April 4, 2025 • 50 mins
Dr. Hiram Larew, the visionary behind Poetry X Hunger—a global initiative—discusses the cause that empowers poets to use their craft in the fight against hunger. Before launching this inspiring movement, Dr. Larew served as Director of the Center for International Programs at the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA). Together, Dr. Martin and Dr. Larew explore the profound intersection of poetry and social impact, discussing how words can spark change and unite communities. Dr. Larew also shares his personal journey as a writer, offering insights into his creative process and the passion that fuels his mission. Tune in for an enlightening conversation on the power of poetry to nourish both hearts and minds!
Connect with Dr. Hiram Larew Email: hlarew@gmail.com
Website: www.PoetryXHunger.com, www.HiramLarewPoetry.com
Twitter/X: @HiramGLarew
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To be a guest or refer someone to the show contact us as 1-844-824-TEEM
Connect with Dr. Hiram Larew Email: hlarew@gmail.com
Website: www.PoetryXHunger.com, www.HiramLarewPoetry.com
Twitter/X: @HiramGLarew
Listen & Subscribe: Subscribe and never miss an episode! Listen to TEEM Leadership Radio on your favorite platform (click to listen) iHeart Radio, Spotify, Apple Podcast, Audible, and Amazon Music.
Join the Conversation: Share your thoughts using #TEEMLeadershipRadio
Website: https://www.teemleadership.com/
To be a guest or refer someone to the show contact us as 1-844-824-TEEM
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio, your resource for inspiration and
partner and transformation. We are here to train, equip, empower,
and mobilize you into your purpose. Are you ready to
take charge of your life and your career? Than subtle
in the world awaits, Let's unlock the leader in you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio. I'm your host, Doctor Cecilia Martin.
Today I have joining me, doctor Hiram LaRue. LaRue served
as Director of International Programs at the US Department of
Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. During his career,
(00:40):
LaRue guided US government food security programs. Today, a published poet,
he is the founder of Poetry x Hunger, an initiative
that is turning poetry into food. His seventh collection of poems,
This Much Vary, was published by Alan Buddha Pra this year.
(01:01):
His poems have appeared in recent issues of Poetry, South Oil,
World Review, Poetry, Scotland's Gallus, and Contemporary American Voices, and
have been nominated for four National Pushcart Awards. He's received
support from art councils and food banks, as well as
(01:22):
the United Nations and Feed the Children for his poetry
ex Hunger, an initiative that is bringing a world of
poets to the anti hunger cause, and he founded the
Voices of Woodland, a powerful program of poetry, music, and
art that explores America's tragic history and legacy of slavery.
(01:43):
LaRue is a courtesy faculty at five US universities, is
a former member of the Folger Shakespeare libraryes Hoy Tree Board,
and serves as the poetry consultant to WBJC FM Classical
Radio in Baltimre, Maryland. And Maryland is also where he resides. Welcome,
(02:04):
Welcome Hiram LaRue, Doctor Hiram LaRue, thank you for joining
us today.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, thank you Cecilia for the program Team Leadership radio
show that you have hosted for several months, if not
years now, and for inviting me to participate. I'm very honored.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, so you are coming to us from the from Maryland,
you know, in Texas, I say the Great State of Texas,
but I really actually have dual citizenship because I lived
in Maryland for almost twenty years. So right, yeah, there's
no other place to get a great crab cake.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I can tell you that much.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
There you go. I have lived here for Maryland around
the DC area pretty much my entire professional life. And
about four or five years ago I moved from a
little bit closer into the district of Columbia out a
little ways and I now live in a rental cottage
on just off the Chesapeake Bay. I can see the
(03:02):
water from the cottage and it's it's just been just
been wonderful. So, yeah, Maryland's a nice state, as it's
Texas too.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Yes, we're just a tad bigger, that's all.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's a little bigger. That's right. Now.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
We want to get to know the man behind the
pen or the pencil. Tell us about your early years.
Where did you grow up? You said you spent Maryland.
You lived in Maryland for most of your professional career.
But were you born and raised.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
There or no?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I was well, I was born in Indiana, but my
parents moved when I think I was about two years old.
So I basically grew up in central Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And then when I finished high school, I went south
for college and then out west to universities for other degrees,
(03:49):
and then came back mayor a big circle and came
back and as they say, it started my working life
here in the Greater DC area.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Okay, all right, so you've circled around a little bit.
What about overseas? Have you had the pleasure I have.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I've never lived overseas, but I worked. When I was
working many of those years, I was working on international
food programs, and so I traveled very extensively for USAID.
In fact, I worked for the US Agency for International
Development for a while. We traveled quite a bit when
(04:28):
I was there. And then I worked at US Department
of Agriculture and traveled a little bit internationally for USDA
as well. So I've had the wonderful opportunity and pleasure
of visiting overseas. I've not lived overseas.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Okay, all right. Well were your parents' world travelers as well?
What were they like or were they you know?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I don't think they were. Remember my dad when he
took a trip to Iceland for a consulting job. Well,
that was the first time he had traveled internationally, and
I don't think he traveled too much more internationally than that.
And my mom didn't as well. One time, my sisters
and I got her on a plane and we took
(05:13):
her to through Germany for about a week, but they
were very proud. My parents were very proud of the
fact that they had visited all fifty states, all of
them during their life. So they were and most of
that was driving, of course, so they were very proud
of that fact.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That is something to be proud about, you know. And
I'll take advantage of what's right here stateside, and I
don't think there are very many people that can say
they've been to all fifty states.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
But they had all the paraphernalia to prove it to.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
They did.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Speaking of paraphernalia, where your parents at all in the arts?
I mean, we want to we're going to talk about
your poetry and the amazing work that you've done continued
to do. But how did you get into the arts?
Were they artists at heart? Painting music or Truman?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, my dad played the guitar and really enjoyed that.
I think he found just kind of a pressure relief
from being able to strum the guitar. And my mom
was an avid needleworker and created a lot of the
images that she then depicted through needlework. So there was that,
(06:29):
you know, kind of aspects of creativity in both of them.
One of my grandmothers loved poetry and you know, shared
some of her work with me as I was a
young kid, and all I think that probably sparked an
interest that I had in it. So yeah, kind of
coming from from the upbringing, I believe there was, you know,
(06:52):
some interest in poetry, and then there certainly was an
interest in plants and nature in gardening from in kind
of surrounding me as I grew up of parents and
grandparents and so on. So I think this all kind
of came together as I was growing up and realized
(07:14):
that I would enjoy maybe just trying to write a
little bit about all of that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, Well, I know many entrepreneurs, you know, when they
start business, they remember their first paycheck or when something
or their check that solidified we're in business. Yeah, they
framed their dollar bill, they framed their twenty or their
check from their first client. When did you realize that
(07:39):
poetry was an integral part of your life? Do you
remember your first poem?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Did you frame?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I don't remember the first poem I wrote, but I
certainly was writing in high school. Now I might have
been writing a little bit before that, but the reason
I know I was writing in high school is because
the high school I went to had a little kind
of arts magazine literature or poems and short stories and
some artwork, and I had some poems in that magazine.
(08:10):
It was called the Bumblebee, So I can kind of
track back through that, and I remember writing some pieces
in college and having them picked up and printed in places.
And then during the work. You didn't ask about kind
of poetry during work life, but I was very active
when I was working in the poetry world. I often
(08:32):
say poetry or poets are bats. Theyking out at night.
So you know, I would work during the day and
then I would go to readings or gathering of some
sort of an evening after work. I didn't bring those
two worlds together, my professional interests and my poetry interests
(08:53):
in poetry until basically until after I retired. And we
can talk a little bit more about that if we
talk about treats hunger. But I've been writing well since
I was the teenagers, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You know it's funny because now today when I think
about poetry readings and gatherings like that, I think of
it sort of as a new trend or phenomenon. But
you're saying it's been going on for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I think so. Certainly in urban settings there have been
readings for probably at least a century, and some amazing
poets emerging from those readings that we now know their
work and they're kind of iconic poets. But it is
the case, I believe that in the last I don't know,
(09:47):
twenty five years, maybe a little bit more than that,
the interest in poetry, particularly oral presentations of through spoken word,
through slam, it's really really come on big time with
young people and then with elders as well. But there's
just an amazing, amazing level. There's an amazing level of
(10:12):
interest in poetry now. I often say, you know, everyone
seems to be writing poetry, and it's so much true.
But I think that's a great thing in terms of
a way to try to express both concern and also
joy over what's being encountered as you live.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yes, when I think about any type of written expression
or expression for that matter, I think about some of
the greats of the past and of our current time,
and I'm just wondering what makes someone a good poet.
I mean, because everyone's writing, like you said, but not
everybody's good at it. I consider myself a prose writer,
(10:54):
and I've actually written one poem that addresses sort of
my patriotism, but I haven't really read it out out
loud and hasn't been published. But when it comes to
your approach to poetry, because you've been nominated for several awards,
do you consider yourself more of an ethnographer or an
existentialist when it comes to connecting with people in nature
(11:18):
or poetic expression? How does one become great at their art?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Oh, that's a wonderful question, and it's a big one.
Everyone who's writing has a different style, a different message,
a different approach, and I'm a little bit hesitant to
say that one is better than the other. I can
say what I relate to a bit more in my
own work, and what I look for in poems that
(11:44):
tend up that other folks have written that I tend
to enjoy. What I noticed is that I, first and foremost,
I really enjoy surprise in poems. I kind of like
the unexpected, and that can be delivered through word choice,
through rhythm, through arrangement on the page, through topic chosen.
But I just really enjoy the unexpected. I don't know
(12:06):
why that is, But I do know that it is
for me. I really like that in terms of ethnography, culture,
or you know, big existential questions. I personally think probably
I kind of intrigued by Boat. Certainly I looked towards
culture and how I was raised within a culture to
(12:27):
as a source of a lot of the work that
I have done, a lot of the poems I've written.
I am also, as I get a little bit older,
also very very interested in, you know, the big questions
about you know, the why questions and the how questions
and the when questions. So the existential topics I do
(12:52):
try to pick up on in ways that hopefully are
a little bit unexpected and or fresh that you know,
these are kind of those kind of questions have been
asked through the eons by people, and so asking them
again is nothing new. It's kind of how you ask them,
(13:14):
how you present them, and maybe even how you try
to answer them is where you know you might you
might add a little bit to the discussion through innovatives thinking.
So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but
it's a wonderful question. I think, you know, it's a
(13:35):
big yes explanation point for me. Both as a cultural
background and these big questions of why are we and
who are we? And where are we going? And that
sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now you know you've touched on something very important because
you actually have a PhD in entomology, right, bugs Bugs.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yes, yes, but it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
But when I think about some of the great writers
that are timeless, like Coleridge and Keats, you know, to
me they had a very close connection to nature and
so it you know, to me, it comes out in
their poems. Do you think, though, even though you're not
willing to say, there some that aren't cut out for it.
And we know that there there are some who aren't
(14:22):
cut out of poetry and that's okay. But is it
your belief that you do have to be connected to
nature in order to be effective in your expression?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Well, again, that's a wonderful question. There certainly are well
known and well loved poets who have written pretty much
about the urban experience without a whole lot of reference
to freeze bird skies and that sort of thing clouds.
So I think there is room in the poetry community
(14:54):
for those who love depend on nature or tholess bomb
understanding even almost kind of religious, a spiritual sort of connection.
I think there's room for that. But I also think
there's probably room for those who write about what I
(15:17):
would call the very human, very human centric kind of experience,
often from a little bit more of an urban point
of view. And so I'm not sure that again I'm
answering your question, but I think there's room for all.
And I've seen all gone very very well and very compellingly.
(15:38):
So it's not just birds and trees. It's certainly there
are wonderful poems about that, and I've tried to kind
of capture some of that wonder stepping out into nature,
particularly when I look for bomb, and I mean b
A l M, not bomb, when I look for solace,
when I look for a long term point of view,
(16:01):
realizing that we're here just for a little while, I
often earn to nature for a little bit I think
clear understanding of at least what some of the questions are,
and so I draw heavily on nature. I'm always always
fascinated by people though as well, so you know I'll
(16:23):
never get away from that fascination, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Oh yeah, I think you really you have answered the
question in the sense that it sounds like any poet
needs to draw from something where that spiritualism nature, whether
it is their urban experience. And I've seen the urban
experience come to life too in poems where you actually
(16:45):
can see the street light, you can see the grass
growing through the concrete. Yeah, it really is something how
poetry can be therapeutic and cathartic.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
In so many ways. When I think about again some
of the classics, will you words worth? The world is
too much with us?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
That is so timeless, and it's so relevant now the
world is too much with us. Do you have a
favorite piece of your own that you feel will be
timeless or do you think what you're writing? I think
most of what you're writing is pretty timeless in my opinion,
from what I've read.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, I'd like to think that I have a little
bit of timelessness in the lines. I'm not sure which,
if any of them, will you know, survive or have
any kind of longevity, but I certainly like to think so.
And one way I have of doing that, and I'm
not thinking this is right or wrong, but one way
I kind of deal with that is I typically don't
(17:41):
write directly about what I call headlines the daily headlines.
I probably should, and there certainly are a lot of
poets who are doing an amazing job of that, lifting
up the present day and discussing it in their poems
through everything from joy to anger, and so there is
(18:03):
a role for poets in doing that. I tend to
enjoy or that's really not even Its not a matter
of enjoying. I just tend to relate a bit more
to poems that have that little bit of timelessness about
them that can be picked up, you know, years from
now or years after they're written, and still speak off
(18:24):
the page to the person who is reading them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Now you were talking about and we're going to get
to Hunger accent a second, but you were talking about
how your poetic expression was still very much in tandem
when you were in the workplace. Do you think there's
a place today, And of course we see it as
an extension now, you know, knowing your professional background and
your philanthropic work now with Hunger, clearly there was an
(18:52):
alignment there. Do you think that there's a place for
poetry in the workplace today?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Oh? I love that question because it's one that I
gottually been working on. I'm not sure that all workplaces
are yet ready for poetry, but I think there is.
I think, yes, there's probably a role for poetry pretty
much everywhere. The work that we've done with poetry X
Hunger definitely illustrates to me the power of poetry. We
(19:20):
have a culture I think put a real high value
on scientific fact, the logic that is used to get
to that fact, the data that we collect to illustrate
the fact, and the trend lines that we developed to
show where that fact might be going. And those are
all very important to understand kind of what we're dealing with,
(19:43):
and there are issues that are facing us. But if
we don't have tools in the toolkit to engage people,
to engage their minds, their hearts, their souls, if we
don't have ways of reaching out to folks beyond the lottery,
then I think we're doing ourselves a disservice and probably
(20:05):
not going to be particularly successful. Another way of saying
that is, I think poetry and the arts generally, especially poetry,
have a role to play in speaking up, speaking out,
explaining sharing in ways that everyone, I don't care what
(20:26):
background you're coming from, everyone can relate to, and so
celebrating that power of poetry, I think is something that
I certainly have been interested in trying to do and
tap into, and I know others have worked on bringing
poetry to bear. I mean, think about the that true
liberty Cecilia, the poem. There's a poem at the base
(20:49):
of it, written by Ema Lazarath. It's called the New Colossus,
and it was written I think, back in the early
part of the nineteen hundreds by Missus Lazarus welcomes immigrants
to the US. Well, fast forward, I think that poem.
It certainly affected our approach to immigration for many, many years.
(21:13):
It provided the open arms to the statue of liberty,
welcoming folks, particularly the disadvantage, but all to the shores
of the US. And if you fast forward, I'd say
that that kind of message poetry is still very very relevant.
(21:33):
I'll just believe it at that. But I think poetry
and the poets writing it can explain and relate and
net with folks in ways that the other more technical
terminology simply can't. Long answer to your question.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
No, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I'm actually sitting here and taking notes, and I am
I'm just loving the dialogue because it's so profound, and
I don't think a lot of people know that there's
a poem at the welcoming immigrants at the bottom of
the Statue of livery Well that.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Says, give me or bring me your poor your remember
I should, but it's a very it's iconic poem and
spoke to our national spirit soul at the time, and
I think still needs to it still does up put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yes, And I think it's so important what you're talking
about is maintaining the humanistic side of society and humanity
in all.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Of these issues.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I mean, we get again with the world too much
with us, and we lose our souls to some degree
and out minds.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
If I might add, one of the reasons doctor Martin
Luther King Junior was so such a powerful, powerful force
was because he was a poet and he knew how
to deliver his poems as well. I don't mean he
said that. I don't mean he wrote science sonnets. I
mean in the thoughtful air that he prepared what he
(23:01):
said and how he spoke it to me. Yeah, that
was poetry. That was poetry. And we you know, his
legacy is in large measure based on those powerful words
that he that he shared and kind of challenged us
with and continues to challenge us with.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Absolutely what I've learned with by being around other brilliant
poets that like yourself and experiencing your work is that
there is truly a rhythm and a rhyme and a
scheme to life, to pulling and drawing on the soul.
And like you said, that's what Martin Luther King and
many other even JFK a lot of them did with
(23:43):
their words. They were They were not just great orators.
They had a command of the sensory of the words
to bring you back to life, to jolt you to say, no,
we're human beings, and.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
To convince the public at large that this was a
noble cause and one that we need to rally around,
and we have it within us. We have it within
us to rally around. They challenged us with their words,
and so, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
This is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
So now I want to know what was the turning
point that caused you to intersect poetry with your philanthropic
approach to addressing hunger?
Speaker 4 (24:21):
When what was that for you?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It was actually a regreests that I preceed from a
college university out on the West Coast to come and
speak to students about poetry and hunger, the kind of
the poetry of hunger, and I readily accepted it, and
then like, well, what am I going to say? So
I had to do a little bit of homework to
(24:44):
prepare for speaking with the students, and much to my surprise,
when I started to look on what's on offer? What's
on offer with poetry about hunger? Not hunger the heart,
not hunger of the spirit or hunger of the soul,
but hunger the stomach. When I started to look for
poetry about that, I found a few pieces, but I
(25:06):
didn't find many, and I certainly didn't find as many
as I thought there should be. And so I thought, okay,
well maybe there's something here that I could help with.
And so from that I formed just a very informal initiative.
We made it a little bit less formal, a little
bit more formalized now, but at the time it was
(25:28):
a pretty informal initiative called Poetry ex Hunger that reached
out to poets around the world and ask if they
would share their talents to write about hunger some one
of it's maybe many, many, many aspects. And then share
that work that we could post it, and we did that,
and we did it with we used some support from
(25:51):
the United Nations, from arts councils, from food banks and
the like to stand up a website that now fast
forward has I think about four hundred or more poems
from around the world. And those poems are they're not
sitting on the shelves. We've made an active, active effort
to put them to use in the anti younger cost
(26:14):
And so I often say we've done at least two
things using poetry x Hunger poems. We've raised awareness in
that just one example, a poem offered the Poetry x
Hunger website by a wonderful Canadian poet, Josephine Murray, was
picked up by a huge organization anti hunger organization called
Feed the Children. They incorporated the poem into a one
(26:39):
minute public service announcement and that public service announcement has
been viewed by one hundred and sixty five thousand people.
So we've amplified using poetry. We've amplified the signal about
the scourge of and the importance of address the scourge
of hunger and the importance of trying to address it
we've also turned poetry into food, and by that I
(27:02):
mean in the last couple of years, the Poetry X
Hunger poets have used their talents to raise about twenty
thousand dollars for poetry organization or excuse me, anti hunger
organizations locally, nationally and around the world. And so we
really are trying to put the poems to work, so
(27:22):
to speak, in the anti hunger cause. And if any
of your listeners never have a poem that they'd like
to submit, it's very easy to do. They There's a
submission guidelines on the Poetry X Hunger website and that
address is www dot poetry X. The letter X poetry
X hunger. That's all one phrase, poetry X Hunger.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Duck absolutely and I hope that everyone will go to
the website, have a poem to submit or not just
to peruse the website work the great work that you
guys are doing, the wonderful poetry that's on display. You know,
it's like a virtual art gallery in my for poetry,
and so you can also donate. You know, I was
(28:05):
all too looking at some statistics and I was shocked
to know that in the United States alone, there is
about thirty six million people in hunger and worldwide one
hundred and fifty two million. And you ask yourself, how
is that possible in today's society with all the food
and I mean, on one end, it seems like we
(28:27):
are gluttonous and wasteful at the same time. And I've
seen several documentaries and experience, you know where people well
I've also experienced firsthand where countless companies have you know,
they throw out food every day and again just so wasteful.
Is there some type of legislative action? I know this
is a loaded question as well, but is there some
(28:49):
type of legislative action that can be taken for us
to minimize the food waste alone or to distribute it
better to other people or countries that are hungry and
in need.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, well, let me go back for just a second.
When I was growing up, my parents would lean over
the table as we were eating, and if for any
reason I wasn't eating everything on the plate, they'd say,
think about, there are kids in China or kids in
India eat that food. Now you need to eat it
because they are hungry kids all over the world. Now
(29:23):
that's unfortunate, But I think parents could just as legitimately
say eat that food because our neighbor is hungry. I mean,
hunger is everywhere. It's in our cities, it's in our suburbs,
it's in the rural settings, it's on college campuses. There
are many many college campuses around the country now that
(29:45):
have food banks, and they have to because there are
many students. College students, you simply can't afford books, tuition,
and food. They have to make a choice. So, yeah,
it's a problem that's over there, but it's also a
problem right next door. So in terms of food waste,
I'm not the most up to date on the legislative proposals,
(30:06):
but I don't recall anything currently on offer that would
work to reduce waste. Having said that, food waste, Having
said that, there are a number of organizations around the
US and really around the world that focus on food recovery,
repurposing of food that wasn't eaten for whatever initial and
(30:28):
purpose it was intended and can be reused in a
variety of ways. So, for example, here in the Washington,
DC area, there are at least three organizations that focus
on trying to repurpose, recapture food that might otherwise be wasted.
It is the case that in the US, experts often
say that overseas, particularly in horror countries, In less well
(30:52):
resourced countries, the problem with food waste occurs before the
consumer buys it, in other words, and it's grown in
the farm. At the farm and harvested there often is
not the kind of refrigeration or storage has to keep
the food fresh, and so it rots or it goes
to waste that way. In more well resourced countries, most
(31:17):
of the food waste occurs after it's been purchased by
the consumer and is sitting in a refrigerator in the
back of the shelf, gets forgotten, and it gets pitched.
So we're worldwide were we all tend to waste food,
maybe in different ways, but we all tend to waste food.
It's a problem, we really do.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And it's so sad that there's got to be well.
I'm actually encouraged to know that there are organizations that
take food and repurpose it.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
And you're right.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Because in terms of most of the food waste happens
before it even gets to the consumer. And just for
the sake of confidentiality, I won't mention any major details,
but I visited a fulfillent and there were ballads of
thousands food that rotted. And then you know, you get
(32:08):
to the commercial side of it, where there are a
lot of companies that sell food and they throw it
out at the end of the night, you know, unused
or and with people hungry on the streets, there's just
gotta be a better way. So, you know, I'm actually
encouraged by what you're doing with poetry X Hunger and
the fact that you guys are addressing a basic need
(32:31):
of every human being. And when I think about it,
when we were growing up, you know, we were poor,
but I didn't know it, but the same thing over
and over again, and just thought that was the way
of life. You know, I'm just I was trying to think.
I don't think there are any time so that I
remember being really hungry, Like I don't think we're gonna
eat today. We eat something, but it may not have
(32:55):
been anything glamorous, but I knew food would happen at
some point. My question to you, have you ever experienced
hunger or abject party or has there been a situation
like most of us we grew up. We may have
been poor, we didn't have much but we didn't know
any better, right.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Well, I think the short answer is no, I've never
been hungry. And in fact, Cecilia, I'm often kind of
challenged by folks saying, well, how can people who have
never been hungry write about hunger? And it's absolutely the
case that if a person was hungry and then was
fortunate enough to escape it and wants to write about
(33:33):
reflect back on that experience, those poems are extremely authentic.
And we have some poems who have done just that,
and their poems are very powerful. But I also believe
that there's room for all of us to write about hunger,
those of us who've been fortunate enough not to be
and asked those haunting questions, well, I've never been hungry,
(33:56):
why have you been hungry? What's the difference tween us
that causes some to be hungry and some not? And
what's the social equity or inequity that causes that? Because particular,
I think there's something for all of us to contribute
in terms of poems about hunger. And I've been fortunate
(34:18):
enough that a lot of the poets who I don't
believe have ever experienced hunger have been willing to write
and write very powerfully about hunger, its scourge, its history,
its impacts, and their point of view as somebody who
hasn't experienced and what hunger means to them, how they
(34:39):
understand it or misunderstand it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Ben And isn't that what it's about really too, that
the strong bears the weak or becomes the advocate and
the voice for the vulnerable who may not be able
to express for themselves. And for the younger generation, you know,
to put it in a perspective that they can understand.
You know a lot of people will say, well, that's
an authentic or you know, where's the authenticity in that?
(35:03):
But for the younger generation, they admire a lot of
these artists today who've never experienced anything that they're talking about.
One great example is ice Cube, who was prolific in
his music and he talked a lot about inequality and
he really turned hip hop on its head and talked
about the gang life in la and all of that,
(35:26):
and he was never any of that. He was never
on the streets. He was busted across town to a
great school. He was always very intelligent and articulate. He
never lived the street life, but he was able to
capture the essence of those who were struggling during that
time and bring it to the forefront of the world
like you guys are doing with the awareness this is
(35:47):
a profound need and something must be done to address it.
So I think it's fantastic and you got definitely need
to keep going.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
The way I say it is. Poetry is never going
to end hunger. I understand that. I accept it. But
can it help the anti hunger cause I think absolutely
it can't. It must and it will. And so we're
working and I'm not the only one by any means
working on bringing poetry and really the arts to these
(36:22):
kind of socially important clauses.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Now, do you also do you get any backlash from
the poetry you do on slavery? Some of your writings
you address the history of slavery and plantations. Do you
ever feel like you're liaising between your ancestry and others
to make amends or do you get backlash from what
has happened?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well, so far, I won't speak to the future, but
so far, I think we've the group that has worked
on this well. Voices of Woodlawn has that we've been
welcomed because what we're trying to do is use poetry,
art and music who raise the voices of and reimagine
(37:08):
the lives of those who were enslaved at what are
now called historic plantations or mansions here in the Greater
DC area. So often those stories of the enslaved erased,
we know very little about them, and so by visiting
(37:30):
one of these sites, some poets, and I was one
of them, were able to kind of reimagine what had happened,
the impact it had. And I also try to point
out because I think it's really true that that legacy
or that history of slavery is impacting us today. And
(37:52):
so if we're trying to understand what is going on
today with erase relations and other important and social interactions,
but then I think that's something that you got to
to kind of look back at where all this came
from in the history and the fact that the lives
were erased, and we're doing our best in courts are
(38:12):
good at kind of reimagining, reconstructing what it must have
been like. And so the program that we put together,
it's about an hour long program of poetry, art and music,
has been well received around the country. We've used on
Zoom and really, we've been around the world. We'll see
as we move forward in times that are changing, whether
(38:36):
or not that reception warm reception continues, but I'm certainly
hopeful it will.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
And how often is that? Is that monthly or annually?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
We kind of do it by invitation. A group comes
to us and says, you know, would you like to perform,
and we reach out and try to invite ourselves as well.
But I'd say maybe every six months something like that.
It's a group of about five of us, and so
as you can well image and hurting those pats around
the time an hour is a little bit of a challenge.
(39:06):
So we've I think we've presented it maybe a dozen
times over the through the pandemic and then since and
probably about every six months something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
In your other word, mud Ajar, you wrote a pook
called Sucoatege. Now we were in a worldwide crisis at
the time, but you spoke of talents and bruises and
all of that as it pertained to this country. What
was the meaning behind the poem and it's time?
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Well, as I said a few minutes ago, I don't
often write about headlines, but sometimes they becomes so overwhelming
that it's like it's affecting, you know, it's it's seeping
into the things that I write. And as I stood
back and kind of thought about, you know, everything from
the pandemic to the political uproar and divisiveness that we face,
(39:58):
some of thethority that we've had that seemed to be
kind of questioned or very questioned now at the upheaval.
Because I thought about that, I kind of began to
write about both my love the country and also some
of the things that I've encountered, seen experience, and even
(40:20):
maybe caused myself that are not positive. And I grounded
it in kind of the rural setting of pies and
from porches and the light, because I think that's where
America in so many ways exists, and certainly did. My
last line in that poem is my country, My country,
(40:42):
so flies over pie, And by that, I mean, you know,
we've got this beautiful pie, but we've got all these
flies buzzn't around it as well, trying to as avoc
and ruin it and eat it. So it was my
love song to the country, but also my concern song.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, yeah, and it's it's really amazing. It's a beautiful
piece of work. Tell us about your new compilation or
collect Yeah, your new collection.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, I've got a Yeah, I've got a kind of
a short collection call it Chatney of about I don't
think it's about poems that has just come out from
a publisher called Alien, the Alien Buddha Press. And it's
a little bit for me at least. It's a little
bit different in that I've used a couple of different well,
(41:33):
I've experimented a bit in some of the pieces, and
some of them are kind of conversational. Many of them
are my wonder at the world and my surprise and
enjoyment of the world. A couple of them are about relationships.
If somebody asked me the other day, if it's themed,
if there's a technical horror theme around the poems, and
(41:57):
I don't really think there are, other than the fact
that I would like to think that they are. They
will surprise the reader in a little bit of way.
Hopefully that doesn't lose the reader, but that keeps the
reader wanting to turn to the next page. Let's see.
But yeah, But so it's a it's a new collection,
and I've started kind of working on yet another one.
(42:18):
If you ask most posts, they're always working on about
three collections at one.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Why can we party your current work?
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Uh. If you go to my website, which is just www.
I Roam LaRue Poetry Paul one phrase dot com, there's
information there about the collections. This is my seventh, and
so there's information about some of the others, and then
information certainly about about this particular collection. I was, I was,
(42:47):
I couldn't help, but grin Peter, Paul and Mary is
a group was a group of folk singers back in
the day when I was growing up at least and
Paul Stookey Paul and Peter Paul and Mary provided what
we call a blurb or a comment on this collection.
This it's called the collection is called this much Vary
and mister Spooky was kind of enough to write a
(43:10):
blurb about it. And it's been funny since a lot
of people, a lot of younger people haven't not too
much of an idea Peter, Paul and Mary, but those
of us are certain age or older. So oh okay, yeah,
I recognize that. Man. It's been kind of fun Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Again, I want to encourage everyone to go to the
website because again, if you're in the mood for and
in the need of a virtual sort of an art
gallery of work, a body of work, not just Harm's work,
but other artists that he features. It is just it
will do good for your soul. And I was thinking
(43:46):
about going back and reflecting back.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
To the to this one poem that I wrote. I
actually had planned on performing it at an event that
didn't take place.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And then I missed an event. Yes, but one day
it is. My poem is and on a apologetic view
of the country that I live in, and I love
for better or for worse. You know you were talking
about in mudda jar when you when you wrote succotage.
You know that's it's a pie and it's you know,
and then you have flies, right, you know?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
So for better for worse. We have a lot going on.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
But most poets do have some type of thing that
that has woven throughout their work.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
What would you say Yours is No, I.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Don't mean to repeat myself, but I just sorry that
one of my one of the things that I'd love
about poetry is its ability to surprise me mm hmm,
to take me places that I probably never will get to.
And I mean both geographically and spiritually, and it always culturally.
(44:55):
And I mean poetry is a ticket for me too.
I can own, we imagine and that I'd love to visit,
and poetry allows me, through its ticket to visit. So uh,
that's kind of what I aspire to in my own
work as well, is to try to offer pieces that
(45:16):
people can one yeah, I relate to and two also
leave with some questions, maybe even leave the poem a
little bit different than when they started the poem. Well,
and be surprised by it. Be not flummixed by confused
by it, hopefully, but being kind of surprised with the
way the words are arranged or what said or what's conveyed.
(45:40):
So surprise. It's kind of the theme.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Well, let's put it this way. I'll say some of
my favorite poets are the book the classical ones, not
not to take away from any of the current ones,
but Pole, Ridge, Key, Blake, Chaucer, Oh Chaucer. But so
who are Let's put it this way, because your work
is powerful, descriptive and it is constantly surprising.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
Yet oblique and abstract.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Or who are your either classical idols or current poets
that you admire?
Speaker 4 (46:12):
If you had one or two.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Well, when I was growing up, coming up through I
remember really tuning in to James Walton Johnson's trumpets and poems,
and I think what mister Johnson did for me at
least was to bring the sound of poetry to bear.
He just does a wonderful job through those trumpets, what
I call his trumpets, to announce and to the rhythm founds,
(46:37):
the rhymes in his poems, and the spirituality too. I
just think it's just what my ears grinned the entire
time having a chance to enjoy his poem. And then
similarly early on E. Cummings, mister Cummings, what he did
(46:57):
with words, I'll never forget reading some of the first
time I read some of his work, it was like,
you mean, you can do that with words, right, and
definitely convey a meaning through a different use of words,
definitely convey a feeling, a meaning, a joy in many
of his poems, but not writing directly about I feel
(47:22):
joyous right now and this is what so I it
was just like, wow, I had no idea, and so
he was a real influence, has been a real influence
and groundstone for me as well. Yeah, those are just
two I mean, there's as you say, there's so many.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, there's so many. Yeah, yeah, Well I think we're
out of time. But I definitely want to thank you
so much for joining me today. And you know, just
as some parting words, you know, what would you want
your legacy to be, you know, around poetry ex hunger
or as a poet and artists, and then make sure
(48:02):
you give us all the information that we need again
to get connected.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
First and foremost, SIY has been a real honor here.
You're such a wonderful interviewer and it's been an honor
to be on with you in visiting with you a
little bit. In terms of legacy, I think for POETRYX hunger,
I mean, if we can, as I say, raise awareness
globally and locally about the problems with hunger and the
causes of hunger, that would be we're using poetry, that
(48:29):
would be a wonderful legacy or handoff to kind of
the next generation. My own work, I would hope that
it's you know, it maybe creates a little bit of
space for those who express themselves, perhaps just a bit differently,
but just as powerfully and that love nature that fascinated
(48:53):
by other people so I'm hoping that it will contribute
a little bit to the overall understanding of what poetry
you can do and help can do it. And so again,
if anyone's interested, the Poetry x Hunger website is just
poetry x letter x hunger dot com and my website
is Hirom the Room Poetry poll onephrase dot com. Thank
(49:17):
you again, Cecilia, thank.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
You so much, and we will definitely be visiting your website.
And guys, please donate to the calls. You may not
have been an abject poverty or experienced starvation or hunger
to the degree that others do, but you know what
it's like to be in need, like Hiram say, your
neighbor is in need. So please if you have a
(49:42):
few dollars, no amount it's too small, to donate to
the calls. Thank you guys for listening, Thank you for
joining me for this one hour of power and it's always.
Thank you for being a team player.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Thank you for listening to Team Leadership Radio. Subscribe never
miss an episode. We'd love to hear from you. Give
us a call at one eight four four A two fourteen.
That's one eight four four A two four t E
E m or visit the website for additional resources at
www dot team leadership dot com. Thanks again for tuning in,
(50:18):
and as always, thank you for being a team player.
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio, your resource for inspiration and
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in the world awaits, Let's unlock the leader in you.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to Team Leadership Radio. I'm your host, Doctor Cecilia Martin.
Today I have joining me, doctor Hiram LaRue. LaRue served
as Director of International Programs at the US Department of
Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture. During his career,
(00:40):
LaRue guided US government food security programs. Today, a published poet,
he is the founder of Poetry x Hunger, an initiative
that is turning poetry into food. His seventh collection of poems,
This Much Vary, was published by Alan Buddha Pra this year.
(01:01):
His poems have appeared in recent issues of Poetry, South Oil,
World Review, Poetry, Scotland's Gallus, and Contemporary American Voices, and
have been nominated for four National Pushcart Awards. He's received
support from art councils and food banks, as well as
(01:22):
the United Nations and Feed the Children for his poetry
ex Hunger, an initiative that is bringing a world of
poets to the anti hunger cause, and he founded the
Voices of Woodland, a powerful program of poetry, music, and
art that explores America's tragic history and legacy of slavery.
(01:43):
LaRue is a courtesy faculty at five US universities, is
a former member of the Folger Shakespeare libraryes Hoy Tree Board,
and serves as the poetry consultant to WBJC FM Classical
Radio in Baltimre, Maryland. And Maryland is also where he resides. Welcome,
(02:04):
Welcome Hiram LaRue, Doctor Hiram LaRue, thank you for joining
us today.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
Well, thank you Cecilia for the program Team Leadership radio
show that you have hosted for several months, if not
years now, and for inviting me to participate. I'm very honored.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah, so you are coming to us from the from Maryland,
you know, in Texas, I say the Great State of Texas,
but I really actually have dual citizenship because I lived
in Maryland for almost twenty years. So right, yeah, there's
no other place to get a great crab cake.
Speaker 4 (02:39):
I can tell you that much.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
There you go. I have lived here for Maryland around
the DC area pretty much my entire professional life. And
about four or five years ago I moved from a
little bit closer into the district of Columbia out a
little ways and I now live in a rental cottage
on just off the Chesapeake Bay. I can see the
(03:02):
water from the cottage and it's it's just been just
been wonderful. So, yeah, Maryland's a nice state, as it's
Texas too.
Speaker 4 (03:10):
Yes, we're just a tad bigger, that's all.
Speaker 3 (03:14):
It's a little bigger. That's right. Now.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
We want to get to know the man behind the
pen or the pencil. Tell us about your early years.
Where did you grow up? You said you spent Maryland.
You lived in Maryland for most of your professional career.
But were you born and raised.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
There or no?
Speaker 3 (03:29):
I was well, I was born in Indiana, but my
parents moved when I think I was about two years old.
So I basically grew up in central Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia.
And then when I finished high school, I went south
for college and then out west to universities for other degrees,
(03:49):
and then came back mayor a big circle and came
back and as they say, it started my working life
here in the Greater DC area.
Speaker 2 (03:58):
Okay, all right, so you've circled around a little bit.
What about overseas? Have you had the pleasure I have.
Speaker 3 (04:05):
I've never lived overseas, but I worked. When I was
working many of those years, I was working on international
food programs, and so I traveled very extensively for USAID.
In fact, I worked for the US Agency for International
Development for a while. We traveled quite a bit when
(04:28):
I was there. And then I worked at US Department
of Agriculture and traveled a little bit internationally for USDA
as well. So I've had the wonderful opportunity and pleasure
of visiting overseas. I've not lived overseas.
Speaker 4 (04:45):
Okay, all right. Well were your parents' world travelers as well?
What were they like or were they you know?
Speaker 3 (04:51):
I don't think they were. Remember my dad when he
took a trip to Iceland for a consulting job. Well,
that was the first time he had traveled internationally, and
I don't think he traveled too much more internationally than that.
And my mom didn't as well. One time, my sisters
and I got her on a plane and we took
(05:13):
her to through Germany for about a week, but they
were very proud. My parents were very proud of the
fact that they had visited all fifty states, all of
them during their life. So they were and most of
that was driving, of course, so they were very proud
of that fact.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
That is something to be proud about, you know. And
I'll take advantage of what's right here stateside, and I
don't think there are very many people that can say
they've been to all fifty states.
Speaker 3 (05:45):
But they had all the paraphernalia to prove it to.
Speaker 4 (05:50):
They did.
Speaker 2 (05:51):
Speaking of paraphernalia, where your parents at all in the arts?
I mean, we want to we're going to talk about
your poetry and the amazing work that you've done continued
to do. But how did you get into the arts?
Were they artists at heart? Painting music or Truman?
Speaker 3 (06:08):
Yeah, my dad played the guitar and really enjoyed that.
I think he found just kind of a pressure relief
from being able to strum the guitar. And my mom
was an avid needleworker and created a lot of the
images that she then depicted through needlework. So there was that,
(06:29):
you know, kind of aspects of creativity in both of them.
One of my grandmothers loved poetry and you know, shared
some of her work with me as I was a
young kid, and all I think that probably sparked an
interest that I had in it. So yeah, kind of
coming from from the upbringing, I believe there was, you know,
(06:52):
some interest in poetry, and then there certainly was an
interest in plants and nature in gardening from in kind
of surrounding me as I grew up of parents and
grandparents and so on. So I think this all kind
of came together as I was growing up and realized
(07:14):
that I would enjoy maybe just trying to write a
little bit about all of that.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Okay, Well, I know many entrepreneurs, you know, when they
start business, they remember their first paycheck or when something
or their check that solidified we're in business. Yeah, they
framed their dollar bill, they framed their twenty or their
check from their first client. When did you realize that
(07:39):
poetry was an integral part of your life? Do you
remember your first poem?
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Did you frame?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
No?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
I don't remember the first poem I wrote, but I
certainly was writing in high school. Now I might have
been writing a little bit before that, but the reason
I know I was writing in high school is because
the high school I went to had a little kind
of arts magazine literature or poems and short stories and
some artwork, and I had some poems in that magazine.
(08:10):
It was called the Bumblebee, So I can kind of
track back through that, and I remember writing some pieces
in college and having them picked up and printed in places.
And then during the work. You didn't ask about kind
of poetry during work life, but I was very active
when I was working in the poetry world. I often
(08:32):
say poetry or poets are bats. Theyking out at night.
So you know, I would work during the day and
then I would go to readings or gathering of some
sort of an evening after work. I didn't bring those
two worlds together, my professional interests and my poetry interests
(08:53):
in poetry until basically until after I retired. And we
can talk a little bit more about that if we
talk about treats hunger. But I've been writing well since
I was the teenagers, for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
You know it's funny because now today when I think
about poetry readings and gatherings like that, I think of
it sort of as a new trend or phenomenon. But
you're saying it's been going on for a very long time.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
I think so. Certainly in urban settings there have been
readings for probably at least a century, and some amazing
poets emerging from those readings that we now know their
work and they're kind of iconic poets. But it is
the case, I believe that in the last I don't know,
(09:47):
twenty five years, maybe a little bit more than that,
the interest in poetry, particularly oral presentations of through spoken word,
through slam, it's really really come on big time with
young people and then with elders as well. But there's
just an amazing, amazing level. There's an amazing level of
(10:12):
interest in poetry now. I often say, you know, everyone
seems to be writing poetry, and it's so much true.
But I think that's a great thing in terms of
a way to try to express both concern and also
joy over what's being encountered as you live.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Yes, when I think about any type of written expression
or expression for that matter, I think about some of
the greats of the past and of our current time,
and I'm just wondering what makes someone a good poet.
I mean, because everyone's writing, like you said, but not
everybody's good at it. I consider myself a prose writer,
(10:54):
and I've actually written one poem that addresses sort of
my patriotism, but I haven't really read it out out
loud and hasn't been published. But when it comes to
your approach to poetry, because you've been nominated for several awards,
do you consider yourself more of an ethnographer or an
existentialist when it comes to connecting with people in nature
(11:18):
or poetic expression? How does one become great at their art?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Oh, that's a wonderful question, and it's a big one.
Everyone who's writing has a different style, a different message,
a different approach, and I'm a little bit hesitant to
say that one is better than the other. I can
say what I relate to a bit more in my
own work, and what I look for in poems that
(11:44):
tend up that other folks have written that I tend
to enjoy. What I noticed is that I, first and foremost,
I really enjoy surprise in poems. I kind of like
the unexpected, and that can be delivered through word choice,
through rhythm, through arrangement on the page, through topic chosen.
But I just really enjoy the unexpected. I don't know
(12:06):
why that is, But I do know that it is
for me. I really like that in terms of ethnography, culture,
or you know, big existential questions. I personally think probably
I kind of intrigued by Boat. Certainly I looked towards
culture and how I was raised within a culture to
(12:27):
as a source of a lot of the work that
I have done, a lot of the poems I've written.
I am also, as I get a little bit older,
also very very interested in, you know, the big questions
about you know, the why questions and the how questions
and the when questions. So the existential topics I do
(12:52):
try to pick up on in ways that hopefully are
a little bit unexpected and or fresh that you know,
these are kind of those kind of questions have been
asked through the eons by people, and so asking them
again is nothing new. It's kind of how you ask them,
(13:14):
how you present them, and maybe even how you try
to answer them is where you know you might you
might add a little bit to the discussion through innovatives thinking.
So I'm not sure if I answered your question, but
it's a wonderful question. I think, you know, it's a
(13:35):
big yes explanation point for me. Both as a cultural
background and these big questions of why are we and
who are we? And where are we going? And that
sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (13:47):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Now you know you've touched on something very important because
you actually have a PhD in entomology, right, bugs Bugs.
Speaker 4 (13:57):
Yes, yes, but it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
But when I think about some of the great writers
that are timeless, like Coleridge and Keats, you know, to
me they had a very close connection to nature and
so it you know, to me, it comes out in
their poems. Do you think, though, even though you're not
willing to say, there some that aren't cut out for it.
And we know that there there are some who aren't
(14:22):
cut out of poetry and that's okay. But is it
your belief that you do have to be connected to
nature in order to be effective in your expression?
Speaker 3 (14:32):
Well, again, that's a wonderful question. There certainly are well
known and well loved poets who have written pretty much
about the urban experience without a whole lot of reference
to freeze bird skies and that sort of thing clouds.
So I think there is room in the poetry community
(14:54):
for those who love depend on nature or tholess bomb
understanding even almost kind of religious, a spiritual sort of connection.
I think there's room for that. But I also think
there's probably room for those who write about what I
(15:17):
would call the very human, very human centric kind of experience,
often from a little bit more of an urban point
of view. And so I'm not sure that again I'm
answering your question, but I think there's room for all.
And I've seen all gone very very well and very compellingly.
(15:38):
So it's not just birds and trees. It's certainly there
are wonderful poems about that, and I've tried to kind
of capture some of that wonder stepping out into nature,
particularly when I look for bomb, and I mean b
A l M, not bomb, when I look for solace,
when I look for a long term point of view,
(16:01):
realizing that we're here just for a little while, I
often earn to nature for a little bit I think
clear understanding of at least what some of the questions are,
and so I draw heavily on nature. I'm always always
fascinated by people though as well, so you know I'll
(16:23):
never get away from that fascination, I'm sure.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Oh yeah, I think you really you have answered the
question in the sense that it sounds like any poet
needs to draw from something where that spiritualism nature, whether
it is their urban experience. And I've seen the urban
experience come to life too in poems where you actually
(16:45):
can see the street light, you can see the grass
growing through the concrete. Yeah, it really is something how
poetry can be therapeutic and cathartic.
Speaker 4 (16:56):
In so many ways. When I think about again some
of the classics, will you words worth? The world is
too much with us?
Speaker 2 (17:02):
That is so timeless, and it's so relevant now the
world is too much with us. Do you have a
favorite piece of your own that you feel will be
timeless or do you think what you're writing? I think
most of what you're writing is pretty timeless in my opinion,
from what I've read.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
Well, I'd like to think that I have a little
bit of timelessness in the lines. I'm not sure which,
if any of them, will you know, survive or have
any kind of longevity, but I certainly like to think so.
And one way I have of doing that, and I'm
not thinking this is right or wrong, but one way
I kind of deal with that is I typically don't
(17:41):
write directly about what I call headlines the daily headlines.
I probably should, and there certainly are a lot of
poets who are doing an amazing job of that, lifting
up the present day and discussing it in their poems
through everything from joy to anger, and so there is
(18:03):
a role for poets in doing that. I tend to
enjoy or that's really not even Its not a matter
of enjoying. I just tend to relate a bit more
to poems that have that little bit of timelessness about
them that can be picked up, you know, years from
now or years after they're written, and still speak off
(18:24):
the page to the person who is reading them. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:28):
Now you were talking about and we're going to get
to Hunger accent a second, but you were talking about
how your poetic expression was still very much in tandem
when you were in the workplace. Do you think there's
a place today, And of course we see it as
an extension now, you know, knowing your professional background and
your philanthropic work now with Hunger, clearly there was an
(18:52):
alignment there. Do you think that there's a place for
poetry in the workplace today?
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Oh? I love that question because it's one that I
gottually been working on. I'm not sure that all workplaces
are yet ready for poetry, but I think there is.
I think, yes, there's probably a role for poetry pretty
much everywhere. The work that we've done with poetry X
Hunger definitely illustrates to me the power of poetry. We
(19:20):
have a culture I think put a real high value
on scientific fact, the logic that is used to get
to that fact, the data that we collect to illustrate
the fact, and the trend lines that we developed to
show where that fact might be going. And those are
all very important to understand kind of what we're dealing with,
(19:43):
and there are issues that are facing us. But if
we don't have tools in the toolkit to engage people,
to engage their minds, their hearts, their souls, if we
don't have ways of reaching out to folks beyond the lottery,
then I think we're doing ourselves a disservice and probably
(20:05):
not going to be particularly successful. Another way of saying
that is, I think poetry and the arts generally, especially poetry,
have a role to play in speaking up, speaking out,
explaining sharing in ways that everyone, I don't care what
(20:26):
background you're coming from, everyone can relate to, and so
celebrating that power of poetry, I think is something that
I certainly have been interested in trying to do and
tap into, and I know others have worked on bringing
poetry to bear. I mean, think about the that true
liberty Cecilia, the poem. There's a poem at the base
(20:49):
of it, written by Ema Lazarath. It's called the New Colossus,
and it was written I think, back in the early
part of the nineteen hundreds by Missus Lazarus welcomes immigrants
to the US. Well, fast forward, I think that poem.
It certainly affected our approach to immigration for many, many years.
(21:13):
It provided the open arms to the statue of liberty,
welcoming folks, particularly the disadvantage, but all to the shores
of the US. And if you fast forward, I'd say
that that kind of message poetry is still very very relevant.
(21:33):
I'll just believe it at that. But I think poetry
and the poets writing it can explain and relate and
net with folks in ways that the other more technical
terminology simply can't. Long answer to your question.
Speaker 4 (21:48):
No, I'm sitting here.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I'm actually sitting here and taking notes, and I am
I'm just loving the dialogue because it's so profound, and
I don't think a lot of people know that there's
a poem at the welcoming immigrants at the bottom of
the Statue of livery Well that.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Says, give me or bring me your poor your remember
I should, but it's a very it's iconic poem and
spoke to our national spirit soul at the time, and
I think still needs to it still does up put
it that way.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yes, And I think it's so important what you're talking
about is maintaining the humanistic side of society and humanity
in all.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
Of these issues.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
I mean, we get again with the world too much
with us, and we lose our souls to some degree
and out minds.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
If I might add, one of the reasons doctor Martin
Luther King Junior was so such a powerful, powerful force
was because he was a poet and he knew how
to deliver his poems as well. I don't mean he
said that. I don't mean he wrote science sonnets. I
mean in the thoughtful air that he prepared what he
(23:01):
said and how he spoke it to me. Yeah, that
was poetry. That was poetry. And we you know, his
legacy is in large measure based on those powerful words
that he that he shared and kind of challenged us
with and continues to challenge us with.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
Absolutely what I've learned with by being around other brilliant
poets that like yourself and experiencing your work is that
there is truly a rhythm and a rhyme and a
scheme to life, to pulling and drawing on the soul.
And like you said, that's what Martin Luther King and
many other even JFK a lot of them did with
(23:43):
their words. They were They were not just great orators.
They had a command of the sensory of the words
to bring you back to life, to jolt you to say, no,
we're human beings, and.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
To convince the public at large that this was a
noble cause and one that we need to rally around,
and we have it within us. We have it within
us to rally around. They challenged us with their words,
and so, yeah, no.
Speaker 4 (24:12):
This is wonderful.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
So now I want to know what was the turning
point that caused you to intersect poetry with your philanthropic
approach to addressing hunger?
Speaker 4 (24:21):
When what was that for you?
Speaker 3 (24:24):
It was actually a regreests that I preceed from a
college university out on the West Coast to come and
speak to students about poetry and hunger, the kind of
the poetry of hunger, and I readily accepted it, and
then like, well, what am I going to say? So
I had to do a little bit of homework to
(24:44):
prepare for speaking with the students, and much to my surprise,
when I started to look on what's on offer? What's
on offer with poetry about hunger? Not hunger the heart,
not hunger of the spirit or hunger of the soul,
but hunger the stomach. When I started to look for
poetry about that, I found a few pieces, but I
(25:06):
didn't find many, and I certainly didn't find as many
as I thought there should be. And so I thought, okay,
well maybe there's something here that I could help with.
And so from that I formed just a very informal initiative.
We made it a little bit less formal, a little
bit more formalized now, but at the time it was
(25:28):
a pretty informal initiative called Poetry ex Hunger that reached
out to poets around the world and ask if they
would share their talents to write about hunger some one
of it's maybe many, many, many aspects. And then share
that work that we could post it, and we did that,
and we did it with we used some support from
(25:51):
the United Nations, from arts councils, from food banks and
the like to stand up a website that now fast
forward has I think about four hundred or more poems
from around the world. And those poems are they're not
sitting on the shelves. We've made an active, active effort
to put them to use in the anti younger cost
(26:14):
And so I often say we've done at least two
things using poetry x Hunger poems. We've raised awareness in
that just one example, a poem offered the Poetry x
Hunger website by a wonderful Canadian poet, Josephine Murray, was
picked up by a huge organization anti hunger organization called
Feed the Children. They incorporated the poem into a one
(26:39):
minute public service announcement and that public service announcement has
been viewed by one hundred and sixty five thousand people.
So we've amplified using poetry. We've amplified the signal about
the scourge of and the importance of address the scourge
of hunger and the importance of trying to address it
we've also turned poetry into food, and by that I
(27:02):
mean in the last couple of years, the Poetry X
Hunger poets have used their talents to raise about twenty
thousand dollars for poetry organization or excuse me, anti hunger
organizations locally, nationally and around the world. And so we
really are trying to put the poems to work, so
(27:22):
to speak, in the anti hunger cause. And if any
of your listeners never have a poem that they'd like
to submit, it's very easy to do. They There's a
submission guidelines on the Poetry X Hunger website and that
address is www dot poetry X. The letter X poetry
X hunger. That's all one phrase, poetry X Hunger.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
Duck absolutely and I hope that everyone will go to
the website, have a poem to submit or not just
to peruse the website work the great work that you
guys are doing, the wonderful poetry that's on display. You know,
it's like a virtual art gallery in my for poetry,
and so you can also donate. You know, I was
(28:05):
all too looking at some statistics and I was shocked
to know that in the United States alone, there is
about thirty six million people in hunger and worldwide one
hundred and fifty two million. And you ask yourself, how
is that possible in today's society with all the food
and I mean, on one end, it seems like we
(28:27):
are gluttonous and wasteful at the same time. And I've
seen several documentaries and experience, you know where people well
I've also experienced firsthand where countless companies have you know,
they throw out food every day and again just so wasteful.
Is there some type of legislative action? I know this
is a loaded question as well, but is there some
(28:49):
type of legislative action that can be taken for us
to minimize the food waste alone or to distribute it
better to other people or countries that are hungry and
in need.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
Right, well, let me go back for just a second.
When I was growing up, my parents would lean over
the table as we were eating, and if for any
reason I wasn't eating everything on the plate, they'd say,
think about, there are kids in China or kids in
India eat that food. Now you need to eat it
because they are hungry kids all over the world. Now
(29:23):
that's unfortunate, But I think parents could just as legitimately
say eat that food because our neighbor is hungry. I mean,
hunger is everywhere. It's in our cities, it's in our suburbs,
it's in the rural settings, it's on college campuses. There
are many many college campuses around the country now that
(29:45):
have food banks, and they have to because there are
many students. College students, you simply can't afford books, tuition,
and food. They have to make a choice. So, yeah,
it's a problem that's over there, but it's also a
problem right next door. So in terms of food waste,
I'm not the most up to date on the legislative proposals,
(30:06):
but I don't recall anything currently on offer that would
work to reduce waste. Having said that, food waste, Having
said that, there are a number of organizations around the
US and really around the world that focus on food recovery,
repurposing of food that wasn't eaten for whatever initial and
(30:28):
purpose it was intended and can be reused in a
variety of ways. So, for example, here in the Washington,
DC area, there are at least three organizations that focus
on trying to repurpose, recapture food that might otherwise be wasted.
It is the case that in the US, experts often
say that overseas, particularly in horror countries, In less well
(30:52):
resourced countries, the problem with food waste occurs before the
consumer buys it, in other words, and it's grown in
the farm. At the farm and harvested there often is
not the kind of refrigeration or storage has to keep
the food fresh, and so it rots or it goes
to waste that way. In more well resourced countries, most
(31:17):
of the food waste occurs after it's been purchased by
the consumer and is sitting in a refrigerator in the
back of the shelf, gets forgotten, and it gets pitched.
So we're worldwide were we all tend to waste food,
maybe in different ways, but we all tend to waste food.
It's a problem, we really do.
Speaker 2 (31:38):
And it's so sad that there's got to be well.
I'm actually encouraged to know that there are organizations that
take food and repurpose it.
Speaker 4 (31:46):
And you're right.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
Because in terms of most of the food waste happens
before it even gets to the consumer. And just for
the sake of confidentiality, I won't mention any major details,
but I visited a fulfillent and there were ballads of
thousands food that rotted. And then you know, you get
(32:08):
to the commercial side of it, where there are a
lot of companies that sell food and they throw it
out at the end of the night, you know, unused
or and with people hungry on the streets, there's just
gotta be a better way. So, you know, I'm actually
encouraged by what you're doing with poetry X Hunger and
the fact that you guys are addressing a basic need
(32:31):
of every human being. And when I think about it,
when we were growing up, you know, we were poor,
but I didn't know it, but the same thing over
and over again, and just thought that was the way
of life. You know, I'm just I was trying to think.
I don't think there are any time so that I
remember being really hungry, Like I don't think we're gonna
eat today. We eat something, but it may not have
(32:55):
been anything glamorous, but I knew food would happen at
some point. My question to you, have you ever experienced
hunger or abject party or has there been a situation
like most of us we grew up. We may have
been poor, we didn't have much but we didn't know
any better, right.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Well, I think the short answer is no, I've never
been hungry. And in fact, Cecilia, I'm often kind of
challenged by folks saying, well, how can people who have
never been hungry write about hunger? And it's absolutely the
case that if a person was hungry and then was
fortunate enough to escape it and wants to write about
(33:33):
reflect back on that experience, those poems are extremely authentic.
And we have some poems who have done just that,
and their poems are very powerful. But I also believe
that there's room for all of us to write about hunger,
those of us who've been fortunate enough not to be
and asked those haunting questions, well, I've never been hungry,
(33:56):
why have you been hungry? What's the difference tween us
that causes some to be hungry and some not? And
what's the social equity or inequity that causes that? Because particular,
I think there's something for all of us to contribute
in terms of poems about hunger. And I've been fortunate
(34:18):
enough that a lot of the poets who I don't
believe have ever experienced hunger have been willing to write
and write very powerfully about hunger, its scourge, its history,
its impacts, and their point of view as somebody who
hasn't experienced and what hunger means to them, how they
(34:39):
understand it or misunderstand it.
Speaker 2 (34:41):
Ben And isn't that what it's about really too, that
the strong bears the weak or becomes the advocate and
the voice for the vulnerable who may not be able
to express for themselves. And for the younger generation, you know,
to put it in a perspective that they can understand.
You know a lot of people will say, well, that's
an authentic or you know, where's the authenticity in that?
(35:03):
But for the younger generation, they admire a lot of
these artists today who've never experienced anything that they're talking about.
One great example is ice Cube, who was prolific in
his music and he talked a lot about inequality and
he really turned hip hop on its head and talked
about the gang life in la and all of that,
(35:26):
and he was never any of that. He was never
on the streets. He was busted across town to a
great school. He was always very intelligent and articulate. He
never lived the street life, but he was able to
capture the essence of those who were struggling during that
time and bring it to the forefront of the world
like you guys are doing with the awareness this is
(35:47):
a profound need and something must be done to address it.
So I think it's fantastic and you got definitely need
to keep going.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
The way I say it is. Poetry is never going
to end hunger. I understand that. I accept it. But
can it help the anti hunger cause I think absolutely
it can't. It must and it will. And so we're
working and I'm not the only one by any means
working on bringing poetry and really the arts to these
(36:22):
kind of socially important clauses.
Speaker 4 (36:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
Now, do you also do you get any backlash from
the poetry you do on slavery? Some of your writings
you address the history of slavery and plantations. Do you
ever feel like you're liaising between your ancestry and others
to make amends or do you get backlash from what
has happened?
Speaker 3 (36:46):
Well, so far, I won't speak to the future, but
so far, I think we've the group that has worked
on this well. Voices of Woodlawn has that we've been
welcomed because what we're trying to do is use poetry,
art and music who raise the voices of and reimagine
(37:08):
the lives of those who were enslaved at what are
now called historic plantations or mansions here in the Greater
DC area. So often those stories of the enslaved erased,
we know very little about them, and so by visiting
(37:30):
one of these sites, some poets, and I was one
of them, were able to kind of reimagine what had happened,
the impact it had. And I also try to point
out because I think it's really true that that legacy
or that history of slavery is impacting us today. And
(37:52):
so if we're trying to understand what is going on
today with erase relations and other important and social interactions,
but then I think that's something that you got to
to kind of look back at where all this came
from in the history and the fact that the lives
were erased, and we're doing our best in courts are
(38:12):
good at kind of reimagining, reconstructing what it must have
been like. And so the program that we put together,
it's about an hour long program of poetry, art and music,
has been well received around the country. We've used on
Zoom and really, we've been around the world. We'll see
as we move forward in times that are changing, whether
(38:36):
or not that reception warm reception continues, but I'm certainly
hopeful it will.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
And how often is that? Is that monthly or annually?
Speaker 3 (38:45):
We kind of do it by invitation. A group comes
to us and says, you know, would you like to perform,
and we reach out and try to invite ourselves as well.
But I'd say maybe every six months something like that.
It's a group of about five of us, and so
as you can well image and hurting those pats around
the time an hour is a little bit of a challenge.
(39:06):
So we've I think we've presented it maybe a dozen
times over the through the pandemic and then since and
probably about every six months something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
In your other word, mud Ajar, you wrote a pook
called Sucoatege. Now we were in a worldwide crisis at
the time, but you spoke of talents and bruises and
all of that as it pertained to this country. What
was the meaning behind the poem and it's time?
Speaker 3 (39:35):
Well, as I said a few minutes ago, I don't
often write about headlines, but sometimes they becomes so overwhelming
that it's like it's affecting, you know, it's it's seeping
into the things that I write. And as I stood
back and kind of thought about, you know, everything from
the pandemic to the political uproar and divisiveness that we face,
(39:58):
some of thethority that we've had that seemed to be
kind of questioned or very questioned now at the upheaval.
Because I thought about that, I kind of began to
write about both my love the country and also some
of the things that I've encountered, seen experience, and even
(40:20):
maybe caused myself that are not positive. And I grounded
it in kind of the rural setting of pies and
from porches and the light, because I think that's where
America in so many ways exists, and certainly did. My
last line in that poem is my country, My country,
(40:42):
so flies over pie, And by that, I mean, you know,
we've got this beautiful pie, but we've got all these
flies buzzn't around it as well, trying to as avoc
and ruin it and eat it. So it was my
love song to the country, but also my concern song.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Yeah, yeah, and it's it's really amazing. It's a beautiful
piece of work. Tell us about your new compilation or
collect Yeah, your new collection.
Speaker 3 (41:13):
Yeah, I've got a Yeah, I've got a kind of
a short collection call it Chatney of about I don't
think it's about poems that has just come out from
a publisher called Alien, the Alien Buddha Press. And it's
a little bit for me at least. It's a little
bit different in that I've used a couple of different well,
(41:33):
I've experimented a bit in some of the pieces, and
some of them are kind of conversational. Many of them
are my wonder at the world and my surprise and
enjoyment of the world. A couple of them are about relationships.
If somebody asked me the other day, if it's themed,
if there's a technical horror theme around the poems, and
(41:57):
I don't really think there are, other than the fact
that I would like to think that they are. They
will surprise the reader in a little bit of way.
Hopefully that doesn't lose the reader, but that keeps the
reader wanting to turn to the next page. Let's see.
But yeah, But so it's a it's a new collection,
and I've started kind of working on yet another one.
(42:18):
If you ask most posts, they're always working on about
three collections at one.
Speaker 4 (42:23):
Why can we party your current work?
Speaker 3 (42:25):
Uh. If you go to my website, which is just www.
I Roam LaRue Poetry Paul one phrase dot com, there's
information there about the collections. This is my seventh, and
so there's information about some of the others, and then
information certainly about about this particular collection. I was, I was,
(42:47):
I couldn't help, but grin Peter, Paul and Mary is
a group was a group of folk singers back in
the day when I was growing up at least and
Paul Stookey Paul and Peter Paul and Mary provided what
we call a blurb or a comment on this collection.
This it's called the collection is called this much Vary
and mister Spooky was kind of enough to write a
(43:10):
blurb about it. And it's been funny since a lot
of people, a lot of younger people haven't not too
much of an idea Peter, Paul and Mary, but those
of us are certain age or older. So oh okay, yeah,
I recognize that. Man. It's been kind of fun Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:26):
Again, I want to encourage everyone to go to the
website because again, if you're in the mood for and
in the need of a virtual sort of an art
gallery of work, a body of work, not just Harm's work,
but other artists that he features. It is just it
will do good for your soul. And I was thinking
(43:46):
about going back and reflecting back.
Speaker 4 (43:48):
To the to this one poem that I wrote. I
actually had planned on performing it at an event that
didn't take place.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
And then I missed an event. Yes, but one day
it is. My poem is and on a apologetic view
of the country that I live in, and I love
for better or for worse. You know you were talking
about in mudda jar when you when you wrote succotage.
You know that's it's a pie and it's you know,
and then you have flies, right, you know?
Speaker 4 (44:17):
So for better for worse. We have a lot going on.
Speaker 2 (44:20):
But most poets do have some type of thing that
that has woven throughout their work.
Speaker 4 (44:27):
What would you say Yours is No, I.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Don't mean to repeat myself, but I just sorry that
one of my one of the things that I'd love
about poetry is its ability to surprise me mm hmm,
to take me places that I probably never will get to.
And I mean both geographically and spiritually, and it always culturally.
(44:55):
And I mean poetry is a ticket for me too.
I can own, we imagine and that I'd love to visit,
and poetry allows me, through its ticket to visit. So uh,
that's kind of what I aspire to in my own
work as well, is to try to offer pieces that
(45:16):
people can one yeah, I relate to and two also
leave with some questions, maybe even leave the poem a
little bit different than when they started the poem. Well,
and be surprised by it. Be not flummixed by confused
by it, hopefully, but being kind of surprised with the
way the words are arranged or what said or what's conveyed.
(45:40):
So surprise. It's kind of the theme.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
Well, let's put it this way. I'll say some of
my favorite poets are the book the classical ones, not
not to take away from any of the current ones,
but Pole, Ridge, Key, Blake, Chaucer, Oh Chaucer. But so
who are Let's put it this way, because your work
is powerful, descriptive and it is constantly surprising.
Speaker 4 (46:03):
Yet oblique and abstract.
Speaker 2 (46:06):
Or who are your either classical idols or current poets
that you admire?
Speaker 4 (46:12):
If you had one or two.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Well, when I was growing up, coming up through I
remember really tuning in to James Walton Johnson's trumpets and poems,
and I think what mister Johnson did for me at
least was to bring the sound of poetry to bear.
He just does a wonderful job through those trumpets, what
I call his trumpets, to announce and to the rhythm founds,
(46:37):
the rhymes in his poems, and the spirituality too. I
just think it's just what my ears grinned the entire
time having a chance to enjoy his poem. And then
similarly early on E. Cummings, mister Cummings, what he did
(46:57):
with words, I'll never forget reading some of the first
time I read some of his work, it was like,
you mean, you can do that with words, right, and
definitely convey a meaning through a different use of words,
definitely convey a feeling, a meaning, a joy in many
of his poems, but not writing directly about I feel
(47:22):
joyous right now and this is what so I it
was just like, wow, I had no idea, and so
he was a real influence, has been a real influence
and groundstone for me as well. Yeah, those are just
two I mean, there's as you say, there's so many.
Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, there's so many. Yeah, yeah, Well I think we're
out of time. But I definitely want to thank you
so much for joining me today. And you know, just
as some parting words, you know, what would you want
your legacy to be, you know, around poetry ex hunger
or as a poet and artists, and then make sure
(48:02):
you give us all the information that we need again
to get connected.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
First and foremost, SIY has been a real honor here.
You're such a wonderful interviewer and it's been an honor
to be on with you in visiting with you a
little bit. In terms of legacy, I think for POETRYX hunger,
I mean, if we can, as I say, raise awareness
globally and locally about the problems with hunger and the
causes of hunger, that would be we're using poetry, that
(48:29):
would be a wonderful legacy or handoff to kind of
the next generation. My own work, I would hope that
it's you know, it maybe creates a little bit of
space for those who express themselves, perhaps just a bit differently,
but just as powerfully and that love nature that fascinated
(48:53):
by other people so I'm hoping that it will contribute
a little bit to the overall understanding of what poetry
you can do and help can do it. And so again,
if anyone's interested, the Poetry x Hunger website is just
poetry x letter x hunger dot com and my website
is Hirom the Room Poetry poll onephrase dot com. Thank
(49:17):
you again, Cecilia, thank.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
You so much, and we will definitely be visiting your website.
And guys, please donate to the calls. You may not
have been an abject poverty or experienced starvation or hunger
to the degree that others do, but you know what
it's like to be in need, like Hiram say, your
neighbor is in need. So please if you have a
(49:42):
few dollars, no amount it's too small, to donate to
the calls. Thank you guys for listening, Thank you for
joining me for this one hour of power and it's always.
Thank you for being a team player.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Thank you for listening to Team Leadership Radio. Subscribe never
miss an episode. We'd love to hear from you. Give
us a call at one eight four four A two fourteen.
That's one eight four four A two four t E
E m or visit the website for additional resources at
www dot team leadership dot com. Thanks again for tuning in,
(50:18):
and as always, thank you for being a team player.
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