My latest review of Karen Elizabeth Bishop’s new poetry collection is now available at North of Oxford. Read it here.
My latest review of Karen Elizabeth Bishop’s new poetry collection is now available at North of Oxford. Read it here.
A couple nights ago I had the pleasure of reading a poem with the Jim O’Halloran Trio at Kezira Cafe in Columbia City, Seattle. The poem, “Return to Rain,” is linked below. Here’s the segment of the set with the reading:
And some larger selections of the show.
Sadly, the focus was set to auto and was doing some really weird stuff in the low-light room. The sound isn’t perfect either, but better than null!
And here’s the poem:
Happy to announce I have reviewed Amy Beeder’s And So Wax Was Made & Also Honey over at North of Oxford.
Following a recent 60th birthday, Paul E. Nelson celebrated with a reading and we engaged in an interview shortly thereafter. Both are available on YouTube.
Another month, more reviews of poetry.
The Fall 2021 print edition of Rain Taxi includes my review of Is This Scary? by Jacob Scheier.
The online edition of Rain Taxi just released by review of CURB by Divya Victor.
Don’t miss ’em!
I had the supreme joy of exploring a handful of cenotes in Quintana Roo, Mexico, last month. These GIFs are the result of some rough, rough footage pulled from a GoPro that was used both underwater and above, focusing on the textures of the pools’ floors and the stalactite-filled ceilings. Using some crude alteration methods in Davinci, I was able to quickly (and continued-roughly) get a Brakhage-esque result.
As with the waterwheel GIFs, these were created using Davinci and ScreenToGIF. Higher resolution versions available, though probably will keep off the web server for frugality.



From the discovery boat tour in Fairbanks, Alaska, with love. Recorded earlier this month.
These two GIFs captivated me before I even imagined their full form. In my continued odyssey through outsider video art, they were created using a new GIF app I just discovered: ScreenToGIF.
Original video was captured on a Sony A7C and the editing was done in Davinci Resolve, the app that forever will confound and surprise.


My first review of Chath’s work was in Rain Taxi, many years ago. I have since read Chath’s latest book, On Earth Beneath Sky, and that review is now up at Poetry Northwest. Read the full review of this incredible poetry collection here!
Many thanks to Amy Billharz for recording and editing the View.Point. event at the end of last month. I’ve uploaded it to YouTube and it’s available in HD format. See below:
A spontaneous drop-in to the new performance art by Will Rawls at the Henry Art Gallery kept me captivated. I managed to capture the first 26 minutes of the performance and it can be viewed here:
Following up my last music video for KMRU, I have created a music video for another artist I really enjoy listening to: Speaker Music. The latest album, Soul-Making Theodicy, is mindblowing, and a combination of it and previous releases led to the drive to make this video. Footage includes videos of night and day sky over Cathedral Gorge, NV, timelapse of Grand Lake, and a particularly attractive flower in Seattle. Davinci did all matter of glitchiness (as it usually does when using blend effects) and the result is quite abstract. Note setting the video to HD 60 frames is ideal for viewing on a larger screen.
My newest review is live and online. I have reviewed Saturn Peach by Lily Wang in Rain Taxi. You can find it here.
A palace among the dogwood and it trembles.
Beyond the tiger lily an ancient rock.
And its chiseled face bare.
We are ruptured. We are dislodged.
Memories captured, compressed in snow melt.
Sun pushing inward, water pushed toward earth.
Even on this day. Even in this breath.
I can feel this return. I can feel this lingering emptiness.
I feel as the long burn serves missive from the meadows.
A typography of flame reaches out to a withered parchment of skin.
Yes, today. Even today.
The core is blue and it is sustaining and we watch within as we dance through this summer.
Consider bends in light scraping gentian and valerian.
Consider the methodology of escape.
Talus and scree. Here. It’s here.
With survival breath accompanying sweat. And now. It’s now.
I am inhaling and exhaling. Be it too soon, we are still arriving through breath.
Around a corner: a plunge to reach a sacred bottom.
There are ruins beneath that bring more questions.
Aquatic trauma accompanying divinity.
It extends onward through the shallows, through the dusk.
Forever its linger. Forever I can hear it calling in rush and awe.
Liquid and its green signals and gray patterns.
Submerge meets emerge.
A single trillium withering purple and brown.
There is the glance backward. Memory’s zoom.
Back to the bounty and its precedent.
Back to the glacial, an Olympics poem.
Return, over shoulder’s creak and creek’s hush.
Stone array to elevate the difference.
Of difference. Of loss. Tales of those coming up onto the shores.
Clambering through climate and its migrants holding breaths, holding sighs.
Tiptoes through preservation. Pounces across ravaged remains.
Past stances of their former shadows.
When the movement settles, I dream.
I dream in old peaks and past voices. Echoes ongoing or spidery hallucinations.
Those whose bodies gave in and gave us their space.
Talismans of forgotten roads, paths, holding grounds.
I dream in ruinous life and the blanket of limbs in the ruins.
Barely hanging on, barely hearing, barely breathing as it spreads.
Smoke’s wisps rolling through the night.
Dawn’s facade a grimace and enough.
Pools of blood clotted in yellowing smoke light.
Pools of dried blood glyphic and perpetual.
The vicissitude within a warren. Alive.
Memories of moonlight dictation and commands of survival.
Morphing across realities we continue to open.
Opened eyes after twisted keys, pressing in and finding the next.
In this land of drought and my own ragged, wagging tongue,
dangling like a peace treaty around my chin,
I invite the reemerged in a mess of light.
I dream and I invite languages of breaking and mending.
More clusters, more shapes of us.
Birthing a glance of another sequence.
Come, join us until we crumble.
I’m excited to be hosting a new literary event in Seattle on 7/28/21. It’s called View.Point and will be at Mt. Baker Viewpoint Park. Details with performers and bios can be found on this page.
The live stream will be at twitter.com/gregbem. Note that the account will be locked until the time of the performance.
Updated start time: the performances will begin around 4:45pm Pacific Time.

My latest review is of Carnation and Tenebrae Candle by Marosa di Giorgio, Translated by Jeannine Marie. The review of this fantastic surrealistic work by the Uruguayan poet is at North of Oxford. Enjoy!