(Prairie Fire Theme Song) (Prairie Fire Theme Song) (Prairie Fire Theme Song) (Prairie Fire Theme Song) Tonight.

Welcome to Prairie Fire.

I'm your host.

Sarah Edwards, earlier this season, we introduced you to the poetry of the late Michael C Holloway, who made his home here in Champaign Urbana, our second poet in this short series of poets you ought to know about from Illinois is Angela Jackson.

She is the Illinois Poet Laureate.

I was fortunate enough to sit down with her and discuss her work and her legacy.

We're here on the campus of Northwestern University, which is where you actually started as a pre medicine major, right?

Yes, I wanted to be a writer when I was 10.

So other factors came into play, where I said I wanted to be a doctor, and of course, my parents and people around me were happier about me saying I want to be a doctor than a writer.

So I want to be a doctor, but I did not do well in chemistry and biology and calculus, so and all I wanted to do was write poems.

Was there a poem that inspired you from the very beginning?

I remember the first poem that I encountered in first grade.

Once there was an elephant who tried to use the telephone.

Oh no, I mean the elephant who tried to use the telephone.

So I was in love with poetry in first degree.

Born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1951 Angela Jackson was the fifth of nine children.

A year later, she moved with her family to the south side of Chicago in the second wave of what's called the Great Migration.

During this time from the 1950s to the 1970s 1000s of black families left the Jim Crow South for the cultural and economic opportunities Chicago could offer.

The Jackson family settled into a house on 55th and Wentworth Avenue.

Angela spent her young years trekking to the local branch of the public library to devour books.

She absorbed lessons of family, black culture, humor and heartache around their large family dinner table, the richness of her neighborhood provided later inspiration for her poems.

We belong to the Baptist youth group, and next door to the Baptist Church was the Pentecostal church.

We called them the sanctified church, and we during summers, we would stand outside, and when the people would get the Holy Ghost and dance, we would dance with them in front of the church.

So I got a full black religious experience just by growing up on my block.

The Jacksons steered their children to academic excellence, and Angela was a family standout.

She earned an academic scholarship to study pre medicine at Northwestern as one of the early waves of black students to attend the university as a group, but her love of words called to her.

You met a few key people that kind of steered your talents quite a bit and recognized your talent.

I met my mentor, Hoyt W Fuller, who was the editor of nephro digest black world, and I showed him some of my poems, and he kept for a while, and the way he gave them back to me, he told me that I had a way with words, and he invited me to the Obasi writers workshop, where I might be judged by your peers, he said, Obasi, which stands for the organization for black American culture, was created in 1967 to create and promote literature and art that was to for and from black people.

It was a revolutionary idea at the time that black literature could be.

Judged based upon black style and black truth.

I went to OBAC, and I stayed for 20 some years, and I grew as a poet.

And the thing about literature when you tell the truth from your own perspective, when you go down deep into the specific, you arrive at the universal.

So just by telling my own truth, I would be reaching other people.

Reach other people.

She did her first collection of poetry called voodoo love magic elevated her to the national stage as an important new poet with an unwavering eye on the black experience, her next collection won the Carl Sandburg award.

Her more recent collections have been nominated for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize.

She's written several plays, novels and a biography of one of her own idols, the poet Gwendolyn Brooks, who was Illinois' third Poet Laureate.

She is the fifth What are your responsibilities as the Illinois Poet Laureate?

The chief responsibility is to inspire a love of poetry across the state, keep people excited about poetry.

Jackson has toured the state, giving readings, talks and educational programs during her four plus year tenure.

What do you say to all the kids who say poetry so boring?

Try poet to a poetry reading.

Coming to my parlor said, the spider to the fly coming to my popular said the spider to the fly.

Been so long without you, I think I'm about to die.

Try experiencing it.

If you experience hearing it, that'll pull you in.

Angela Jackson poems are vivid reflections of human choices and a human sense of identity filtered through the lens of her own colorful upbringing on Chicago's South Side.

They also address our weaknesses and flaws with musicality and humor.

One night, CeCe Hill sang at the club Tupelo the night.

ZZ Hill sang at the club Tupelo on the west side of Chicago.

He was built like a heavyweight boxer in A Tailored Suit bathed in a soft blue light, like the only thing to see in that darkened space where blues people came to turn a tear into a holler than a cry of joy and exaltation, the women lined up to kiss ZZ Hill, or at least shake his hand, but With a turn of his hand, he waved them away.

They couldn't hide disappointment, but that's the way love treats a woman.

Sometimes he kept on singing, box in the air, those songs about promise, request and living it turn our hearts tough like his voice got turpentine in it.

Do you know how CeCe Hill died in his driveway, laid out under a bright midnight moon, like heaven opened its refrigerator door, the neighbors watched from their windows.

Wasn't he on stage whispering about how fallen down drunk.

He was disgraceful, dead drunk.

He was, in truth, gone from a heart attack at 49 that fast, that young, leaving our hearts knocked out in some down home blues, caregiving, my girl, before the doctor told me I could not leave her, not even for 15 minutes.

Twice a week, I would rumble, race out of that house, wind, zip down the street to the L, jump on to 87 haul, dash to the gym, stomp the treadmill for 45 minutes, then pull heavy arms and thighs for 15 minutes, Rumble, race back to the hell, ride the train in a soft sweat, bend.

Vast charge down the street, and one day, there she was sitting on the gray stoop like a little lost girl.

Head turns in my direction.

Whisper, you were gone a long time.

I never went to that gym.

I think anybody who has had to care for somebody who is not where you're in charge of their safety, right?

It's a beautiful Ode to that, that situation, so many of us in that situation, it was, you know, I knew when I was writing it, that I wasn't just writing it for myself.

Even though that had happened to me, I knew that other people needed that poem.

I hope that it can be said that I wrote exceptional poems.

I can't say I'm a grateful they're better than good, and also that they have some sense of beauty and truth, that they are honest.

Angela Jackson, thank you very much, and thank you so much.

The you to Northwestern University for hosting us.

Now we get a lot of story ideas for Prairie Fire from all of you out there, and one of the suggestions we hear the most is, Hey, did you know that there is a national Ship Model Museum in sodoris, Illinois?

Well, no, we did not, but now we know it was a little bit of a tight squeeze for our cameras, but here, let's take a tour.

My name is Charles lozar.

I'm a retired architect, and my passion has been ship models, because they're very much like upside down houses with really good roofs.

I created the National Museum of sea history and ship models when we first moved into the building after it had been restored, I had a collection of approximately 14 movie models from studios like universal, we had about 20 small models that were scattered throughout the building.

Over the years, we have gathered many, many more models too to try and represent sections of the world and the time periods of history.

And you could easily spend two to three hours walking through the cramped, small spaces between the model ships.

The emphasis in the museum is on the history of the exploration of the world.

You pretty much can trace the history of civilization through ships and ship building, from prehistoric times with the early ships, to the Vikings to the exploration of the Mediterranean, and then eventually the Silk Road to the Far East for spices.

One of the most unusual models in the museum is a 27 foot long model of the Queen Mary, which still exists in Los Angeles about 2005 I got a call from a person in Chicago named Wayne cousy, and Wayne, very calmly over the phone asked if I had room for a Queen Mary.

And there was a long pause, and Wayne says, well, it's 27 feet long, and it's made out of 1 million toothpicks.

He brought down the model in a truck, and we unloaded it, and you can still see it sitting in the middle of the first floor.

I think that the fascination with the sea actually has to do with biology.

I think it's because we crawled out of the sea and evolved into land creatures.

There's a certain relaxation, certain quietness in looking out across the sea that makes you feel at home with nature.

Also, there's a sense of adventure, because it's a question of what is over the next edge of where you can't see.

It's the same reason that we have spaceships going to the moon and maybe Mars, those will be the next ships of the future generation, and hopefully there will be a museum of spaceships later on.

When I first started the museum, I was very, very interested in the construction of the models.

And you.

To begin to appreciate the amount of effort that goes into making an accurate model that represents a piece of history.

My collection grew to the point where we had many models from the older people who had them as a hobby and had passed away as more donations came in, and people told me their life history or their grandfather's life history, you begin to realize that actually you're the caretaker of other people's treasures.

You kind of hope that the museum will live on for a while after me and their treasures will give joy to the new visitors who come to see the history of the world.

It is so cool when you can make your passion part of your life's work.

And on that note, we'd like to introduce you to an artist from Champaign Urbana who started in needlepoint and embroidery, but now he's known for his more colorful experimental works.

Let's start at the very, very beginning.

All right.

I graduated from college in 1976 from Arizona State, Tempe, Arizona, and I walked right into my first job by accident, a longer story that I won't waste your time with now, but I walked into my first job designing needlepoint canvases, and realized I could make a whole lot more money if I designed my own needlepoint canvases and sold them.

So I started a business.

Robert Chapman, needlepoint design.

I kept designing stranger and stranger things.

People loved them.

I eventually got to the point where I was designing stuff that was so strange.

I'd walk into the shop and the people would say, Gosh, Bob, we really love this, but I just don't think I can sell it.

And that's one of these pieces here, which is coffee, tea and lizards.

So I sold my needlepoint business.

I took two years off and did bead work and embroidery.

Made quilts out of old neckties.

This is called Danish pulled thread embroidery.

There's probably 10,000 20,000 stitches on that piece.

And then, just by happenstance, decided I'd better go looking for a job.

I got hired to doing etchings for this commercial art company.

I worked for them for 10 years.

Left them and worked for Rosenbaum fine art for two years, and then started my own business.

When you go out into the commercial world, you got to do what they want.

How hard is it to be creative?

Really creative.

When someone says, We want a flower, it has to be pink, it has to be in a garden, it has to be this big.

We want it to be so beautiful, that's a real creative assignment.

So I really think I learned a lot about things I wouldn't have discovered otherwise, because I had to take other people's ideas of what they wanted and incorporate it into my life.

So I actually gained a lot from all those different tastes.

It wasn't just my taste anymore, it was other people's taste.

And I learned about production.

I learned about it going in at eight o'clock in the morning and working your butt off to nine o'clock at night.

And so I still do that so but now I'm making my own stuff.

I started experimenting with cotton linters and making paper in my backyard, and came up with this technique of casting small squares.

I went to Chicago Art Institute and saw this piece and would just, I'm just dumbstruck.

Gobsmacked.

Is that the thing?

Yeah, I was gobsmacked.

Came right home and immediately built this thing and started painting out.

So I've been working on this for probably 12 years or longer.

On this piece, it's getting close to being done, but there's still lots of little things to do.

Is the camera still going?

Look at my monkey.

Look at my monkey.

I love decoration.

I think that's why I did so well as a commercial.

Artist, is I love decoration, and I just want to remind as much as this looks like a picture of someone and it looks 3d and it's a room, I'm just decorating the surface.

And when I put buttons on there, it's like to remind people, no, this is just a decorated surface.

I'm not trying to fool you.

What I want to do is make this so decoratively beautiful that when you get close to it, you can't tell that it's a it's a cat, and you just see the little pieces.

It's still delicious.

I want it to be a delicious surface that happens to look like a cat and a woman in a chair.

I get bored real easy.

It's like, when I've been working on something for a while.

It's like, Yeah, I kind of know that already.

I mean, I can keep pushing it, and I probably should, it gets better and better.

It seems like nowadays, it gets better and better, but then it's like, Ooh, I see some new little thing.

I just got to take off on it.

So this is one of my newest favorite things.

This is called the dream box.

This is my little dream box right here.

Of it.

So this is watermarked paper.

This is the stuff that I'm really excited about right now.

I'm still achieving.

I have not achieved like I feel the bounds have been thrown off.

That's why people think I don't really go in the studio every day.

Jan will tell you, it's every day, seven days a week.

Getting me out of that studio is almost impossible, and I'm getting old.

I have all of this that people say, as you get older, your knowledge is going like this, as time goes like this.

So I'm on this.

You know, I've got this going on while this is going on.

So I just like, Come on, I'm in there fighting every day just to get as much stuff as I can done.

It's wonderful to have all that knowledge, but it's scary to think that you might not get to use it all.

So that's that's where I'm at.

And my personal philosophy is, anything that ain't studio, ain't studio.

So I know you work all day long, and you and you've had a bad year, you need a vacation.

Take the vacation.

You need it that ain't studio.

So it's like, if you burn, burn, that's the only that's my that's my only philosophy, and that's like I hit the on button when I was 12, and I just, I don't know where the off button is, and I hope I never find it.

We leave you now with a little preview performance of an artist you'll meet in a future episode of prairie fire.

Her name is Joy Yang, and she is a pianist, an educator, and she even plays the theremin too.

So enjoy this little sneak peek of a performance she (Basso Ostinato)