Harvey Taylor

At a July 2005 Rally

Bio Note

Harvey Taylor is a founding member of the Earth Poets & Musicians performance ensemble, peace activist, music and writing teacher (often in ‘special needs’ settings), avid gardener, part-time crane operator at the port of Milwaukee, and obsessive writer of poems and songs morphing into compulsive music composer and CD producer: www.harveytaylor.net

Holly Haebig

Holly with her main source of inspiration, baby Elladia

Louisa Loveridge-Gallas

Looking at you

As an earth poet, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas believes all beings are deeply connected, as she reveals in her “Ode to Slugs”: Remind me, with your body of alien goo/we are mud relatives. We’re family, me and you.”

She has performed her poems and also on piano in concerts with Red House Recording Artist Claudia Schmidt who writes of Louisa’s poetry collection, Revelations on Longing Street: “. . . I am reminded to forgo cynicism and simply to celebrate this wild ride called the human condition.” Schmidt performs Louisa’s poems in her national tours, on radio shows, including “Prairie Home Companion” and on a spoken word CD, “Roads.”

She has been an artist in The Wisconsin Arts Board Artist in Residence and Education Program and a featured poet at Chicago’s Women and Children First, Madison’s Room of One’s Own Bookstores, Milwaukee’s PAC Peck Pavilion, Woodland Pattern, Centennial Hall, Village Church, and Schwartz Bookstores.

Often inspired by Milwaukee, she was the winner of onmilwaukee.com’s poetry Contest 2006 for her poem “Live at the Jazz Estate.”

She has 25 years experience as a body-mind counselor and quotes Freud who said “Everywhere I go, a poet has been there before me.”
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Jeff Poniewaz

Dolphin poet smiling in the Milky Way

Bio note

Jeff Poniewaz has taught “Literature of Ecological Vision” via UW-Milwaukee since 1989. His poems have appeared in many periodicals and anthologies. Allen Ginsberg praised his work for its “impassioned prescient ecological Whitmanesque/Thoreauvian verve and wit.” His book Dolphin Leaping in the Milky Way won a 1987 “Discovery Award” from PEN, the international writers’ organization. In March 1997 the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra and Chorus performed the special “Song of the Rainforest” concert he brainstormed to draw attention to the global rainforest crisis. He was awarded an Earth Guardian Award at Milwaukee’s Earth Day 2000 celebration.

Suzanne Rosenblatt

Suzanne reading (with Jeff and Louisa) at Antler’s Poet Laureate reading sponsored by Friends of Milwaukee Public Library, March 23, 2003

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Bio note

Suzanne Rosenblatt writes travel journals, performs with the Earth Poets and Musicians, draws wordrawings along Lake Michigan and moving dancers during performances, paints sunrises on the beach, does tai chi and yoga, bikes, gardens organically, and is an environmental and political activist. Her books include Everyone Is Going Somewhere (MacMillan), Memorandance (Marcel Dekker), and Shorelines (Gallery of Wisconsin Art), and illustrations in her daughter Sarah’s books, On the Waterbed They Sank to Their Own Levels and One Season Behind (Carnegie Mellon University Press).

Web site: http://www.rosenblattgallery.com/suzanne/index.shtml

Here’s a link to my blog: http://blogs.shorewoodnow.com/between_yesterday_and_tomorrow/

Link to Grass Roots, my pesticide education group: http://www.rosenblattgallery.com/grassroots/index.shtml
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Jahmes Tony Finlayson

A Poet of Percussion

Group pictures

First Earth Poets

Earth Poets group photo taken in advance of the very first Earth Poets performance. This was the original group selected by the event’s organizer, Jeff Poniewaz. The photo was taken in the red oak grove on the wild side of Riverside Park just west of the bike trail in April 1988. Left to right, standing in front of the tree: Jeff Poniewaz, Suzanne Rosenblatt, Angela Peckenpaugh. In the tree: Rick Ollman, Ann Megisikwe Filemyr, Craig Kowalkowski, Cristina Herrera, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas, Sue Silvermarie, Harvey Taylor. Antler performed with the group for its first few years, but was doing readings on the East Coast when this photo was taken.
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Earth Poets in early April 2008

The four original members of the Earth Poets group who have performed as part of the Earth Poets every April since 1988: (left to right) Jeff Poniewaz, Louisa Loveridge-Gallas and Harvey Taylor. Far right: 2008 guest poet James Godsil. 4/2/08 photo taken by Keith Knox on the wild side of Riverside Park, west of the bike trail.
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