- On the next edition of "Arteffects," a weekly poetry night in downtown Reno.

(bright music) - [Iain] Monday Night Poetry is basically an open mic.

People can connect and feel like they're seen.

- [Beth] A story that is personal and heartfelt.

(gentle music) - [Zahra] There's always a sense of like, this is my home.

It's nice to feel like I belong at a place where I wasn't even born.

- [Beth] And peek into the work of a renowned poet.

(gentle music) - [Gailmarie] I use the furniture of the world.

So whatever I see around me, I try to to craft into my work in some way.

- It's all ahead on this edition of "Arteffects."

(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Heidemarie Rochlin.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

- Hello, I'm Beth McMillan, and welcome to "Arteffects."

Every Monday night in a cozy English pub in downtown Reno, a diverse group of people gather.

They come from all over the area with the desire to step on stage, bear their souls, make friends, and enjoy the warm community they've created.

This is Monday Night Poetry.

(car zooming) - Next up on the microphone.

- [All] Where they at?

Where they at?

Where they at?

- Please come up all the way to the stage for Pamela Lee.

(crowd cheering) (bright music) - My entire body frigidly cold, it cannot be warmed.

My entire body burning hot, it cannot be cooled.

This is when I know it is poetry.

- Monday Night Poetry is basically an open mic centered around poetic expression.

So it's not like your traditional open mics where you have musicians and comedians.

It's centered strictly around poets.

- It is in downtown Reno, so it's bustling.

For the most part, it's a community where everyone's invested in what we're trying to do, which is celebrate the art form of poetry.

And we've democratized fame in a way in that anybody can come off the street and share five to six minutes.

- [Iain] So a typical night at Monday Night Poetry starts usually when Jesse shows up, he sets up everything, puts the list out, and then once the list is out, people are free to show up and sign up.

- [Jesse] We do 10 slots, and then we have a group photo.

- Poetry!

- Brief intermission, and then 10 more slots.

And then people are done for the night, - Which is why some call me The Godfather.

Thanks for that.

- The goal is to make the poetry as an art form that we love, both page poetry and performance poetry, to make it accessible to everyone.

It is free to attend Monday Night Poetry.

The only stipulation is you have to be over 21.

It was a fairly dead night before.

Now, Monday night might be the busiest night of the week at Shim's, even busier than Friday or Saturday.

And that's depending on the week.

- There to catch me.

See y'all, I need to catch my breath.

I need to catch up on my sleep.

I need to learn how to sit still.

And to be honest, I've just been exhausted.

My name is Iain Michael K. Watson, and I'm learning to be better than my yesterdays.

I'm learning to say no more often.

I'm learning to love my imperfections and be kind to myself.

And there is still so much work I have to do.

Thank you.

(crowd cheering) (upbeat music) - We started, the very first Monday Night Poetry was held at 6:00 PM January 3rd, 2022.

So each year, the closest Monday to January 3rd, we've celebrated birthday.

It was just a beautiful, beautiful night for me to be there as a host to see how much the community really celebrates what we're doing and looks forward to it each week.

- Heavenly twin, they know each other well.

Opposites have a story to tell.

After all, when push comes to shove, you're either in fear or you're in the bottom.

(crowd clapping) - So the chants and the snaps and all the callbacks, that comes from the poetry scene in general, just kind of what a spoken word open mic should look like because it's not a typical poetry reading.

You want to bring a lot of energy.

You want the crowd to participate.

You want them to feel like they're part of something.

- So the where they at.

- [All] Where they at?

Where they at?

- It's just a way to get the audience charged up for each individual performer.

Ways for people to respond audibly are the snaps.

If somebody excels what's worthy of snaps, then you get into the mmm, almost like you have peanut butter stuck to the roof of your mouth.

It's usually short, kind of pithy aphorisms that are meant to be encouraging, but not so much that they're distracting - Like a comedian.

A comedian needs that instant gratification when they tell a joke and they need to hear people laugh because if you don't get laughter, you're like, "Oh, okay, I'm tanking."

So poets don't need as much of that.

But it's when you have a line and you're like, "Okay, I think this is a good line," and you deliver it and you hear the reaction, you're like, "Yes, that was a good line."

- [Jesse] Come all the way to the stage for Pax please.

(crowd cheering) - I am a poet and I've been coming pretty regularly for over a year.

It happens every Monday night, so I'm here most Monday nights, and a lot of my good friends come here too.

It's a big community in my life.

All right, this one's called "For the Curly People."

The Truckee River was straightened for the sake of efficiency, the first river in the US to be unbent.

Armies of engineers writing their equations on curves.

So doing this every week has helped me as a poet exponentially.

I'm always inspired by the other poets here, all the different styles.

And then just having a built-in audience makes you wanna write more.

Like if you have something to say, there's someone who's gonna listen.

And so you want to say it.

- The path a loose leaf chooses with the wind, curves of hope shooting through the darkest nights.

Ride those waves, they will bring you home.

Thank you.

(crowd cheering) - Monday's my favorite day of the week now, and I used to dread Sunday night, going back to work the next day.

And now on a Sunday night I'm thinking, well yeah, I've gotta go to work tomorrow.

But then when I'm done with the day, I get to start my week off on the right note, and I get to see my friends, and I get to see my chosen family, and I get to encourage people, and I get to see people light up, seeing people increase in confidence that were painfully shy to begin with and now they can't wait to share.

That is a magical experience for me as a host.

- That's one thing I've always been proud of is just having a platform where people can connect and feel like they're seen and they're heard.

And I just think that's really worth its weight in gold is just having a community and a safe place that people want to be in.

- Here's the thing about honesty and love.

Neither is fully possible without the other.

Much like friendship, much like family, much like belonging, much like us.

(gentle music) - To learn more, find them on Instagram @spoken_views_reno and @mondaynightpoetrynv.

And now it's time for this week's art quiz.

Poetry slams began in the 1980s when American poet Mark Smith believed the current poetry scene was too structured and stuffy.

Thus the open mic and competitive poetry slams were born.

In what city did this take place?

Is the answer A, New York, New York, B, Chicago, Illinois, C, Atlanta, Georgia, or D, Los Angeles, California?

And the answer is B, Chicago, Illinois.

Up next, we travel to New Mexico to meet author and illustrator Zahra Marwan, who published the book, "Where Butterflies Fill the Sky."

In this picture book, Marwan shares the true story of her immigration from Kuwait to the United States.

Take a look.

(gentle music) - [Faith] What inspired you to write "Where Butterflies Fill the Sky"?

- When we left Kuwait, when I was a child, I wasn't really sure what we were doing or where we were going or what was happening.

When we came to New Mexico, I didn't really understand why no one spoke Arabic anymore or why we weren't going to my grandpa's house in a few days.

So I was trying to create that feeling of what it felt like as a child.

- [Faith] Why did you title the book "Where Butterflies Fill the Sky"?

- I don't have the right to live in Kuwait, but my mom's a Kuwaiti citizen.

In 2018, she became sick and was hospitalized, so I had to make an emergency trip home, and I'm allowed to stay there only for three months on a tourist visa.

And there had been a lot of rain.

And every time I'd look up that spring, there were hundreds of butterflies in the sky.

And that's when I started putting the book together.

"Where Butterflies Fill the Sky: a story of Immigration, Family, and Finding Home."

To my parents who should have never had to leave who gave us everything they could.

From the desert to the sea, this is my home where 100 butterflies are always in the sky.

Pigeons are kept and loved, both sail the calm sea.

Mama is on the shore.

My aunties drink their tea.

Papa swims in the open water.

His sister takes the boat out to sea.

Me and my brothers are in our own world.

This is where I sleep, where my ancestors live and are always watching.

- So there's a lot of different motifs that are reoccurring in the book.

Can you tell me a little bit about them?

- Sure.

Culturally, Kuwaitis keep birds at home, whether parakeets or parrots.

I like to talk about my oldest aunt who fights with her parrot every Friday at the family lunch.

And I have my mom's three sisters that keep appearing as like grounding pillars of like safety and protection and a sense of home.

- And there was also two ancestral bulls watching over you, right?

Can you talk a little bit about those?

- Sure, it's definitely a cultural faux pa, religiously, being from a very conservative Orthodox family myself.

But there are ancient artifacts from the Dilmun civilization or Mesopotamian sculptures that were found 10 miles off of Kuwait's shore, and one of them was a bull.

So I had these Mesopotamian bulls be the connection to ancestors and place that keep following the main character throughout the book.

So this is my favorite illustration in the book.

It's me and my dad.

People often sit on the ground in Kuwaiti culture on Persian rugs.

Here we have a Dilmun bull and he's packing watermelon.

We would often eat watermelon after lunch.

There are flamingos flying.

They naturally migrate to the Kuwaiti shores in the winter.

There's a picture of my uncle who was killed during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.

He was killed with a grenade.

And this is also a point that I always keep in mind is how he can always be listed officially as Kuwaiti when he had died, stateless, fighting for our little home.

- [Faith] What does it mean to be stateless and why is it important to talk about this subject?

- Citizenship is very complicated, and it shouldn't be at all, right?

Three of my grandparents are Kuwaiti citizens and only one wasn't.

And that was my father's father.

And all of them are historically and culturally rooted in Kuwait.

My grandfather didn't apply before oil and the window to apply was very small.

So although we're from there generationally, culturally, and historically, we have no legal rights to live in our country.

- And what does that mean?

- It means you don't really have the right to an education.

You're not allowed to get married.

You're not allowed to leave, you're not allowed to access healthcare.

You essentially don't exist yet.

You're illegal, and yet you're there.

(gentle music) Papa tells me there is magic in the place we'll go.

I don't want to leave.

Mama says it'll be better for us.

I say my goodbyes without knowing why, and travel far, far away, to a new place where each day feels like a year, where no one speaks like me.

Are my ancestors still watching?

- What is it like to leave your home behind in Kuwait and come to New Mexico?

- The last time I was in Kuwait was this January.

And when the plane lands, it makes me cry.

And when the plane leaves, it makes me cry.

And I've become almost totally foreign there other than family.

And every trip back, I would notice I was becoming further and further removed from my home, whether linguistically or culturally.

I think nobody really wants to leave their home, yeah.

- [Faith] How did it feel adapting to New Mexico?

- I think it's a forever ongoing process of how, like this is the only place where I feel like I belong that I can live legally.

And at the same time, I realize I'm not totally from here historically.

But there's always a sense of like, this is my home.

It's nice to feel like I belong at a place where I wasn't even born.

I mean, I still remember like my friend Adam Romero playing tag with me in the third grade or the second grade when I couldn't speak.

So it's nice to know that there are people like that.

I'm so different from everyone here, but these new people show me I belong.

My family sends reminders that they're thinking of me, and I tell them that I'm thinking of them too, that I miss them and hope we can be together again.

That in this new place of high desert, I have found a home.

- [Faith] Why do you have the bulls resting?

- [Zahra] Maybe that they feel a sense of comfort or also feel a sense of home.

- They can take a break from watching over.

Like what's the feeling that you felt when you were creating this illustration?

- I don't know.

Maybe this one that I really do feel comfortable here, that there are things I understand and feel really lucky to have come to a place where people do treat you like you belong.

I feel like I've learned from people here to like be proud of my language and culture and heritage, even if there's like a system that tells you you shouldn't be.

- For more information about Marwan, head to zahramarwan.com.

The art of the spoken word can be very powerful.

For Reno poet Gailmarie Pahmeier, every word has meaning.

She was Reno's first Poet Laureate in 2015 and 2016, and was a Nevada Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023.

She serves as an ambassador for poetry, telling stories that might otherwise become lost.

We spoke with Gailmarie in 2016 when she was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

(gentle music) (audience applauding) - [Narrator] The Nevada Writers Hall of Fame was established in 1988 to recognize the great writers who wrote in and about Nevada and those who are continuing to contribute to Nevada's literary landscape.

Induction into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame acknowledges a lifetime achievement in writing.

- My name is Gailmarie Pahmeier.

I am a lecturer in creative writing at the University of Nevada, and I'm serving currently as Reno's first Poet Laureate.

I've lived now in Nevada the majority of my life.

I identify as a westerner.

I identify as a Nevadan.

I moved to Reno in 1984.

We had come from Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I had a very, very dear girlfriend, best friend throughout grade school.

My girlfriend's name was Lori.

And Lori and I wrote what we called novels, they were about nine pages long, and we set up a stand in the front yard, like a lemonade stand.

But we sold our books for 15 or 25 cents a pop.

We really thought of ourselves as professional in some way, and I'm delighted that all the neighbors that bought those books returned them to my mother.

And 35 years after that experience, my mother boxed them up and sent them to me.

It reminds me that it was always there.

It was always there.

It was a grade school teacher who first said, "You've really got a gift for this."

And I didn't take that all that seriously, but I loved writing.

I use the furniture of the world.

So whatever I see around me, I try to craft into my work in some way.

I overhear something, a snippet of conversation, or I see something that strikes me as a particularly interesting image.

And then I just start drafting from that particular, what we call a trigger.

It can take many different turns as it evolves.

I'm constantly tweaking.

It can take me a year to craft 14 lines that I'm happy with.

(upbeat music) Writers inspire me, cultural figures inspire me.

And Marilyn Monroe was often misunderstood, pigeonholed, struggled under intense scrutiny, and worked through a lot of pain.

The John Houston film "The Misfits" is a quintessential Nevada film.

It was her last film.

It was Clark Gable's last film.

You know you want Marilyn's dress, not the one your mother wanted, not the rhinestone second skin she sang his song in.

Happy Birthday, Mr. President.

Not that dress.

You want the simpler, but also sleekly tight little thing she wore here in this Nevada town, the dress she wore while drinking shots at this bar in Dayton.

Cocktail cherries, halter back.

You want this dress because she wore it here, but also because everyone who watched her learned of her unknown special talent, how she could wield a paddleball 100 times and never miss a strike.

(gentle music) I have been blessed with one of the most wonderful gigs in the world, and that's working with students.

Everybody has the right to tell his or her story and to be heard.

A creative writing class in a university may be the last time someone's individual life matters because going into the world of work, going into graduate school and pursuing scholarly studies, when do issues of vulnerability, instability, heartbreak become important enough to write and talk about?

I've had a lot of students pass through, and some of them are, wow.

Willy Vlautin, whom I adore, who was a student of mine 20-some years ago, who has gone on to do internationally acclaimed work.

- Gailmarie was just so cool.

She was just like, it was the first time I ever felt that I wasn't a freak for writing stories, that I was actually really lucky.

So I walked into her class and I finally found where I was supposed to be, and she kind of pointed me in the direction saying like, "Look, it's okay to write about Reno.

It's okay to write about working class stories or depressed people or banged up people.

You can write those stories and it's okay."

And I didn't know that until I met her.

- Working with Willy was probably one of the many highlights of my academic career.

One day I'm sitting, I think I was grading papers, the phone rang and it was the Chair of the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame Selection Committee.

And he said, "I have some really wonderful news for you."

He said I was one of this year's inductees into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

And I was stunned.

And then within five minutes, Willy called, - When I found out I was inducted to the Hall of Fame, and they told me it was with Gailmarie, I always say it's like walking down the street and you find money.

Once in a while you get lucky.

And I got lucky when they called me.

- [Gailmarie] We're really, really delighted to be going in together.

- It's more than an honor to be inducted with my great pal Gailmarie, and to be on the same list with her and Robert Laxo, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, I appreciate it more than you ever know to be, have my name next to their names.

- Nothing of real meaning happens without the joy and challenge of the classroom.

So to my students, all of you, you have inspired and motivated me, and I deeply thank you.

I think this is the highest honor in the state of Nevada that a writer can achieve.

I certainly hope it's not a lifetime achievement award.

I hope I have a lot more work in me, and I hope I have many more adventures and road trips out into the state of Nevada to talk about the literary arts.

But this is a cap in many ways that I am so proud to don.

I can't imagine what other life I could have had.

- Learn more at And that wraps it up for this edition of "Arteffects."

If you want to watch new "Arteffects" segments early, make sure you subscribe to the PBS Reno YouTube channel, and don't forget to keep visiting pbsreno.org to watch complete episodes of "Arteffects."

Until next week, I'm Beth McMillan, thanks for watching.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Arteffects" is made possible by Sandy Raffealli with Bill Pearce Motors.

Heidemarie Rochlin.

In memory of Sue McDowell.

The Carol Franc Buck Foundation.

And by the annual contributions of PBS Reno members.

(bright music) (upbeat music)