Robin Ouzman Hislop

Robin Ouzman Hislop is co-editor at of Motherbird.com and Artvilla.com where he also publishes Poetry Life & Times.   His recent publication of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk, was published by Aquillrelle.com. Buy All the Babble of the Souk by Robin Ouzman Hislop at Amazon or Lulu....... Read more

Robin Hislop reads Amparo Arróspide´s Poem Can´t All Poets. Arrangement by Dave Jackson. Guitar Andy Derryberry

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* A poem by Amparo Arróspide, from “En el oído del viento” (Baile del Sol, 2016). 
Hers and Robin Ouzman´s translation.

***
Can't all poets 
get a PhD in synesthesia
by the University of Columba in New York?

Can´t they harvest medallions under the moon?

Can´t they work as professors of Punic Sciences?
As kindergarten teachers, can´t they work?
Can´t they translate their 14th century Chinese 
concubine colleagues?

Can´t they afford to pay for
their third self-published volume? 

Can´t all poets live on air?

Can't they rummage, deconstruct , snoop
build for themselves a submerged house
inhabit a crystal palace?

Can´t they repeat over and over the unsaid
incite questions of ethical and aesthetic weight
dismantle and fragment reality?


Can´t they receive writing 
from a yearning and swift
void?
From a primordial nothingness?

Can´t they mortgage their crystal palace 
their submerged house?
Can´t they rebelliously peddle little stars?

Can´t all poor poets steal books?
Can´t they read so
the complete works by Samuel and Ezra and John
by Juana Inés, Alejandra and Gabriela
by Anne and  Margaret and Stevie
by Wallace and Edgar and Charles
by Arthur and Paul and Vladimir
by Dulce and Marina and Marosa?

And etcetera and etcetera and etcetera and etcetera?

Can´t all poets
add more beauty to beauty
and more horror to horror?

Can´t they draw maps and routes
of the invisible, futuristic city
foretold by their dreams?

Can´t they pursue the intangible
Move towards permanence
so that a poem
becomes a closed and completed vehicle
to treasure a present without behind or beyond?

Can't they unfold and transmigrate
can't they achieve mindfulness 
Can´t they stammer forever
into everlasting silence?

**

Righteous Speech. A Poem by Gary Beck. Excerpt from Learning Curve Collected Poems

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We removed Saddam Hussein
because he was an evil man
gassing his people,
developing nuclear weapons,
a threat to world peace.

So elected leaders
of the good old U.S.A.,
self-appointed
international policeman,
decided arbitrarily,
against some sensible advice
that state building
replacing tyranny
with democracy
is a difficult task
in an alien land
without due process,
or civil rights,
and a fanatic clergy
opposed to Western ways.

But our elected leaders
ignored warning signs
and decided.
Saddam must go.

So we invaded Iraq,
crushed feeble resistance,
a super power
flexing its military,
and we excavated Saddam
from his hiding hole
and swift justice followed.

So we helped install
a new government
that didn’t know how to govern,
in a land divided
by race, religion, tribe.
And we proclaimed to the world
democracy was born.

 


 

Gary Beck has spent most of his adult life as a theater director and worked as an art dealer when he couldn’t earn a living in the theater. He has also been a tennis pro, a ditch digger and a salvage diver. His original plays and translations of Moliere, Aristophanes and Sophocles have been produced Off Broadway. His poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and his published books include 26 poetry collections, 10 novels, 3 short story collections, 1 collection of essays and 1 collection of one-act plays. Published poetry books include: Dawn in Cities, Assault on Nature, Songs of a Clerk, Civilized Ways, Displays, Perceptions, Fault Lines, Tremors, Perturbations, Rude Awakenings, The Remission of Order, Contusions and Desperate Seeker (Winter Goose Publishing. Forthcoming: Learning Curve and Ignition Point). Earth Links, Too Harsh For Pastels, Severance, Redemption Value and Fractional Disorder (Cyberwit Publishing). His novels include a series ‘Stand to Arms, Marines’: Call to Valor, Crumbling Ramparts and Raise High the Walls (Gnome on Pig Productions) and Extreme Change (Winter Goose Publishing). Wavelength (Cyberwit Publishing). His short story collections include: A Glimpse of Youth (Sweatshoppe Publications). Now I Accuse and other stories (Winter Goose Publishing) and Dogs Don’t Send Flowers and other stories (Wordcatcher Publishing). The Republic of Dreams and other essays (Gnome on Pig Productions). The Big Match and other one act plays (Wordcatcher Publishing). Collected Plays of Gary Beck Volume 1 (Cyberwit Publishing. Forthcoming: Plays of Aristophanes translated, then directed by Gary Beck). Gary lives in New York City. https://www.facebook.com/AuthorGaryBeck
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Presenting The You Tube Poets

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Description
We are a group of poets making a TV pilot for a documentary about presenting our poetry on YouTube. We hope to approach a mainstream TV channel with the finished pilot, and may upload a complete documentary after the first few versions have been added here. This channel will be shared with participating poets and those poets who wish to submit work for consideration to be added to the documentary. The poet in the inset photo is Nordette Adams. I am Sara Russell, aka pinkyandrexa, and I will be editing the different versions of The YouTube Poets video until we have a final version that everyone is happy with. Please visit the link below the video to subscribe and send us your on You Tube Poems
 

 
You Tube Poets Channel see also YouTube Poets http://www.twitter.com/PoetsTube to follow

 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Wartime And Everyday Blues. A Poem by Phillip Christopher Henry

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Scourin’ the racks
at the D-A-V
for some thing
that says Blues
that sings
other times
vivid in
bottleneck steel string
guitar caterwaulin’
Mississipp,
found an ancient,
long-to-the-shins
olive drab double-breasted
heavy-as-1942
United States Army issue
stiff sandpaper collar,
tall-on-the-neck-of-a-GI-my-size
coat.
 
Slip my arms down sleeves
a dozen years older
than the flesh and bone going in,
gaze at the reflection
looking back from inside
a tall looking glass,
and wonder why
the perfect fit
feels so wrong,
why the same bold coat of
Hollywood World at War
flickering light movie star
hero posturing
monochrome pompadour
looks paltry beneath
haphazard chaos
of thin gray hair,
midriff bulging and
cheeks stretching
almost into jowls.
 
Pull on the collar and
sixty-two year old wool
meets fifty year old face and
scrub of dry sagebrush goatee,
mirror reflecting incongruity,
and ponder how this
thing of wartime
and heroes
just won’t fit
my everyday blues.
 
“Wartime and Everyday Blues” appeared in Lullwater Review, Vol XV, No 2 (2005)
 
https://www.facebook.com/philliphenrychristopher/
 

 
Poet, novelist and singer/songwriter Phillip Henry Christopher spent his early years in France, Germany and Greece. His nomadic family then took him to Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio and Vermont before settling in the steel mill town of Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where he grew up in the smokestack shadows of blue collar America.Escaping high school, he made Philadelphia his home, alternating between Philly and cities across America, living for a time in Buffalo, New Orleans, Fort Worth, even remote Fairfield, Iowa, before settling in Indianapolis. While wandering America he has placed poems and stories in publications across the country and in Europe and Asia, including such noteworthy journals as The Caribbean Writer, Gargoyle, Lullwater Review, Hazmat Review, Blue Collar Review, Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Blind Man’s Rainbow and New York Quarterly
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com ; his publications include
 
All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules, Next Arrivals and Moon Selected Audio Textual Poems, collected poems, as well as translation of Guadalupe Grande´s La llave de niebla, as Key of Mist and the recently published Tesserae , a translation of Carmen Crespo´s Teselas.
 
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

POEM ON COVID19 Lockdown, UK. When Dreams Go Viral. Sara L Russell.

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I will haunt those tree-lined avenues again
I will watch white seagulls circling in the sky
I will once more see the Leidseplein in rain
Let this still cocoon unfold its wings and fly
 
I’ll rebuild that club the council had pulled down
dust off my leather trousers and boot chains
I will browse the market stalls of Camden town
Go on short bus rides; long trips on fast trains
 
I will wander free amid the aftermath
I’ll claw back all that seemed so out of reach
Swim in that rooftop pool again, in Bath
Throw pebbles out to sea on Brighton beach.
 
When freedom comes to grant us one last wish
When once more people meet, to drink and dance
You’ll be a dried-up smear on a petrie dish,
worn down and stripped of all significance.
 
 
 

 
 
Sara Louise Russell, aka PinkyAndrexa, is a UK poet and poetry ezine editor, specialising particularly in sonnets, lyric-style poetry and occasionally writing in more modern styles. She founded Poetry Life & Times and edited it from 1998 to 2006, when she handed it over to Robin Ouzman Hislop, who now runs it as Editor at this site. Her poems and sonnets have been published in many paper and online publications including Sonnetto Poesia, Mindful of Poetry and Autumn Leaves a monthly Poetry ezine from the late Sondra Ball. Her sonnets also currently appear in the recently published anthology of sonnets Phoenix Rising from the Ashes. She is also one of the first poets ever to be published on multimedia CD ROMs, published by Kedco Studios Inc.; the first one being “Pinky’s Little Book of Shadows”, which was featured by the UK’s national newspaper The Mirror, in October 1999. (Picture link for Mirror article) Angel Fire
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times ; You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

Road rage prayer. A Poem by Alex Z. Salinas

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I need emergency Dial
Soap, Lord, my mouth
Speaks the darndest
Lines during rush hour,
Easy hate spreading like
Wolf spider poison in vein
Canals and I wonder,
Where else has it bore
Holes in my heart?
Halting at stoplights
Makes me curse one’s
Dark skin, beautiful
Singing, old age,
Aimless female gaze.
I must kill it, The Beast,
Right here right now,
Lord. Rescue me from
Disease passed for tradition.
Give me the strength to
Honk my horn
If I have to, if I must.
 
 
 

 
 
Bio:
Alex Z. Salinas lives in San Antonio, Texas. He is the author of WARBLES, his debut full-length poetry collection by Hekate Publishing. He is poetry editor for the San Antonio Review, and holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary’s University.
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times at Artvilla.com;
You may visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author.
See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds)

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