Looking through both ends of a telescope: a conversation with Lisken Van Pelt Dus and Robin Scofield

Poetry Medicine for the Soul is a podcast inviting poets to share and examine their work, produced and moderated by John Gillespie.  Episode 7 features Lisken Van Pelt Dus and Robin Scofield. Lisken Van Pelt Dus reads “Remix: The Paper Brigade” from her forthcoming book How Many Hands to Home (January 2025). Robin Scofield reads “Small Pools in a Dry Río Grande” from her book Ridge of High Pressure. Remix: The Paper Brigade By Lisken Van Pelt Dus The horrors of the Holocaust were met with various forms of resistance. [A] resistance group nicknamed the Paper Brigade... in what is now Vilnius, Lithuania's capital ... risked death, smuggling artwork, books and rare manuscripts - hiding them in underground bunkers. [from 60 Minutes, “The Paper Brigade: Rescuing cultural artifacts during and after WWI,” CBS News, November 13, 2022]   Gun, of totalitarianism. Bounty, but of totalitarianism. Evil filled in. So to the ghetto.   The ghetto had other ideas. Dug up the survive out of the brutal looting. Dug up the survive: this culture, these boxes. Materials the ghetto.    Years, it encompassed. This is the absence that could never emerge from hiding. They set aside the scooped-empty heroes, homemade wheelbarrow and shovels. The building organ. The church now tunnel.   Anything in – saved. Anything needed for kindling, baroque arches, wiped out country. Dusty iron knocked down, the rubble a manuscript.    Deliverer upon faded saved. Collection of works rescued and lives of beauty walking. Book Palace an absence that could never rubble. Erasure knocked down, became human of the burnt contraband. Surviving pages insisted books had blood. Vanished Book the war.   The other ideas, floor to the gun, rooms upon rooms. Paper could never, wasn’t bounty. Bellows the war, wiped out nexus of poetry, what you're not allowed. You weren't taught books. No. No.   Picture those Jews encompassed, amplified by Chagall. Insisting feet down, assessing and prescient. Their hiding places. Their hiding places. Fearing the so says who. Heard whispers. Documents would were killed.   The evil is full, the it encompassed. Yiddish voices the unexplored absence that stains. This unexplored Book absence out of the burnt readers, contraband community.    These are the surviving pages. Homemade diapers sewn Nazi, sewn Red Army. The us there, awaiting renovation. Who we have. Who we have: the scooped fragments.   Small Pools in a Dry Río Grande By Robin Scofield The Great Blue Heron stays by the empty river while the Divine explodes in every star. A few minnows angle in pools left over from drought as Divinity suffers. A father and son also fish for the rare minnows to use as bait at the big lake north of here, Elephant Butte. I try to figure out how Divinity suffers while the dog bites the heads off dead fish and romps through the small pools. Four and a half billion years after a super-nova rocked a cloud of dust and gas, the heron nests in Afghan pines on the east bank. An underground channel keeps the river alive while the barest spark hints at the Divinity. Some activists filed suit on behalf of the river. The heron reflects by the small pools and considers dancing as I wonder why no one sued in her name. I follow heron footprints in dry sand, so much sand in my shoes, it bruises my toes. The dog splashes in small pools, and the heron flies off to her nest. In slow wingbeats, I hear the Divine Rhythm. Observed and unobserved, super-novae burst around us. The pine trembles as she settles on a large branch, scaly yellow feet around it, midnight wings folding. Lisken Van Pelt Dus is the author of two full-length collections of poems, What We’re Made Of (Cherry Grove 2016) and How Many Hands to Home (Mayapple Press 2025), as well as two chapbooks, Everywhere at Once and Letters to My Dead. She was raised in England, the US, and Mexico, and now lives with her husband in western Massachusetts, where she is an award-winning teacher of writing, languages, and martial arts. Her work can be found in many journals, anthologies, and craft books, including recently Naugatuck River Review, The Comstock Review, and The Bond Street Review, and has earned several awards and Pushcart Prize nominations. Learn more at LVPDPoetry.com Link to 60 Minutes news piece used in Lisken’s poem in this episode. Robin Scofield is the author of Ridge of High Pressure (Mouthfeel Press, 2023), Flow (Street of Trees Projects, 2019), Sunflower Cantos (Mouthfeel Press, 2012), and a chapbook, And the Ass Saw the Angel (Mouthfeel Press, 2011). Flow was named Southwest Book of the Year. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, Theology Today, and The Texas Observer. Currently, her work appears in The Fourth River, The Banyon Review, and the Border Beats Anthology. She writes with the Tumblewords Project in El Paso, Texas, where she lives with her husband, her son, a cranky cat, and a small dog. This podcast is hosted and produced by John Gillespie. Check out our website or Simplecast podcast feed for more episodes. Listen and subscribe to Poetry Medicine for the Soul in Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Learn more and get in touch: poetrymedicineforthesoul.com