#141 / 2010 Fall Las Cruces: Beatlicks Interview

Meet the Beatlicks! 

#141

Performance duo brings VW van, Beat poetry to Las Cruces

By Jeff Barnet

"My Las Cruces"

As in any good story, no one really knows where it came from or who said it first. The name, that is: The Beatlicks.

But at some pint in 1988, Joe Speer and Pamela Hirst were part of a Nashville-based performance trio by that name. Hirst is a native of Nashville, and Speer, originally from Albuquerque, graduated from New Mexico State University in 1970.

               

“The name pays homage to the Beatniks,” Pamela said. “That’s the main thing.”

The Beatlicks got their start at Windows on the Cumberland, an open mic poetry venue on Nashville’s 2^nd Avenue. (The third Beatlick, Maria Serna, still lives in Nashville.)  Later they took their act to the Douglas Corner Café in the West End and from there, they became a Nashville phenomenon. They even infiltrated the music-only venues.

The important thing is the art, to keep it alive and out there,” Joe said.

Their travels took them around the country, and they

“I just told them I wanted to tell a story,” he said. “It kind of took off from there.”

Their travels took them around the country and they would be the first poets to bring the live Poetry Slam concept south of the Mason-Dixon Line.)

“We brought the slam to Nashville in 1990,” Pamela said. “We promised the winners a free trip to the Green Mill Lounge in Chicago.”

Pamela and Joe took at least four or five winners up to the legendary Chicago bar that is the unofficial birthplace of the Poem Slam movement. Though they have performed as a feature act and have been widely recorded and published, Beatlick Joe and Beatlick Pamela never sought to make a living as poets.

“That’s just too much work,” Pamela said. “We live by a great minimalist philosophy. Keep life simple, so we can always pack up and go.”

“The important thing is the art, to keep it alive and out there,” Joe said.

The Beatlick News

Joe and Pamela are the publishers of The Beatlick News, a do-it-yourself poetry and arts magazine that has a worldwide draw and a long history going back to the 1970s Albuquerque, where Joe first published his magazine, “Kameleon,” using an old, portable typewriter. After meeting Pamela in Nashville in 1988, he would eventually move there and bring the magazine with him, where it was renamed The Beatlick News. At first it was published monthly, but in recent years it has become a quarterly.

The Beatlick News now calls Las Cruces home, after Joe and Pamela visited here in 2005 and decided to settle down for a while.

                “They had just finished their “Eternal Tour of 2003-04, which had taken them all over the United States and Mexico, Pamela explained, and Joe wanted her to see the place he called home from 1966 to 1970 and where he had studied poetry with Keith Wilson, the beloved poet and NMSU professor.

“I always liked the campus, because it was off by itself, not a part of the city like UNM is in Albuquerque,” Joe said. “I’m kind of anti-urban.”

Pamela said she fell in love with the place and the people.

“I did not have peace of mind until I lived here,” she said. “Here, you can pour yourself out. The sky goes on forever. You can just let it go.”

She also said she can name no fewer than a dozen people here that she loves “beyond distraction.”

The Peace Tour of 2002-03

The Beatlicks left Nashville because they felt it was becoming a little too slick, Pamela said. Before they made the split for good, they launched their “Peace Tour” of 2002-03, taking the VW Van to such places as Toronto, Pittsburgh and Buffalo in an attempt to stop the invasion of Iraq.

               

“It didn’t do a bit of good,” Joe said.

               

“It didn’t have any impact,” Pamela said.

The Eternal Tour followed shortly after that – all of it has been documented in The Beatlick News, which is archived in more than a dozen libraries in the country. The State University of New York at Buffalo has a complete archive, and soon the New Mexico State University will have a complete collection.

“We’ve never had vast numbers of subscribers, but we’re one of the few small poetry magazines to have survived this long,” Pamela said.

They have never made money off of the magazine and they have never tried.

“We’re supporting the arts,” Pamela said. “We don’t try to make the arts support us.”

Joe said they see the magazine as a way of giving back to the community, creating a venue for the arts simply because the arts are important.

In that same spirit, the Beatlicks taught poetry workshops at the recent Peace Camp at Las Cruces’ Temple Beth-Il. More than 40 middle school students went home with their own do-it-yourself book of original poetry.

Every time the Beatlicks go out on tour – and they are almost constantly on tour – the drop in on open mics, perform their act and invite poets to submit their work. Recent issues have included the Truth or Consequences issue and the Grand Canyon issue.

The magazine has featured such well known writers as Denise Chavez and Kevin McIlvoy. Writer Barry Alfonso submitted an article he did with Beat legend Allen Ginsberg, author of "Howl.”

Doublespeak

The Beatlicks say they are simply traveling poets. They get by on what Joe called “humble, modest jobs.”

Pamela, who went back to school to study literature and communication, worked for a time as a features reporter for the Franklin, Tenn., “Review Appeal” had has also published articles in the “Nashville Tennessean.

Through the many years, they have refined their dynamic act, using their voices to both harmonize and serve as counterpoint to one another – a form of performance poetry they call “double-speak” – many people have encouraged them to do one thing or another to make a living off performance. But that just doesn’t hold much interest for either of them.

“It’s more about the process of doing it than the product,” Joe said.

Their work has shown up on YouTube and Joe recently was recorded by Chuncksville.org

“We just kind of show up and do our thing,” Joe said. “It’s just working. Just as a farmer would.”

Oh, Mexico

Pamela, 64, and Joe, 62, both said they were inspired by the Bet Generation. Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Ginsberg. Their sense of community, for one thing, inspired Joe.

“They broke through not as individuals, but as The Beats,” he said. “The created a new genre of literature.”

But the main connection they feel to their 1950 forebears is the travel motif, Pamela said.

After publishing the next issue of The Beatlick News in December, Pamela said they’d be taking the VW Van to Oaxaca and then all over Mexico, where Beatlick Pamela will be blogging on what she learns about the danger or lack thereof, for l=travelers in the troubled country.

But they’ll be back, they say. For the blue skies and the laid-back Las Cruces poetry scene. For the love.

My Las Cruces reporter Jeff Barnet can be reached at

 jbarnet@lcsuno-news.com