Category Archives: Poet Bloggers

The Cézannization of what wasn’t left, an excerpt from ‘Machinations’

untitled oil on canvas by Michael McAloran

untitled image , oil on canvas by © Michael McAloran 2003

histology slice 3

[ a tissue cloth so delicately coloured in mauves and purples indigo
and ivory cells become tissue whereas this isn't at all the case
all is one in febrile disequilibrium not excluding momentary states
of euphoria and relative equilibrium the macabre beauty of histology
like a travelogue along enlarged detailed drawings of funghal spores
or sporoform zoophytes white exquisitely and hypersensitively drawn
by haekcle against a black CSO corps sans organes the hubris debris
humus against which lines flightlines maps nomadologic trails micro
politic events pointillistic gestes rhizomatic ghanaean junglean infra
branchings dadaistic or ba'akan pygmee refrains establish unfold
glare and disappear amongst glacis' of ice basalt slate sapphire or
northsea grayness and mist histology is that : the slice with obsolete
or ephemereal or contingent a truth to leave the observor with her's
his's own ponderings of carcinogenic intimacy or clean tissue missive
towards the ones receptive the ones donating slices out of their body
to be mapped navigated coloured in mauves grays deep purples
to indigo ]

Text is © Aad de Gids

Recours Au Poème ; Contemporary Poetry/The Poetic World


Irish Poets and Reviewers call-out.

Recours Au Poème is edited by Matthieu Baumier. Baumier is inviting contemporary Irish poets and poet-reviewers to consider submitting to the journal. There is a contact form link available in the base of this post for those who are interested in having their poems published in a modern multi-lingual contemporary poetry journal dedicated to excellence in poetry and review.

In order to give the Irish poet, poetic-reader, reviewer, and/or essayist an idea of the breadth of the site I am adding herein the index of Recours Au Poeme for issue #26. I suggest that the aspirant poet-writer would read some of the critiques and essays before submitting.

Below the index I have included some examples of works that I enjoyed reading recently. These include an essay on Poetry In Translation by Raymond Humphreys, a review of Surrealism, Underground Tour by Paul Vermeulen and the works of the two women poets, Marissa Bell Toffoli and Dominique Hecq

I am excerpting a teeny piece of Hecq’s , Canted bone poem here as a taster. The entire poem can be read at this link

Canted Bone Poem

‘Poems grow in the dark, trace
the descent of sound
into silence

This is a song of silence

This is the sound of the bone
breaking through the skin
of a slow waisting

 Canted Bone Poem is © copyright Dominique Hecq. Published, Recours Au Poème

  Recours Au Poème, Issue # 26  (index):

Rencontre: Jean-Charles Vegliante, traducteur de La Comédie, de Dante.
Focus :  Abdourahman Waberi
Poèmes: Cécile Guivarch, Laurence Sarah Dubas, Sonia Khader, Triunfo Arciniegas, Nikola Madzirov
Chroniques: S’ils te mordent, Morlay, la chronique de Christophe Morlay autour du Manifeste pour la vie d’artiste de Bartabas.
Notes pour une poésie des profondeurs (5) : Marc Alyn en présence de la poésie, par Paul Vermeulen.
Essai : Vu de New York : Is Poetry (Scene) alive in New York (and beyond)? par Maya Herman Sekulić
Le jardin des adieux : flux et reflux de la perte ou l’abandon lumineux, sur la poésie d’Alain Duault, par Sylvie Besson
Critiques Michèle Finck, L’élégie balbutiée, par Mathieu Hilfiger
Une syllabe, battant de bois de Mary-Laure Zoss, par Pascale Trück
Vision de Roger Munier, par Fabien Desur 
MIDRASH d’Eurydice désormais de Muriel Stuckel, par David Schnee
Mon pays ce soir de Josué Guébo, par Etty Macaire

The following are a collation of links mentioned in the post above. They are  to a review, an essay on translation, and links to the poems of Dominique Hecq and Marissa Bell Tofolli.

          Related Links

Thanks to Matthieu Baumier for requesting submissions and proposals regarding the work of some contemporary Irish Poets. I thought the best way to deal with a call-out to Irish Poets was to link the site (as I have done so above here) and see if any poets wish submit to it.

Note – I joined the Recours Au Poème mailing list in recent weeks. Weeks that have been incredibly busy, and in terms of collaborative and writing work both very interesting and fruitful. I sent along a few poems for consideration, and they will be published later in the year.

 

‘We Protect the Weak’, Kimberly Campanello

 

We Protect the Weak

We protect the weak and call it love or ethics.
For the safety of our students this door
must remain closed at all times. Ani yalda tova. I am a good girl,
I tell the Israeli jeweler who is impressed with my Hebrew.
Someone nearby says, Fuck Israel. I offer, I am a bad girl. Ani yalda ra.

 
To dance is a kind of paralysis. Muscles contract
in a certain way and we call it beautiful.
The men on the beach made me think
they were dancing tango, but instead one
was helping the other will his feet to remember
 

walking. If I had withered hands and always gave you
your pen with my teeth would you think it beautiful?
For the continued safety of our money
these checkpoints must remain closed
at all times. For the quality of our progeny these legs

 
must remain closed at all times. These minds.
This mouth. This heart. Why don’t you substitute
your for these and this? See how it feels. Ani yalda ra.
Feel that. Feel me feel you. Tell me I’m good
and bad. Tova and Ra. Let us be both…
 

© Kimberly Campanello

Kimberly will be reading at the  National Concert Hall, on Thursday, December 6th 2012. Kimberly will be read her poems on the sheela-na-gigs in Strange Country, a new work by composer Benjamin Dwyer for uilleann pipes, tape, and poetry. More information and booking details can be found at www.nch.ie.

We Protect the Weak was previously published in the pamphlet, Spinning Cities (Wurm Press, 2011). Kimberly read this poem at Catechism, Readings for Pussy Riot, in Dublin.

.

 

Kimberly Campanello was born in Elkhart, Indiana. She now lives in Dublin and London. She was the featured poet in the Summer 2010 issue of The Stinging Fly, and her pamphlet Spinning Cities was published by Wurm Press in 2011 . Her poems have appeared in magazines in the US, UK, and Ireland, including  nthposition , Burning Bush II, Abridged , and The Irish Left Review .

Pic by Brian Kavanagh

Bone Orchard Poetry, a blogzine for working poets and writers

Bone Orchard Poetry is variously active on discussion sites and uses social-media well. This is what writers refer to as bloody good innovative web-use. Editor Michael McAloran keeps the blogzine brief in description, ‘ An explorative blogzine of the Bleak/ the Surreal/ the Dark/ Absurd and the Experimental. ‘ There you have it encapsulated in a single minimal statement, a blogzine dedicated to new writing that focuses on the actual work of  working writers.

I had been aware of Bone Orchard Poetry for a period of time. I decided to investigate it, and I submitted a single poem. Turns out a single poem isn’t enough. This is probably the best thing about Michael’s editorship of the Zine, I got an email back suggesting that a single poem submission doesn’t really tell the reader anything about the writer at all. He suggested I re-submit with a small grouping of poems. This I did. I sent a sequence based in a dream, actually based in the reality of a grief-experience. The poem initially had one extra verse, and there was a turn contained within that verse. I am still holding onto the original cycle in a folder, as I am very unsure of the turn issue in the poem.

Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle is based in a seven day walk through an unfamiliar/familiar park, in winter. This sequence does not always occur in waking reality, it is a dream-reality.  Maybe the rest is nightmare. I am adding a link to the entire sequence here, and a brief excerpt from ECPC(#III).

Eamon Ceannt Park Cycle

III.
There is a man in the stone.
.
The dew is playing fire at her feet,
wetting her legs.
.
A legion of rooks guard his stone.
.
© C. Murray
.

Go read the site, I note that Kit Fryatt is a contributor , she will be familiar to Poethead readers for her poems which I published here and here. I added the Bone Orchard Poetry link to Irish Poetry Imprints on my blogroll.

Other poet-contributors to Bone Orchard Poetry are, PD Lyons ,Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Kevin Reid, Gillian Prew, John W. Sexton, Alyssa Nickerson, Craig Podmore, , Michelle Greenblatt, Heller Levinson, David Scott Pointer, Natasa Georgievska, Carolyn Srygley-Moore, Anthony Seidman, Aad de Gids and David McLean

And Other Poems

This is a brief note about the And Other Poems blog which is owned and written by Josephine Corcoran. What a breath of fresh air the blog is, judging by contemporary availability of good poetry (and critique). To say that poetry is sorely neglected in the face of market-forces is a wild understatement, but more polemic anon.

“And Other Poems is simply a quiet, uncluttered place to read poems by different writers posted by Josephine Corcoran. The blog’s aim is to give readership to poems which would not otherwise be available, for instance poems no longer elsewhere online, out of print poems, poems published in print but not online, and new, unpublished poems by established writers. Poets have given permission for their work to be featured and copyrights remain with the poets.”

I had been seeing some of Josephine’s link on Twitter for a period of time, and as always was gladdened to see the advent of blogs and websites dedicated to the reader of poetry. Quite a few blogs and websites deal in modern and contemporary poetry in all its wonderful variety. Whilst some people may look on this avant-gardeism as a niche-activity, it is important that the poetry-reader can access all types of poetic-writing. It has been a while since I looked at how poets use online tools to disseminate literature  but I see a radical improvement and diversification in the area. Josephine knows her poetry which is excellent for her readers. I recommend a perusal of her blog and of  her list of poets which is wonderfully diverse. I am adding here the And Other Poems index , and of course a link to my poem i and the village (after Marc Chagall) which she kindly published on 11/09/2012.

I have never presumed that poetics are a niche-activity , but that a wholly conservative approach to critique combined with a mechanistic desire to advance contemporary fiction book-sales dominate newspaper editorials/reviews,  at least in Ireland. The fact that many readers seek poetics through varieties of means, combined with news that 30,000 people signed up to PENN State’s Modern and Contemporary Poetry Course in 2012  would suggest that market-forces are just wrong. Or actually repellent !  Editors would rather clever women review silly books, than look at poetry or actual literature.  If  poetry readers seek adequate reviews of women authors and their books they must look elsewhere than the media, hence the blogs, the small presses, the literary journals and forums dedicated to poetry.

There is a list of blogs and websites dedicated to poetry on the right sidebar of this site. Links to And Other Poems are embedded in this post and given below :

Irish Poetry Imprints (Online and Print)