The Tattooed Poets Project: Ruth Kohtz Shares a Poema

Today's tattoo comes from Ruth Kohtz:


Ruth explains:

I got the "poema" tattoo on my birthday, November 9, in 2007, by Nik Lensing at Fluid Ink in St. Paul, Minnesota. I made the appointment about 2 hours before I got it, and I had the design all printed out already.

I had been out of college for about six months and was struggling with lots of existential "what am I doing?" kind of stuff. I have spoken Spanish and written poetry for several years, and the word "poema" ("poem") expresses that I am writing my own life into existence - there's no one way a life has to be. It's a poem.

And I got it on the back of my neck so I wouldn't have to work a job where I couldn't have a tattoo on the back of my neck. Someday I'm going to get "Ruth-less" across my knuckles...

I also have a small blue star on the inside of my right arm because it is said that poet Dorothy Parker (of the Algonquin Round Table in the 1930s) had a similar tattoo back when it was not quite so popular...

Thanks to Ruth for sharing her tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

Please head over to BillyBlog here to see her performing one of her poems.

The Tattooed Poets Project: My First Tattoo

I'm going to be a greedy little poet/blogger today and share one of my tattoos (and a tattoo-themed sestina on BillyBlog). We're in our final week of National Poetry Month, and I thought it would be a good time to hop on the bandwagon.

I was hoping to post a tattoo that I've recently had done, but the artist has respectfully requested that I wait to post it until after it has been fully completed.

So we'll head back to 2003 and my first tattoo, on my right bicep:


Back then, I was not so involved in tattooing, and I didn't really understand the process. I thought you just went to a shop, picked some flash, and had it inked. Had I known then what I know now, I may have approached the experience a little differently.

The first tattoo is a representation of my oldest daughter, Jolee. She has a Hawaiian middle name, "Lineka," which one English-Hawaiian, Hawaiian-English dictionary told me means "lynx". Not that there are any lynx roaming around Honolulu, but she certainly has the personality and beauty of a lynx, and it just seemed right.

A tattoo artist named "Sickie," who was working out of Body Arts Studio in Bay Ridge, took the flash, modified it by removing all the extraneous bamboo and other background art, and created this version of the wildcat.

He was very proud of himself over the way the eyes came out. I tend to agree. They're pretty cool. Lest you think my younger daughter feel left out, she is also represented on me in the form of a tattoo, previously posted here.

Thanks for indulging me. Now head on over to BillyBlog and read my sestina.

Gilding - temporary body art for children and adults.

Here is a photo of gilding using turquoise, white and green glitter gel to match a little girls dress. Tubes of glitter gel are usually available at the henna table at The Midnight Sun so that children can enjoy the henna experience for a day... without any worries about smudging the pattern or staining their clothes.

In this example, the design is a traditional flower pattern. The colors used in this temporary body paint make the simple pattern shine. For those new to henna tattoo, please note this is not a photo of a henna tattoo. Henna tattoo is not available in colors... however, it can also be gilded.

To see samples of gilded henna tattoo, visit The Gilded Henna Tattoo page on my website.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Claire Askew's Two Naomis

Today's tattoos come from Claire Askew, a poet and editor who lives in Edinburgh, Scotland:


Claire explains:

My tattoo was inked by Roberto Seifert, who works out of Herzblut Tattoo in Leipzig, Germany. However, he tattooed me while doing a guest-stint at the fantastic Tattoo Zoo (run by Gerry Kramer) in Victoria, Canada. It was summer 2008 and I originally went into the parlour with my boyfriend, who was getting his second piece of Tattoo Zoo ink. Seeing the place and talking with the artists, I decided I also wanted to be tattooed there, and took the plunge -- this was my first tattoo.

The design is based on part of a painting by Alan Aldridge, most famous for his Beatles sleeve art and illustrations. I like the sleeping faces because they're innocent, but because they're inside flowers there's also something slightly sinister about them, like Venus Fly Traps. Roberto worked on them a fair bit before inking them, and the two are ever so slightly different from one another -- one looks very pure and sweet


while the other looks more menacing, like she's plotting something.

I have a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde character so this really seems to fit.

I am planning to expand this into a full chest piece in time, although currently I am enjoying their delicacy and sparseness. I've nicknamed them the Naomis -- when I had them done, I had just finished an academic dissertation on the poet Allen Ginsberg, and had become fascinated by his mother Naomi, an amazing woman, but a sufferer of paranoid schizophrenia. Perhaps fittingly, they got her name.

Thanks to Claire for sharing her tattoos with us here on Tattoosday.

Please head over to BillyBlog to read one of her poems here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Rachel McKibbens' Bookish Knuckle Tattoos

Today's tattoos were submitted by Rachel McKibbens, who knows, among others, Cheryl, whose beautiful tattoo, appeared here previously. These are, in fact, the first knuckle tattoos appearing on the Tattooed Poets Project:


Rachel, who is almost fully-sleeved, writes:

I got this tattoo on April 30th, 2006, at the True Blue Tattoo studio while visiting Austin, TX. [Work from True Blue has appeared on Tattoosday twice before, click here to see]. The artist was Jon Reed. Next to my "ditches" [the inner elbows] this was the most painful tattoo I've gotten to date. I was running out of space on my arms and decided to finally go balls out and get my knuckles done. I was initially going to get " a s d f j k l ; " to represent the home keys of a typewriter, but I realized, since it would have to be upside down and backwards, it wouldn't match up with the actual fingers that rested on them.

At the time, I was teaching poetry at Bellevue Hospital, and I was always encouraging my kids to read. I would give them the books off my shelves, go to The Strand and buy in bulk, etc. I needed them to feel like they weren't confined to the hospital or their group home. One of the writing exercises was to have them come up with my knuckle tatts - two four-letter words that weren't dirty. They came up with some doozies, but nothing that really fit.

I finally came upon "book worm" after my friend Leah's boyfriend suggested it. It was such a logical choice, but the two words never came to me in the months I was searching. It is one of my favorite tattoos. And it's the first thing people see (besides the teardrop below my eye) and, since knuckle tatts have come to have this "tough guy" persona, people always laugh when they see it.

If you like knuckle tattoos, I encourage people to visit Knuckletattoos.com, where I occasionally contribute a piece I've spotted in New York. I would have sent Rachel there, but they posted a Book Worm tattoo knuckle piece here.

Thanks to Rachel for submitting these here.

Please head over to BillyBlog to read one of her poems here.

The Tattooed Poets Project: Craig Arnold - Ἔρως and ψυχή

Today's tattoos come to us from Craig Arnold, who I found by way of J.D. McClatchy (who is un-inked, but suggested I contact Craig).

He sent these to me from Yakushima in Japan, which, according to Craig, "has lots of Princess Mononoke landscapes but very little internet/phone service".

Craig has two Greek words inscribed on his arms:


Craig explains:

"Both are Greek words: the right arm (Ἔρως) is eros, the left arm (ψυχή) is psyche. They were acquired almost exactly a year apart from each other, right arm in August 2003, left in 2004, both at Lost Art Tattoo in Salt Lake City, Utah. I believe the artist was Dean ... He designed the lettering.

In retrospect there's maybe not much of a story here, but I'll tell what there is of it.

That summer, my then-partner and I were in the early stages of splitting up, after many years together. It used to be -- maybe it still is, in some quarters -- that people got tattoos together at the start of a relationship, to express the beginning of a shared enterprise. But we were never much for going about things in the right order. So, we got tattoos together as the end approached, to remind us of our "irreconcilable differences." On my right arm I got eros -- desire, especially sexual, libido, profane love, but also creation; I think of Whitman's 'urge and urge and urge, / Always the procreant urge of the world.' And on her left, she has agape -- I suppose you could call it divine love, Christian or selfless love, unconditional love,

After a while, though, Eros got lonely and acquired a Psyche. In Greek, psyche can mean many things -- breath or life, spirit, soul, mind and self (thus, psychology). In some parts of Greece it's still used to mean butterfly. But Psyche is also the human girl who falls in love with the god Eros, in the fairy-tale that Apuleius tells in The Golden Ass, one of the earliest versions of Beauty & the Beast. The story is about what comes between them and how they finally succeed in getting back together; I think of it as one of the foundational myths, an allegory for the ways in which Desire and Will depend on and fulfill each other."

Thanks to Craig for sharing his tattoos with us here on Tattoosday. To read one of Craig's poems, please hop on over to BillyBlog here.

Henna Tattoo Design for the Back of the Hand.

It is always lovely to be able to create a henna design that compliments the natural beauty of each client.

As you can see, LuAnn is wearing a very lovely ring, and her henna pattern was created to both compliment her hand and to draw attention to her jewelry.

Using a hand rolled henna cone, a very find\e henna powder ( Jamila Henna ) and a smooth, rich henna paste made with essential oils, a bit of lemon juice and my own blend of "henna tea" it was easy to quickly create this traditional henna pattern.

If you are just learning to henna, please be sure to experiment with your paste. When I first started to make henna paste, I made a much thicker paste than I do now. Adding a bit of fenugreek to the henna tea really helps to make a cohesive paste. As well, fresh henna makes a lovely "gummy" paste.

The 2008 Jamila henna harvest is a super fine henna powder that gives a great color.