Interview: Jane Levin shares insight on poetry, surviving cancer and self-publishing [with Video]
I’ve been lucky to know Jane Levin for over a year now. She and I were awarded a Mentorship by SASE/Intermedia Arts, a local arts organization, and the Jerome Foundation in 2006. With several other local poets we
met regularly to workshop and support each other under the watchful eye of Sun Yung Shin, our mentor.
Since then, Jane has worked hard and met with a lot of success in publishing her poetry in both online and print journals. Last week she performed as a featured reader for the SASE/Intermedia Arts GLBT Reading Series. Award-winning writers Andrea Jenkins and John Medeiros curate this long-running reading series.
Part reading, and part book release party, Jane triumphantly held up the gem-green book that she had labored to publish over the previous months. Legacy is a slim volume packed with lyrical, wry and moving accounts of the author’s experience dealing with the fear and pain of cancer, and celebrating the triumph of health, family, friends and her lover Judy.
In her own words, Jane says:
My poems, especially those in my chapbook Legacy, explore universal issues that arise from living as a Jew, a cancer-survivor and a member of the LGBT community. My hope is that my poems will also heal.
I used my digital camera (a Cannon PowerShot A95 for you poetry-loving gadget-geeks out there) to record some short video clips during Jane’s reading. You can watch three of those clips edited together here.
In this 4:42 minute video, Jane thanks her supporters and reads “Atoll” and “Passover” from her book, Legacy.
To order the book, you can send an email to moonflowerpress [at] gmail.com. Each copy is only $8.00 USD. Legacy is also available at the following Twin Cities independent bookstores: Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, Birchbark Books, Brochin’s, Elijah’s Cup and Micawbers.
Read the full interview with Jane Levin after the jump, and below the video.
