Harris Gardner, poet

Boston-baseed Harris Gardner is the poetry editor for Ibbetson Street. He is co-author of Chalice of Eros, and author of Lest They Become, and Among Us.

Harris has been published in numerous literary journals including The Harvard Review, Constellations, Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review and others. 

He is co-founder of Tapestry of Voices, and The Boston National Poetry Month Festival. He is the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from Ibbetson Street Press. 

Harris is also co-founder of the reading series, the First and Last Word Poetry Series. 

In this Zoom video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3yP2OC5EL8 filmed in February, 2022, Cervena Barva Press founder and editor Gloria Mindock launhces Harris's newest collection, No Time For Death. 

Praise for No Time for Death:

No Time for Death is just the right title for this lovely collection that uses poignant wit and deep feeling to fend off mortality in the only way that poems know how: by keeping time alive in breathing lines. I admire the combination of playful, ebullient imagination and steady, formal restraint in these ranging meditations on transience. There are also some extremely moving poems about Gardner’s Jewish heritage. And then there’s Gardner’s intuitive grasp of the instructive way that language, by its punctuated structure, keeps reminding us of our human predicament, even as it continues beyond the end-stopped lines.

 —George Kalogeris, author of Dialogos (Antilever Press) and Camus: Carnets (Pressed Wafer Press) 

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Harris Gardner’s collection, No Time for Death, is sharply aware of mortality. How do we understand the passing of time, and our place in it? How do we come to terms with the certain knowledge that our lives will end? Although these are questions without answers, Gardner, in a poem like “Entreaty to the Trees” finds a way forward through the recognition of the world’s healing beauty. The trees exhale “that we may breathe”, and they nourish us with their “full blown fruit”. They, and we, are sacred parts of the whole. 

—Jennifer Barber, Founding Editor, Salamander author of Works on Paper (Word Works)

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On a personal note, I must thank Harris for encouraging me years ago, back in the mid to late 90s to get out and go public and read my poems aloud in front of strangers. I had done a tiny bit of this in Worcester due to the encouragement of my friend David Nader, but it was Harris who broadened the horizon for me, so to speak, and introduced me to poets such as Ryk McIntyre, Gloria Mindock, Doug Holder, Melissa Guillet, and Michael Brown, among others. 

All these poets were actively promoting their work, engaging people, supporting their artistic vision at some level by sharing it. In Gloria's case, she was writing and publishing her books while running her own press, Cervena Barva, and she's still running it. Doug Holder was publishing his books, editing Ibbetson Street magazine, and also writing a column for the Somerville News. 

Ryk McIntyre was frenetic, fearless, willing to go anywhere to read aloud or to compete and often win in the slam festivals which were such a fresh, raw and vital part of the cultural landscape of many cities at that time, especially Boston.

Ryk is a ferocious talent and performer, and he revels in shaking an audience out of their lethargy. 

Ryk is pictured above, while in performance. I never felt he read his poems. He brought them to life.

Michael Brown was another genius performer, in my opinion, who I was fortunate enough to get to know at that time, thanks to Harris. We were billed together at a reading held at the Warwick Art Museum in Rhode Island. 

Michael is pictured below.

Watching him perform, listening, I understood Michael knew how to seamlessly blend highly literate language and sophisticated metaphor with a populist and theatrical energy. His poems incorporated a certain seriousness of purpose with an easy zaniness, and a street pulse and pop culture ethos suggestive of hip hop and jazz, as well. There was a visual element to his writing that made it a cinch to imagine whatever place or person occupied the poem he was reading. It was no surprise to me that he had won so many slam contests and had taken the Boston slam scene by storm. 

Looking back, I find it amazing to think were it not for Harris I would never have had the opportunity to share the stage and to meet and to publish with these talented writers and performers. 

It was Harris, as well, with his Tapestry of Voices project, who suggested I encourage my friend Baha Sadr to join me at readings and play his traditional Persian instruments. Baha and I performed together for a while in some venues in Massachusetts, having the time of our lives. 

Lastly, it was Harris who kept telling me my work was good enough, that I should send it to more publishers, and he suggested Jennifer Bosveld in Ohio who was editing Pudding House at the time. When Jennifer accepted the chapbook manuscript I submitted to her, it was Harris who I told first. I was gushing, and I think Harris was just as happy about my success as I was. That's how generous and supportive an artist he is.

Here below are two of Harris's poems. 

The Wonderland Train Is Arriving

Attention, slow transit travelers!

The next warehouse on wheels

to Never-land will arrive shortly,

eventually, perhaps never.

If you do not wish to wait,

then you may board the next

scheduled transit that may arrive

approximately on time.

Wait! Let’s back this up.

Insert, “ transit to Wonder.”

Wonder-light, wander lightly. White

bread is porous, full of air.

Will this ever return, get back on track?

Wishful thinking on your part.

Where is this going? You can’t get

there the way this is rolling along.

This may be air-lite, big wind.

Don’t vote for your local rascal.

Vote for the environment!

“All we are saying, is give Earth a chance.”

That’s the ticket! Want to be my running mate?

We’ll do one of those cross-country train campaigns,

cast a line at every whistle stop.

If you want to be saved, step this way,

unless you prefer to wait at the end of the line.

“This train is bound for glory”

if a miracle gets us elected.

We all roll somewhat merrily along,

more or less willing passengers of time.

I’m sorry, my time is up.

Be happy yours isn’t.

Please deposit $150 in the pay phone.

Sorry, I haven’t got change.

Oh , well, better luck on your next dime.

Will and Witness

I have tilted at the windmills of time

for the greater part of my fragile breath.

Death sits mounted, holds a poised lance

to challenge to a game of chance I cannot win.

Though I go ten rounds, and still ten, again,

though the referee may deem it a draw;

though I dance and weave around the ring,

Death will sound the knell for a t.k.o.

A stealthy shaft in the shoulder

or a toothy twinge in the knee

warns that I should devise a will.

There is still the won’t of denial.

Perhaps, let them make a well-stoked pyre.

My body will briefly feed the flowering flames.

Then, let the wind take my powdered remains

to sate the salivating maw of the sea.

My sanity grows wings, becomes suspect.

I appoint G-d to be both expert witness

and executor of my final designs.

He may choose first from my lean legacy.

The wattage of my inner light wages with the wind.

Heaven may take me on a simple whim.

My knickknacks and baubles left behind

go to those who wish to reap an odd keepsake.

The will, though strong, bends like a willow

I prepare to submit to the terminal triumph.

My pen is poised to write a sole codicil.

I am content to contemplate my ashes.