When Eliet Brookes wrote her first poem in 1977, she says the experience was a lot like throwing up.

"I didn't know what it (her first poem) was or where it came from," says the 38-year-old poet and artist. "Afterward, I remember sitting in a sort of dizzy confusion for the rest of the afternoon. It was an epiphany."

Brookes, who recently released a full-length poetry/music CD called "The Miles Left Over," started combining words and music after receiving a guitar for her 12th birthday.

"It started in junior high with Joni Mitchell, Rickie Lee Jones, Jim Morrison, Patti Smith," she says. "These were 'rock stars' but to me they were poets playing music. It made too much sense. Poetry is already music so why not add a melody to feed it?"

However, Brookes misplaced her guitar during one of her many moves -- she claims to have lived in 34 different places after leaving home at age 16 -- and she didn't pick up the instrument again until about a year ago.

"The Miles Left Over" is a dramatic collection of work. Brookes' voice is clear and strong, with a hint of vulnerability. Her words are truthful, shameless and seemingly focused on the past and present yet longing for a non-linear existence.

"Poetry is my emotional response to the world and also my reinvention of the world. My themes are not new: beauty, despair, madness," she says.

Friends and local musicians Paul Setser, Richard Pinney and The Aimless Blades provide the perfect musical background that's complementary to Brookes' words and never once overpowers her voice.

Brookes, who is also a visual artist currently creating sculpture out of found objects, is one of the judges for OMC's Milwaukee Poetry Contest. She will also perform with a band at Linneman's on Nov. 22.

"Performance is just a natural extension. You want the words to be seen and heard. They are elemental children. Sometimes they are quiet darlings, other times they throw tantrums," she says.

Touched

By Eliet Brookes

Push your cattle words onto the freeway
Over the tongue and onto the farthest road
With the white deer and the laughing hyena
Or outer space this isn't funny
This war of oil and hamburgers
This war of shifting W's