Crowe, Thomas Rain 1949-

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CROWE, Thomas Rain 1949-

PERSONAL: Born August 23, 1949, in Chicago, IL; son of Norman and Marilyn (King) Dawson; companion of Nan Watkins; children: Christopher. Ethnicity: "White/Caucasian." Education: Furman University, B.A., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Farming, gardening, ecology, music.

ADDRESSES: Home—407 Canada Rd., Tuckaseegee, NC 28783. Offıce—New Native Press, P.O. Box 661, Cullowhee, NC 28723. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Beatitude Press, San Francisco, CA, editor, 1974-78; Katuah Journal, Asheville, NC, founding editor, 1983-87; New Native Press, Cullowhee, NC, publisher, 1988—. Sylva Herald, press operator, 1989-93. Fern Hill Records, founder and producer, 1994—; The Boatrockers (performance group), founder and performer, 1996—. San Francisco International Poetry Festival, founder and director, 1976. Project to Identify and Protect Native American Sacred Sites in Western North Carolina and the Southern Appalachians, director, 1984-88; Canary Coalition, member of founding board of directors, 2000; Artists and Musicians United for a Safe Environment, charter member of board of directors; Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project, member of advisory board; Western North Carolina Alliance, acting director; member of Foundation for Global Sustainability and Western North Carolina Peace Coalition. National Humanities Faculty, member of advisory board; South Carolina Governor's School for the Arts, master class instructor, 1989, 1990.

MEMBER: Amnesty International.

AWARDS, HONORS: Thomas E. McDill Poetry Prize, 1980; International Merit Award, Atlanta Review, 1996; Teacher Recognition Award, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, 1996-97; Publishers Book of the Year Award, Appalachian Writers Association, 1997.

WRITINGS:

Learning to Dance (poetry), illustrated by Mary Laird, Landlocked Press, 1985.

(Translator) Hughes-Alain Dal, Why I Am a Monster (poetry), New Native Press (Cullowhee, NC), 1991.

Poems for Che Guevara's Dream, Holocene (Spartanburg, SC), 1991.

The Sound of Light (poetry and music), Holocene (Spartanburg, SC), 1991.

Deep Language, French and European Publications, 1991.

Night Sun (poetry), Volume I: The Personified Street, Volume II: New Native, Volume III: Water from the Moon, New Native Press (Cullowhee, NC), 1993.

The Laugharne Poems, Gwasg Carreg Gwalch (Conwy, Wales), 1997.

(Editor, with Gwendal Denez and Tom Hubbard) Writing the Wind: A Celtic Resurgence (The New Celtic Poetry) (poetry and translations), New Native Press (Cullowhee, NC), 1997.

Writing on Glass (essays on and interviews with Philip Glass), Schirmer Books (New York, NY), 1997.

(Translator) Hafiz, In Wineseller's Street, IBEX Press (Bethesda, MD), 1998.

(Translator) Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: 100 Poems of Hafiz, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 2001.

Also author of the unpublished novel A House of Girls; compiler of the unpublished collection Letters of the Beat Generation, City Lights (San Francisco, CA); assistant editor, Encyclopedia of Indian Nations A-Z, Walden Books. Contributor to books, including Writing Work: Writers on Working-Class Writing, Bottom Dog Press (Huron, OH), 1999. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Bloomsbury Review, Rain Taxi, and Smoky Mountain News. Editor, Beatitude, 1974-78; editor at large, Asheville Poetry Review, 1994-2001.

WORK IN PROGRESS: The Wake Up Man, a children's book; Practical Epiphanies, interviews with contemporary writers and musicians; translating Ten Thousand Dawns: The Love Poems of Yvan and Claire Goll; Zoro's Field: Life at the End of the Road, a memoir.

SIDELIGHTS: Thomas Rain Crowe is a poet whose works combine what may be termed an old-fashioned attention to the techniques of poetry with a grounding in the political discourse that marks the influence of the postmodern. Crowe's "initiation" trilogy, Night Sun, is comprised of Personified Street (bound in black), New Native (bound in grey), and Water from the Moon (bound in white). Each volume shares a metaphysical politics with the others though they are thematically quite different.

The pieces in Personified Street form "an urban-hip book demonstrating the power of city energy," according to Joe Napora in the Small Press Review. Their politics is one of the streets and of revolution. New Native, on the other hand, presents a somewhat embittered return home. "These are earth bound, anchored, rooted poems," wrote Napora, "or at least they strive that way." Water from the Moon investigates the heavens and forms the chronicle of a spiritual quest through poetry. As such, Crowe attempts a synthesis of poetic influences, according to Napora, "combining street tough Rimbaud, with Nature bound Thoreau, with political-mystical William Blake."

The Laughharne Poems chronicles another type of quest, this in search of the man considered by some critics to be Crowe's poetic father, Dylan Thomas. The pieces collected here were inspired by two journeys to Wales, where Crowe was given permission to write and work in Thomas's boat house home—something that had not occurred since Thomas's death in 1953.

Crowe once told CA: "From the early influence of my mother's singing, storytelling, and reading to me at night, I began reading and then writing at an early age. Writing (primarily verse) became and remained a staple, for I grew up in rural western North Carolina where radio and television were inaccessible. By the time I reached high school age, I had already won forensics contests.

"Following the completion of an English and anthropology major in college, I left the United States to live in France as an expatriate poet, following in the footsteps of other American writers and artists I admired, and also wanting to be in the country of my French literary heroes: Baudelaire and Rimbaud. At this age, the Beats had already influenced my poetic vision and my tastes in the contemporary and avantgarde art of the time. Upon returning to the United States in 1974, I went straight to the hub of the Beat Renaissance: San Francisco. There, in league and friendship with many of the preeminent Beat poets and artists (Ferlinghetti, McClure, Kaufman, Micheline, Meltzer, Lamantia, DiPrima, Snyder, Whalen, Everson) as well as other maitres such as Jack Hirschman, George Oppen, and Harold Norse, I found my voice as one of the 'baby Beats,' helping to resurrect Beatitude magazine, which had been one of the very first Beat movement publications during the 1950s. In 1976, I planned and produced (with Neeli Cherkovski and Ferlinghetti) the first annual San Francisco International Poetry Festival. It was also during this time that my first book, The Personified Street, was written.

"Early on I was influenced heavily, outside my West Coast circle of friends, by such turn-of-the-century Russian poets as Mayakovsky, Essenin, Klebnikov, Kruchenek, and Pasternak, as well as contemporary Russian poets such as Voznesensky and Yevtushenko. The Spanish poets also moved me deeply in those earlier days, and, of course, the French poets. The book The Personified Street is an echo of these Russian, French, Spanish, and Beat influences in my developing voice.

"Perhaps above all of these influences was that of Dylan Thomas, a voice whose lyrical brilliance would become almost a haunting influence in my work as I aged and matured, and who would lead me to Laugharne, Wales, in 1993 and 1995. My book The Laugharne Poems was heavily influenced by Welsh lyricism and the metaphorical nuances of Dylan and the place where he lived in the final years of his short life.

"In the years and books to follow, I developed strong ties with Northern California poet and scholar Gary Snyder. Environmental awareness, a rural sense of place, and stewardship became effective metaphors and references in my poems. Then I returned to the mountains of North Carolina, where I quite literally became a 'new native,' and where I have lived ever since, taking an activist role in preservation, conservation, and cultural issues pertaining to the southern Appalachian region, and in particular with regard to my philosophical interests in 'bioregionalism' and the notion of 'reinhabitation.' Until 1983 I lived, Thoreau-like, in the western North Carolina woods along the Green River in Polk County, in a small cabin without electricity. I grew my own food and learned to live self-sufficiently in balance with my environment.

"In 1996 I founded my spoken-word and music band The Boatrockers, and we have been active in public performances of my own work and translations set to contemporary, electronic, and acoustic compositions in an attempt to broaden and expand the interest and the audience for contemporary poetry. My record label, Fern Hill Records, is the first record label devoted exclusively to the marriage of poetry and music."