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J.C. OLANDER
Poet Chris Olander has been writing poetry since
1984, “articulating artistic words through music, spoken word and
gestures: poetry experiences of energized body language.” Olander’s
poetry arises from land-based ethics rooted in science, observation and
reflection. “I explore human horrors and beautiful auras of mystical
revelations and all that is possible in being here now. What we make of
life is what we get. I create an action art poetry: musical image
phrasing to dramatize relative experiences—a poetry from oral and bard
traditions, a sound poet exploring meanings and ideas in rhythm
patterns.”
He has worked as a Poet/Teacher with California Poets in Schools (CPITS),
since 1984. He teaches and reads his work throughout California and in
Oregon, Washington and Hawaii. He has been published in many
anthologies, magazines and specialty publications; has an M.A. in
Creative Writing CSUS 1984; has taught in 34 elementary schools and 25
high schools in 17 N. Ca. counties and elementary schools in Hawaii and
Washington states.
Olander was a founding director of Poet’s Playhouse of Nevada City,
1988-99 and the Nevada County Poetry Series of Grass Valley, 2000-12. He
has worked as an organizer and featured reader for the Berkeley
Watershed Environmental Poetry Festival since 2001, as a Poetry Coach
for California Arts Council’s Poetry Out Loud program since 2006 and was
the California State Poetry Coach Champion in 2007, third place coach in
2013 and 2014; second place in 2015.
His three chapbooks, “Mass Man’s Epiphanies”, “December Birds” and
“Iris” have each gone to press for a second printing.
Published two poetry books: “River Light”, Poetic Matrix Press, 2017;
“Twilight Roses”, R. L. Crow Publications, 2021.
Olander completed four solo CD’s of his poetry in April 2013 to
complement his pre-released CD Mass Man’s Epiphanies and his chapbooks.
Two more CD’s with musical accompaniment, “Wild Women Wake” and “J. C.
and the Apostles” were released in August 2014; “Silent Motif:
Conference of Poets” a CD anthology of six poets with electronic music
accompaniment was released in April 2015.
Olander, was poet laureate of Nevada County, CA 2017-2019, and was a
founding member of Sierra Poetry Festival, 2015. He has read his work
accompanied by improvisation, modern, ballet and Middle East belly
dancers since 1996 at special events and dance recitals and has read
with many musicians with various instruments for 30 years. He can be
reached at jcjb@nccn.net.
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J.C. Olander's newest work, WHO ARE WE.
160pp, Perfect Bound, Soft Cover
$18.95 + $5 shipping
In this book we travel in the psychic vehicle of Chris Olander’s poetic
voice. It’s an ancient tradition, going back at least five thousand
years to the magical beginnings of Chinese poetry. At that time poets
had the shamanic skill of spirit travel, when poets were usually
employed by dynastic courts to enter the heavens or deep into the earth
to recover the lost soul of an emperor. People were suffering because he
was too out of touch with the pragmatic needs of his subjects. The
poet’s vehicle was his voice and his path defined by the next word as
it materialized under each spoken step. Rhythmic momentum was key.
Olander invites us on a similar quest for our own souls. It's an
ambitious book and full of psychic risk for the poet at a time when all
human life hangs in the balance.
His journey began when he was first swept up by the ecstatic, perhaps
Pentacostal, fire he felt in the swirling emerald pools below waterfalls
of the Yuba under the guidance of sacred nymphs in the sixties. This
book traces that journey into our present moment where, through his
bardic voice, he attempts to digest by song the political mush everywhere
around us down into the guts of hell, full of poison and endless
treachery to witness cannibals and cutthroats slicing each other apart
with flames that not even torrential rains can put out. The rain is full
of microplastic just as the rain falling over the Rockies in Colorado
has been discovered to be. This hissing acidic caldron cannot digest
anything. It’s a true hell. Olander’s marvelous poems on food touch on
this. One can’t help but wonder, in a world where fire can’t be put out
by rain because rain is full of plastic, a form of fossil fuel, despite
its having been birthed in the human mind as an idea, What sort of beast
can the indigestible trash our culture creates be feeding?
Olander’s voice is embattled. At times he digresses into well-meaning
didactic exhortations, a voice calling out while almost drowning in
lies, delusions and human vanity. It’s not a tidy book, all wrapped up
with the ribbon of genius. It’s the singing voice taking on the struggle
for fragile tendrils wavering in the air for something to hold onto, the
delicate beauty that keeps the apocalypse at bay. Blossoming ballerinas
are there to see, and Olander performs a ballet of the ear to hear. We
witness the struggle as we're nourished by the solace of his music yet
the outcome is on us and unclear. Redemption lies in his perseverance.
Gene Berson
Author; raveling travel,
Work Ethic of a Shopping Cart Shaman
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