Jeff Mann: Wiccan, Pagan, Tattooed Poet

Today's tattooed poet is Jeff Mann, who shared this cool tattoo:

Jeff tells us:

I’ve been a Wiccan and pagan since I was a teenager. Because my bloodlines are Irish, Scots, English, and German, I’ve taken more and more of an interest in the Celtic and Norse gods and goddesses as I’ve aged. In 2003 I sat in on a graduate class at Virginia Tech, a course that focused on Celtic and Norse literature, and I got to read The Elder Edda, The Prose Edda, and a bunch of Icelandic sagas. These readings became the inspiration for my third book of poetry, Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology.

The hammer-wielding thunder god Thor is my favorite Norse deity. I admire his warrior manliness, his earthiness, his strength, and his determination to protect those he cares for. I showed several Thor’s-hammer images to my tattoo artist, Shaun Carroll (@shaun.hotrodtat2) at Hot Rod Tattoo in Blacksburg, Virginia, and he came up with the design, complete with Celtic knots and Wiccan pentagram.

Jeff shared the following poem, as well, which originally appeared in Chelsea Station and in his collection A Romantic Mann:

HOMOMONUMENT, AMSTERDAM

Commemorates all women and men

    ever oppressed and persecuted

        because of their homosexuality.

Pink triangles of granite.

    Three of them, interlocked,

        jutting out into the busy waters

of Keizersgracht.  A smooth

    stone shelf we step onto

        gingerly, as if it were an edge

of rosy ice that might break loose

    and floe us off to sea.  About our feet,

        white wreaths of lilies, peony-

scatter, wilting commemorations

    like those rose bouquets tenderly

        laid about the statue of Anne Frank

just around the corner.  Here, flowers

    share the space with cigarette ends,

        bottle caps, candle butts, the pearly swirls

of wax long cooled.  (Semen’s

    molten moonstone sealing together

        the bellies of lucky lovers, tears freezing

   

a widower’s beard.)   In a safety

    born of sheer coincidence, on this pink

        promontory flanked by the canal’s

wake and flux, we touch history’s

    spilled tallow, calla lily memories

        not our own: the lesbian stoned to death

in the public square, the faggot-

        pyre heaped about the sodomite,

            ashes shoveled from the cooling

furnaces of Buchenwald.  

    Those deaths become our whetstone.

        Upon this pink granite prow sword-sharp

   

and sheer as honed will,

    we sit together, knee to knee,

        in the Dutch sun’s imprimatur,

dipping frites into mayonnaise,

    feeding each another.

        Perfect photo opportunity for those

in tour boats who float by.  They listen to

    the story of the Homomonument, point us out—

        living examples!—aim their cameras, smile.

 ~ ~ ~

Jeff Mann grew up in Covington, Virginia, and Hinton, West Virginia, receiving degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. His poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in many publications, including Arts and Letters, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Willow Springs, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Crab Orchard Review, and Appalachian Heritage. He has published three award-winning poetry chapbooks, Bliss, Mountain Fireflies, and Flint Shards from Sussex; five full-length books of poetry, Bones Washed with Wine, On the Tongue, Ash: Poems from Norse Mythology, A Romantic Mann, and Rebels; two collections of personal essays, Edge: Travels of an Appalachian Leather Bear and Binding the God: Ursine Essays from the Mountain South; three novellas, Devoured, included in Masters of Midnight: Erotic Tales of the Vampire, Camp Allegheny, included in History’s Passion: Stories of Sex Before Stonewall, and The Saga of Einar and Gisli, included in On the Run: Tales of Gay Pursuit and Passion; six novels, Cub, Country, Insatiable, Fog: A Novel of Desire and Reprisal (which won the Pauline Réage Novel Award), Purgatory: A Novel of the Civil War (which won a Rainbow Award), and Salvation: A Novel of the Civil War (which won both the Pauline Réage Novel Award and a Lambda Literary Award); a book of poetry and memoir, Loving Mountains, Loving Men; and three volumes of short fiction, Desire and Devour: Stories of Blood and Sweat, Consent: Bondage Tales, and A History of Barbed Wire (which won a Lambda Literary Award). In 2013, he was inducted into the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival Hall of Fame. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Thanks to Jeff for sharing his tattoo and poem with us here on Tattoosday's Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2018 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoo are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website 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.net 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.

Isobel O'Hare Shares Two Tattoos (and a Poem) on the Tattooed Poets Project

Our next poet, Isobel O'Hare, is sharing two tattoos for Tattoosday.

First up is this cool black and gray piece:

Isobel explains:

"The hare on my right forearm was both a well-planned tattoo and an impulse tattoo. I had fantasized about it for a couple years before getting it done, and one day when I was feeling particularly anxious and in need of a cathartic outlet, I called a tattoo parlor and asked if they had time to fit me in for a custom tat. I walked in, described what I wanted, and a visiting artist from Los Angeles drew it up and my leaping hare was born.

The hare for me means many different things. Obviously, it is related to my last name, but the wild hare has always been an animal to which I have felt a kinship, as well as rabbits. I've had several house rabbits as pets, and I'm sure I will again someday. It was important to me that the hare appear lively and contented without seeming too cartoonish, and I think the artist did a good job making that happen. Every time I look at him, I smile.

The tattoo is definitely also a nod to Watership Down, which affected me deeply as a child. Sometimes when people ask about the tattoo they'll mention that book and I'll say something about adding some blood to it to make the connection more apparent. I like my hare happy, though.

The hare is named Taliesin after the figure in Welsh folklore who, after transforming into various creatures (including a hare) was consumed by the goddess Ceridwen and reborn through her. There is a lot more to the tale, but you'll have to read the Welsh Mabinogion if you want more than I can fit here.

The hare was done by a visiting artist from Los Angeles (whose name I can't remember) at Temple Tattoo (@templetattoo13) in Oakland, California."

Isobel also shared this other tattoo:

Isobel explains:

"The Celtic Trinity Knot on my left wrist was an idea two of my sisters and I had when we were visiting our mother in Virginia. We wanted something to honor our sisterhood, and so we chose this symbol. For me it means a couple other things as well: I went to a Catholic women's college called Trinity, where all of the students referred to one another as sisters, and I belong to a pagan spiritual sisterhood that is rooted in my Welsh, Scottish, and Irish ancestry.

Several people have pointed it out in public and wanted to talk about their Celtic background, too, but my favorite interaction regarding this tattoo occurred in college. I was sitting outside my academic advisor's office waiting to be calling in for an appointment, and a friend walked down the hall and sat next to me. We started chatting and she glanced down at my wrist, saw my tattoo, and asked, 'Are you a witch?'

The knot was tattooed by an artist at Body Art Tattoo Studio in Berryville, Virginia."

Isobel also sent us the following poem, called  "His Flaming Sister," ehich first appeared in The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review in 2013.

His Flaming Sister


Her mother found her in the kitchen

          a knife in her belly        and her head

wedged between the branches of an oak chair.

In this way     one day in the 1960s

           she became an exhibit in this museum of trauma

                        we call family

a craze-dancing    red-haired         blood-bellied girl

          behind this flap with the little round knob

          that reads: Lift Here to See Tragedy.

Lift here to see an eighteen-year-old girl

          shunned by her mother

                     lying in a hospital bed

          sick with blame for what has happened

                     to her body.

Lift here to see the self            divided

          and the crevasse that separates            what they want

                     from her physiology.

Lift here to see the kindness of neighbors

         who     having keys to the house

                     cleaned the kitchen           of all its darkest spots

         washed the white towels and returned

                     everything to the air
                     that held its breath.

~ ~ ~

Isobel O’Hare is a Pushcart-nominated poet and essayist who has dual Irish and American citizenship. She is the author of the chapbooks Wild Materials (Zoo Cake Press, 2015) and The Garden Inside Her (Ladybox Books, 2016). Two of her poems appeared in the anthology A Shadow Map, published in 2017 by Civil Coping Mechanisms Press. You can find her at isobelohare.com or on Twitter @isobelohare.

Thanks to Isobel for sharing her two tattoos and poem with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project!

This entry is ©2017 Tattoosday. The poem and tattoos are reprinted with the poet's permission.

If you are reading this on another website 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: Susan Sweetland Garay

 Our second tattooed poet today is Susan Sweetland Garay:

Here's a closer look:

Susan elaborates:

"The tattoo I would like to share is one I got recently. It has a Celtic knot modified to symbolize a mother and child. It also has California poppies, a fern, a red clover, a dandelion (the wisher part) and a thistle.

It is all to symbolize motherhood and how becoming a mother has really changed the say I see myself and who I am. The flowers all have meaning too, my mother is from California, and those orange poppies are all over where I live (rural Oregon), the fern is also just a representation of where I am from and where my daughter will grow up. The clover is because the red clover only bloom for a couple of weeks in the spring, and they were in bloom when she was born, I remember focusing on them during the drive to the hospital.  The dandelion is because wishes for me will be different now, since I want things more for her then for myself. The thistle is also a representation of where we live. The spiral is also sort of about the perfection of nature, and how amazing it is what nature (and a woman's body) can do." 

She credits artist Cassidy at Black Rose Tattoo at Solstice Body Arts in Dundee, Oregon, with this crisp and colorful work.

Susan sent us the following poem, which was first published in The Zoomoozophone Review Issue 3 in October 2014.

night breeze

I feel the breeze through
the bedroom window
on a summer night
as I sit with my baby
at my breast,

it’s the end of summer
and finally the coyotes
have returned.

their song comes through
the open window and in the
odd hours of the early morning
they keep me company
in the quiet and the dark.

The cool comes on quickly and
autumn makes herself known
as the warmth of the day
arrives later and later.

Daylight makes lessons learned
in the dark harder to remember.

There is a feeling of relief
and then dismay
when I realize that
I am still myself,
despite the drastic
changes to my
definition.

Stretch marks,
like any other scar,
are a reminder
of where I’ve been
a record on my body
of each destination
and crash.
A mind may forget
but the body remembers.

It is written on my bones
and this body will find a way.

In a time of crisis
I strain to remember
what coyote taught me
about the lighthearted
nature of the universe-
I say it over and over again
in my head, hoping repetition
will make it stick.

Her mouth curves into a wide grin
around my nipple and
again I am in love.

~ ~ ~

Born and raised in Portland Oregon, Susan Sweetland Garay first played among the moss and pines, then the majestic Rocky Mountains, the rolling hills of the Ohio Appalachians and now the lovely vineyards of the Willamette Valley with her husband and daughter. She enjoys writing, growing plants and making art. She has had poetry and photography published in a variety of journals, on line and in print. She was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014.  Her first full length poetry collection, ApproximateTuesday, was published in 2013.  She is a founding editor of The Blue Hour Literary Magazine and Press.  More of her work can be found at susansweetlandgaray.wordpress.com. 

Thanks to Susan for sharing her work with us here on the Tattooed Poets Project on Tattoosday!

This entry is ©2015 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.