Q&A with Dank Phart the Pirate Poet

Peace on Earth. It’s a term we’ve all heard, maybe some of us have even tried to contribute to it. We may think it’s impossible to accomplish alone, but Matty Bovard, or Dank Phart the Pirate Poet thinks otherwise. He can bet you a million dollars that he can make Peace on Earth in under a minute. You’d be surprised that he’s right. He can indeed make Peace on Earth in under a minute. and that’s why he’s launching the “P.O.E.M,” Peace on Earth Movement. 

“It was the summer of 2011 and I was camping with some friends at the Coralville Reservoir. I was down on the beach by the lake and the thought just hit me that to make peace on earth you can write a peace sign on the earth,” Dank Phart said. “I walked up to the campsite and asked my friends if they wanted to see peace on earth.”

You can join the movement by performing his hit poem, “Seed Bomb of Love:  How to make peace on earth in under a minute, a lesson in poetry magic.” Film yourself performing the poem, post it to all your social medias with the hashtag #PeaceFoolMotherLover and then challenge a friend. Donate $1 to make your impact go even further. There’s no deadline, but he is running the campaign for 77 days. Click *here* to see the campaign video.

“I would like to see the peace on earth movement last for generations seeding our planet with love,” Dank Phart said. “Alone we’re but a drop of water upon a thirsty desert but together we are the ocean that feeds the water cycle of the entire planet.”

We did a little Q&A with Dank Phart, you can learn more about the movement and who he is below.

When/how did the idea for the P.O.E.M. come to you?

My thought process has always been playful with imagery and language. It was the first sign to me that I was a poet. An example of this, is the word ‘mind.” When I think of it in relation to the third eye and the letter ‘i’ in the word, I see the potential for it to be meyend, which represents the higher mind guided by the third eye. Many of my poems can’t be fully understood unless seen as the word play breaks apart the language in a way that wouldn’t make straight forward sense in many cases. The concept of peace on earth came to me back when I was still living in Iowa City, IA where I went to the University of Iowa. It was the summer of 2011 and I was camping with some friends at the Coralville Reservoir. I was down on the beach by the lake and the thought just hit me that to make peace on earth you can write a peace sign on the earth. I walked up to the campsite and asked my friends if they wanted to see peace on earth. 

How long have you been teaching this poem?

I don’t remember exactly when I started teaching it in earnest. I do have an earlier off the cuff video of me teaching the poem during my first time at Harmony Park in 2014, so I have for sure been teaching it at least that long. I’ve likely been doing it since 2011 when I first had the idea for the concept but my memory doesn’t have a clear vision of when I really started teaching it. 

What does “Peace on Earth” look like in your mind?

Peace on earth looks, to me, like systems designed with organic flows of energy taken into account. We’re manufacturing more products than we as a planet can consume and much of it goes to waste, which is just energy that hasn’t been properly used. In human biology the waste is urine and feces: both of these when managed properly can be put to use within a closed loop system. Our current system is based on extraction of resources while putting as little as possible back into the system to achieve an ever increasing profit margin. A business in the current paradigm needs to meet quarterly gains and if those gains aren’t met it is considered unsuccessful. Why is meeting the needs of its employees and sustaining itself while serving a mission of providing a beneficial service or content not successful? How much money is enough? At what point is it just a pissing contest at the expense of the rest of the ecosystem? We can transform our systems through a philosophical understanding and integrate it into our established infrastructure to create a future that doesn’t require us to tear down the existing one. Peace will come through people getting their basic needs met. From there with a belly full they will be able to make decisions not based on instincts of survival but from more nuanced places as they can begin to explore their passions. When we are all voluntarily living our lives and not feeling yoked by societal expectations our lives will come from a place of “getting to” instead of “having to” which will transform society into a place rooted in joy.  For too long have we lived under societies rod bending us to tasks that insulted our very being. Yes life requires work, but it must be work that sparks our spirit.

What’s your hope for this project? 

The hope of this project is that it will cross all international borders and languages, to be a seed to connect our human family back to the one thing that we all have in common; this planet as the force that sustains us. The vision that swirls upon my mind is after the 77 days there are a minimum 1 million people that have done the #PeaceFoolMotherLover challenge, seeding this garden home with their loving intentions. From there, they teach those close to them and those they encounter upon their journey spiraling this metaphysical seed to all areas of the planet. Until one day we all remember that there’s no community without “u and i.” If another struggles then you to struggle and we all struggle and always will in some fashion. Alone these struggles are unbearable but if we all support each other in the struggle then there’s no weight we can’t carry. 

What’s the story behind your pen name?

This story is the introduction to my first full length book of poetry “heART rEvolution,” due out late this year. It was fall Iowa, City 2009 and I was hanging out in my apartment with some friends. One of my friends, whom I had just met that day, and I were talking about how hilarious it would be to be on stage ripping massive farts into the microphone leaving everyone in the audience slack jaw in wonderment. Another friend on the other side of the room said  “Bovard, you smoke so much pot you fart dank. Your dank fart. I can smell them at my house all the way across town.” From there it just stuck and I started going by it as a badge of honor in the name of cannabis and the psychedelic rEvolution. Looking back on it I’ve come to call it a Gonzo Mystic Naming ceremony, which is an unintended ceremony where the individuals open themselves up through forms of conscious alteration, that is anchored by previous experience giving them knowledge of the territory thus able to traverse the strange without having a freak out, that allows them to be a pure channel of transference. The name was originally Dank Fart. Shortly after I moved to Colorado I was at a friends and he introduced me to his roommate as Dank Fart and his roommate replied “is fart with a ph?” I replied “It is now.”  (I know this isn’t grammatically correct but not sure what is)  From then on it was Pretty Hot and Really Talented. Then last year at Arise 2019 I was getting food at the Rainbow Lightening staff kitchen and my friend Leaf who was serving me introduced me to his fellow crew as Dank P.H.A.R.T. explaining that it was P.H.A.R.T. meaning Pretty Hot and Reasonably Talented and so it was. 

 Where are you from?

I grew up in a small Iowa farm town that is also the epicenter of Transcendental Meditation, the meditation technique that the Beatles went to India to study with Maharishi. I grew up  surrounded by farm fields mixed with an international culture that was highly philosophical, intellectual and artistic. Then spent 6 years in Iowa City where I went to the University of Iowa and received a degree in theatre. I always knew I wouldn’t be staying in Iowa as my love for cannabis was not looked upon kindly by the local authorities. On September 17, 2011 the day I got off probation for cannabis in Iowa I moved to Boulder, CO where I’ve been ever since working in the regional art and psychedelic scene. 

When did you realize you were an artist?

I grew up around art with both of my parents being talented artists in their own right and it was something that just happened. I don’t know exactly when it was that I realized I myself as one. I did a little theatre when I was in elementary school and always felt called to the stage. In high school while watching SNL I decided that I could do sketch comedy and tried out for the improv team on the speech team. The coaches were stoked that I tried out and were mystified that a football player would be on the speech team. It was around that same time that I discovered I was a good creative writer by trying to piss off my English teacher. He would give assignments and  I would write absurdist essays that had no bearing on reality, an example was a research essay that was supposed to have three sources sighted as the place where information was found, I cited only myself and wrote about how Al Qaeda was trying to take over America through reality television. I was expecting to get an F but he gave me a B. In that class the teacher had us free-write every day in notebooks and that became a habit. It was in my freshman year of college that I realized I was a poet. In a remedial English class that went over the different areas of literature there was a poetry section. As part of that section there was a packet passed out of quotes from heavy intellectual thinkers from the past such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Freud, Emmerson and the likes. The quotes were about the fire, passion, madness, darkness, ecstasy of life that were the fuel for poetry. As I read the quotes I thought to myself “I think that’s what I do” and from that moment on I called myself a poet. I think the artist always was and it wasn’t a recognition of myself as an artist it was just a recognition that expressing myself authentically was what I had always been doing. I think the root of art is authentic expression. You can be a master having perfected all the notes, strokes, rhyme but have no feeling creating compost or you can be totally untrained but be totally in tune with the feelings that will create masterpieces. Those are both extremes I see a true master as one that is able to fully feel while knowing the strokes they place. An example of this that wouldn’t necessarily be called art is Bruce Lee when he’s in a fight. 

When did you decide to start pursuing poetry more seriously?

The moment I read that packet of quotes about poetry by major thinkers of the past there was no going back. I didn’t have a clue of what I would be doing with it but I was forever a poet and it was beyond my control. It was soon after I graduated college that I was thinking to myself about how to make a successful career as an artist, specifically a poet. Having heavily studied the Beats of the 1950’s specifically Allen Ginsberg and his work promoting the whole community, I was struck with the idea that if I cultivated a successful art community then plugged myself into it, I would find success. From that moment on I started organizing events and working at as many festivals as possible.

What is it that you really love about poetry? 

What I love about poetry is that it is connected directly to spirit through its intimate connection to breath. I see the most basic poem as the breath itself. If you look up the etymology of the word spirit it directly goes back to breath (Wiktionary, n.d.). “From Middle English spirit, from Old French espirit (“spirit”), from Latin spīritus (“breath; spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peys- (“to blow, breathe”). Compare inspire, respire, transpire, all ultimately from Latin spīrō (“I breathe, blow, respire”). Displaced native Middle English gast (“spirit”) (from Old English gāst (“breath, soul, spirit”)), whence modern English ghost. Doublet of sprite.”

Where can people find your art? 

As of now I’ve got profiles on all major social media outlets Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr. All under the name Dank P.H.A.R.T. You can also find me on the up and coming network Nectar.earth again under Dank P.H.A.R.T. 

How can people support your art?

The best way to support my art at the moment is to participate in the #PeaceFoolMotherLover challenge to make peace on earth and contribute $1 to the campaign of which 33% will to organizations supporting the ideas and stories to cultivate an equitable future for all. Subscribing to my Patreon patreon.com/dankphart or following and commenting on my social media channels.