As a small independent journal, we are always planning for the next great journal
Artemis Journal has showcased compelling new voices for four decades, including notable writers ranging from Poet Laureates to Pulitzer Prize winners and first-time writers and artists. Over 2000 artists and writers have appeared in our journal. Artemis has served the Appalachian Region of the Blue Ridge Mountains with a rich history that has played an integral role in the success and perseverance of our journal.We are grateful for the continuing support of the Roanoke Arts Commission, The Taubman Museum, our contributors and donors.
Nikki Giovanni & Jeri Rogers, Editor Artemis Journal
HBO has acquired the Documentary which won the Sundance Film Festivals best documentary of 2023
In the opening scene of Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson’s searching documentary Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, the poet Nikki Giovanni shows her cards: “I don’t remember a lot of things,” she says as images of a glittering galaxy and archival footage of the poet as a child flash onscreen. “I remember what is important and I make up the rest. That’s what storytelling is all about.”
Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project wants to let Giovanni choose how she is remembered without sacrificing an allegiance to linearity and mainstream appeal. So the documentary, anchored by the vivacious personality of its subject, blends its experimental inspirations (Raoul Peck’s I Am Not Your Negro) with the duty of a compositionally legible portrait (Timothy Greenfield Sanders’ Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am).
Javon Jackson with Nikki Giovanni and Nnenna Freelon
Friday, November 3, 2023, 7:30 PM
Moss Center Virginia Tech
Blacksburg, Virginia
Street and Davis Performance Hall, Anne and Ellen Fife Theatre
“These songs are so important. They comforted people through times of slavery, and during recent years we needed them to comfort us again.”
— Nikki Giovanni
About The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni
Why would one of poetry’s most revered voices want to curate a jazz saxophonist’s album of gospel hymns and spirituals? “These songs are so important,” says Giovanni, one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 Living Legends and a Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award winner for 2017. “They comforted people through times of slavery, and during recent years we needed them to comfort us again. But a lot of the students today do not know about the history of these songs, and they should. So I’m out here putting water on the flowers, because they need a drink.”
“The spirituals have been around so long,” says the renowned poet, activist, and educator, who came to prominence in the 1960s and ’70s as a foundational member of the Black Arts movement following the publication of such early works as 1968 book of poetry Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgment and 1970’s Re:Creation.
“Some spirituals have been updated and stayed around and some have been lost over time,” Giovanni notes. “So for me, it’s just helping to keep something going. And I do it because there’s a need.”
Co-sponsored by the Black Cultural Center
A historic collaboration between renowned poet and Virginia Tech legend Nikki Giovanni and saxophonist-composer and former Jazz Messenger Javon Jackson has yielded The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni. For this intimate jazz performance, Jackson brings his bold-toned, Trane-inspired tenor lines to bear on a series of hymns, spirituals, and gospel numbers hand-picked by Giovanni. They are joined by celebrated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon.
Come join in the fun and support the Journal and Taubman Museum with a program featuring Singer, and songwriter, Lara Taubman and her band.
Lara Taubman
Following a career as an Art curator, Lara turned her attention to music and began writing, producing, and singing. Her intention has always been to create work that is healing.
“2021 was the year I began to cover some classic gospel songs. Singing those deep, healing sounds sparked something profound in my body and mind. I believe part of the reason I began writing music at all was so I could climb inside of a song, to embody it. The inspiration of classic gospel brought me that experience when I wrote these songs. Being from the South and my roots in Appalachian music are not far from classic gospel music. The two kinds of music have always intermingled historically. In a way, these new songs have brought me closer to my southern background but in a deeper, more spiritual way.” Lara Taubman
“That ol’ feeling you get listening to good lo-fi music via hi-fi just got a retro update via Lara, channeling the likes of Patsy Cline and other ol’ giants of a smoky lounge scene with that signature sound that is captivatingly Lara and totally original.” RYAN MARTIN JAMMERZINE
We will also honor Dr. Sandee McGlaun, associate professor of English and director of the Writing Center, who died Sept. 4 after a long battle with breast cancer.
Her husband, Steve Prisley, posted to her social media: “The earth has lost a beautiful soul today as Sandee McGlaun left her weary and wounded body after a long and determined battle with cancer. Visit her Still Life Beyond Cancer blog to read her encouragement to hold your loved ones close, always choose kindness, and savor each moment.”
Dr. Sandee McGlaun
Her poetry will appear in the Artemis Journal alongside artist Bob Rotche, who collaborated with Professor McGlann during her last days. Here is their work as it appears in the Artemis Journal. http://www.bobroche.com
Join Frederick Douglass (Nathan M. Richardson) for a conversation about the meaning of American Democracy in the words of the former slave-turned-writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Learn how his relationships with William Lloyd Garrison, Susan B Anthony, Harriet Tubman, and Presidents Lincoln, Johnson, Garfield, and Grant significantly influenced the suffrage movement, the antebellum, the civil war, and early Reconstruction. Hear Mr. Douglass explain his evolving views on the U S Constitution and American Democracy. Bring your own questions.
Nathan M. Richardson is a published author, performance poet, and Frederick Douglass Historian. His poetry collections include Likeness of Being, Twenty-one Imaginary T-shirts, and The 7 Last Poems of an Unarmed Citizen. Books featuring Nathan’s success story include; You Can Do That; (Amazing People with Amazing Jobs) By Michael Messick & (You Don’t Want Success Demolishing Fears And Excuses) by Miko Marsh. Nathan teaches a variety of workshops for emerging writers and spoken word artists.
Mr. Richardson is now in his 9th year of The Frederick Douglass Speaking Tour – a living history performance that captures completely the physical, spiritual, and intellectual essence of the former slave, writer, orator, and abolitionist Frederick Douglass. The Frederick Douglass Speaking Tour has been seen live nationally and internationally and has film credits with the National Park Service and Alabama Public Television. Nathan’s recent rendition of the speech “Frederick Douglass Honors the Unknown Loyal Dead” was Nominated for Best Short Film at the 2022 I Will Tell Film International Festival.” You can learn more about Nathan Richardson and his work at www.scpublishing.com
The arc of Susan’s career is amazing. Besides her commitment to Photography, It includes a six-year term as President of the American Kidney Fund. She has been represented in three galleries and continues her desire to be of creative service to artists, dancers, and musicians. Her video skills helped numerous artists worldwide to have virtual shows during Covid isolation. Artemis Journal is pleased to publish her latest work, “Wilderness” in the 2023 Journal.
Join Jeri Rogers, Editor of Artemis Journal as she interviews Artist Susan Saandholland
Here is a peek at the latest layout for Artemis 2023 featuring Susan’s work, “Wilderness”
go to our Podcast icon on this website
ICONIC ROANOKE MURAL GETS REFRESH
Great news! Back when we launched our very first Artemis Journal in 1977, Dorothy Gillespie donated a pastel for our cover. Lyn Yeatts and I then approached Roanoke Business leaders and the Roanoke Arts Council about creating a downtown mural in Roanoke. The wind caught the sails of our idea and the mural became Roanoke’s very first one in the city. Our legacy lives and Artemis Journal continues to create and support the arts. We are now in the final layout for our Artemis Journal 2023 which promises to be one of our very best, with 96 poets and 50 artists from our region, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and beyond. The official launch will be on September 1st at the Roanoke Taubman Museum of Art.
Jeri Rogers, Editor, and Founder Artemis Journal
Gillespie Mural dedication, Doug Jackson, Roanoke Arts Commission Director, Pedro Salzay, Director of Southwest Virginia Ballet, William Penn, Chairman of RAC, Susan Jennings, Former Director of RAC, Katherine Devine, Artist, Jeri Rogers, Editor Artemis Journal
Roanoke, Va.- (April 24, 2023) – This week, fresh coats of paint are being applied to “Accentuated Forms in Space,” the well-loved but much-faded work of public art on the side wall of downtown Roanoke’s 312 2nd Street, SW. Painted in 1979 from a 1975 design done in pastel by renowned artist Dorothy Gillespie, the work has been called “fluid and playful.” The late Cabell Brand, President of Total Action for Progress (TAP), stated about the design, “Its colors harmonize just like people in a community should harmonize. It shows what beauty can be when everyone works together.” The mural was the result of a collaboration between the artist and the region’s arts community to celebrate the Artemis Festival of Women in the Arts. Partners included Artemis Journal- which featured the work on its first cover–philanthropists Warner and Carol Dalhouse, and Ann Lee, who then owned the property.
For more than two decades, area residents and art lovers have called for a revival of the work, something that just recently became possible. “We were able to bring together good partners eager to make this work,” says Roanoke Arts Commission Chair Meighan Sharp. “Sometimes it just takes time for the stars — like Gillespie’s “Accentuated Forms in Space”— to align, and this year it came together quickly.”
2023 marks the 40th anniversary of the Roanoke Arts Commission, and the volunteer, 15-member body appointed by City Council voted in March to undertake the project in celebration of ‘forty years of progress, fun, and art.’ Sharp continues, “In many ways, you can see Dorothy Gillespie’s gift to the city in the late Seventies as seeding the strong public and community art program we have today, and appropriately in the Year of the Artist, we’re celebrating this Roanoke daughter and art legend.”
2020 was the centennial of the artist’s birth in Roanoke, and her son, Gary Israel, through the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation, has worked in communities across the county to showcase the joyful painting, sculpture, and activism to which the artist dedicated her life.
“This mural is significant,” says Israel. “It is one of only two murals of my mother’s work produced in her lifetime, and it’s the only one that remains. It’s wonderful that it’s here in the community so beloved to her.”
The City of Roanoke has piloted a public-private partnership strategy that allows public funds to support public-facing art on private property. “It’s been allowed by our public art policies and plan for a while now,” says Sharp, “but until we developed the “Art in Place” program, we didn’t have the tools to encourage and shape these projects.”
For the refurbishment of the mural, committed partners have collaborated and contributed financial resources. Those include Downtown Roanoke, Inc. (DRI), property owner Quintessence Properties, led by Peter “Reyn” Holden, and the Dorothy M. Gillespie Foundation.
We are off to a busy start, all submissions are now in and our Editors are making selections for the next journal. Thank you to all who have made submissions and to our supporters. The Artemis 2023 will be released next summer with an official launch at the Roanoke Taubman Museum of Art in the Fall. Stay tuned for details.
In the meantime, our Podcast, Artemis Speaks is now in the 3rd season with 40 interviews of artists and writers from our library. A big thanks to my co-producer, Skip Brown of Final Track Studio, who makes the magic happen.
Podcast heaven
Skip Brown, Producer recording Jordan Harmen singing our Posdcast theme song “Slow Down”
Susan Hankla Poet has s long history with Artemis. Back in 1977, as a young writer, Susan’s poetry appeared in the very first edition of Artemis Journal. VA. For many years she worked as a traveling poet-in-the-schools working with underserved communities in Virginia, through generous grants from The Virginia Commission on the Arts. This made her love of teaching creative writing grow into reaching out to the Richmond community offering adult writing classes at the VMFA Studio School, The Visual Arts Center, & The University of Richmond. Her debut collection of poems, Clinch River, was released in 2017 and her second poetry book was just released, titled I’m not Evelyn published by Groundhog Press.
Nikki Giovanni, Poet
From Harlem rooftops to the drumbeats of the Congo, the poems in “The Women and the Men display in full measure the gifts that have made Nikki Giovanni one of the most important, appealing, and broad-reaching American poets: her warmth, her conciseness, her passion, and her wit. As a witness to four generations, Nikki Giovanni has perceptively and poetically recorded her observations of both the outside world and the gentle yet enigmatic territory of the self. When her poems first emerged from the Black Rights Movement in the late 1960s, she immediately became a celebrated and controversial poet of the era. Written in one of the most commanding voices to grace America’s political and poetic landscape at the end of the twentieth century, Nikki Giovanni’s poems embody the fearless passion and spirited wit for which she is beloved and revered.
1977 Artemis Journal cover image, Passages V by Sam Krisch
Go to our Podcast section to hear Artemis Speaks interviews
As we close this year, we want to thank all that support our mission, The Roanoke Arts Commission, The Taubman Museum of Art, Final Track Studios, our artists and writers, and readers. We have had a successful year, publishing our latest journal, Artemis 2022, virtually traveling around the Moon with Artemis 1 Lunar Craft, and finishing our 3rd season of Artemis Speaks Podcast.
Keep your seat belts on for a great ride! As a non-profit, we have survived 45 years and looking forward to another successful year.
Jeri Rogers, Editor & Founder
Editorial Staff; Julia Fallon, Associate Editor Page Turner, Art Editor Zephren Turner, Layout Editor Donnie Secreast, Poetry Editor Adam Gnuse, Poetry Editor Nikki Giovanni, Distinguished Poet Virginia Fowler, Critic Editor Jonathan Rogers, Legal Advisor Skip Brown, Audio Editor
New Podcast to end our year featuring Betty Branch, Sculptor
Betty Branch is an artist who is constantly reinventing herself. Her media is diverse; She sculpts in wax, clay, fiber, straw, and stone. Throughout her career in intensive production, she has culled visual references from ancient matriarchal civilizations to current cultural events, from Greece to the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Her work is defined by lifelong tenets: the body, rites of passage, the intersection between land and form, and the myth and form of crow and raven.
Branch’s award-winning art has been widely exhibited in the US and abroad, with works from small to monumental in private, corporate, university, and museum collections. She maintains a studio and gallery in Roanoke, VA.
Starroot grew up in Southern Germany and started to create art at an early age, inspired by nature and her unlimited fantasy. She explored and practiced conscious dreaming in her early childhood. She is an entirely self-taught artist. When she was 30 years old, she had a life-changing Out of Body experience in a car accident. Starroot opened more and more for visions coming to her. In 1986 she moved with her two children to Tennessee and then to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Regional culture kicked into a big gear on Friday at the Taubman Museum of Art. Our September launch featured our guest speaker, acclaimed poet, Nikki Giovanni. Our sold out crowd cheered our program which also had Southwest Virginia ballet Companie’s student dancer, alexis Potter performing along with Nikki giovanni’s reading of her poem, “Fall in Love, (for Artemis). Jordan Harmon, musican perfored music for the event.
The museum played host to two events in one. Roanoke’s annual Artemis Journal, devoted to Southwest Virginia artists and writers, had its launch party. “For the Love of a Book” is the theme for the 45-year-old publication’s latest iteration. The journal, developed from writing workshops for domestic violence victims in the region, this year features works that Nikki Giovanni inspired with her poem, “Fall in Love (For Artemis).”
The publication also features former U.S. Poet laureate Natasha Trethewey; Virginia poet laureates Ron Smith and Carolyn Kreiter-Foronda; and Virginia Poet Laureate Luisa Igloria. Artists and writers from Floyd County — Colleen Redman, Katherine Chantal, Starroot and Lisal Kayati — are in the pages, along with more creators from around the world, according to information that Artemis editor Jeri Rogers provided.
Donnie Secreast, Literary Editor, Poet Nikki Giovanni, Adam Gnuse
Zephren Turner, Page Turner, Art/Layout Editors, Donnie Secreast, Adam Gnuse, Literary Editors, Jeri Rogers, Editor, Julia fallon, Associate Editor, Steven Kenny, Cover Artist
Artemis Journal 2022, Cover, The Flock, by Steven Kenny
Join us for a night of art and poetry as Artemis Journal launches its 2022 edition!
Featuring readings from acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni, original performances from Southwest Virginia Ballet, and artwork from painter Steven Kenny (whose work graces this year’s cover), the evening promises to be filled with lively conversation and engaging entertainment!
5-6 pm: Catch up with friends and meet new ones while enjoying a cash bar, light refreshments, and open galleries 6-7:30 pm: Artemis Journal poetry readings and discussion featuring Jeri Rogers, Nikki Giovanni, and others; Southwest Virginia Ballet will perform during the readings 7:30-9 pm: Open galleries, cash bar, and light refreshments continue
Advance registration is encouraged to reserve your seat!
Join host Jeri Rogers as she speaks to Nikki Giovanni about jazz, Jane Goette about her newly published novel, & Italian Poet, Alessio Zanelli
The renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni has a new album “The Gospel According To Nikki Giovanni.”
In addition to publishing dozens of poetry works, Nikki Giovanni has recorded several spoken word albums over the course of 50 years. But this time, she’s doing something a little different.
The new album, a collaboration with saxophonist Javon Jackson, is a collection of gospel hymns and spirituals set to jazz. Growing up in the Baptist church, Giovanni says gospel music was instrumental to understanding herself as a poet.
“The spirituals had a message,” she says. “They weren’t just some people woke up one morning or came from working in the evening and said, ‘Oh, let’s sit down and sing.’ They were sharing information with each other.”
” The truth exists in the world and it is the job of the poet to pull the truth out of violentical air and place it with care upon the page to be casted from the mouth to the hearts of the people.” – Camae Ayewa (Moor Mother, Irreversible Entanglements)
Nikki with Jovan recording at Final Track Studios with co-producer, Skip Brown
Jane Goette’s novel, A River Road Memoir is a journey through a young girl’s idyllic childhood in the rural South to her restless adolescence when the Civil Rights struggle becomes urgent and personal to her family. The unfolding story is told through the second daughter’s eyes. Jane is a serious child, the one her father calls, “a tree full of owls,” always thinking, observing, and wondering about meanings. Unresolved conflicts continue around the family table as the Civil Rights movement evolves, the Vietnam War begins, and chemical plants spring-like poison mushrooms along the river. Set in the 1950s and 1960s, the conflicts reflected in this book are hauntingly familiar to readers today as Americans continue to battle over the nation’s identity and values.
Alessio Zanelli is an Italian poet who writes in English, a language he has learned completely as an autodidact. His work has appeared in some 200 literary journals from 17 countries including, in the USA: Artemis, California Quarterly, Concho River Review, Italian Americana, The Lyric, North Dakota Quarterly, Philosophy And Literature, Potomac Review, Worcester Review, and World Literature Today, among about a hundred more. His fifth original collection, titled The Secret Of Archery, was published in 2019 by Greenwich Exchange (London). For more information please visit www.alessiozanelli.it.
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