local literary community. We explore the rich history of the Poet Laureate tradition, the significance of the laurel in ancient Greece, and gain insights into the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limon. David also shares personal anecdotes, including memorable meetings with renowned poets like Billy Collins and reflections on the unique annual poetry tradition in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Our journey doesn't stop at poetry. We venture into an adventurous tale from 1977, starting with my enlistment in the California Conservation Corps and eventual role as a firefighter in Calaveras County. Hear about the unexpected blaze that led to a winter spent in tents, my acceptance into Humboldt State, and a thrilling hitchhike to Alaska amid a recession. This segment offers a raw look at the tough conditions of cannery life and the resilience of workers striving to save for school, setting the stage for future stories of unexpected friendships and life-changing experiences.

Finally, we dive into the vibrant poetry and performance art scenes in Humboldt County, highlighting the importance of local venues, public readings, and poetry slams. Discover the nurturing environments provided by Northtown Coffee in Arcata and the Siren Song Tavern in Eureka, fostering talents from high school students to seasoned poets. Get a taste of the local literary culture with a heartfelt reading of David Holper's poem "Silah" and explore the significance of perseverance in creative writing. This episode is a heartfelt celebration of the arts and the community that keeps the spirit of poetry alive in Humboldt County.

Transcript

Poetry and Poet Laureate Programs

Speaker 1 0:30

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages, it's the 100% Humboldt podcast with my new best friend, David Holper.

Speaker 2 0:36

Thanks, Scott. Hi Dave, how are you doing?

Speaker 1 0:38

I am well. It's just one of those interesting weeks before we lead up to 4th of July and it seems like then we launch in December.

Speaker 2 0:46

Yeah, I'm ready.

Speaker 1 0:47

Yeah.

Speaker 2 0:47

Long winters, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 0:49

The longest winter ever on record. Did you have a long winter, Nick?

Speaker 2 0:53

Yeah.

Speaker 2 0:54

Nick's saying so tell me who you are what you do, okay, well, I'm a retired English teacher from College of the Redwoods and I've been a poet for a long, long time and fiction writer. And back in just so this I guess this is the way most people will know me is back in 2019, leslie Castellano from the Eureka City Council reached out to me and said the city council, in coordination with the Inc people, was going to start a Poet Laureate excuse me, can't talk Poet Laureate program for the city of Eureka, oh, and wanted me to look over, like this, guidelines of what they were doing and just say does this sound workable? Wow, and so I did. I gave her a few tips on like how to maybe do things a little bit differently, but most of it looked great. And I said you know, it looks good and, by the way, can I apply? And she said, absolutely. So I did and got it and I wound up being the inaugural poet laureate for Eureka and got it, and and I wound up being the inaugural poet laureate for eureka.

Speaker 1 1:58

Of course you did, yeah, so so what is a laureate? So we? I asked you before johnny, we were talking on the way over ago, she goes find out what a laureate is yeah what is a poet laureate? You told me a little bit about the laurel leaves yeah, right.

Speaker 2 2:08

So the ancient greeks, you know, for the festivals like for instance, the Olympics and things, they had a lot of games. When you'd win you know a race, or you'd win a poetry competition or a drama competition, they'd put these oak laurels on your head and you became the laureate. And that tradition has followed us. In Western civilization, like, for instance, britain, has a poet laureate program that's gone on for 500 years and just recently they had their first female poet laureate. And the United States has had a poet laureate program for about a hundred years, and the current poet laureate is Ada Limon, who's a Californian that's cool she doesn't live in California anymore, but and that's selected by whom?

Speaker 2 2:56

By the Librarian of Congress, yeah, so whoever the librarian is selects the Poet Laureate. And I know a little bit about this because when Billy Collins came and read at Humboldt State University, probably like 10 years ago, after the reading was over we invited him, the group that I was in invited him out and we sat with him for about three hours and asked him everything Like what do you get if you're a poet laureate? And he said you get an office, I guess, in the Library of Congress, and you get your own secretary. And he said he went one time, sat at the desk, met the secretary and then didn't go back.

Speaker 2 3:34

That was it, that was it?

Speaker 1 3:36

Did he read some poetry to you?

Speaker 2 3:39

He didn't read any poetry to us then, but he just finished like a two-hour reading, so it was great yeah.

Speaker 1 3:44

So now it's time for cocktails at Plaza Grill. Yeah right Better yet.

Speaker 2 3:49

Yeah.

Speaker 1 3:49

So is it. Would he recite poetry or would you call it reading poetry?

Speaker 2 3:54

I mean, I've seen him read a couple of times and he can do it by memory, or I've seen him do it with a book or, you know, with a binder of poems, but oh, he's a great reader, very funny.

Speaker 1 4:08

So recite is then from memory yeah, okay, gotcha.

Speaker 2 4:11

Yeah, I can't do that. My memory's not good enough anymore to hold the poem in my head. What was your name again?

Speaker 1 4:16

I kind of.

Speaker 2 4:16

I know I forget Nick.

Speaker 1 4:18

where am I? Where are all these lights?

Speaker 2 4:21

I love going to poetry slams where people can do like a three-minute poem off the top of their head. And I could do that when I was young, in my teens. But I can't do that anymore. My memory I just can't hold. I get nervous and then the poem flies out of my head.

California Stories and Surprises

Speaker 1 4:34

Speaking of Europe and poetry, where we go back to see our son Jesse hey, jess, they live in Utrecht, netherlands, which is just south of Amsterdam, about a half hour. It's a smaller version of Amsterdam and they have a poetry. I don't know what you'd call it, but it's a brick line that they put one word per year.

Speaker 2 4:54

Oh, that's great.

Speaker 1 4:55

So it's this thing that's been going on and on for like hundreds of years. Wow and they add one brick per year. One word per year, one year, yeah, I have no idea, I haven't read it or anything, so anyway. So tell me more about your history. How did you get to Humboldt, meet your lovely wife?

Speaker 2 5:14

Well, that's an interesting story Counting on it.

Speaker 2 5:19

Yeah, I left home in, let's see, it was about 1977 and I joined the California Conservation Corps and I was working as a firefighter in Calaveras County, just up above Angel's Camp, and during that period of time fought a lot of fires. And then I progressed to working on a portable sawmill for the CCC up in Calaveras Big Trees. And as I went up the feeding chain of, you know, being a Corps member, I shared a room with another guy named Al, and one night it was probably about one or two in the morning Al came running in the room and said Dave, there's a fire, we got to go. So I did what I always did when there was a fire I threw on my Nomax, I grabbed my gear bag and I was running out the door. I ran out the front door of that building and I realized, oh, the kitchen and dining facility were on fire. He meant there's a fire at our fire center, not, we're going to hop in the bus and go to San Diego. And the fire was so hot it burned down that kitchen and dining facility in an hour. So the state of California came in, surveyed the damage and said we're going to rebuild your dining facility and kitchen and we're also going to redo your dorms because they're from the 1970s and so we're going to move everybody into tents for the winter in the foothills of the Sierra's in the winter.

Speaker 2 6:49

And it got cold there. We weren't up that high, we weren't up to Calaveras Big Trees, but it was cold enough and it did snow there occasionally. So I said this is crazy. So I had applied to Humboldt State and I thought I better call them. So I got on the telephone, I called and I got a secretary who said let me put you through. There's somebody who can take care of your problem. And I'd spoke with a woman and she said well, I can't tell you right this moment, but call me back this afternoon and I'll let you know. So I did. I called her back that afternoon and she said you're in.

Speaker 2 7:24

Just like that, and that's how I wound up at Humboldt State.

Speaker 1 7:26

Wow, and where did you? Where'd you come from before you were at Conservation?

Speaker 2 7:30

Corps. Yeah, I grew up in the Bay Area in Marin County.

Speaker 1 7:33

Okay, yeah, so Marin guy.

Speaker 2 7:35

Yeah, I'm a Marin guy, what part of Marin. In Corte Madera, on the old hill that would go over to Mill Valley. Yeah, beautiful place to grow up.

Speaker 1 7:42

Brother-in-law got married there, beautiful. Yeah, I love that, so is that how you met your wife.

Speaker 2 7:49

Well, no, I think in 1980, there was a recession going on here. There wasn't much in the way I put my feelers out for a few jobs that were. There really wasn't much in the way of jobs, and I thought I got to make some money over the summer to help pay for next year. So there were two girls in my French class who told me one day that they were going to go to Alaska and work in a cannery. Oh, the cannery story.

Speaker 1 8:16

Yeah yeah, that's a cannery story.

Speaker 2 8:18

I said that sounds great. I remember those. So I hitchhiked to Seattle and met them there and we hopped on the ferry and went up to Ketchikan. Rad and I got off in Ketchikan and I never worked in a cannery. I drove cab and catch can for a while, worked on a fishing boat, worked on a dam that was being built there, did all sorts of stuff, but I worked there for a couple summers and made enough to keep going to school, including a cannery. Never worked in a cannery. I went in a cannery one time and it that was enough, and that was enough.

Speaker 2 8:49

It really smelled pretty bad and I thought I don't want to do this Hardly, yeah.

Speaker 1 8:53

No, I remember fellow students at Humboldt State, now Cal Poly, if you must. So kind of an ongoing joke. They would live there for six, eight weeks and live on the freezer in the back of the cannery and rat hole every penny and they would make eight or ten grand and that would feed them for the next school year. Oh, absolutely, and they could figure it out because the wages were enough, and that's very different from mom and dad writing a check.

Speaker 2 9:23

You know, I remember when I was driving a cab I picked up people who were working in the canneries and drove them back to their campsites, wherever they were camping, and frequently they would have a garbage bag typically a black garbage bag, with the salmon that had not been put in the cans yet, and they would eat that.

Speaker 1 9:43

That'd be their dinner.

Speaker 2 9:45

I tried it one time. I'm like I'm never eating that again.

Speaker 1 9:47

Really, it was just terrible. Yeah, it was dreadful Stuff they wouldn't can.

Speaker 2 9:51

Well, before it's canned, it's not very good. It's really salty. Oh really Stuff they wouldn't can. Well, before it's canned, it's not very good. It's really salty, oh really, yeah, you wouldn't want it. Do they barbecue it or do they just? They would just heat it up in a pan. They were so tired by the time they did a shift at the canner. Oh my gosh, yeah.

Speaker 1 10:03

I remember talking to different guys going. That would be a rough thing.

Speaker 2 10:07

Yeah.

Speaker 1 10:08

So you graduated from Humboldt.

Speaker 2 10:10

But let me tell you the rest of the story, because you asked about my wife. So when I arrived in Ketchikan that day, I took a bus downtown because somebody had said that the Forest Service was hiring and I'd already been in the CCC. So I went down and I wound up talking to a woman from the YCC, the Youth Conservation Corps and she said well, do you have references? And I said sure, you can call the fire center and talk to my crew boss. And so she did, and I was sitting in her glassed-in office in the Forest Service building and I saw this cute redhead walking by and I thought, oh, I'd like to get to know her. And it turned out that she was the driver for the YCC. And that's how I met my wife, michelle.

Speaker 1 10:51

That's funny, yeah, so did you get on? You got on with YCC, then yeah, and then she was your driver.

Speaker 2 10:57

She drove me around Ketchikan and I got on a float plane and flew out to Prince Wales Island where I was out in the boonies doing stream cleaning for Does she still drive you around ever? Yes, sometimes she does. And sometimes you drive, yes.

Speaker 1 11:12

I like it. So you were a professor then at CR.

Speaker 2 11:16

Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:16

Okay, how long were you at College of the Redwoods?

Speaker 2 11:19

23 years.

Speaker 1 11:20

Which sits right over here on my map? Oh yeah, it's right over there on the middle part yeah, yeah, yeah, you can see it. So how many years? 27?

Speaker 2 11:29

23 years 23,. Wow, plus another 10 years teaching in Sacramento.

Speaker 1 11:34

Wow, what did you teach there?

Speaker 2 11:36

I taught at a couple of high schools Catholic high schools Taught English the same thing Composition, literature, creative writing. So left Humboldt and came back. Yeah, yeah, so I feel like I won the lottery when I got the job at CR.

Speaker 1 11:49

I just felt like, oh, so blessed to be back on the North Coast.

Speaker 2 11:50

Yeah, yeah, like, oh, so blessed to be back on the North Coast.

Speaker 1 11:53

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a state job and it's got Cal it's retirement.

Speaker 2 11:59

It's got all the things one would like and we were starting a family, so you know we could have our kids here. You know, in right in the heart of nature and it wasn't a long drive to the beach Right, or to the forest or the mountains.

Speaker 1 12:11

Our date night is five minutes to Huda Point in Camel Rock.

Speaker 2 12:14

Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 12:15

Throw the van open and it's picnic time.

Speaker 2 12:17

I was telling Nick before we started all it would take for me to remember how blessed I am to live in a place like this is go to a conference in LA or Chicago or wherever, and I would fly back in. I'd get off the plane and I'd think, wow, what am I doing? Yeah, I don't mind going to those conferences, but every time I'd come back. I think this is the place, this is where, this is where my heart is.

Speaker 1 12:41

It's really interesting, yeah, and it takes sometimes. It takes people to leave to get to know that, or it takes COVID to go Right. There's three and a half years of lockdown and you want to? Let's go to the beach again. That sounds about right. Oh this place is magic. Yeah, and Joni and I looked at everywhere Chico, slow, medford, eugene, whatever it's like Chico, it's 112 there today.

Speaker 2 13:07

Who wants? I don't want to be there. I lived in Sacramento for 10 years, you know.

Speaker 1 13:10

Yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, it gets so warm. Yeah, so yeah, oh my gosh, yeah, it gets so warm. Yeah, so you're retired now. So what do you do in retirement?

Speaker 2 13:16

Well, I'm doing a lot of writing. I'm working on novels, oh, cool.

Speaker 2 13:20

I got my Master's of Fine Arts in fiction, but I'd never had any time to write a whole novel when I was teaching. So now I'm working on those novels, perfecting my craft and aiming to get one of those published. Wow, you know, perfecting my craft and aiming to get one of those published. But in addition, I guess for about 10 years I'd wanted to hike the Camino de Santiago in Spain. And for people who are unfamiliar with that, there are a variety of routes that people take, and the reason why they go to the city of Santiago is because, according to Catholic law in Spain, st James is buried there and they call him Santiago. They don't refer to him as St James, and so, starting in about the year 1000, people started doing pilgrimages to Santiago to go see St James Remains. And the most popular route runs from France, just over the border, in a little town called St Jean-Pied-de-Port, and it goes pretty much due west, right through the Pyrenees and then across the plains of Spain to the city of Santiago 500 miles. So that's the one I did.

Speaker 1 14:28

Our friend Paul just did that from Church, Catalyst Church. Oh yeah, he did part of it. I think he did maybe 200 miles of it. Yeah, he said, it rained a bit.

Speaker 2 14:38

Yeah, I have friends who just finished the northern route along the coast today and they were walking in rain for several days. I was fortunate when I went it was pretty dry. It rained on us a couple of times, but no real soakers.

Hiking the Camino and Writing

Speaker 1 14:51

Would it be normal for me to start thinking in poetry being around a poet? No real soakers. Would it be normal for me to start thinking in poetry being around a poet? Because I'm thinking of the rain in Spain and planes.

Speaker 2 14:58

Yeah, there was a lot of joking about that among the group that I walked with. Were you poets? Yeah, because that plane in Spain is called the Meseta and there's joking among pilgrims and I think has been for a long time. That that's where you go crazy.

Speaker 1 15:14

That's what he said.

Speaker 2 15:19

It's really flat and there's nothing, there's no trees, it's a wheat fields as far as you can see in any direction and it and it gets hot. And I was hiking through the Meseta in July and the first part wasn't so hot, but then I stopped in Leon to visit some friends for a few days and when I started again it was 105 every day for two weeks. Yeah, and I'd get up at 4.30 in the morning and get out and start hiking Two miles. Yeah, I'd get my miles before it got too hot.

Speaker 1 15:43

How far did you? Did you do the whole thing?

Speaker 2 15:45

Yeah, I did the whole 500 miles. That's pretty rad. Yeah, it was a great experience. That's cool, yeah.

Speaker 2 16:05

And I thought I was going to go by myself. I thought this is my pilgrimage to set aside the second third of my life, the work part, and to prepare for the last part of my life, and at the end of the first day. So it's 15 miles through the Pyrenees and it takes you to a town called Roncesvalles, and when I got there, there's a very large monastery complex that must have been built, you know, in the medieval era, and it's been turned into a giant hostel. So, like the main building has four floors full of beds and there's so many people staying there that they do dinner in shifts. And so I had my little plastic ticket told me when to go to dinner, and I met a guy named Pop, from Ohio, and he was the first person in the group that I wound up walking with. And by the time, three days had gone by and we were walking into Pamblona. There were seven of us going together and we're all still in touch with one another, that's neat.

Speaker 2 16:54

Yeah, so we had a great time together. Thanks for friends.

Speaker 1 16:57

Yeah, and Haikin's good for that.

Speaker 2 16:59

Oh, it's terrific, you can talk. Yeah, you can talk, and every day would start with a walk in the dark and then coffee and, you know, some pastry, and then at the end of the day there'd be a cold beer and some chips or pretzels or whatever. Very nice, yeah, you earned that beer. Oh, my goodness, and all those pretzels.

Speaker 1 17:17

Yeah, so, uh, hello, reese Hughes the hiking guy and Joni the hiking gal, that have encouraged me to maybe hike a little bit more. Yeah, uh, yes, I will.

Speaker 2 17:27

Promise, there you go.

Speaker 1 17:29

Uh hey, I think it's about time for a poem. What do you think?

Speaker 2 17:32

I think that's great. Can you read?

Speaker 1 17:33

something for us. I'll let you.

Speaker 2 17:35

Yeah, you want a shorter one or a longer one.

Speaker 1 17:37

Let's start easy.

Speaker 2 17:38

Well, let's start with a hiking poem. This seems appropriate. This is called Hiking the New Year, so I wrote it in January of this year, just thinking about you know hiking, because I've done a lot of hiking in the last few years. So here we go, hiking the New Year, burning from practicing nothing diligently all fall. Days.

Speaker 2 17:56

Later I hike out to headwaters, find myself soaked in sweat and struggling to catch my breath, trudging up the two-mile hill above Three Mile Bridge. I hike out to Fern Canyon, almost nine miles out, and back, under a damp gray sky, I walk utterly alone. Only a chickadee's song to shape the silence of the redwoods. Utterly alone. Only a chickadee's song to shape the silence of the redwoods. She reminds me of the girls in my high school choir who seemed almost invisible, with their plain faces, their dowdy clothes, until they began to sing. And only then would you discover how little you knew about them Until then. At most you saw was your own reflection on the surface of the waters. I don't know where a single one of them lives now, or what they do, or who loves whom, but walking into the mist, gradually dissolving into rain, I hope they're all still singing in the shower at a coffee shop, in another choir, opening their mouths and awakening us all to our blindness. This foolish assumption. We already understood the universe and our pale place within it, nice.

Speaker 1 19:17

I like that. Yeah, do you like that? Nick says he likes it. Thumbs up. Yeah, yeah that was great. No good one. Those are hikes that I actually understand a little bit of. Yeah right, Tony's taken me on a lot of hikes, including one. Those are hikes that. I actually understand a little bit of yeah right, Joni's taken me on a lot of hikes, including freshwater.

Speaker 2 19:32

Yeah, I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 19:33

Headwaters and freshwater, yeah, and she just did a 14-miler yesterday up at Prairie Creek. Oh, good for her. They did a big circle, a red dendron trail and everything. That's great, very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2 19:52

How does?

Speaker 1 19:52

Humboldt, inspire you as an artist and as a poet and writer.

Speaker 2 19:54

Um, I think when I first got here, I wound up taking a couple of creative writing classes right away, and I was really fortunate at then Humboldt state. Um, the two creative writing teachers who were married to one another and shared a single position were Jory Graham and Jim Galvin, and Jory Graham is probably one of the best known poets in the United States at this point. She holds the rhetoric chair at Harvard and she and Jim Galvin aren't married anymore, but Jim Galvin teaches at the University of Iowa and they're both really noteworthy. Yeah, he's more a fiction writer, but he's still a poet as well, and she, among intellectual poets, is probably the premier intellectual poet of the US.

Speaker 1 20:39

They're part of the English department at Humboldt State.

Speaker 2 20:41

Yes and so— In the day. Yeah, and Jim taught fiction and Jory taught poetry and I got to study with both of them and they introduced me to what then was the poetry scene at the Jambalaya, which was the happening place for poetry in Humboldt County that's right. And they stayed until I was a junior and then they asked me if I would edit the toy on the literary magazine at Humboldt, so I got involved in that. Is that still?

Speaker 1 21:12

published Dave.

Speaker 2 21:12

Yeah, it's still published, still coming out. It's very different than it was then, but it's become a class now. Then it was sort of a fly by night thing. I just asked my friends help me select the poems and the stories, Throw up into a magazine.

Speaker 1 21:30

And I was at.

Speaker 2 21:31

Bug Press doing the layout one night, you know, yeah, so it was really sort of, the torch was passed from one person to another.

Speaker 1 21:38

Remember Jim at Bug Press? He used to own it. Yes, I do. He was a neat guy.

Speaker 2 21:43

Yeah.

Speaker 1 21:46

We used to work out at HealthSport once in a while and he was just always a nice man.

Speaker 2 21:48

I can't believe that they opened it. You know that they opened up Bug Press to a bunch of students to lay out the toy on. It was kind of cool yeah, it was very cool. So I learned a lot about layout. I learned what it was to be an editor of a literary journal. I started writing and taking myself a little more seriously and that wound up leading to me applying for an MFA, a master's of fine arts in creative writing, studying fiction at UMass Amherst. Is that distance?

Speaker 1 22:15

education, or did you actually?

Speaker 2 22:16

No, I actually went there for three years and studied. Oh, wow yeah, how far is that out of Boston it's several hours. It's kind of like it's sort of near Springfield.

Speaker 1 22:28

Okay, yeah, very good, yeah, wow.

Perseverance and Inspiration in Writing

Speaker 2 22:31

So that's a doctorate when you're done or a master's MFA is usually considered what's called a terminal degree, not because you die of it, but because once you've finished an MFA and they're usually in creative pursuits like in dance or photography or sculpture or things of that nature then instead of getting a PhD, you go on and do your creative work.

Speaker 1 22:55

Oh neat, yeah, Okay yeah. So that's part of the degree is get carrying on.

Speaker 2 23:00

Yeah, so I've gone on to publish three books of poetry Now it's novels and lots and lots of poems and stories along the way. Nice, how many books and lots and lots of poems and stories along the way. How many books. Three books right now, three books of poems, and then I've written four novels now.

Speaker 1 23:18

Wow.

Speaker 2 23:18

Yeah, Are they all fiction? They're all fiction and they're all being sent out to agents and publishers and hopefully I'll sell one of them, one of these days, so I'm excited about getting those out into the world. Yeah.

Speaker 1 23:33

I have a published book called the Everyday Dad. Actually it's self-published. Yeah, I correct myself because that's a big correction, not anymore.

Speaker 2 23:41

Yeah, no, I think you know. People ask me you know, are you going to be successful? And I say I'm going to be persistent until I succeed. And the reason why is there's a young gal, or she was a first novel, sent it out, no agent, publisher, nobody would touch it, just got form letters back and she kept on writing. So she wrote book after book after book. She wrote 11 books, none of which were published. That's just an amazing feat, I think, with no recognition. And then on the 12th book, she decided, before she wrote it, she should go do some research on the marketplace to find out what was being published. And here's what she did she went to the local Walmart. She saw that it was mostly paranormal romance on the shelves. She went home and in 16 days she wrote a paranormal romance and then and changed her name to JK Rowling Paranormal Romance and then and changed her name to JK Rowling.

Speaker 2 24:55

Wouldn't that be fitting? No, then there was something going on with the Muppets in Chicago and she was really into Muppets and she wanted to go see it and she needed $300 to be able to go see the Muppets. So she decided she was going to self-publish her 12th book on Amazon as a KDP book and make $300. That's all she needed. So she put it up there and it started receiving a lot of positive reviews and she made the $300, went to the thing in Chicago, saw the Muppets came home and the book began to sell quite a bit. The Muppets came home and the book began to sell quite a bit and pretty soon she was making, I think, about $10,000 a week off her book. And then Bedford St Martin stepped in and offered hera book deal because she was so successful and she at the time she had that success. She was one of the top 10 authors in the United States.

Speaker 1 25:46

Really yeah.

Speaker 2 25:48

So you know, I think it's just a matter of perseverance. You have to keep at it until you succeed.

Speaker 1 25:53

That's really true for all of us yeah. Yeah, yeah, the um. Did you ever know the guys at one way bookstore?

Speaker 2 26:00

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 26:00

Produced a lot of McDonald's books, yep, yeah yeah, they were kind of local, local legends. So kind of back to where my question was going, I'll make it a little bit more specific. So when you go out in nature and you're hiking, does that promote your poetry, your internal?

Speaker 2 26:15

poet. Yeah, I've written a number of poems about the local area, about hiking out to headwaters. Before it was illegal, I wanted to go see Hyperion Tree, which is in Redwood National Park. It's the tallest tree in the world.

Speaker 1 26:31

Oh yeah. So— but you can't see it anymore. No, you can't go there, you could.

Speaker 2 26:35

You could, but I think there's a $5,000 fine for going to see it.

Speaker 1 26:39

But before it was illegal— Let me show everybody where it is on the map.

Speaker 2 26:42

Oh yeah, it's right on that upper corner, that's right.

Speaker 1 26:50

Yeah, now everyone knows We've narrowed it down.

Speaker 2 26:51

Yeah, Well, I found the directions and I went and I saw it. And the thing about going to see Hyperion is when you're on the ground you can't tell it's the tallest tree in the world.

Speaker 1 27:03

Right.

Speaker 2 27:03

It looks very similar to other trees around it. It's in the Redwood.

Speaker 2 27:06

Creek Basin yeah, somewhere up that way, yeah, and so I went home and I wrote a poem about that and it turned out to be a pretty good poem and yeah, so I've written poetry about when I was overseeing. I worked in Redwood National Park. One summer before grad school. I ran the YACC with crews you know, teenage crews from Arcata and Crescent City and two adult supervisors and one of the things, one of the first jobs we had to do, was finish the Skunk Cabbage Trail in Redwood National Park and most of it had been built, but we built the last section of it out to the beach. Is that in Prairie Creek area? Yeah, it's just north of Oreck. As you're leaving Oreck, maybe after you turn off to the Bald Hills, you go around a turn and then it's just to the left and it's marked?

Speaker 1 28:02

Does it go out to the beach?

Speaker 2 28:04

Yeah, yeah. So what you do is you go down a road and it dead ends at the start of the Skunk Cabbage Trail and then I don't know it's about eight miles, if I remember correctly out to the beach. I think Joni's walked it's beautiful. Yeah, it's very nice.

Speaker 1 28:19

Yeah, she's part of the Fortuna Old Farts.

Speaker 2 28:21

Oh yeah, I've done that Hikey group. I've hiked with them.

Speaker 1 28:23

Yeah, they're hardcore.

Speaker 2 28:24

Yes, they are.

Speaker 1 28:25

Hey, shout out to the old farts. Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 28:27

Especially the Wednesday group. Oh, she went. Yeah, it's yesterday.

Speaker 1 28:30

She goes, there's one guy and he just, he just books it, then he gets faster. Oh, and you got to keep up with them.

Speaker 2 28:35

Yeah, there's some really experienced hikers in that group. Yeah, you're late. They're already in Oreck man, I know they're gone.

Speaker 1 28:46

I know why is everybody so late?

Speaker 2 28:50

But they're a great group yeah.

Speaker 1 28:51

No, she really enjoys it. Apparently they're really good. I've hiked a little bit with the Friday group down at Hooked and Slew and Table Bluff out that way, right, pretty fun. Yeah, a lot of good hikes.

Speaker 2 29:05

Well, can I give you another piece of inspiration?

Speaker 1 29:08

I am ready, let's do this thing.

Speaker 2 29:09

Okay well.

Speaker 1 29:10

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 29:11

Since we've been talking about Cal Poly Humboldt. This was an experience in that French class where I met the two young women who I went to Alaska with. But there was another young woman in that class and this poem is sort of dedicated to her. Okay, it's called Crush. Crush it to her, it's called Crush.

Speaker 2 29:28

While I was muddling through college French, there was this girl blonde, petite, perfect, a magnet of grace and intellect, realigning my sense of gravity. I sat several seats behind her, watching, waiting, all semester. I listened to her perfect pronunciations, the lilt of her voice making words into magic. Her sense of style rearranged the order of everything Her fine pearl-colored blouses, designer black jeans, those leather boots, the way she bent all the light toward her when she walked into the room, into the room, I thought if only I could just tell her how the scent of her every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon transformed my heart into a raven sitting on some remote redwood branch calling out into the emptiness, bringing treasures, suffering for even a morsel of affection.

Speaker 2 30:23

I was not very good at French, to be honest. I didn't give it enough time, only wanting to saunter the streets of Montmartre pen stories like Hemingway. One day I decided French meant nothing. What mattered was the courage to speak to her During a break. I followed her out of the classroom down the hall to the elevator. When the door sealed us into silence, I summoned everything I had and asked her. Predictably, she said no, she already lived with someone, a professor. I recall what happened after that. Well, we ossified in that tomb listening to the sound of our stilled breath. The doors opened only after all the oxygen was gone. The doors opened only after all the oxygen was gone. She disappeared, returning into her perfect life, and I pressed the down button back to hell where I would rent a room for many seasons, still carving my initials into the walls, thinking mistakenly my God, there is no place lower to go than this.

Speaker 1 31:31

That's pretty good. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, because we all knew that gal oh we did. Yeah, she was amazing and she smelled really good. That's like I'm glad you caught that.

Speaker 2 31:37

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 31:38

Yeah, Um yeah.

Speaker 2 31:40

Yeah, and I didn't make that part up about the elevator either.

Speaker 1 31:43

Yeah, and you mustered the courage to ask her, and she said well, not really I live with a professor because professors are very moral and they never date their students.

Speaker 2 31:54

I guess in those days that wasn't so much an issue.

Speaker 1 31:57

No, you know, I had a Bob St Peter's by name. He was a. I'm a recreation major which my kids go. Is that like recess? What is that? Yeah, and I go, don't worry about it. It's liberal arts and I did okay. But he married Valerie and I'm sure she was over 18. So it was probably legal in the state of California. Although he was 87, you know, he seemed like he was pretty old, anyway. So, hey, kudos to all you professors up at Humboldt.

Speaker 2 32:29

Yeah, absolutely. That's some great professors up there. I love that.

Speaker 1 32:33

So what do you see for our county, for the people, for the jobs, for the issues? What's your Dave Holper perspective? What do you see? What do you want to see?

Discovering Poetry and Performance Art

Speaker 2 32:53

Well, before I moved back to Humboldt, my wife and I lived in Sacramento for 10 years and Sacramento has a lot of things going for it. We had a lot of friends there. My wife got sick because she had cancer and got great treatment at Sutter Cancer Center and so many people from the high school where I taught and the church where we went to supported us through that time and I just can't thank all those people enough because we could not have done that on our own. But culturally I felt like Sacramento didn't have a lot to offer and when we moved back here this place was just thriving with artists and poets and writers and it felt really vibrant and alive. And one of the things that I felt really blessed by the Jambalaya scene had long passed by that point, but there were two thriving slam scenes going on.

Speaker 2 33:44

There was one at Northtown Coffee in Arcata that Will Gibson and Dylan Collins helped to get going and it ran for a number of years and college students from Humboldt would come down and it was really very political and really energetic and it was a great place to see performance. And meanwhile in Eureka, starting at the Accident Slam or at the Accident Gallery and then moving to Siren Song Tavern, therese Fitzmaurice and Vanessa Pike Verdiak ran a slam for, I think, 14 years. Amazing. They took numerous teams to nationals to compete in the National Slam competition. So it was just a great proving ground and a place for young poets to get out there and try their stuff. And some of these were high school students they weren't all college students. And then people in the community like myself who would come in and perform, and that I mean I would have never written three books of poems without the Eureka Slam being active, because once a month I'd go down there and do a few poems and those poems wound up, you know, being the kind of backbone of the books.

Speaker 1 34:58

Safe place, it sounds like.

Speaker 2 35:00

Yeah, great place to meet people. So I met a lot of poets in the county and then at CR I would invite writers as well. So I met many of the writers who were active in the county, and then at CR I would invite writers as well. So I met many of the writers who were active in the community.

Speaker 1 35:11

Yeah, I like. So I come from a Toastmaster background where you give speeches and there's 6,000 chapters in the world and it's a formatted meeting and they do them once a week or twice a month, whatever so, but it was a safe space where people could come in and tell a story, read their icebreaker story about their life, a persuasive speech, and have that safe space where they could get good or really good. Some people got really good and you're going wow, that person ratcheted their game up really big time in 12 months.

Speaker 2 35:46

Well, I remember when you were doing that and we talked about that and how excited you were about that.

Speaker 1 35:51

It was fun yeah.

Speaker 2 35:52

I think you learned a lot from that.

Speaker 1 35:54

I took a lot. Yeah, my dad said, learn speed reading, but better yet, learn how to speak.

Speaker 2 35:59

Publicly. Yeah, yeah, that's a really important thing. You know, some people have a way with words and others no, have way yeah and that's the number one fear I think that people have in, you know, in society in general is public speaking, yeah, and they're definitely afraid of it and I think, with poetry, that what I've seen and it's very not enough, I want to see more, you made me hungry for this is that it is performance art.

Speaker 1 36:27

It's not only just speaking and addressing an audience, it's you could really do stuff Right. You can gesticulate, you can dress up, you can do a thing and have a prop and whatever.

Speaker 2 36:38

Yeah, and when I taught poetry at CR, I stumbled across a book by June Jordan called, I think, poetry for the People or Poetry for the Revolution, I can't remember, but it was a great book. It was really eye-opening and as a result, I redid the way that I was teaching poetry, and so every class was geared toward finishing some work and then presenting it in a public reading at the end of the class. Wow, so the first year we did it. We just did it in a classroom at CR, in one of the lecture classrooms, but I thought this is not the right venue. So we wound up renting the Morris Graves Rotunda the next year and we turned out an audience of over a hundred people, which for a poetry reading in Humboldt is quite pretty good. That's pretty good.

Speaker 2 37:28

And so for five years I did those readings, that and they were. They were a big deal. Lots of people would come out and see those and I told the students you're going to craft this reading, you're going to, I'm going to get up, I'm going to introduce you, and then it's all you. It's like yeah, you guys have to figure out. Are you going to do it in costumes? Are you going to use props. Will there be food and drink, Like whatever you want, but you have to do it.

Speaker 2 37:51

So they could really get creative. Yeah, and you have to name yourselves as a group of poets, and so they'd come up with a name. You have to create the poster for it. They went on K-Hum and did readings of their poetry to help promote the event. Very cool, yeah, so the event Very cool, yeah. So I really got them to get out into the community, so they learned not only how to write a poem but how to perform it and how to put on the reading.

Speaker 1 38:14

Speaking of which, I bet you have another poem with you. Can we do one from the book? I like that Scottish term, but if there's another one that's more clever, that would be cool.

Speaker 2 38:24

So this latest book is called Language Lessons, a Linguistic Hijira, and a hijra is like a spiritual journey and there are just so you understand how the book is structured. There are 109 poems in this, which is to mimic the japa mala, which are the prayer beads that Hindus use the 108 prayers basically on the japa mala and then the final bead is like the divine bead. So that was the idea, is to do 108 plus a special one at the end. Okay, and these are from words that that are untranslatable. You can explain them in English, but there's no one word we don't have it, we don't have it, we don't have it.

Speaker 1 39:09

It's so limited. Actually, when you start reading the Greek and different things, you go English is so limiting. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 39:17

Let me find you a good one.

Speaker 1 39:18

And real quick. When you're finished with this, I'd like you to tell us how to get a hold of you and buy the product. Oh yeah, sure.

Speaker 2 39:34

We'll do the shout out here and one at the end. But yeah, we could buy your work. We can find it absolutely easy to find you're online.

Speaker 2 39:37

I am, I've got my own website, davidholpercom, couldn't be any easier than facebook, and I'm on facebook, I'm on instagram nice, and I've got my own website do you do tiktok greetings uh, I did tiktok for a little while and I didn't really care for it, but I did did start a YouTube channel, so there's a bunch of uh performances on of me in front of a camera doing poems.

Speaker 1 39:55

Plus. You're on access Humble.

Speaker 2 39:57

Yes, right, so it's not hard to find me.

Speaker 1 39:59

See you frequently on that. Yeah, yeah, it's good.

Speaker 2 40:02

Okay, so this is um an Italian word. The word is guitarra. It's an elderly woman who cares for stray cats.

Speaker 1 40:10

Yes, it's like a next neighbor down the street.

Speaker 2 40:13

There she is. You know this story. In the news they were reporting that when the old lady died they found a hundred cats in her house. All well-fed strays, everyone living in the lap of luxury. Don't be jealous if in her will she left her millions to the mangy lot of them. Perhaps you were a stray once too and understand what it is to be picked up by the scruff and saved nice I like that.

Speaker 1 40:44

That's a good.

Speaker 2 40:45

Okay, I'll do a couple of these, so you get a sense of this.

Speaker 1 40:47

Sure, go for it. Yeah, take your time.

Speaker 2 40:49

Yeah, let's see.

Speaker 1 40:51

I like those.

Speaker 2 40:54

Yeah, these were fun to write and I wrote these really quickly. Oh, here's an interesting word. Oh no, this is too serious, I want some lighter ones.

Speaker 1 41:07

I like the scotch one. Yeah, that was a good one. What is it? There's a word Tartle, tartle.

Speaker 2 41:14

Yeah.

Speaker 1 41:14

When you meet someone and you forgot their name you're introducing. This is my friend. Hey you Right, joni, and I always talk about that when you see somebody and you've, I know totally who this person is, but it's like, hey, what's your name?

Speaker 2 41:29

You. Yeah, how are you doing? Yes, because you have no idea.

Speaker 1 41:34

It's so hard. Oh, some of those are weird rescues.

Speaker 2 41:37

Yeah.

Speaker 1 41:37

Especially when you get advanced maturity, like you and I.

Speaker 2 41:39

Yeah.

Speaker 2 41:43

It's like I've met a lot of people in my life and I have, I recognize, hard time with names, just like memorizing poems. My memory's not as good as it was when I was a teenager. Okay, um, this is a bantu word. Uh, the word is ilunga, and it's defined as a person who's ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time, and, in the opinion of a thousand linguists surveyed on the subject, it is the world's most difficult word to translate. The first time, she says okay, everyone's human, everyone makes mistakes. The second time, she tolerates your stupidity, but she gives you that look, as if to say try me again and die in my sight. Yes, you best heed the warning before you figure out the difference between figurative and literal. Heed the warning.

Speaker 2 42:36

Heed the warning. The look was enough.

Speaker 1 42:39

I think I know that. Look. I've seen that look a couple times, I have too. Yeah, ah, the look. I've seen that look a couple of times, I have too. Yeah, ah, the look. Yes.

Speaker 2 42:48

This is a great word. I'm not going to read the poem, but this is one of my favorite words in the collection. It's a German word, it's a noun and it's backfeffen gesicht and it's a face in need of a fist.

Speaker 1 43:00

Oh, you don't want to read it.

Speaker 2 43:15

Okay, it's not, it should be funnier. I've met a few of those. Oh, you don't want to read it. Feel your fingers curling into a fist. You imagine how this face just needs a knuckle sandwich to punch away the smugness. What you wouldn't give to be the one to deliver that fell blow just so you could smirk while he wiped away the blood fumbled for something broken, asking why the heck did you do that? While you smile as if to say you have the rest of your life to play the fool. Why not take today off?

Speaker 1 43:49

You, you get a day off Smack.

Speaker 2 43:54

Yeah, okay, I'll do one more. Sure, go for it.

Speaker 1 43:57

Take time.

Speaker 2 43:57

Yeah, let's see. Okay, this is a great word. We don't really have this in english. I think we have the concept, but we don't have anything. There's no word like it. It's l'esprit d'escalier, it's french and it's a noun and it literally means the wisdom of the staircase. It is that witty or cutting retort that we should have delivered to a person but comes to mind only after we've left the gathering and are on our way down the stairs. That's why it's the wisdom of the staircase.

Speaker 1 44:29

On the way out.

Speaker 2 44:30

Yeah, l'esprit d'escalier.

Speaker 1 44:33

That's a thing, man it is. Oh, I couldn't.

Speaker 2 44:36

Oh, I know.

Speaker 1 44:37

That moment is gone forever If I could oh hey, wait, everybody come back. I want to say something no, no, you cannot.

Speaker 2 44:51

It's over for you. So if we want to get ahold of you, how do we do that best? The website is davidholpercom. Just go on there. My email's on there. You can email me and it's easy. Email it's eurekapoetlauriettecom, or no. Eure EurekaPoetLauriet at gmailcom.

Speaker 1 45:04

Okay, yeah, and you're that for how long?

Speaker 2 45:06

I was that from 2019 to 2021.

Speaker 1 45:09

Oh, who is it now?

Speaker 2 45:10

Will Gibson, and he is one of the founders of the Arcata Slam, okay yeah, which is no longer in existence, but but he runs a slam now out of the Siren Song and I think it's called Black Hat Productions, if I'm correct. So if I'm not, will, my apologies, but I think that's what it's called.

Speaker 1 45:29

And Siren Song's down in Old Town, right yeah right.

Speaker 2 45:32

Just a catty corner from Booklegger.

Exploring Humboldt

Speaker 1 45:36

Yes, yes, it is, yeah, okay. Okay, used to be Old Town Bar and Grill. Oh yeah, right. Okay, used to be old town bar and grill, oh yeah right. I went there, I saw some blues musician. Oh my gosh, it's a history of um lots of bands, bands that came through that were amazing yeah apparently the history of that from the 70s and the end of the 80s was, um yeah, stellar. We saw a guy named bruce coburn there he's oh, I know bruce coburn yeah, he's been through a lot of times here.

Speaker 1 46:02

Yeah, one of my favorite guitar players. Yeah, good friends with greg king. Oh, is that right? Yeah, oh, I know Bruce Coburn.

Speaker 2 46:19

I launched a couple of books out of there, Okay. So anyway, let's. Let's read this. Here's the poem. The next day, in the shower, you discover the words that eluded you, the perfect comeback to the poison that awful person poured into the porch of your ear. If only he were here to feel the fire of your scalding wit. What you wouldn't give to see him roasting alive in his richly deserved humiliation.

Speaker 1 46:48

Richly. You so richly deserve my wrath, my wrath. Yeah, funny, funny, how we could really word it up after after the fact. After the fact yeah, pretty dull stick otherwise, yeah, yeah, well, same to you. Yeah, yeah, you jerk same to you. Yeah, yeah you jerk what? What are you doing? Yeah, so you mentioned the magic of humble, not your words, mine, right, what do you feel like we have here that is not in SAC? You said community. I heard that.

Speaker 2 47:35

Yeah, we definitely have community you said community. I heard that getting involved with something called Poetry Out Loud, which is a program the National Endowment of the Arts started years ago and it's kind of tantamount for poetry to like what a spelling bee would be. So high school students all over the United States, if their high school participates in Poetry Out Loud, they memorize a few poems. They have to be from the Poetry Out Loud website, so they have to be published poems, and so they select two and they take part in a high school competition. Whoever wins that goes to the county, whoever wins the county goes to the state, and whoever wins state goes to nationals.

Speaker 2 48:21

Yeah, so both my daughters participated in Poetry Out Loud and my younger daughter, catherine, won at the county level and went on to the state and got into the top six for the state of California and I don't know if how many there were total, but it was most of the counties in California. Pro-dead moment yeah, oh, yeah, it was awesome. I thought she's going to go to nationals, but she didn't quite make it. The top two were amazing, they were just phenomenal. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 48:51

Toastmasters does the same for speaking Right, and you get to Sacramento or the Bay Area and you go. These guys wait.

Speaker 2 49:04

this thing's all been like paced out and it's got theater and there's like props and I'm going.

Speaker 1 49:06

Really. My speech was good, but this thing's yeah, off the hook.

Speaker 2 49:10

Yeah, that's how I felt about the two performers from. They were from sacramento and from oakland they were next level stuff.

Speaker 1 49:17

They were phenomenal, yeah yeah, that's cool that she went all the way yeah, though part of the way she's really yeah, she's really gifted.

Speaker 2 49:24

Both of them are gifted with language.

Speaker 1 49:26

Hey, the part of the show, yeah, where I'm going to read some poetry. All right, perfect, just kidding. So favorite parts of Humboldt for you, so let's. You're a hiking guy, so top three hikes, you have all. You have three days off.

Speaker 2 49:40

Okay, you can go to three hikes. Do it right now. But you used to be able to go up the ridge where Lady Bird Johnson is and go up beyond that to Doleson Prairie, so it's just beyond the fire station, it's about 11 miles up the ridge and then go down from Doleson Prairie all the way to Emerald Creek over the ridge and all the way down to the tall trees grove and then turn around and go back up. That was the whole thing. Yeah, yeah, that was 13 and a half miles and about 3,300 feet of climbing. That's pretty good. That was a really good workout to get back in shape.

Speaker 1 50:15

But Joni said there's a big redwood on the it's almost it is impassable.

Speaker 2 50:20

Yeah, so once you go through all the prairies and you go into the forest, there was a big blowdown a couple of years ago and you know I understand why the park hasn't cleared it, because it's probably a ton of work and it's a trail that isn't used that much. But boy, that was a beautiful trail.

Speaker 1 50:34

Yeah.

Speaker 2 50:35

I loved hiking that Headwaters. I love hiking headwaters, headwaters. A Tough one that I've enjoyed doing a lot more recently is Grasshopper Peak, which is down in Southern Humboldt Really hardcore. That's 3,400 feet. Pretty steep Hike out of Alby Campground and go up there. Boy, that's a good hike.

Speaker 1 50:55

Yeah, Joni's done that. They have a once a year run Run Walk.

Speaker 2 51:02

Yeah, I was just hiking on it a few weeks ago and Six Rivers was out there. I didn't know they were going to be there that day and they were doing the um is that a Saturday?

Speaker 2 51:13

The 10K, yeah, and they were doing a 30K and the 30Ks. I didn't see the 10K people cause they were behind me, but when I was getting up toward the top of the peak, I saw the 30K folks come by and I cheered every single one of them on because that is a tough run, that's going to be tough, tough. I was 18 miles and going up 3,400 feet. I can't even imagine. Oh man, those folks are all hardcore.

Speaker 1 51:36

Round two. Yeah, where do you go for coffee?

Speaker 2 51:39

Oh, ramones, over by the hospital. Ah, that's close to my house.

Speaker 1 51:44

Hey, here's one. If you could go anywhere you want in Humboldt, yeah, and read your poetry. Oh where would I read To an audience that magically showed up? Where would you read?

Speaker 2 51:54

My favorite spot, you know bar none Morris Graves Museum Rotunda.

Speaker 1 51:59

Yeah.

Speaker 2 52:00

That is, you don't even need a mic. The acoustics are so good in there. I've read a few times in that space and it's so, so awesome, so it's a.

Speaker 1 52:08

Carnegie library.

Speaker 2 52:10

Yeah. And he funded like 2000 libraries around the nation and many of them have been turned into museums. So we are just so blessed to have that Morris Graves Museum as a kind of centerpiece of art and culture. And they're the ones who do the Poetry Out Loud, the countywide competition. I'm on Humboldt Arts Council, so shout out to the Morris Graves folks and to the staff, especially Jemima Parr, executive director, and her staff, genevieve Kesbu, alexandria all of them, they do an awesome job, shout out.

Speaker 1 52:45

The Sally Arnott was huge too, oh yeah she was a big fundraiser for them and a cheerleader all the way when I worked at the Tri-City newspaper, we we did the free ads for the bricks that just, you know, donate money and get a brick, yep, yeah, it is a really cool facility.

Speaker 2 53:02

It is, so that'd probably be my number one spot, but any coffee house in the county I'd read at Okay, ready, yeah.

Speaker 1 53:09

Free dinner on Joni and I. Where do you go?

Speaker 2 53:11

Where do I go? That's a tough one. Larapin, larapin, yeah.

Speaker 1 53:19

We get Larapin Nick. Nick says yes.

Speaker 2 53:22

Where would you?

Speaker 1 53:22

go. You know, because I haven't been to Larapin probably for a while, I probably would go there. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah, probably Larapin.

Speaker 2 53:33

Yeah, south G Kitchen, though We've recently eaten there. During taco week we went and had their tacos. Is that at the beer joint that Redwood's? In yeah right, is it a truck? It's a truck out back. Oh, best tacos I've had in Humboldt County, south G Kitchen. You guys rock.

Speaker 1 53:46

Really.

Speaker 2 53:47

Yeah.

Speaker 1 53:48

That's a big thing, because I'm from San Diego and the taco standard is pretty high bro.

Speaker 2 53:54

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 53:54

Yeah, man.

Speaker 2 53:58

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 53:59

But their tacos work. That's German.

Speaker 2 54:00

Jamaican yeah, man, yeah, is that translatable into English? It?

Speaker 1 54:04

is no. There's some really good tacos there, and I think there's plenty of good Mexican food here. Yeah, For some reason it's always that kind of it, just it's not.

Speaker 2 54:15

I grew up in the Bay Area you put ground beef in there.

Speaker 1 54:18

You can't do that. No, don't do that man.

Speaker 2 54:21

Yeah, no, we have good restaurants here, but you know, I grew up in the Bay Area and I ate a lot of really good food in the Bay Area and so I'm always encouraging the restaurants keep on up in your game, but there's good food here All right Ready. Yeah.

Speaker 1 54:36

You're going to go write a poem, yes, and you're going to go to one spot and sit for four hours and write maybe many poems. Where would, if you had to sit and stare at one vista point or one spot?

Speaker 2 54:50

and on that map. Well, because it's summer it's summer now and the waves aren't monstrous. I would take a folding chair and I'd go out on the north jetty oh in a safe spot. I'm not going out like I'm not gonna go, not like the North jetty in a safe spot. I'm not going out like not like the guy who drove his truck out there on a stormy day.

Speaker 1 55:08

Washed away.

Speaker 2 55:09

And I'm going to sit out there and write some poems.

Speaker 1 55:11

That'd be a great spot because you'd have it all yeah.

Speaker 2 55:14

Actually, when I was poet laureate, I went out there and wrote a poem called North jetty. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, it yeah. It's a good spot to sit and think, you know, because you've got the Pacific rolling in, you've got seabirds, it's quiet and yeah that's a good spot.

Speaker 1 55:29

I have another spot for me to go write poetry. It would be Malal Dunes. Oh yeah, when you walk up back on the dunes there's a really high one that just looks east at everything.

Speaker 2 55:39

Yeah, my pastor and I went and shot a video up there on the top of one of them, I think on the high one, and yeah, I hadn't been up there in a while. And boy, you get a view from there.

Speaker 1 55:49

It's really neat. Yeah, you can see way north and way south.

Speaker 2 55:52

I know it's an amazing spot.

Speaker 1 55:53

Strawberry rock would be nice. Strawberry rock would be good too. Yeah, you gotta be young to do that whole.

Speaker 2 55:58

there's like a rope climb at the end. Yeah, I've done it with my family.

Speaker 1 56:02

That's pretty rad. Yeah, can't take the lawn chair up there.

Speaker 2 56:05

No, well, you could, but you'd have to sling it over your back or throw it up to somebody.

Speaker 1 56:10

Yeah yeah, that's great, so tell us more about what you want to see on your tombstone. Okay, what's your end of life poem, if you have one?

Speaker 2 56:22

Who has one?

Speaker 1 56:23

You might, I don't know.

Speaker 2 56:25

No, if I have one, what do you?

Speaker 1 56:26

want to be remembered for what are we saying at your I think I'm going to have a two-sided tombstone.

Speaker 2 56:31

So on one side it'll say David Holper the years that I lived, and it'll say poet and writer, and on the other side there'll be a recipe.

Speaker 1 56:38

Nice yeah.

Supporting Poetry in Humboldt County

Speaker 2 56:39

Nice, yeah, I like it. Yeah, like there was. I've seen a tombstone for this. I guess it was a grandmother who everybody was always bugging her for this recipe. And she's like when I die, you can have it.

Speaker 1 56:51

So she put it on the back of her tombstone. The chocolate chip oatmeal Right Surprise yeah.

Speaker 2 56:57

That's it, like nobody knew how to make it, but now they do. Yeah, I they knew how to make it, but now they do.

Speaker 1 57:00

Yeah, I like that. I was thinking of like a record album, like on one side it would have this and on the other side it would have I don't know.

Speaker 2 57:07

Yeah, lyrics.

Speaker 1 57:08

Right, yeah, I like that. Yeah, well, I appreciate you coming. Tell me one more time, shout out to you in terms of how we can support you. Oh sure Support poetry in Humboldt County poets et cetera, et cetera.

Speaker 2 57:22

Well, let me just start by saying you know there are a number of really great bookstores here. North Town Books, I think, has copies of my latest book of poems, eureka Books Book Lager, both of those in Eureka. The Morris Graves Museum downstairs has that the little gift shop. They have some books, copies of my book. Oh, I know Eureka Natural Foods has copies in Eureka. So any of those places and you can always order it through Amazon if you can't find your way to any of those shops. And davidholpercom. Davidholpercom.

Speaker 1 57:59

Hey, we have time for like a one minute quick one more, if you want to just pick one.

Speaker 2 58:03

Yeah, let me pick you a quick poem. I'm going to pick you poem 109.

Speaker 1 58:09

Let's go with that one.

Speaker 2 58:10

Which is the word silah. So it's a Hebrew word used 74 times in the Hebrew Bible, 71 times in the Psalms, three times in Habakkuk, and no one knows what it means Not anymore. And no one knows what it means Not anymore. So I think probably the best guess is it means stop, pause and think of this Sila. At the end of one journey, we often miss how our footsteps fall in the place where another journey always awaits. In order to learn such a lesson, one must walk the great, dusty distances into silence where, if you're listening carefully, you will recognize the footfalls of those who have passed before you and all those who will by necessity follow. Perhaps, in understanding your place in this hijra, this spiritual journey, you can see the beauty in offering some grace to another along the way. In such practice, what journey is ever taken alone?

Speaker 1 59:08

Thank you, david, that was amazing. Thank you Appreciate you coming on the show.

Speaker 2 59:12

Thanks, scott, it's a pleasure being here.

Speaker 1 59:14

We'll look for some poetry events and look for you. Sounds good, all right? Thanks again, all right.