Call for poetry, reviews and essays...Issue 2 Autumn 2011 poetandgeek.com

Call for poetry (4 poems or less), images and reviews (literary and technical) for Issue 2 Autumn 2011 of poetandgeek.com online magazine. Deadline for copy is July 30th 2011.


You can view Issue 1 at www.poetandgeek.com.

Essays, by prior discussion with the Editor only, send an outline of your ideas on poetry,place and/or informatics marked FAO Bridget Khursheed. Please note that editorial policy values the experimental, fresh and thoughtful in language and form; don't send us an ode to your i-pod. Having said that we love poets who surprise us with their use of traditional form and welcome dialect poems and translations.

Contact for submissions and all other enquiries is poetandgeek at gmail.com.

22nd World Congress of Poets (Larissa, Greece June-July 2011)

22nd World Congress of Poets 2011 held in the heart of Greece, from the 29th June to the 3rd July 2011, in Larissa.

200 poets from over 40 countries; the emphasis is a little different in this Greek conference. It offers to the participants a social and recreational program that includes "1st Mediterranean Poetry Festival", traditional Greek night, visits to interesting sights in the Periphery of Thessaly, banquets with music and dancing, etc. There is also an opportunity for poetry reading.

More information on the composition of the event here:

http://www.wcp-greece2011.org/

Or go direct to http://www.facebook.com/wcp2011 and consult with conference president Dimitris P. Kraniotis

The thin black line

John Hollander identifies the most popular verse form in America today as:

a kind of free verse

without any special

constraints on it except

those imposed by

the notion-also

generally accepted-that

the strip the lines

make as they run

down the page (the

familiar strip with the

jagged

right-hand edge) not

be too wide

I love Hollander for this definition and for the fact he wrote his book Rhyme's Reason, from which this quote is taken, in 1981. The free verse form is still so familiar today. And maybe with Kindle, netbooks and phones being used to compose will become all the more so.

Hollander of course is too subtle not to concede that great poetry can be produced looking like the above but ask yourself when writing.

However inspired, are your lines that length just to avoid being "too wide"?

The rain in the mic

My bout of hayfever (not an asset to a woodsman) turned to a chest infection so my time in Birling Wood has had to be cut short. I think the hot spell brought all the trees in the Borders out at once. After the icy winter, that much pollen air was a shock to even my outdoor lungs.

Bought a scarf and carried on with it wrapped round my face like a smoggy city dweller but no good.

However I persisted until the rain came. Sound equipment doesn't like rain nor the recorder. No good input. Couldn't breathe so have been staying in one of my NFA shelters. Here I have been woken by willow warblers and pied flycatchers, a deer at my windowsill - the house is derelict - but I am able to stay now and then on sufferance amongst the sheep feed. Thankfully the door is good and tight so rodents are kept to a minimum. It's a red squirrel area too and one can be seen most mornings in what would have been the garden ground. Forget-me-knots, gooseberry and currants still remind you of the previous inhabitants.

I stretch my legs up the field of this glacial valley. And there are always hares. Standing like small people and still, they watch me coming. Some people say hares are a witch's form and when they look at you in a red morning light, well, I can't help wondering if that is true.

Alaíde Foppa tweet poetry

Guatemalan writer, university teacher, women's right's activist and poet Alaíde Foppa (born in 1914 or some sources say 1932 - missing presumed dead in 1980). She “disappeared” in December that year when she returned from exile in Mexico to visit her family in Guatemala. It is presumed that she was murdered by the Guatemalan government. In the context of her death, the lines of her poem Wound are all the more powerful. Read her work and remember her.

PoetGeek poetandgeek.net 

Your life hurts me son like a recently opened wound They think you broke from me because you were born the cord invisible arrow in my side

10 seconds ago Favorite Reply Delete

This is from a poem called Wound, I am guessing Herida in the original Spanish. There seems to be no archive or resource for Foppa. I would love to see the poem in its original form; please send it to me if you have it. It is unclear who the translation I have is by but here it is in full.

Wound

Your life hurts me, son
like a recently opened wound.
They think that you have detached yourself from me
simply because you were born.
The cord is invisible:
an arrow in my side,
a ripened fruit
that does not abandon the tree,
a tender branch
threatened.
You are weaker than my hand,
more delicate than my eyes,
smoother than my lips.
You made me so vulnerable
that I feel fear:
your life depends on
a gust of wind,
whoever touches you lightly
hurts you,
at your side,
in the tepid folds
of your bed, death sleeps.
And even though you are
more mine than my hand,
oh my most tender little branch,
perhaps I won't know how to defend you.



More on Foppa and her poems can be found here: http://amediavoz.com/foppa.htm

More on the hunt to find out what became of Foppa here: http://www.ifex.org/guatemala/2010/11/23/donde_esta_alaide_foppa/

The poem is anthologised in the always rewarding anthology (out of print: why?) These are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women:(White Pine Press) edited by Marjorie Agosín.

Neologisms and national pride

Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish 19th poet and novelist, is an unexpected hero of the nationalist movements in many countries. He provided inspiration to poets and writers by leading the way in expanding language through the use of new words. In his case, often borrowed from Scots or words specific to the tradition of the Scottish Borders.

Some words and phrase he uses include:

Blackmail
Grotty
Elfish
Bartizan
Bluff
Raid
Borderer,
Glamour
Canny
Caught red-handed
Cold shoulder
Blood is thicker than water
Flotsam and jetsam
Go berserk
Infra dig
Lock, stock and barrel
Nail your colours to the mast
Savoir faire
Strain at the leash
The apple of my eye
The back of beyond
Tongue in cheek
Wide berth

Poets who used him as an exemplar in the push to enrich their own languages include František Čelakovský the Czech poet (who also translated Scott's poem Lady of the lake) and the Russian Alexander Pushkin.

Chus Pato: muse as machine

an inner voice, we listen to this singular voice; we await orders, await instructions from this inner voice

but an internalized voice is made up of every written text, read by those eyes-voice, made up of all we've spoken of, of all that is not verbal (audible)

we await orders; is this how we write?

we say the poem is inspired
we listen to the inner voice (the poet's)
we await orders, instructions from this incarcerated voice, so inspired, of the poet

we thank the deity for the concordance between symbol and thing, between language and things

from Charenton translated from the Galego by Erín Moure

More on Chus Pato here http://www.shearsman.com/pages/books/authors/patoA.html at Shearsman who also sell a translation of this poem.