Wild Fridays #32: Roving the Web

Opportunities

Via my inbox (from Tinywords):

Hello tinywords readers and poets! We are now accepting submissions, through the end of August, for our 20th anniversary issue.
To submit haiku, haiga, or other short poetry, use the form here: https://tinywords.com/submit/   

The Editors

On a friend’s Facebook page:

Full details here.


I Wish I'd Written This

But I think it would be overkill to feature Caitlin Johnstone again so very soon, even if Consent Rescinded is a white-hot, brilliant manifesto. And besides I wouldn't be able to find anything illuminating to say about it, as in this she says it all. So you may have a look for yourselves at the link on the title of her piece, above.


Haiku Havens

Those who love haiku and related forms will no doubt already be well aware of the colourful CARPE DIEM HAIKU KAI website, created by the indefatigable 'Chevrefeuille'. I know several people in this community respond to his prompts, as I do myself from time to time. It's also a great source of education about haiku, renga, tanka, etc. etc., imparted in a very readable, easy style. And you can find a number of free downloadable ebooks there too. (Some are by Chevrefeuille's friend and mentor, the noted haiku scholar and haijin, the late Jane Reichhold.) All the links at the top of the page and in the side columns are very interesting to follow. One of them leads to a blog featuring works by the great Basho, and Chevrefeuille's own writings inspired by them.

As you see, GRACEGUTS is the website of Michael Dylan Welch. Unlike Carpe Diem it's not interactive, but here too you can find a wealth of material on haiku and related forms, by Welch himself and others. It's all very detailed and scholarly, and it takes account of the modern 'English language haiku' and such, whereas Chevrefeuille is more traditional in his approach.

I find Carpe Diem a delightful place to play, while Graceguts is endlessly (and to me fascinatingly) informative and includes many excellent examples of haiku.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.

Wild Fridays #28: Roving the Web

Motivation

I found this and other wonderful samples of writer Octavia Butler's motivational notes to herself, thanks to a friend who shared this one on facebook.

Wow, the determination! And what a reminder to all of us writers not to give up. (If we ever do feel like that, maybe we can borrow some of her self-talk.)  Do, do, do go to this link and have a read, and watch the (very brief, yet inspiring) video. You can also read more about her by clicking the various other links you'll find there, and at Wikipedia.

(Wikipedia says, 'At the age of 10, Butler begged her mother to buy her a Remington typewriter, on which she "pecked [her] stories two fingered".' This particularly excited me: my grandfather left me his Remington when I was 9, and I'm still pecking away two-fingered on my keyboards, lol.)

In case you didn't know of this woman, she was a multi-award-winning science fiction writer. In order to succeed, she overcame extreme shyness, dyslexia, repeated rejections of her early submissions, and all the inequalities and disadvantages attendant on being a black woman in the USA.

I wasn't aware of her before, even though I love science fiction. Now that I've also looked up her prolific output, I can only wonder at my ignorance. I'll certainly be seeking her books now!


Free Culture

But there's more! The site featuring Octavia's words is a find in itself:

It offers (among others things): Free Courses; Great Lectures; Free eBooks; Free Movies; and Great Recordings.  The last one particularly caught my eye. Here's what's listed under that heading:

• Great Recordings

  • T.S. Eliot Reads Waste Land
  • Sylvia Plath - Ariel
  • Joyce Reads Ulysses
  • Joyce - Finnegans Wake
  • Patti Smith Reads Virginia Woolf
  • Albert Einstein
  • Charles Bukowski
  • Bill Murray
  • Hemingway
  • Fitzgerald Reads Shakespeare
  • William Faulkner
  • Flannery O'Connor
  • Tolkien - The Hobbit
  • Allen Ginsberg - Howl
  • W.B Yeats
  • Ezra Pound
  • Dylan Thomas
  • Anne Sexton
  • John Cheever
  • David Foster Wallace

What treats! The first one for me will be Ginsberg himself reading Howl. Oh, wow, the things this technological age makes available to us!!! I don't do bucket lists, but this is something to make sure I grab while I'm alive, and be devoutly grateful not to have missed. And there are plenty of other enticements on the list, too.


Closer to Home

Our online home, that is. I wonder how many, reading newish PS&U participant Jedediah Smith's poem for the latest Weekly Scribblings, also clicked the link to something called The Pojo Show Episode 2? I did, from curiosity. And oh, what a treat! It turned out to be the second of a new series of Podcasts by Jedediah and collaborator Batty Royale, inspired by this pandemic situation we all find ourselves in. The theme for this one is Coronavirus II: Poetry on Illness and Loss. 

Consisting of poems and songs, it's beautifully put together and lasts for a fraction over half an hour. They had me at St James' Infirmary, an old favourite, the opening number. I was even more enraptured when they included another great love, James Dickey's The Hospital Window ("I have just come down from my father"). Other moving and exciting pieces, I didn't know and was glad to encounter. (As so often, I found the American accents difficult at times and missed the odd word here and there, but that's a problem that can't be avoided in these days of international audio sharing and all kinds of accents. I can always search the texts online.) 

At the very end Jedediah and Batty go back through the material shared, with some brief, informative words on each – and some remarks I was glad to hear, about the crossover of poetry and song. I found this bit, in its own way, as interesting as the rest of the content. Well, it seems that Jedediah has also hosted a radio program, so it's not surprising he knows how to make stuff entertaining.

Now I'll be checking Episode 1 in the very near future: Coronavirus I: Poetry and Plagues thru History. (If this is all beginning to sound unpleasantly morbid, the experience of listening to Episode 2 was far from that!) Episode 3, with the theme of Isolation (ranging from loneliness to imprisonment) will be posted today.

To find these  and future episodes, you can subscribe to them on Jedediah's YouTube or go to the Sound Files section at his website. I enjoyed the visuals on YouTube (faces of the poets and musos) so I've bookmarked it and subscribed. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our Own Success Stories

Spotted recently on Instagram:

Gillena (well-known to all of us, who blogs at Lunch Break) has a new book of poems out. It's available, as paperback or ebook, from AuthorHouse.

Even more recently, Kim (equally well-known to us, via Writing in North Norfolk) has a new book out too, available from Amazon in paperback or Kindle. I've linked to UK Amazon, since Kim hails from the UK, but it's available at others as well.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.

Wild Fridays #22: Roving the Web

Hello, Dear Earth

(I didn't have to rove very far to find the following; it turned up in my email.) 

I'm writing to you during times of pandemic, race riots, dangerous politics. Looming over all of this terrible suffering is the ongoing destruction of our beautiful planet, which is already disproportionately affecting the most vulnerable of us. It is appropriate to feel grief, fear, rage, disconnect, or despair.   How can we live through these times without being consumed by the darkness? How can we find the balance between denial and overwhelm? How can we steady ourselves in order that we may enjoy the gifts we've been given, and do our little bit?   For me, the answer is always refuge. We need to find something bigger than us that we can lean into, and then we need to lean. I've written a new free e-course that I hope will support you to lean into our dear Earth - with all her complexity, wisdom and beauty. It will take you ten minutes a day and involves finishing the sentences of a magic formula. I've written it as an offering to her, and to you. I hope you like it. It'd be good to hear how you are. Reply to this email and let me know.  Sending many blessings from the temple here in Malvern, a little piece of paradise, with the blackbird singing and the sun shining down. I'm feeling humble, grateful, and overflowing with dear Earth's love. <3  * Hello Dear Earth. Here I am, at my desk on this Sunday morning, thinking of everyone who will receive my email. Earth - you are quiet here, and in other places people are screaming. Leaning in, I feel sadness welling up. Listing gratitude - the cornflower blue of my office wall, wildflowers in the little vase next to the Buddha, two sleeping dogs next door. Offering you my grief about the riots, and my joy at the peony bud opening in the garden.  ****************************** I subscribe to letters from Satya Robyn. Satya is a lovely writer (both novelist and poet) as well as being a psychotherapist and a Buddhist priest who, with her husband Kaspalita Thompson, runs a Pureland Buddhist temple in Malvern, Worcestershire, England. As some of you will recall my mentioning a few times, she created a form of mindful writing which she calls small stones (which could be either prose or verse) and in January 2011 invited people all over the world to join her in writing them daily, posting them to our blogs, and sharing the links with each other via a facebook group. A delightful thing to do! I've continued the practice on and off ever since. I do it because I like it. Also, on the rare occasions I get stuck for something to write, I can look around and find a small stone. She and her husband have also offered various online courses over the years, all involving writing. I've done a few, and always loved them and got profound re-energising from them. The one she's come up with now is in perfect timing for me, just when I needed something like this. Furthermore it's free, and – being essentially spontaneous – takes hardly any time at all from each day.  I'm doing it! You can either just go ahead with it on the basis of what she says in this letter or, via the link included, you can sign up for daily emails – brief, and offering gentle guidance as to what you might focus on each day. Personally, I always so enjoy anything she writes that I choose to get the emails. The course goes for four weeks, ideally fitting neatly into June. Yes, this is a bit late to let you know. (She only put it together quite recently.) But it's fine to start late. Because of time difference, I get her emails in the evening instead of the morning, so even though I began on June 1st, I am always a day late implementing her specific suggestions and will end up with one 'earthello' (as she calls them) extra. That's OK too. This practice is meant to empower us, not hang us up with logistics. (And there's no rule against continuing on forever if you so desire.) If you take this on, you might like to share a few in our Writers' Pantry from time to time. Or you might rather keep them as private journalling.  If you do wish to share, please wait until a convenient Sunday. Putting links in the comments here and now doesn't really work. Wild Fridays are intended as your input time, hopefully inspirational but not meant as immediate prompts, so a Mister Linky is not included. You can try things at once and share later; or you can mull something over, play around with it at your leisure ... or simply take it in and absorb it. I've been sharing my earthellos on Instagram. People say they find them calming to read. That's lovely! I think Satya's intention is that they might be calming to write. I find it so. Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors. 'Letters from Satya' images and text © Satya Robyn 2020.

Wild Fridays #16: Roving the Web

The things you find! I couldn't resist this one.

I think the plums in the icebox must be one of the best-known poems ever – only surpassed by the red wheelbarrow (by the same poet, William Carlos Williams – but you knew that, didn't you?). I always thought that if I'd been on the receiving end of his little note that morning, I might not have felt too forgiving, even if it was in poetry.

Then there's this. Seems I'm not the only one to have this problem!  (If you read my haibun for Weekly Scribblings #15.)

There! Hope that boosted your immune system – laughter, we are told, being the best medicine.

They both came from facebook, actually. (It has its uses!) This one, which seems to have most things covered, came from there too:

Someone has pointed out, re item 4, that one shouldn't really need a to-do list to ensure tending to a child in one's care. Too true! But if we do have a child, a pet or a plant to look after, that's one item we can be sure of crossing off virtuously as 'done'. (I am keeping my plants alive; I am, I am! I'm just not weeding around them as often as I might....)

You probably saw Helen's terrific anti-meme poem in response to the latest Writers' Pantry. If not, scroll back a couple of posts from this to pick it up. Going back for a second read, I finally had a proper look at the meme she used as illustration. Oh yeah, I could get into that one – it's about writers!

click image to enlarge it

That's the trouble with memes, isn't it? Mostly they are a pest, but then one will pull you in. If you want to know (or even if you don't) as I told Helen, it's House #5 for me, no question. Not only does it include some of my favourite writers, but even more importantly, there is no-one there I dislike, or am merely lukewarm about.

I can forego Plath in order to spare myself Ayn Rand; Wilde and Brecht so as to miss Hunter S. Thompson; and even James Baldwin (sigh) if it means not encountering L. Ron Hubbard. And the combination of Mailer and Hemingway – and yes, even Joyce – would be way too misogynist for me. (Though it might be fun to watch Dorothy Parker deal with them.)

How about you? You are allowed to play in the Comments.

So I didn't have to rove far and wide through the web for those; rather they came to me. So did a newsletter in my email from Jean Shinoda Bolen, author and Goddess-centred feminist. (She describes herself as 'author, Jungian analyst, activist'.)

Her newsletter contained links to two YouTube videos of empty streets, along with some wise words presented as a poem. One shows streets in Ireland, the other America. Here is the Irish version, which includes audio.

In case you can't quite get all the words through the lovely accent, let me tell you what they tell us: that when when we see the empty streets, either when out walking or watching the news, what we are seeing is love in action. We are seeing how much we do care for each other – and that even though jobs, businesses and lives will be lost, 'It isn't the end of the world. It is the most remarkable act of global solidarity we may ever witness.' We are urged to let 'all that love' fill and sustain us.

May it indeed be so!

Stay safe and well, my friends.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.

Wild Fridays #12: Roving the Web

Saying it with pictures

How many of us search the net for images to put with our poems? It makes a post more interesting, doesn’t it? I’m always amazed how our masters of romance, Robin and Sanaa, always manage to find the perfect image for every poem – albeit their styles, and hence the illustrations also, are very different.

Others (like me, when possible) use their own photos. The ones that spring most immediately to mind are those our Magical Mystery Teacher regales us with. I’m always blown away by their skill and beauty. (Me, I live in such a beautiful part of the world that I don’t need to do much more than point and click, and maybe the occasional bit of digital editing.)

But sometimes I don’t have anything suitable in my own photo library, and have to go hunting. Many of the supposedly free picture sites aren’t really all that free – there may well be a copyright fee. However, that’s usually small enough to afford easily. 

[A potential trap is that the fee may cover only a limited period of time. I once thought I was paying to use an image forever, only to find it slapped with a nasty sticker right across it after a month. The owner had not made it obvious – it was in VERY fine print – but apparently I was supposed to keep renewing the payment. No thanks! You think I’m made of money??? I found one of my own photos after all.]

All this preamble is leading to the welcome news that ‘Paris Musées, a collection of 14 museums in Paris, recently made high-res digital copies of 100,000 artworks freely available to the public on their collections website. Artists with works in the archive include Rembrandt, Monet, Picasso, Cézanne, and thousands of others.’

What a treasure trove, eh? The one pictured here is Monet’s Sunset on the Seine at Lavacourt, Winter Effect, held at the Petit Palais.
 

(If any of you know great picture sites that you’d care to share with us all, please feel free to do so in the comments.)

Other people's poems to love
(and where to love them)

chocolate is a verb

I subscribe to One Sentence Poems, receiving one per day in my email inbox. Which led me to further explore the poetry of someone whose words I particularly liked: J. I. Kleinberg, whose website is endearingly entitled chocolate is a verb.

Oh, the treats I found there! 

I'm particularly enraptured by the cut-up found poems (reminiscent of our Magaly's). Look at this one (very topical) called the monastery: 

And then go and look at some more! You'll find lots of them by scrolling down the home page.

This is far from the only kind of writing you'll find. It's simply a lovely start in exploring the work. (I want to call it the play.)

I got in touch with J.I. Kleinberg for permission to reproduce her poem. She also allows me to quote her bio:

Twice nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net awards, J.I. Kleinberg is an artist, poet, and freelance writer. Her poems have been published in numerous print and online journals worldwide. She lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, where she tears up magazines and posts frequently at chocolateisaverb.wordpress.com and thepoetrydepartment.wordpress.com and occasionally on Instagram @jikleinberg.

The art is well worth a look too. I personally was delighted by the many amazing crochet creations – but, again, that's far from her only form of expression.

Vandal Poem of the Day

Australian poet Amanda Joy recently posted on her facebook page this blog publication of this wonderful poem by (Australian poet) Robert Adamson. After I enjoyed it, I thought, 'What is this Vandal Poem of the Day?' (the name of the website). At the About page, I found out that: 

Vandal Poem of the Day (VPOD) is a public poetry project, which brings relevant contemporary poetry to the University of Idaho and the broader Idaho community. A new poem is published on this website every day during the academic year.

They also say:

VPOD encourages people waiting for buses, eating lunch, or otherwise going about their lives, to read a new poem each day on the VPOD website. Further, we hope the poems featured on this site will encourages public conversations about contemporary and enduring topics since the poems are quickly readable, but resonant enough for readers to re-read, think about, and comment on or share using the links at the bottom of each poem.

We operate with these famous lines in mind:

It is difficult

to get the news from poems

yet men die miserably every day

for lack

of what is found there.

-from “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower”
by William Carlos Williams

Oh good, you don't have to be attending the University of Idaho in order to enjoy these poems. But can you get them, or at least a reminder, in your inbox each day? I couldn't see a way, but there is somewhere to direct questions. I didn't do that, however, because I found it was easy to follow the site with Bloglovin'. All the Vandal Poems that I've looked at so far, I find utterly fascinating and thrilling.


Publications by our community members

Aw, no-one (well, almost no-one) took up my kind offer to publicise them for you. Is that because they are already clearly visible at your blogs, with links to where to buy them?

I asked Rommy (whose book I already had) to start the ball rolling, and she obliged. Here is the link to her book of stories at Amazon, available in both paperback and Kindle. (And here's a picture of it to whet your appetite.)

I'll jump on the bandwagon and tell you about mine too – because there's a sale on at Smashwords right now, until 20th April, where you'll find something of mine, something of my late husband Andrew Wade's, and a collaboration between me and my poet friends Jennie Fraine and Helen Patrice – all here. 

To get the discount price, you have to scroll down and click on the book you want. (All these are ebooks only.) 

I also have an Amazon page you're very welcome to browse and buy from, but no discount happening there at present – though the chapbooks are very cheap. (If you would like to get the paperback of Secret Leopard, you'd do better to ask me, not Amazon, where it's currently unavailable. Or you could get it from Abe Books, at this link.)

So that's how it works, if you'd like to share information about your own books. Simple and straightforward! Just email me the details.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos, and other writings and images remain the property of the copyright owners, usually the authors.