Word Play Congregation
“Waffles” And WordPlay:
Two sides of Poet John Homan
“Waffles”
“Funny story about ‘Waffles.’ I did that at a poetry assembly at Middlebury Middle School with a bassist backing me up and they [the students] loved it. Seeing a bunch of 6th graders snapping their fingers like beatniks in training was a real high point in my career.”
John Homan, Panoply Michiana’s poet of the month for June 2020, shared this story in an email. It told me a great deal about who he is, in addition to the biography on his blog (Link to blog at end of article) that includes a long list of publications. It told me about John Homan’s values. As I learned from the telephone interview, those values can be summed up this way: bemused humor, which sometimes verges on whimsy; an appreciation of young people; generosity (founder of WordPlay – more on that, below); and compassion: “You know how brave that is, to get up in front of people and tell your personal story?” He is talking about a night at WordPlay Open Mic when a young girl appeared, got up and told her personal story of abuse, and then left, never to appear there again. He says of her doing that: “That really blessed me.”
John Homan’s work falls squarely in a long tradition of poet-priests, including Gerard Manly Hopkins, John Henry Cardinal Newman (both 19th century British), Walt Whitman, and many more. But I doubt that he regards himself as a traditional poet and I feel certain he would be uncomfortable with “squarely.” Nevertheless, his poetry has a way of lifting the mundane, the pedestrian (“Laboratory Technician”), into something beyond, into something sometimes sophisticated (“Lemon Frosting”), sometimes magical (story “The Home”), sometimes universal (“Fan Girl”) – and always full of surprises. For instance, the tone of his poem “What My Father Left Me” is not sentimental, as the title might lead one to expect. He said that writing the poem “Fan Girl” about taking his daughter to a Boy Band concert led him to an appreciation of why young folks respond favorably to that kind of music. It led him to understand why she responded to that music, which in turn allowed him to connect in a deeper way with her.
‘It’s church. . .”
In 2015 John Homan generously founded WordPlay, an open mic for poets that is now held the second Friday of each month, at 7:00 p.m., at the Book Worm in downtown Elkhart.
“It’s church for people who don’t go to church,” says John.
“WordPlay was my congregation.”
He was a volunteer youth pastor for three years; he has taught 6th graders Sunday School; now, he is an adult Sunday School teacher. In his 40’s he studied and received a degree in Spanish at IUSB and there, began to write poetry. In April 2015 he reached out to the owners of Krav, a night club, and started hosting open mic poetry readings. WordPlay was born. After Krav closed, WordPlay moved several times until it settled in, at the Book Worm. A fascinating aside: the owner of the Book worm lived for a while in Bend, Oregon. John Homan is originally from Bend, Oregon. What are the chances . . .?
A Community of Stories
“There is such a great opportunity to hear stories about everybody. If you don’t tell your story, you won’t know what you’re about.”
From WordPlay Open Mic, Homan published an anthology of 19 Elkhart Poets, sponsored and paid for by a donor and a GoFundMe. They brought in enough money for him to bring out a second anthology.
“WordPlay creates a community of stories,” he says.
Homan appreciates all kind of poetry, including the shocking and the obscure. But his preference is for that which has an immediate heartfelt impact. “One of my poet friends laughs at the idea of [the audience’s] holding any reactions until after the poet has finished reading the poem.” WordPlay open mic welcomes all kinds of responses, including hoots and hollers. Homan says he probably bases his vision of WordPlay on the testimony night in the Pentecostal church he grew up in. “We are here for a reason,” John says. “The open mic helps them [the readers] and it helps us. We witness that – it’s so important. Whether it [the poem] has a form that’s acceptable or not does not matter. . .it’s about going straight ahead; it’s putting my heart out there.”
There is so much more to write about John Homan. He is bilingual. He has done facing page translations of his own work and published a paper about the cultural meanings in the work of artist/painter Diego Rivera (1886-1957). He helped translate Elizabeth Horan’s book Auto-retrato about Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), artist/painter and wife of Rivera. He is a percussionist, having learned percussion from a colleague at Conn-Selmer where he worked for 13 years (last month was let go). He plays “Dungeons and Dragons” once a week on Zoom; he likes to camp and hike; he is learning blacksmithing. He quotes Whitman: “You say I contradict myself? Yes, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes.”
Yet, I cannot close without bringing to your attention a very special piece entitled “The Eternal Part” about a feeling John discovered in himself. It is published in tinyessays.com Bitesize Nonfiction. The image of an indoor swimming pool behind the essay instantly conjured up for me the scene in the movie “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” with Tom Hanks portraying Mr. Rogers. Perhaps Mr. Rogers discovered this place in himself.
“It’s a strange feeling to explain,” John wrote to me. “But inside all of us, no matter how much pain, hurt, and turmoil we are going through is a safe room in the human spirit that can never be breached, but we’re all so affected by the things going on outside, we forget that such a place exists. ‘The Eternal Part’ is connected to his collection of poems Chlorine Dreams (https://pulpphimoetspress.com/2-poems-by-john-homan ) which is the most important one to him because it talks about adversity, about swimming against the water, against what resists us.”
The essay makes me want to explore within myself to see if I can find what John is describing.
“But not on SoundCloud”
You can listen to John reading many of his poems on SoundCloud, https://soundcloud.com/beatnik-for-jesus. However, if you’d like to hear John read “Waffles,” you’ll have to attend a WordPlay open mic (and probably request it). He doesn’t read it on SoundCloud. ”Because I have to yell,” he says. Indeed, poetry is primarily about voice and sound. Think “Yowl!” of Walt Whitman.
John almost won a poetry slam in Fort Wayne with “Waffles” and “The New Carpet.” But then, thinking he should do something serious, he read a serious, sad poem. He lost the poetry slam. But he won the hearts and minds of poetry lovers in Elkhart and in many more places with his humor, generosity, and compassion. Wherever John Homan finds himself, he establishes a home around himself for poets.
Speaking one’s truth. Listening. Witnessing. How exactly right, for the time in history we find ourselves in!
Note: WordPlay will do a video watch party for the June meeting. Go to the Facebook page for more details. John is hoping to resume meeting at the Book Worm in July.
Update: John actually did an audio version of “Waffles” Everything else was recorded outside, he says, and he didn’t want to be arrested for making a public nuisance yelling about breakfast food, so he had to wait until the house was empty. Here’s “Waffles.” https://soundcloud.com/beatnik-for-jesus/waffles But come to a WordPlay Open Mic and request it anyway.
