Creating Art: From Silversmithing to Soulful Poetry

Create our Podcast Interview Jenny Dickinson hello friend.This is Timothy Keem O'Brien, your head instigator for Create Art podcast where I bring my over 30 years of experience in the arts and education world to help you, your inner critic, and create more than you consume. So in this interview, I'll be talking with Jenny Dickinson.Now, Jenny is a millennial hailing from northeastern Nevada high desert, and she's lived in San Francisco, California, Olympia, Washington, and parts throughout East Texas where she currently resides.Now, she's a jack of all trades and she's held a myriad of jobs, but prefers to think of herself as a silversmith and a poet when her poems get wrangled out of her. Now, she's just published a new book, Pluto in Capricorn, and it's a collection of poems that she's done over the years, self published.And when I met up with her, I immediately knew she was the person for the show.So without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and let that interview roll here and enjoy the laughter and the fun that she and I have here in this interview. All right, well, thank you everybody for joining us here for Korean Art Podcast.I have the privilege of having Jenny Dickinson on the show here with us today. Jenn, how is it in Texas today?

Today in Texas it is beautiful. It's like 80 degrees outside. The sun's shining and I need to get out there and plant my garden.

Yeah, I'm here in Virginia and I've got about a month before I can plant my garden. But I definitely miss Texas and having the 80 degrees in February, that is for sure.

You miss it until, you know, August comes around.

Oh yeah, no, when August comes around, it's 110. No, thank you. So I wanted to start right off. You have a wonderful book that I had the pleasure of getting, Pluto in Capricorn that you put out.You're a poet, you're a silversmith.Let's jump into the poetry first and we can talk about the silversmith stuff as well because, you know, anytime I can get some time with a poet that is as talented as you are, I want to use up that time really good.

Oh, thank you.

Absolutely. I was really impressed. And is this your very first book of poetry that you have published?

Yeah, this is my first published poetry and I self published it.

Excellent. How was that process for you? I know it can be intimidating for some people.

You know, back in the day when I thought about publishing and you know, always thought about sending it to literary magazines and stuff, like that. And I really never got around to it. But I was unemployed for about a month and I spent every day sitting on my front porch collecting all the poetry.And I had a mishap where I have like probably 48 journals, and they're all in this one cabinet. And it had gotten wet and so I had spread them all out over the floor, trying to salvage and dry them.And I know there's some lost poems in there, you know, the ink ran and I figured I needed to type them all up, even just to make some space and maybe burn the drivel. But I decided not to burn all the journals. And so I did type all of them up. And it was quite the process. It was kind of emotionally taxing.But I sat on the front porch drinking and smoking. Either I was drinking coffee or some beer or something, and I just, I went for it.And it actually was really easy to the process of self publishing on Amazon. Otherwise I don't think I would have done it. And I'm not sure if I could have shopped it to anyone.

I hear you on that one. I've done the, the Amazon publishing and I also did Lulu.I started off with Lulu Publishing, which is self publishing, and I was surprised at how easy it was because, you know, if you know how to format a, you know, a Microsoft Word document and you know how to upload a file, you're a published author, which is like, wow, how does that make you feel to have that book on your shelf?

It's pretty nice. I'm kind of glad to get it out of the way, actually. I've always wanted to do it, and I feel like as my freshman attempts, it's pretty good.I'm happy to share it with people.

It's kind of like Doritos.Once you've done the first one, then the second one's going to come, and then the third one's going to come and then the fifth one's going to come and. Yeah, you know, and before you know what, Simon and Schuster is knocking on your door going, hey, we need to publish you.

Well, that'd be cool.

Yeah.

I'm writing. Trying to write a prose shorts like a novel at the moment, but it's a whole lot different than poetry.

How is it different for you from writing poetry?

Well, dialogue.Putting my voice into, you know, or trying to speak through someone else's voice and have the dialogue there or, you know, just make up what's in their mind and what they're thinking is totally different from poetry, because I know what I'm thinking, and I know what I'm saying, but this is a whole, you know, and I'm trying to use a different lexicon for, you know, it'll be interesting. I think I'm. I think if I hack away at it every day, I can get it. I might have to send it to you and see what you think first.

Absolutely, absolutely. I'd be happy to read it. You heard it here first, folks. We got a book coming out. So now when you're writing, have you ever.When you're writing a poem, have you ever liked. Scrapped it, you know, kind of put it on a shelf and then come back to it maybe a year or two or 15 years later and.And completely changed it entirely.

Yes, that's one of my processes, actually, is to write and then come back at it later. I always find something to change. It's very rare that I've written something and it just stood alone.I think there's only one poem in the book that is that way and it's the shortest one. The Radical Appreciation and one of the first poems. I used to do writing workshops in a little ghost town called Tuscarora, Nevada.And it's a little ghost town that used to be a gold mining town and now it's just populated by 12 to 15 artists. And I would get into the writing workshops there by, you know, helping Cook and being the Girl Friday. And Nancy McLelland, she ran the workshops.And I think she was also a professor at UC Santa Cruz, I believe, or UC Davis, I'm not quite sure. Can't remember. It was a long time ago, but that was one of. One of the things she told me is to just let it sit.And so for a lot of these poems, I let them sit four years before I went back and rewrote them or just moved them around or cut. Cut a lot of stuff. Because I believe poetry is supposed to express something in the least amount of words possible. Kind of. I don't know for sure.

I mean, those Greeks, they had it all wrong. These 5,000 pages of the same poem, it's like, no, no, you could have said it in three sentences.Have you ever collaborated with another artist using a different medium with your poetry?

Not with visual art, but in the past, I have put poetry to music. I had a recording that I did for the poem. Gosh, what was the title of that poem? It's one of the songs. I got two or three songs in the book.And so those I've actually performed in front of audiences and had like, you know, just live recordings of. Done with a cello player named Cello Joe. And that was back in 2011.And before that, I would just kind of go off the cuff and use some of my poetry to freestyle with a friend that I had named Carlos Canales or Baltazar Canales. And he had all those recorded. And unfortunately he was murdered in Houston just two years ago.And I don't know whatever happened to any of those recordings. He was running a. His own little artist collective down there.

I'm just thinking about the names Cello Joe and Bazar. That's. Those are some awesome names.

Those are some of my ex boyfriends. But I'm sure you read about a couple of them in this book.

I did. And I was like, oh, I know that guy. Because I might have been. I mean, not that, you know, I might have been that type of guy.One of the things I really liked about that, you know, being a guy, being a CIS male and all that comes with. I never felt. What's the word I'm looking for?I never felt like you were giving me, giving us guys the middle finger by saying, you know, screw all men, I hate you all, blah, blah, blah. I was really taken with how you kind of balanced everything with.It was just like, okay, yes, this happened, you know, and you were able, it seemed like a lot of times you were able to move on from that or do better for that.

I'm very empathetic to others points of view and myself. I know that I can be crazy, you know, and I can understand, you know, the man's point of view and maybe why our relationship didn't work out or.And how I was treated to some extent. But I've also always had hope and knowing like, okay, well, that didn't work out. I dodged a bullet. And so I feel like I've dodged a lot of bullets.Like there was a reason that it didn't work out.

There is this sense of hope in, in these poems. And that's what was really touching me about it, because I was like, okay, she's not giving up, she's moving on.And I know my personal life, there's times I'm like, oh man, I got burned really bad and do I want to move on? But then reading your stuff, it's like, yeah, you can move on and you can make something of yourself, which I think is fantastic.I think that's one of the reasons why I connected with it so much. So well.

That's one of the things that I hope that readers can take away is that you might have had this relationship and your heart was broken, but you can pick yourself up and mend that broken heart and find someone else and give a little bit of hope. Because there are a couple poems with the theme of a little bit of, like, thought of suicide. And. And that has like, this is really. Honestly me.I've thought about it, and I've always been really glad having been a thought, not an action. And I really want people to see that. It could be bad at the moment, but there's always another adventure around the corner.

That's true. In my other life, in my. One of my other podcasts that I do, it's all about suicide prevention and all that.And it's one of these things that a lot of us. I don't want to say everybody. I don't want to paint with that broad of a brush. But, you know, a lot of us think about it. Not.Not a lot of people actually go through with the act, But I think that's. It kind of connects people together. What do you. We've. We've been at our deepest pits. We've been at the inner wit's end, and that thought comes in.But then picking up and moving on and looking at better days is the way to go. And really connected with your poetry in that. Do you ever use silence or empty space in your writing? Because I find that there. I.I perform my poetry Friday nights is my poetry night, so. And I always make sure to, you know, when it's appropriate or when I really want to pound a point home, I throw.I'll throw in a pause or I'll throw in silence. Are you using that in any of your works?

I'd say maybe leave things unsaid purposefully, but it's been a very long time since I've performed any poetry, and I have a tendency to try to rush over it. And so I've got to remind myself to, like, leave a pause.The last actually time I did perform was at some burlesque shows that my friend was putting on. And so I was reading some of more of the erotic poems. And actually I got in trouble by the coordinator of the burlesque show once for.For reading a poem that is not in this book. She said everybody came up to me afterwards and said, you really needed trigger warnings for that. I was like, okay, sorry, folks.Yeah, I don't know if that one will ever be published, but.

That'S the poem I want to read.

Yeah. When the whole audience is kind of upset with you. Yeah.

At A burlesque show. Come on. How? You know.

Yeah, it was kind of fun. Before that, I did poetry readings in San Francisco a little bit, and in Nevada, I'd been doing that for. Since I was, like, 14.

Oh, wow. Okay. How are the audiences different in different locations for you?

Well, the poetry readings in Nevada were at a bar called the DLC Gallery, and that was once a month. And that was really cool because it would be the same people, and for many years, kind of, they would request poems.They were like, oh, read that poem, and read that one again. And I thought that was neat because they got to know me and see me grow.The poetry readings in San Francisco I went to were called you'd're going to die. I think there's still an Instagram page for that poetry reading that was. That was more of a controlled environment.And, okay, read one poem about death. And so I think it was. I don't know. I felt way more nervous at the San Francisco readings because I was like, oh, this is the art mecca.And as for the burlesque shows, I thought I had a pretty good act. You know, other girls were taking their clothes off and dancing, but I had people audience just. And I was fully clothed, so pretty good.I don't have to take my clothes off. You're listening, though.

Gives me an idea for tonight's poetry reading. I might have to do a burlesque show at the poetry reading. Luckily, my nephew owns the coffee shop, so I can get away with that.All right, so I want to get us into silversmithing, but one question I want to ask you about your poetry is this. If one of your poems could be turned into a piece of jewelry, what would that jewelry look like?

That is a very interesting question. I guess I. I've seen some really cool, like, cuff bracelets that actually had poetry on them. I actually am wearing a piece that's really interesting.So the audience can't see this, but you can. This was a UN coin minted for the 25th anniversary of the UN that I cut out. And it is a man hammering his sword into a plowshare.And then on the other side, it's reversible. And you can see stones from either side, and they've got a brick motif. I made that in regards to.Because that coin was minted when Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the year he had won the Nobel Prize for literature for his writing A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. And in that book, he was a bricklayer, and that's what he took pride in his work, and so I need to write a poem about it.But I made that necklace with that kind of, you know, a necklace about it. I took a coin from that year that the USSR wouldn't let him leave to go accept his prize and made it about his book.

Now, when you're doing jewelry, when you're doing silversmithing, is there a like. Like what you just showed us here? Is there a story to all the pieces or just certain ones or maybe commission pieces?

I have done some commissions that have a story to them. Personal pieces for people and personal pieces for myself. But most of the time, I'm just trying to make something that's going to.Frankly, I make multiples of stuff, and I'll make a big run of rings and all sorts of different sizes with stones that, you know, will fit all sorts of different people. And I can sell them for 20 bucks a pop because I do try to keep a lot of affordable things on hand. And then on my display, I'll have like a.I have this belt buckle that has some inscriptions on it. That was kind of a story, a little personal memory, but I have it for sale. Yeah, I've made some men's wedding rings that kind of had their own story.But really, I'm just trying to have.

A little side hustle that makes perfect sense. Absolutely. There's nothing wrong with that.This podcasting thing is my side hustle, because right next door to me here is I have my work computer, and I do that for eight hours. Sometimes I do a little bit of this while I'm doing that. So.

Yeah, I would be nice to make some more meaningful pieces. The hard thing is when I make a meaningful piece, I want to keep it, and then I therefore, I'm not selling it.

Now, if you could work with a certain metal or gemstone that you haven't worked with yet, what would that be and why would you want to work with that?

Well, I do like 18 karat gold, and I haven't used much of it just because I have had the skills of being a little silversmith for many years, but not a lot of money to be buying gold and making stuff out of it. And I started out with copper and moved to silver, just working with copper scraps and found items and teaching myself.And then I've heard that gold is, you know, a lot easier and pleasant to work with.I'd always be kind of nice to graduate to actually being like, you know, make some real luxury goods and not just this silver stuff, but I've also taken many years to put together a studio, and it's still quite bare bones. I used to call my jewelry company Elida's Big Rocks and Bare Bones. And now I call it a lighter scope.And I still work with a acetylene torch that I bought on the Navajo reservation. So you see, the Native American silversmiths I would go.When I would drive through New Mexico, I would stop at their little supply store and buy stuff. So I'm still using a lot of the tools from there. I haven't.I know how to use all the other types of torches and stuff because I worked in some nice studios before, but in my own studio, I'm still bare bones.

Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Now the physical, because I've never done silver smithing, never worked with gemstones, nothing like that.If you were to see some of the sculpture stuff that I've done, you'd be like, don't. But one thing that I've noticed when I have made sculpture out of metal is, is that physical act of working with metal.It can be very meditative, like poetry. What. What's that physical act for you? Like, what. What do you get out of it?

I just like melding metal to my will. And I like the fact that if I get upset, I can just throw it in the crucible and melt it and it's not lost.Like, whereas if I messed up a drawing and burnt it, it's just gone. And I can take the metal and reuse it again, cast it or, you know, if it didn't work out.I do like the process of sawing and kind of feels alchemical to use a torch and connect the metal. That just is my favorite part. I hate polishing, but it is. Once it's polished and shiny, it's like, okay, that's nice looking.I like to make things that won't break is one of my number one things. Like, I don't set opals and rings because opals are soft. I try to use really hard stones.And I like the idea of making something that I think would, like, be found in some grave by an archaeologist.

That's a cool way to think about it. Yeah, that's, you know, and. And then maybe the poetry is the hieroglyphics that some archaeologist finds.And they go, oh, this is what these people in the, you know, 21st century were talking about.

Well, William Blake, he was a poet, but he also made. What are they called? Etchings.So on metal, these etching plates with fantastical scenes and so I've been thinking about how I could put poetry into etching like that, because I do have a couple vats of acid and lots of copper, and I could, you know, use that for my poetry. I did make an etching, a little portrait of Ezra Pound at one point.

Nice. That's cool. Yeah. Because when I was reading your bio in in Pod Match, I'm like, silversmithing and poetry.I know poetry, silversmithing, jewelry, stuff like that. I. I watch Forged in Fire. Maybe a typical guy kind of thing.

But I like that show.

Okay, cool.

I said, I haven't made a knife yet.

You haven't made a knife yet. Okay, Maybe next year we'll get you on forge and fire, you win the $10,000, and there you go. Yeah, I'll talk to my guys in forge and fire.We'll see what we can do for you.One more thing that I wanted to ask you here on silversmithing is, is there a technique or tool in silversmithing that fascinates you, even though that you may not use it often, or if I could wave a magic wand and there's a technique or a tool that you would want? And I go, okay, poof. You got it. What would that be?

Well, there's two. Okay. I'm going to start with technique. And I have done it once before. It's called mokume gane or gone G A N E. And it's.It looks like a topographical map out of different alloys of metal. And it's mixes of gold, silver, and copper, and occasionally others, I think it's called. Some of the alloys are shibu and shakudo, I believe.And I worked with. I made my own blank of it once and made a couple men's wedding rings out of it. But you do like I did mine. It was 24 layers. And you.That brings me to the tool. I really need a rolling mill.And you beat it up as you send it through the rolling mill, and you get this swirling patterns and different layers, and that would. I would love to make another blank of Mokulegane.And then for the tool, that rolling mill, I just need one because I've, you know, borrowed and used other ones. I like to take some coins and roll them. Like to take silver coins and use those. But you can make your own wire and all that.And it could really help me utilize my scrap. I could just roll it back out instead of having to figure out how to cast it into something too cool.

So any listener out there that has an extra rolling Mill or is just like, hey, you know, I got to get this poet, the silver smith, a rolling mill. Get on the website, links are in the show notes. You know, maybe.Well, you know, maybe you'll make some jewelry for them or write a poem for them at the same time.

Oh, there you go. That'd be a game changer to have a rolling mill.

So on the flip side from silversmithing, let's go back to poetry. Similar question there. Is there a style of poetry or a poetry related experiment that you've wanted to try but haven't done yet?

Huh? I would.I think the epitome of a good poem would be like if I could just read it on a busy corner and cause a car accident because people were just paying attention. But I don't know if that's what you mean.

That's perfect too. Yeah, absolutely. That would be cool.

I would like to write a poem that got turned into like a really popular song. That would be pretty cool. I just, I'm not much of a rhymer. Every time I've tried a rhyme and do little couplets and such, I just.It sounds so dumb to me. So I haven't really managed that quite yet. Become a songwriter.

I'm right there with you. I can't do rhyming poetry. I've tried to do it and it sounds horrible in my head and I'm just like, dude, just burn it and get rid of it.So don't do that. Well, Jenny, it is been fantastic talking with you. I'm glad we got a chance to, to sit down and get this out to. To everybody here.Is there any question that you wanted me to ask that I did not ask?

No, but I had a question for you. I wanted to ask if you had a favorite poem out of my book.

Yes, I do.

I'm excited to know which one.

I think my favorite one was Harsh Realities.

Oh.

Yeah, that one I really liked. And is it 5D sleep? Yeah, but yeah, Harsh Realities was the one I really, I really like.

Oh, that's really interesting to know. That was one that almost didn't make it in there.

Well, see, it was supposed to make it in there. So that way, you know, it was supposed to be in there.No, but that's a great question and I didn't even think to ask this, but how did you decide with all the palms that you have, how do you go? Okay, I'm gonna put these in it, but I'm not gonna put those in it.

Well, I do have some, like I told you about the poem from the burlesque show that got me in so much trouble. That one is kind of an epic poem. It's.It would have been 10 pages long in the book, and I figured that it was meant to be looked at longer and maybe be its own thing at some point. I also had written an epic poem because that's one of the. I just always wanted to be like Ovid and write an epic poem or something.I wrote a epic poem about Hurricane Harden and another one about the Keystone or the Keystone Pipeline, and it's called Keystone Pipeline Ultimatum.

So.

So I have like three epic poems that I decided were just their own things and too long for the book and really not on them. So. But otherwise, if the poem really sucked.

Maybe these are future books, right?

Yeah. I also took out some of my really early, early poems. I have some written when I was like sub 17, so 14, 15, 16. I'd left those out.

I know how that goes. I left all of my. Anything before 18, I was like, yeah, no, not gonna have people read that because then they're not going to read anything else.All right, Jenny, well, thank you again so much for joining me here on Create Art podcast. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Pleasure learning about a little bit about silversmithing and. And about your poetry. I promise Jenny that 24.You will have at least 12 people buy the book. So I need everybody to go do that. Otherwise I got to buy 12 copies of it.So make sure that you go out, check the show notes on that for us and definitely check out Jenny's website for all of her silversmithing and her jewelry, because we're recording this before Valentine's Day. But you know, if you got somebody that you love, they need jewelry, right?

Yeah. And I've got something that'll fit anyone. And I promise if y'all buy the book, you'll find at least one poem that you can relate to.

Mm. I've got about 10, and I've got them all dog eared. So definitely get the book. Definitely.

Well, thank you, Tim, for having me. It was a real pleasure to talk to you.

You got it, Jenny. Thank you so much. All right, so that was my interview with Jenny Dickinson. And as you can tell from this interview, we both had a great time talking.A lot of laughter was had, and it's always great to talk with another poet that really gets it. And I really got her poetry. And I think you can hear that throughout this entire interview.Now you're probably asking yourself, hey, Tim, how do you get great guests like this. Well, I use Pod Match and what that allows me to do is allows me to reach out to people that are on the app there and allows them to reach out to me.And that's actually what happened here.Jenny reached out to me, looked at my profile, just like you do with any social media type thing, and, and we connected and got this interview set up. And here it is for you right now. So check it out in the show notes. I will have my affiliate link in there.And yes, with Pod Match, you can get paid to do with that.I do make a small bit of money off of the interviews that I do with Pod Match, but I wouldn't recommend it to you unless could show you that it works. And you can hear that in this interview. So give Pod Match a look if you want to be on podcasts or if you have a podcast and you need great guests.Now with podcasts there, you need, as a podcaster, you need a way to share your podcast.And what I use to do that is Podcast Beacon, basically what that is, when I'm at the grocery store or at a conference conference or out at the art gallery or something like that, I wear this little wristband. And when it's appropriate, I talk to people about my podcast.And maybe you know that they want to be interviewed on the podcast or they want to learn more about it.Well, instead of handing them a business card that they're going to lose, I just hold out my arm, show my wrist, have them put their phone over my wrist, and it goes right to the website there. My good friend Matthew Passi runs Podcast Beacon and I give it a look. See for yourself if you have a podcast.There's no better way to share your podcast than with Podcast Beacon. And before we go for today, I wanted to let you know about a new company that I started up. It's called TKB Podcast Studio.You can go to TKP podcast studio.com and if you need help starting up your own podcast, I am there for you to give you what you need. TKP Podcast Studio is kind of my money maker, for lack of a better term. So that way I can provide you with great podcasts.And it is my network hub for all my other podcasts that I run.So give it a look, see for yourself and see what else I'm doing around the world and see some of my professional portfolio and some of the fun stuff that I have going on there. So again, tkbpodcaststudio.com is the place to go to see everything that I'm doing there.All right, now it is time to turn you on to the rest of your day. I need to get on with my day.You know me, I record these on Sundays, so I need to get upstairs and get hanging out with my kiddos, which is the reason why I do all these podcasts. But I want you to go out there, maybe write some poetry if you've been inspired by today's show, or go grab Jenny's book. It is fantastic.And go out there, tame that inner critic. Create more than you consume. Go out there and make some art for somebody you love. Yourself. I'll talk to you next time.