Episode 07: Creating a “Haiku” Theatre with Dr. Daniel Medina

In this episode, we present Daniel Medina, a poet, painter, and musician. Medina is a public schoolteacher and an ordained minister with the United Church of Christ. American Pop Haiku and the Beat Generation influenced his poetry. He says writing and performing haiku helped him express his brokenness as an artist. His poetry, music, and paintings provide an unending palate of words, sounds, and colors, employed as dreamcatchers, and are intended to bring his memory into matter, incarnating his experience engraved into his work. He is the author of the book Kigo: Four Seasons in Haiku. Let’s hear Daniel’s thoughts on how to build self-esteem, be an authentic artist, and be a better human. Daniel founded the Atomic Theatre, a Miami-based electronica/avant-garde jazz ensemble / an eclectic group inspired by the change operations of John Cage, early UK alternative music (Joy Division, Siouxie and the Banshees, the Cure, New Order & the Psychedelic Furs), John Cale and the early Velvet Underground, the work of Sun Ra, Milford Graves, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Dark Jazz, Cabaret Voltaire, 80s Miami Freestyle, DADA, world music, the writings of Jack Kerouac, Hermann Hesse, Yann Martel, Edgar Allan Poe, Flannery O’Connor, Miguel Unamuno, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and American Transcendentalism.

Daniel’s book recommendations to our listeners include:

Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra by John Szwed

Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith by John Szwed

Where the Heart Beats John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists by Kay Larson;

The Bride and the Bachelors by Calvin Tomkins;

Piet Mondrian: A Life by Hans Janssen;

Memoirs of A Dada Drummer by Richard Huelsenbeck;

Girl in a Band: A Memoir by Kim Gordon

To contact Daniel: dmedinacc@gmail.com

Find more about Daniel Medina and Atomic Theatre

Atomic Theatre

Music by Atomic Theatre

Kigo: Four Seasons in Haiku