Hard Listening
During the pandemic, Alison Luterman started taking voice lessons in order to sing and collaborate with her musician husband. She did not start out with
Alison Luterman grew up in a suburb of Boston, the oldest of four children. She had her head in a book from the time she learned how to read, and got hooked on poetry when she was six years old. She is third-generation American, the great-granddaughter of immigrants who were allowed into this country at a time when they desperately needed it. She’s the inheritor of that privilege, and she doesn’t forget it.
She studied poetry at Emerson College and at UMass Amherst where her favorite teachers were Bill Corbett (Emerson), and Julius Lester (UMass.) She fell in love with Frank O’Hara and the whole New York School of poets, an influence that continues to inform her work.
After graduating, Alison joined VISTA (Volunteers In Service to America) and was sent to Miami where she worked with Haitian refugees, learned Creole, and worked as an ESL teacher and a translator for asylum cases. Returning to the Boston area, she continued to work with the Haitian community for years while attending voodun ceremonies and writing a bad novel.
After she moved to California in 1990, she worked as a freelance journalist, massage therapist, HIV test counselor, harm reduction educator for IV needle using drug addicts, drama teacher, actor in a children’s theater troupe, poet-in-the-schools, playwright-in-juvenile hall, and adult education teacher. She began to publish her poetry regularly in The Sun Magazine, and has taught at Esalen and Omega Institutes, New College, Holy Names College, The Writing Salon, and writing conferences across the country. Currently she offers one-on-one coaching as well as classes on Zoom.
For many years, Alison performed with the improv troupe Wing It! She had always sung in choruses, but during the pandemic she began studying singing with a teacher and continues to this day. She’s in a band with her husband and some friends but they don’t have a name and have not as yet played a gig anywhere. They just have fun practicing in the living room.
Her previous books are The Largest Possible Life, See How We Almost Fly, Desire Zoo, In the Time of Great Fires, and the e-book Feral City (now available on Audible.com.) She has also written a half dozen plays, including two musicals. She can be reached through www.alisonluterman.net .
During the pandemic, Alison Luterman started taking voice lessons in order to sing and collaborate with her musician husband. She did not start out with
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