I appreciate the sentiment of the intro and poem and they are shared here with Tony’s permission. How nice to learn in the process of acquiring consent to publish that Tony has several self-published collections and a ninety-four page epic poem, Me, ME and Not Me, was published by Waterloo Press, 2014. / J.D.
How to find the right balance in a poem? How to deal poetically with the worst that mankind can inflict on itself yet at the same time avoid the accusation of voyeurism? And yet the worst must be told…
And so with the latest news that yet another boat-load of refugees from Africa has floundered in the Mediterranean I’ve revisited a poem in which I blame the innocent sea for a piece of wreckage… but, but, but …… what I’m really trying to say is that some part of me understands completely that screaming figure in Munch’s great work of art. Tony
A Name Painted in Blue
Gathering wood is easy after a storm.
Bits and pieces always litter the tide-line
and sometimes an enormous plank
or a stout tree stump will swell the heap
’til theres enough for a bonfire.
But now and then you’ll find something
that makes you shudder: a splintered oar,
a piece of decking, maybe a strip of ship’s timber
with a name painted in blue.
It’s at times like these you might hear the waves
chuckle to one another, or the wind
snickering amongst the rock-pools.
TONY FRISBY was born in Ireland and lives now in England. Tony began writing poetry as a hobby in 2000. Soon afterwards, he started reading his work in public. By 2010, Tony had self-published five volumes of poetry all of which were voted ‘Book of the Week’ by The Brighton Argus. In 2014, his ninety-four page epic poem Me, ME and Not Me, was published by Waterloo Press. His latest collection That Blue Pause was published in 2017. He is working on three further collections. Tony’s Amazon UK page and Amazon US page.
Regular Sunday Announcements are in process and will post later today, but yesterday was International Holocaust Rememberence Day. I share the poem of a child imprisoned and murdered at Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. We remember it with the hope that there will never be another genocide and that children of every race, country and creed will be allowed to fulfill their promise, to grow up, to grow old and to die in God’s time. Even as we do, there are genocides currently happening around the world, ten of which are full-blown. Ironically, “prominent scholars of the international law crime of genocide and human rights authorities take the position that Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian people could constitute a form of genocide.” Details HERE. May all sentient beings find peace.
I Never Saw Another Butterfly
by Pavel Freidman
The last, the very last,
So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.
Perhaps if the sun’s tears would sing
against a white stone. . . .
Such, such a yellow
Is carried lightly ‘way up high.
It went away I’m sure because it wished to
kiss the world good-bye.
For seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.
That butterfly was the last one.
Butterflies don’t live in here,
in the ghetto.
Pavel Friedman was born in Prague on January 7, 1921. He was deported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp on April 26, 1942 and later to Auschwitz, where he died on September 29, 1944. The poem was found when Theresienstadt was liberated in February 1945.
Pevel’s poem is included in and lends its name to the title of a collection of poems and artwork by the children and youth of Theresiesnstadt* and published by Hana Volavková and Jiří Weil in 1959.
* Theresienstadt was the German name for Terezín, a Czech fortress. “After the Munich Agreement in September 1938 and following the occupation of the Czech lands in March 1939, with the existing prisons gradually filled up as a result of the Nazi terror, the Prague Gestapo Police prison was set up in the Small Fortress in 1940. The first inmates arrived on June 14, 1940. By the end of the war 32,000 prisoners of whom 5,000 were women passed through the Small Fortress. These were primarily Czechs, later other nationals, for instance citizens of the former Soviet Union, Poles, Germans and Yugoslavs. Most of the prisoners were arrested for various acts of resistance to the Nazi regime, they were later sent to the extermination camps like Mauthausen in many cases; it was also destiny offamily members and supporters of the Reinhard Heydrich assassins. The Jewish Ghetto was created in 1941.” Wikipedia
A response worth sharing from bogpan (a.k.a. Bozhidar Pangelov –(bogpan – блог за авторска поезия) “Great pain for my heart. The Bulgarian people have saved 50,000 of their Jewish citizens. But not all. Never more genocide!”
It flows, the river flows
and spills…
I won’t, I won’t
enter,
girl,
with hair of sea.
I won’t
enter,
girl,
with a face of moons.
Today the green people
enter there
and raise
their hands
heavy.
My heart is
carved into
sand.
Sand.
The Artists at Risk Connection launches today in tandem with a public event in New York featuring one of the world’s most prominent threatened artists, Ai Weiwei. Ai, who will be in conversation with author and PEN America President Andrew Solomon, was detained in China without charge for 81 days during 2011 and later denied his passport to travel. The event will be streamed live online at 6pm (Eastern) at PEN.org Livestream.
“Fats was starting to think that if you flipped every bit of received wisdom on its head you would have the truth. He wanted to journey through dark labyrinths and wrestle with the strangeness that lurked within; he wanted to crack open piety and expose hypocrisy; he wanted to break taboos and squeeze wisdom from their bloody hearts; he wanted to achieve a state of amoral grace, and be baptised backwards into ignorance and simplicity.” ― J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
PEN America announced today the launch of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC), an online collaboration of more than 500 global organizations that provide life-saving resources to artists worldwide who face oppression, persecution, arrest, and violence for their creative work.
Recent reported threats against New York’s Guggenheim Museum, the cancellation of a major planned work from the Louvre in Paris, and the withdrawal of a major film from Russian theatres offer stark reminders of the hotly contested terrain that artists occupy. There were more than a thousand attacks on artists in 2016, according to the Copenhagen-based Freemuse—more than double the prior year. While hundreds of organizations offer assistance to imperiled artists, ARC is a first-of-its-kind platform bringing all of these resources together in a single online hub, accessible in 104 languages.
“Artist face backlash when they push up against intellectual, social, and ideological boundaries,” said Suzanne Nossel, Executive Director of PEN America. “While global campaigns and U.N. resolutions have been mounted to protect journalists and human rights defenders, threats to artists have gotten limited international attention. The Artist at Risk Connection brings together an extraordinary network of global organizations committed to augmenting the assistance available to artists who risk their freedom and their lives in the name of creative expression.”
ARC collates resources—including emergency funding, housing opportunities, residencies, fellowships and grants, and legal, immigration, and resettlement services—in an interactive online catalogue to help threatened artists quickly identify programs for which they’re eligible. This exhaustive database is the first of its kind for artists-at-risk, who have typically had to piece together assistance through a combination of personal contacts, referrals, and web searches, often under dire circumstances.
ARC also provides training and facilitates collaboration within a network of artist assistance organizations, including Index on Censorship (United Kingdom), ICORN (Norway), Al Mawred (Lebanon), and the Sundance Institute (United States), to strengthen each organization’s ability to provide comprehensive support to artists in dire need. Over time, ARC will work to elevate the visibility of artists at risk, seeking to mobilize an even greater breadth global arts institutions to play a more prominent role in assisting their field’s most vulnerable.
“At-risk artists often operate in the shadows, striving to continue to work amid pressures and dangers to their livelihoods and safety,” said Julie Trébault, Director of the Artist at Risk Connection. “Given the central role of the arts in society and culture, those who pay the heaviest price for their contributions need and deserve greater support and recognition for their sacrifices.”
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PEN America stands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. We champion the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Our mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
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The Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) safeguards the right to artistic freedom of expression and ensures that artists everywhere can live and work without fear. An interactive hub to gather, share, and coordinate the many resources, services, and forms of assistance available to artists at risk, ARC aims to strengthen connections between threatened artists and the organizations that support them.
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The National Beat Poetry Foundation (NBPF) has asked to partner with GUNS DON’T SAVE PEOPLE, POETS DO: Dueling with words to stop gun violence. Evelyn Agusto will be featured as a guest poet at Kerouac Cafe on Saturday, October 7, 3:30 pm – 5:30 pm EST. NBPF has dedicated the event, since the Las Vegas holocaust, to the work of stopping gun violence.
If you are in the area (Hartford, Connecticut), please go to this event and support this cause.
U R Not Your Gun
(For Shaun)
You are: The sound of your mother’s voice calling your name and your father’s
chance for a better life–not his,
but yours, because it’s too late for him,
but not for you…not yet, unless you forget
U R Not Your Gun.
You are your greatest fantasy and
someone’s best friend and another’s
first love. You are shelter
from the storm.
You are memory and risk and reward.
You are tougher han your
disappointments, you are kinder
than you imagine, you are everything
that child you once were
wanted to be and more. But
U R Not Your Gun–
not grey and cold and lifeless.
Not unforgiving like that. Not hollow or predictable. Not dangerous.
Evelyn Augusto of Guns Don’t Save People, Poets Do and Glen Falls House are coming together to host the even POET OUT: Dueling With Words To Stop Gun Violence on Friday, October 6th at 8pm EST at The Glens Falls House in Round Top. Tell others about the legacy of gun violence and share your experiences with gun violence through poetry.
While I was so taken up with chores related to the September and October issues of The BeZineand 100TPC 2017, I completely missed National Poetry Day (UK and Ireland), so here’s a little something in its honor courtesy of Wikipedia. The theme for 2017 was Freedom.
National Poetry Day is a British campaign to promote poetry, including public performances. National Poetry Day was founded in 1994 by William Sieghart. It takes place annually in the UK and Ireland on a Thursday in late September/early October.Since its inception, it has engaged millions of people across the country with live events, classroom activities and broadcasts. National Poetry Day is coordinated by the charity Forward Arts Foundation, whose mission is to celebrate excellence in poetry and increase its audience. Its other projects include the Forward Prizes for Poetry. The day is run in collaboration with partners including Arts Council England, Literature Wales, Poet in the City, Southbank Centre, The Poetry Book Society, The Poetry Society, The Scottish Poetry Library, Poetry By Heart and The Poetry School.
Prince Charles performed in the 2016 National Poetry Day, reading Seamus Heaney’ The Shipping Forecast. On 2015 National Poetry Day poems were included on Blackpool Illuminations.
2014, his ninety-four page epic poem Me, ME and Not Me, was published by Waterloo Press. His latest collection That Blue Pause was published in 2017. He is working on three further collections. Tony’s Amazon UK page and Amazon US page.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 