Poet

5 Guru Poems by Christopher Barnes

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(i)
 
An Unpaused Hour
 
Nine tings chase sanity.
Our guru twiddles
A crow’s sequined wings.
Passions jump off wheezes,
Dashed at the holdall’s flames.
Breath-sucks gyrate the room.
 
(ii)
 
Bar 64
 
A Jagger-lipped ox
Smirks in its float-bowl.
The lampstand’s crimsoning.
“Quirks,” underbreaths our tiddly guru,
“Aren’t without their suns”.
 
(iii)
 
Breakfast Ritual
 
Our guru tub-thumps Ouija learning
Into an atom that coggles.
The rubber shark’s dulceting
“Mack The Knife”.
 
The Ground Of Being’s egohood
Watusi’s tailwards.
High-muckety, we TLC our sanctified protocols.
 
(iv)
 
Financial Break, No Cheques
 
This megacosm flumps –
An undisplayable apparition.
We’re diluted by marvelment.
 
The journey’s butt is an oblivion-fresh
String-puppet butterfly
That coaxes dust
In the attic of our mind fuzz.
 
Our guru belches –
A pixie’s stage whisper.
 
(v)
 
The Mediator’s Art
 
You’ve unfolded these Vanity Fair bodies
Spanning into destiny’s lap.
Poppycock has no improving.
Thighs of our guru’s apostles
Shall be gunked
By Dolly, the sponge-puff mermaid.
 
Xanadu’s here, well-earthed.
 
 
 

 
 
In 1998 I won a Northern Arts writers award. In July 200 I read at Waterstones bookshop to promote the anthology ‘Titles Are Bitches’. Christmas 2001 I debuted at Newcastle’s famous Morden Tower doing a reading of my poems. Each year I read for Proudwords lesbian and gay writing festival and I partook in workshops. 2005 saw the publication of my collection LOVEBITES published by Chanticleer Press, 6/1 Jamaica Mews, Edinburgh.
 
On Saturday 16Th August 2003 I read at the Edinburgh Festival as a Per Verse poet at LGBT Centre, Broughton St.
 
Christmas 2001 The Northern Cultural Skills Partnership sponsored me to be mentored by Andy Croft in conjunction with New Writing North. I made a radio programme for Web FM community radio about my writing group. October-November 2005, I entered a poem/visual image into the art exhibition The Art Cafe Project, his piece Post-Mark was shown in Betty’s Newcastle. This event was sponsored by Pride On The Tyne. I made a digital film with artists Kate Sweeney and Julie Ballands at a film making workshop called Out Of The Picture which was shown at the festival party for Proudwords, it contains my poem The Old Heave-Ho. I worked on a collaborative art and literature project called How Gay Are Your Genes, facilitated by Lisa Mathews (poet) which exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, Newcastle University, including a film piece by the artist Predrag Pajdic in which I read my poem On Brenkley St. The event was funded by The Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences Research Institute, Bio-science Centre at Newcastle’s Centre for Life. I was involved in the Five Arts Cities poetry postcard event which exhibited at The Seven Stories children’s literature building.
 
The South Bank Centre in London recorded my poem “The Holiday I Never Had”, I can be heard reading it on www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18456
 
REVIEWS: I have written poetry reviews for Poetry Scotland and Jacket Magazine and in August 2007 I made a film called ‘A Blank Screen, 60 seconds, 1 shot’ for Queerbeats Festival at The Star & Shadow Cinema Newcastle, reviewing a poem… On September 4 2010, I read at the Callander Poetry Weekend hosted by Poetry Scotland. I have also written Art Criticism for Peel and Combustus Magazines. I was involved in The Creative Engagement In Research Programme Research Constellation exhibitions of writing and photography which showed in London (march 13 2012) and Edinburgh (July 4 2013)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

the last perfect day – a poem by RC de Winter

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there you are
another sunny day
you’ve woken up
and smelled the coffee
(and drunk it too)
now
ambling along aimlessly
you’re taking time
to smell the flowers
you think your life
is a hallmark card
everything smooth
as the surface
of a sunlit sea
on the calmest day
that summer can gift
there is no turbulence
not so much as a rocking wave
when the crusher hits
hurtling out of a sky as blue
as the mater misericordiae’s robe
you have only a moment
to blink
and think
but everything was so perfect
 
 
 

 
 
 
RC deWinter is a writer/digital artist whose poetry has been anthologized in New York City Haiku (NY Times 2017) and Uno: A Poetry Anthology (Verian Thomas, 2002). Her poetry has appeared in print in 2River View, Pink Panther Magazine, Another Sun, Plum Ruby Review, well as in many online publications including Poetry Life & Times. Down in the Dirt will feature two of her poems in its forthcoming Jan/Feb 2019 print issue. Her art has been published, too, and also used as set décor on ABC-TV’s Desperate Housewives. ( Website: https://rc-dewinter.pixels.com/
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

A Robin Finnegan Poem. Video Audio Visual Graphics

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Adam and Eve – The fall: of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy. James Joyce Finnegan’s Wake: thunder in several world languages, including French (tonnerre), Italian (tuono), Ancient Greek (bronte) and Japanese (kaminari) –
(bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoo
hoordenenthurnuk!) = 100 letter word. Editor’s Note.

 
 


 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Poetry Life & Times and Co Editor at Artvilla.com and Motherbird.com. His publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes, Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (an international anthology of sonnets) The Honest Ulsterman, Cratera No 3 and Wall Anthology, Aquillrelle.com. His recent works are three volumes of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk , Cartoon Molecules & Next Arrivals. A translation from Spanish of poems by Guadalupe Grande Key of Mist and Carmen Crespo Tesserae, the award winning (X111 Premio César Simón De Poesía), published through Aquillrelle., in November 2017 these works were presented in a live performance at The International Writer’s Conference hosted by the University of Leeds. UK. Further appearances are in the publications Aquillrelle’s Best, Aquillrelle’s Anthologies Selecting the Best and Aquillrelle’s Published the Best, all available at Amazon.com & main online distributors. He also appears in the recently published free online anthology 1000 Poets for Change. Leeds 2017, accessible now at Artvilla.com & Motherbird.com
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Edge. A Poem by Debashish Haar

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It’s 2:30 am, pacing on the terrace:
I see me ricochet against the edge
of an open window on the fourth floor.
I feel a strange numbness: a speck of ash
scatters, the end left to fall:
tumble and swing in mid air.
There’s no spark as the stub hits the ground.
I begin each day at 7:00 am
somewhere near the spot
where the stub hit the ground.
 
 

 
 
Debashish is a machine learning scientist, who has been published in literary magazines several times across the globe, including Poetry Life & Times, where he was interviewed twice. He is currently contending with a severe writer’s block spanning a decade, when he has hardly produced any publishable content. He is also losing emotional connection with his own work gradually, and spends more time to edit/tighten his old poems than creating any new content. Editors Note: Debashish Haar was interviewed twice in the old Poetry Life and Times, once by Sarah Russell then Editor & later by myself as a new Editor before it folded in 2008. The New Poetry Life & Times restarted in 2013 at Artvilla.com site, Admin David Jackson.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

On the razor’s edge, Iceland. A Poem by Anna Maria Dall’Olio

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Islanda sul filo del rasoio
Sospiro.                                         Spuma sgorga.
Ghiacciaio fulminato
frana fiume fluente.
							Astronomico il debito statale.
                                                        Soverchi tassi d'interesse.
                                                        Basso livello medio salariale.

Vasti strazi nell'infero profondo.
Campi di lava.			O grano.
Fili d'erba sul filo del rasoio.
("Latte & Limoni", 2014)
On the razor’s edge, Iceland
Something sighed					    
a flowing river is falling 
foam flows out.

                                                                       Too high is the national debt
                                                                        too high are interest rates
                                                                        too low are median incomes.

The toxic torture in the deepest depths.
Either lava or corn fields.
On the razor’s edge, blades of grass.





Anna Maria Dall’Olio

She has been teaching English in Italian high schools since 1987. She devoted herself to fiction, poetry and playwriting. In 2005 she was ranked second in “Hanojo – via Rendevuo“, a Vietnamese cultural competition for the millennial celebration of Hanoj (1010-2010). Moreover, she was ranked first/second/third in lots of literary competitions for her Italian poems (2006-2018).She published a short novel, “Segreti” (“Secrets”, 2018). Besides, she published 5 collections of poems:”Sì shabby chic” (“So shabby chic”, 2018), “L’acqua opprime” (“Water oppresses”, 2016), “Fruttorto sperimentale” (“Experimental Food Forest”, 2016), “Latte & Limoni” (“Milk & Lemons”, 2014), “L’angoscia del pane” (“Bread is anguish”, 2010). Finally, She wrote “Tabelo” (“Table”, 2006), a play in Esperanto dealing with mobbing as a supreme artistic form.

Web site: www.annamariadallolio.it

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

I Wonder. A Poem by Judy Moskowitz

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If we were all brain with no body, face, or flesh
just one hundred billion neurons
would we create the wonder
     of a second thought
     know empathy
     feel churning hunger
I wonder
     in a world unarmed, harmless as a dance
would the flaw of our species
     crave the taste for blood
     just for the thrill of it
     like a first kiss

Judy started playing piano at the age of three, and studied at the Julliard School Of Music in New York City, her native city.
She became a jazz pianist and continues to play jazz. Now residing in Florida, she started writing poetry three years ago, and has been published in the Moonlight Dreamers Of The Yellow Haze anthology, Thepoetcommunity, Whispers in the wind, Indiana Voice Journal. Poetry runs deep in her veins along with Music.

 

 

Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Life and Opinions of Doctor BOP the Burnt-Out-Prof. Collected Poems by EM Schorb. Reviewed by Robin Ouzman Hislop

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Excerpt from
Life and Opinions of Doctor BOP
 
A poem is a posit, an assertion, an act,
and in action we forget fear: respite
in creation, the maker takes a stand, in making,
but is it a stand no better than gimmick-makers make?
Well, poetry possesses the virtue of being a record,
at least, and you can date a poem, if you wish,
thus giving it the merit of a worldly fact
contained in a system of time, which, admittedly,
is a system which is perhaps pseudo-fact itself,
or will become so as matter completes its withdrawal
upon itself to revisit its beginnings in a black hole in space;
and yet, until then, something like a fact,
a fact in the sense that Sherlock Holmes is almost real
and lives in Baker Street in a fictional series
in a real world that may exist only in a dream
that is being dreamed elsewhere, perhaps—dare I say—
by Yahweh; and so poetry becomes an actual little stab
and, poets hope, rip in the black sheet
that covers the deserted, haunted mansion.
 
 
Reviewed at:
 
Amazon.co.uk Life and Opinions of Doctor BOP the Burnt-Out-Prof and Other Poems . See also: Amazon.com
 
Amazon.co.uk Emanations from the Penumbra Poems EM Schorb See also: Amazon.com
 
Review of
Life and Opinions of Doctor BOP
by
Robin Ouzman Hislop (Editor of PLT)
 
 
Many poets often turn to playwrites, more so than the other way about, and undoubtedly, imo, EM Schorb’s early background in theater has led to his latest theme in poetics “Life and Opinions of Doctor BOP ( the Burnt – Out – Prof and other Poems)”. In fact, it seems to me, the entire text hovers between sketches, vignettes, and biographic autobiographical narration in the first person. As a European, but one who has followed, as well, with keen interest North Amercan academia in poetics. As much as philosophy, related to cosomology and evolutionary concerns in the new sciences. It comes as an edifying experience to be introduced to the home grown frantics of North American Campus life, or insomuch, the affect it has had on our character in question, Doctor BOP. Actually, in the reading of the first part of this three part volume, a practically epic poem consisting of some seventeen pages, I was strangely reminded of the later short story writings of JD Salinger’s depiction of University life as an undergraduate English lecturer. He was in fact, as he describes himself, a rather reclusive English lecturer. And one of his passages springs vividly to mind, as he mentions in a more or less autobiographical narration, how as a now muchly graying and aging professor, he hastily makes himself scarce, the moment a group or anything like of under 40’s looms on his horizon, (on the Campus). A far cry from the days of Catcher in the Rye, perhaps we might encounter our Doctor BOP, as Schorb portrays him, as having travelled a somewhat similar way, perhaps a universal way of all burnt-out-profs. At least for the birth of our Doctor BOP, as he emerges from the Yiddish community, where due to a series of social phenomena peculiar to North American modern history, he finds himself born into the world of academia at midriff with his family’s origin, social background and status. Here Schorb brings his own background knowledge of Yiddish custom and vocabulary into full play in all its richness, in the first part of the central theme to the work. It is but one of the literary treats he devises. The whole text is replete with a classical apotheosis, religious epitomes, literary analogues and philosophical allusions, all of which abound in the head of Doctor BOP, as he makes his final but defiant bow before the world. The poems obviously are tragico/comico, there is satire, irony, bitterness, humour and kindness blended together with eruditeness. The text is littered with phrases in Latin, Greek, Yiddish, Spanish, we even have augenblick (in the blink of an eye, or in the moment) for Hamlet in German, and of course, Orator fit, poeta nascitur, poeta nascitur, non fit. (A speaker is made, a poet is born, not made). According to Doctor BOP, who quotes extensively from bibliographies of writers past and present and salutes us in the final part of the first part with vaya con Dios, my Darlings. Doctor BOP makes a delightful read, which the two latter parts of this small volume only serve to embed, and is well worth the buy, if only to raise the dust from our minds to reminisce over our studious years and the host of miscellenious trivia that is the heritage of our race in all its travail – a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more – to coin yet another allusion.
 
 
 
Biography
 

 

E. M. Schorb attended New York University, where he fell in with a group of actors and became a professional actor. During this time, he attended several top-ranking drama schools, which led to industrial films and eventually into sales and business. He has remained in business on and off ever since, but started writing poetry when he was a teenager and has never stopped. His collection, Time and Fevers, was a 2007 recipient of an Eric Hoffer Award for Excellence in Independent Publishing and also won the “Writer’s Digest” Award for Self-Published Books in Poetry. An earlier collection, Murderer’s Day, was awarded the Verna Emery Poetry Prize and published by Purdue University Press. Other collections include Reflections in a Doubtful I, The Ideologues, The Journey, Manhattan Spleen: Prose Poems, 50 Poems, and The Poor Boy and Other Poems.
 
Schorb’s work has appeared widely in such journals as The Yale Review, The Southern Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Chicago Review, The Sewanee Review, The American Scholar, and The Hudson Review.

 
At the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2000, his novel, Paradise Square, was the winner of the Grand Prize for fiction from the International eBook Award Foundation, and later, A Portable Chaos won the Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction in 2004.

 
Schorb has received fellowships from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and the North Carolina Arts Council; grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, the Carnegie Fund, Robert Rauschenberg & Change, Inc. (for drawings), and The Dramatists Guild, among others. He is a member of the Academy of American Poets, and the Poetry Society of America.
 
PRIZE-WINNING BOOKS
BY E.M. SCHORB
Books available at Amazon.com
_______________________________________
 
Dates and Dreams, Writer’s Digest International Self-
Published Book Award for Poetry, First Prize
 
Paradise Square, International eBook Award
Foundation, Grand Prize, Fiction, Frankfurt Book Fair
 
A Portable Chaos, The Eric Hoffer Award for Fiction,
First Prize
 
Murderer’s Day, Verna Emery Poetry Prize, Purdue
University Press
 

Time and Fevers, The Eric Hoffer Award for Poetry
and Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book
Award for Poetry, each First Prize
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (University of Leeds) and his latest Collected Poems Volume at Next-Arrivals

Open Book. A Poem by Fabrice B. Poussin

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Fearful of the imminent decay of the old manuscript
investigator of lives passed into a flaky tomb of dust and rust
still in the weight of a moment of hesitant courage
he contemplates the spine broken as that of an ancient fresco.

Freely offered to the avid devourer of sleeping passions
the pages gently curve, palimpsests in the light breeze
of an ante chamber gaping to the treasures of the fortress
illuminations shine in the dim hours of dusk mirror of another.

A sweet flutter pierces the realm to suggest an awakening
as in a stage darkness entombs useless space all around
not even a breath can be heard, not a rumble of a heart
in an excess of life, it appears death conquers the instant.

Hypnotized by the tale told in a murmur to his soul
he longs to join hands in prayer and dive deep within
before, aware of his presence, she seals the gate
left open likely in error when she felt safe in her cage.

Arched outward the velum calls for his foreign touch
so vulnerable to the violent attacks of a cruel reality
it desires to break all bridges to hold him captive and
dissolve him with the universal dreams and make a new world.
 
 
Fabrice B. Poussin
 

 
 
Fabrice Poussin teaches French and English at Shorter University. Author of novels and poetry, his work has appeared in Kestrel, Symposium, The Chimes, and dozens of other magazines. His photography has been published in The Front Porch Review, the San Pedro River Review as well as other publications.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop is Editor of Poetry Life and Times his publications include All the Babble of the Souk and Cartoon Molecules collected poems and Key of Mist the recently published Tesserae translations from Spanish poets Guadalupe Grande and Carmen Crespo visit Aquillrelle.com/Author Robin Ouzman Hislop about author. See Robin performing his work Performance (Leeds University) .

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