The Tattooed Poets Project: Alexandra Teague

Someone recently asked me where I find all of these tattooed poets. A great question, and I owe thanks to many people, for most individuals come by way of word-of-mouth from other poets. But I also reach out on my own, often sending dozens of e-mails to writers around the country, and the world. It's like shooting an arrow into the dark, one can only hope the missive strikes a target.

I was recently poring over a copy of the anthology Poetry Daily Essentials 2007 and picking poets to e-mail. I stumbled across Alexandra Teague's "House Guest" and sent her my standard "ink-query." And sure enough, she became one of the few poets I wrote to out of the blue who replied because, not only is Ms. Teague tattooed, one of them is poetry-related. As she so aptly put it, "I sort of had to reply to you."

Without further ado, here are Alexandra's tattoos:

I was inspired to get the Japanese kanji for "poetry" after seeing a pin at the Poetry Magazine table at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in 1999.



I'd been thinking about getting a tattoo and couldn't decide on a design, but as soon as I saw the kanji, I knew it was exactly right. I see it not only as a symbol of the art of poetry but also as a reminder to live poetically. I got the tattoo at a shop in Miami (I don't remember the name). I did a bit of research to confirm that the kanji was correct (since I don't know any Japanese), but I didn't have it really confirmed until several years later when a new friend, from Japan, said, "Do you know what your tattoo says?" And I said, "I hope so." Fortunately, according to her, it really does mean "poem" or "poetry."

She also shared this lovely tattoo:

The other tattoo is a couple of years old. It was done by Amy Justen at Sacred Rose Tattoo in Berkeley, California. I've always loved the ocean and wanted to live by the coast, so the California seagull is symbolic for me of my migration out West. Amy Justen has a background in fine art and does some really interesting, painterly work with white and grey, which I love, but which made some people think the tattoo was a decal when I first got it!

Be sure to head over to BillyBlog to read one of Alexandra's poems here.

Alexandra Teague’s first book of poetry, Mortal Geography, won the Lexi Rudnitsky Prize and has just been published (April 2010) by Persea Books. Her work has also appeared in Best New Poets 2008, Best American Poetry 2009, and The Yale Anthology of Younger American Poetry, as well as journals including The Missouri Review, The Iowa Review, and New England Review. She was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and has since lived in Arkansas, Missouri, Florida, Montana, Hawaii, and California. She currently teaches English at City College of San Francisco and lives in Oakland. For more information about upcoming readings and publications, visit www.alexandrateague.com.

Thanks to Alexandra for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

Rebecca's Reiki Symbols of Healing

Last week I met Rebecca, who was waiting for an Amtrak train in Penn Station.

She had these tattoos on her inner wrists:


I recognized that they were kanji, but I didn't know that they were reiki symbols.

Reiki is a Japanese healing art, and Rebecca is a certified reiki practitioner.

As part of her certification and training, she studied enough to know that these symbols are accurate and refer to graphic representations of healing. Her right wrist speaks to long distance healing, and her left wrist refers to balance and healing.

Since reiki practitioners work with their hands, it seemed fitting that she had these symbols on her wrists.

She noted, as my wife has told me about her wrist tattoo, that the pain was very intense on this part of her body and that she passed out not once, but twice, in the course of having these tattoos inked over two sittings.

The tattoos were done at Gothic Tattoo & Body Piercing in New Hampshire.

Thanks to Rebecca for sharing her healing tattoos with us here on Tattoosday!

The Crow

I haven't gotten a tattoo in a year, and have been feeling the itch. I have an appointment for this upcoming Wednesday. I decided to get two big crows with lightning bolts, they'll probably on my ribs, unless I wuss out. It's kind of a memorial tattoo for my dad, but not totally. Anyway, I'll post pictures and you guys can feel free to make fun of them as much as you want. In anticipation of my appointment, I decided to do some looking around for terrible crow tattoos. I found a lot.

Full disclosure: I was really into The Crow when I was a teenager. Here's a photo of me being totally awesome when I was 13 or 14.

I don't have any ridiculous makeup on in that photo, but I definitely went to school made-up like the crow. The movie was filmed in my hometown (Wilmington, NC) and I went on a pilgrimage to see where Brandon Lee died. I listened to the soundtrack to the movie every day. I still really enjoy the movie. Regardless of my history with the movie, my crow tattoo idea has nothing to do with the movie The Crow. These people's tattoos do. There are so many sweet crow images out there, I don't know why they picked these out....

So here you go. Awful crow tattoos!


I think this crow is supposed to be on fire? It just looks blobby to me.


This is supposed to be the Crow logo, but it's not executed well...


This one too. Plus! Bonus barbed wire armband! I love seeing terrible versions of the same thing. (See my zombie jesus and wizard posts for more)


Crow mask + tribal + cross = goldmine!


Scarred Kanji + flaming crow = bigger goldmine!



I don't understand the spacing and sizing on this. It looks like the tattoos just got slapped on completely randomly. Also the little spritzes of red and yellow are a real nice touch. What is the black blob on the left? Can anyone tell?


skldfskdjf Brandon Lee does not look like that!


And he really, really does not look like this!!!

I hope you enjoyed this confessional edition of awful tattoos. Check back next week to make fun of my crow tattoo!

These were bad enough to bring my posting back from the dead

So as I'm sure you can tell, I haven't been posting here a lot lately. I've been busy at work, and haven't really come across many new tattoos that are worth mentioning. However, I got an email a few days ago that seriously shook me up. Check out these terrible tattoos, all by the same artist working out of a "pro" shop.


Was the kanji there already, and the rest of the tattoo worked around it? Or was it all designed in one piece? Why is the kanji overlapping with the star? What is that weird black V at the top? It's all a total mystery, and it's all TERRIBLE.


This just makes me think of a pile of pubes, I'm sorry.


...... I don't even know what to say about this. It's not as terrible as the others but it just seems so... sad.