Mapping the Artist: Elva Lauter

Elva Lauter and Kathabela Wilson

Elva Lauter is a passionate lyrical poet, playful as a five year old, yet a sophisticated and accomplished artist and poet.

Elva carries us away to a world of language and colors, and suspends us in a world of light and transformation.

By Kathabela Wilson

A microscope on the poet

Your poetry has a natural magical quality. It invites us to walk with you, as if we are ​inside your imagination​, where does this magic come from?

I’ve always felt that Imagination itself is my companion, my friend, who rises out of the reality of natural beauty. I am surrounded by the “green” of nature. It springs, over and over again, as new beginnings in my poems, my paintings and the fused glass jewelry I create. These three arts are fused in my life, words, colors and shapes. ​I​ name my paintings​, ​and have written poems to go with some of them. The fused glass pendants I make are also ​linked​ with the paintings and poems, because of their color and rhythm.

A telescope on the poet

Looking back over your early landscape, what do you see?

I grew up on a ranch in a small town on the Oregon coast. When I was 8 or 9 I used to slide down the roof of our pig shed onto the back of Patsy the pig. She didn’t mind, and just wandered around with me on her back. My father was a veterinarian, and I often accompanied him on his rounds. Later he got me my own horse. This is an example of my early adventures in what I call “Elva’s Wonderland”. Is it big or small? I think it is both. I believe that I am part of everything and it is part of me — a leaf, flowers, sky, ocean. I grew up in the natural world, and it continues to follow me today. I love life, its surprising wonders, creatures, people, different cultures.

Mapping the poet

I know you and your husband Hal travel and explore together. Your poetry echoes the sounds from afar, intriguingly, mysteriously, how has this affected your work?

I have been to many countries, but the experience of ​living ​a year in Japan (plus 2 other visits there) affected my poetry and painting especially. ​Near our home in Tokyo was a garden and teahouse. ​The garden ​was originally the home of Basho the poet​. ​I visited often. A pond there was supposedly the place where the famous (green) frog jumped in! I remember looking out from a teahouse on a hillside in Kyoto… fall leaves turned the landscape into a field of orange and yellow flames.
My jewelry art and poems still keep th​is same​ fire alive with wonder.

A compass to the poet

It seems you had the Japanese masters as teachers, and what of your work, influences and inspirations here in the US and especially Pasadena?

I took a class ​at the University of Washington ​from Theodore Roethke, a poet enthralled with the sound of words. Like Basho’s frog, I hear ​his rhythms​ ​like ​echoes in my own writing. In Pasadena, I became a docent at the Pacific Asia Museum and the Gamble House where cultures fused and influenced the architecture of my own art and poetry. Being a professor of English at Glendale College​, ​while my husband Hal taught philosophy at Occidental College​, created a dynamic mix for exploring our world together. and sharing the poetic journey.

It feels natural now, to have created my first book. Here I have begun to gather the decades with a lively wonder.

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! Elva’s book, “Being She”, is available from Finishing Line Press.