Crimson and Gold Connection; JT Knoll

Welcome to Crimson & Gold Connection. My name is Dustin Tribor and today I have two guests, J.T. Canole, who is the Prevention and Wellness Coordinator for Pittsburgh State University. Along with him is Adam Jamison, both our graduates of Pittsburgh State University, and along with several other Pittsburgh State grads, you have put together a book of poetry, so please tell us about this book. Yeah, we are Adam and I, our members along with Melissa Fight Johnson, who is a English teacher here at Pittsburgh High, and Alan Lonnie, who teaches up Kansas City, who is a local boy who moved up, but we have a group called White Buffalo, and we have come out with a book called Ghostsign, which is a collaboration that a one person described as a fragrance of Southeast Kansas. We're all working class Southeast Kansas people who have brought our voice to the poetry descriptions of the area, so we have everything from pickup trucks to baseball fields, you know, to coyotes, to farmers. This is rendering through the poems, yeah. This is real life poetry. Yeah, yeah, it's

real life poetry. How many people are part of this collaboration? Well, there's four in White Buffalo, but we've had some wonderful collaboration up in Kansas State. Our main editor up there with Jason Reberg, you know, who helped get the book on the page from Spartan Press, and they collaborate with 39th Street Press, and is this a like volume one or volume 20s? Is this something you've been doing for over the years? This is our, they've done a bunch of books. They basically are publishers who want to keep publishing poets, and they try to make enough on the previous book to publish, to put out another book of poetry, so they've got like a hundred books out there, I believe. But this is our first collaboration on a book. Adam has a book published by Little Balkans Press locally, and I've published a couple books, you know, I write for the morning sun, so I've got a couple collections of columns, and book of poetry as well. Now, I'm going to let's

defy Johnson, one of the Kansas Notable Books Award for her book class share, so she's already been recognized. And we're going to hear maybe some poetry here, and before we actually get into it, how long have you been writing poetry, Adam? Since high school. I'm about 25 years now. I took out Oralani's class on a dare from Al in the hallway, and 25 years later, here I am. And just something you enjoy doing on the side? Yeah, it is. I kind of see things sometimes, and they mill about it, you know, up here in the head, and then at some point a poem comes out, I really can't explain it. And have you had any formal training in this at all? Yeah, well, yeah, I don't know that there is such a thing as formal training, Al, and JT, and a guy named John Macker, out of New Mexico, and JT's brother, Uncle Trial, we call him, Johnny Canole. I've all kind of been mentors, guiding factors, and then, you know, I read a lot

of other people's stuff, and that's kind of where I guess the training comes from, trial and error. It's just something that's in your head, something in your heart that you want to put out on paper, and you got a few, maybe a poem or two, here you want to read for us. Sure, the first one's called Windstorm, and I work for West Our Energy, and when the lights go out, we go to work. Yeah, until every last customer is back on, and this one is called Windstorm, and it's something that happened last Veterans Day, or oddly enough, we're coming up on that. All right. I found Underwood in the crew, 12 miles west of Humboldt, just after 2 a.m., I brought them a transformer, and three pizzas. We ate by headlight in the middle of the road, winds singing through the weeds. And just paints a picture. Yeah, Underwood, here's this broadcast, he probably won't be happy, because then I put him in a poem, but that's all right. That's okay. All right. GT, you got one?

Yeah, here's another little one. We're doing some shortwinds here. We've got a short and long. I was a paperboy growing up, and I find once a paperboy, I always paperboy. I talked to other people with paperboys. Yeah, that was a paperboy. But I still get up very early. I didn't like it as much back then, but now I get up very early, and I walk with my dog. And this is a little poem about Lakeside Park going beneath the cedars and listening and walking with my dog. It's called listening. Walking at 5 a.m., I listen for the dawn in the groove of tires, side on the highway. In the park beneath the cedars, a paperboy passes through me. Impossible to hold for long, but sweet nonetheless, and full of light. Very nice. Here's one I call Saturday. Well, you spend a lot of time with our camper at Forlington Lake.

Sitting in the sunshine of Saturday afternoon, drinking beer and riding. My son rides his bike with the other kids all over the campground. Scooter of the shitsoo is asleep in the sun. Wife reading a book in the lounge chair, trees in half balloon, a cropier biting. Camper windows are open, letting the cans of spring flow through and cover our pillows. The deer sneak up at dusk to eat acorns just outside of the firelight. Only I can see them. Everyone else is busy talking about nothing. I say a month prayer of gratitude between bites of croppy and sips of beer as the bullbats sweep low over the water, gathering their supper and silence. I worked in addiction treatment my whole life and this comes from an inpatient treatment center from the war that was my war as a tribute to the Vietnam vets and their children. It's called from then on. I was eight when my dad came back from

Vietnam wounded in action with my crayons. I made a sign that said my dad is a hero and I walked the streets of our Wichita neighborhood tall and proud. Some guys stopped their car, slapped me around, tore up my sign, called my dad a baby killer. My mother crashed half a volume, fed it to me and told me stop crying. A few weeks later, my dad and I were driving in the car when he heard up backfire and dove under the dashboard, trembling and wide-eyed. He made me promise never to tell anyone. From then on, I knew things would never be the same. Well, JT Canole and Adam Jameson, you guys tell some very vivid stories. I applaud your creativity, I really do. The name of the book is... The name of the book is Ghostsign. Ghostsign. Ghostsign.

And you can find more information online. Sure. Just do a search for Ghostsign. JT Canole, Adam Jameson, thank you for coming in speaking with us on Crimson and Gold Connection. Thank you, Dustin.