The Gestures
Poetry is about something. It is neither wordplay for its own sake nor navelgazing. I believe with the ancients that “as above, so below”; but for me “below” is the self and “above” is history, which includes the future.
Indefatigable
These pieces form part of a project I'm currently working on in which I imagine myself as an island.
An Encounter
I always went to the edge of the woods when I needed to be alone. On the far side, before it dropped down to the railway line, there was a low dry-stone wall, crumbling away, that made the perfect seat. It was incredibly peaceful; you could hear yourself think, work things out in your head. Once an hour, there was a roar of the high-speed train from the city, like a round of applause.
Unwanted Colour Schemes
All this is very much existential poetry in its various forms. The poems are layered and intellectually meant to involve the reader - one which I hope would allow him or her to enter a world which stretches the imagination, opens up new perspectives and alternative fields of creativity.
A Matter of Opinion
Up in the state capital, the legislature was debating a bill designed to make it tougher for workers injured on the job to become millionaires. Robinson A. Rocker, whose carpal-tunnel syndrome accounted for his fervent opposition to the proposal, was—to the further detriment of his wrists—typing a spirited editorial in favour of it when Bev, the newsroom receptionist, poked her head in the fishbowl, as everybody, excluding him, called his small glass-enclosed office.
Artefacts of Articulation
These poems came about in the course of my ongoing efforts to understand consciousness. The lines aspire to an Escherian geometry (unsettling familiarity--of seeing, thinking, and feeling--in ways) often associated with poetry. I feel my poetry is intimate--reflecting conscious experience itself within itself.
A Moment in Time
Geraldine Fleming retired early from an all-consuming career due to ill health. Bereft of purpose in her new life she found herself drawn back into past interests. This newfound freedom allows Geraldine to renew her interest in creative writing. She is a member of the North Coast Writers Group in Northern Ireland and enjoys writing both prose and poetry.
Sophie Cabot Black: “Begin the story as if you knew the horse”
Sophie Cabot Black caught my attention some time ago. There is an unknown world in her verses, an immense and itinerant doubt.
Somniloquy
This selection of poems deals with dream/nightmare sequences I experienced a couple of years ago. I felt the need to write down what happened in my sleep due to the strange nights happening so often. Sometimes, reality finds itself in a blur.
Highlights from the 2021 Miami Book Fair
Some fine contemporary poets reading their work: Devon Walker-Figueroa, Amanda Moore, Teresa K. Miller, Trevor Ketner, W. J. Herbert, Forrest Gander, Kwame Dawes, Shara MacCallum, Carol Muske-Dukes, Jill Bialosky, Achy Obejas, and Sally Keith. Enjoy!
Laguna de Don Pedro and other poems
A selection of mystical poems by Rowena Hill, a Venezuela-based poet, translator and researcher.
A Romp in the Bookish Dark of Technocracy
A review and riposte to “The Selling and Self-Regulation of Contemporary Poetry” by JT Welsch.
Autobiography of a Book
“Autobiography of a Book” is the story of a book willing itself into existence. Every word “Book” brings it closer to its dream of being what it claims to be, a real, honest-to-goodness book.
Jean Paul Sartre’s Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Badge Maker
This was written after remembering a gallery show by the fashion label Boudicca. Visitors were given white badges to wear, which were sprayed with the label's signature perfume, Wode, initially making the badge blue, which then slowly disappeared as if by magic, leaving nothing but the white badge plus the scent.
Afterlives
The inspiration for these two poems comes from the nature of time and the inner workings of the natural world, from the subatomic to the cosmological.
Bad For Glass
A deep dive into the literary puddle. Water has long been an elemental trope throughout literature, for the moving target of the swimmer, a medium of agency and transition; for the spectator, a fateful mirror, an abyss that both reflects and absorbs.
Slate Petals, Untravelling, and the Kazimir Effect
Poetry of Life - Project Jupiter
Penteract Press focuses on exploring the structural properties of poetry, promoting innovative constraint-based and visual poetry, as well as works that explore traditional verse forms. This article showcases three Penteract authors: Anthony Etherin, Mary Frances, and Christian Bök.
BOOK LAUNCH: The 2020s: An Age of Conversation
Today is a proud day for Mercurius, for it is the day we launch our first printed version of the magazine. And wow, what a journey it has been!
Grey Matter: Three Poems by Adam Steiner
These poems are reimaginings of ordinary everyday scenes dissected into trace elements of sand, brick, flesh, earth and how they become more animated and visceral to the eye if we give them the time of looking and reflection.
Forrest Gander: At Which Point Without any Lurching Commencement
Be With, 2019 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Poetry, is a deep, blinding and stark book in which the poet recites his pain in the mirror of his wife's death. See below some poems from that authentic and voracious collection, along with a recording I made for The Nude Maja in 2016.
The never-ending quest…
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