margareta waterman

orgasms and galaxies look alike they scatter stars, they spin to zero from five songs of the the primordial alphabet (1995) mw9muses@teleport.com   founded (1987) and continue to operate nine muses, an artist-owned collective which has published and produced the work of more than fifty, mostly poets, in books, chapbooks, broadsides, poetry postcards, workshops and seminars on small press publishing grew from the interest generated by the nine muses style. featured in publishing lives (Jerome Gold, Black Heron Press) among the 33 northwest small press publishers interviewed.      created manifest arts, a 15-program series of half-hour mixed media videos displaying some of the work that was being made in seattle at the beginning of the nineties, with margareta waterman as producer and artistic director and James Markham as video director.      board of directors, red sky poetry theatre, 1987-1993. variously organized, judged, moderated, mc'd, reviewed, edited, composed, for red sky poetry theatre, bumbershoot, the seattle small press poetry review, the alternative to loud boats, raven chronicles, and other literary endeavors of the seattle scene in those years. produced many evenings of abstract theatre, mixed media events and poetry readings, performed in many productions for many producers: readings, cabaret, small theatre, videos, radio, art openings...       toured (1994-1998) as featured reader in more than two-thirds of the states: schools, festivals, bookstores and the places where street poets gather.       3rd annual globe mural, globe poetry cafe, 1997, a painted work of visual poetry. naked autobiography... direct from sixties intellectual new york to a commune in the oregon woods, where i found myself in the roots of language. and then travel, travel, travel and write, write, write, a strictly private life, until 1986, when seattle drew me into a sense of living literature and a public life. adding the dimension of mixed-media performance gave me a new understanding of my work; the nearness of fellow artists taught me in thousands of ways how to do it better.       in 1994 i began touring the united states, seeking mainly the realm of the street poets, the poetry of taverns, watching the present wave of poetry form and grow. i traveled also in places where language is not english, where my language skills are crude, barbaric, and there is much to learn.       an active performing life tends to build up a pile of pages which call for attention. one can only neglect such things for so long; therefore i am spending more and more time in my solitary studio in the oregon woods.         because in my work i assert the relevance of personal things, i will add that i am a family woman, with children and grandchildren (and greats expected), but single, with many friends and lovers in my history. i am a believer in tantric metaphysics; in freedom of choice; that the statue is in the marble; that spirit and matter are not separable, nor subject and object. in some ways i am widely impractical and am fond of hyperbole.

books and chapbooks available by email:mw9muses@teleport.com or through amazon.com or Books in Print. the seeds of osiris eleusinian theatre red sky sketches moon riding backwards cracked cystal egyptian night walking' occam's razer lady orpheus astarte calling clytemnestra, 1994 some south american colors, 1995 five songs of the primordial alphabet cloud coop songs, 1997 (26 Books) tara's consort (a fiction chapbook) the mother of the world 1999