Reuben Woolley’s poetry is minimalist, sinuous on the page – or sometimes scattered like landmines waiting to explode. I find his work addictive and his latest book Skins (Hesterglock Pess, 2016) is going to be a gift to myself next month. Proceeds from sales go to CalAid.
Reuben’s poems, while exquisitely trimmed of all excess, are still rich with imagery and emotion.
Stylistically, I’m reminded of e.e.cummings.
Yes! I like the way he writes. More importantly, I’m glad Reuben chose to use his deft pen and kind heart to bring more awareness to the darkness in humanity, hanging our dirty laundry out to be seen and not denied. He tells the hard truth. If you are not devastated then you have grown numb to the injustices of our world. This is why we need poets like Reuben, to sound the clarion call and to bare witness.
With Reuben’s permission, here are two poems and look for more of Reuben’s work in the January 15 issue of The BeZine.
lessons
this is the fear
of a first breath
start counting
now
this is laughter
through bleeding membranes
don’t hope for wings
or terminal
stations
we walk the subway
mazes.the painted
maps & all their changes
…………drilling
skulls gives no answers
& death itself
is rarely clean
to this we came.not this
wrapping
a mind round wires
& razors ……………..cut
i’ll wear the given
shoes so well in these
white
streets
……………....it isn’t
the same
the running from metal
……………….the bombs
they make who give
the shoes but
still
they’re laughing at us
mother
THE FOURTH INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF POETRY, MARRAKESH
Reuben is invited to the Fourth International Festival of Poetry in Marrakech, Morroco in April. He plans to take poems from I am not a silent poet, his online magazine. The Festival covers hotel and catering costs but doesn’t pay anything towards transport. Like all of us who live off the proceeds of poetry, his purse is a little light. Reuben set-up a crowd funding page to raise the money for the airfare. That’s the main reason I wanted to introduce Reuben to you today. Here’s the invite. The “Mrs.” is a typo and festival organizers have promised to correct it. Reuben’s crowd-funding site is HERE.
Reuben Woolley is published in various magazines including Tears in the Fence,The Lighthouse Literary Journal, The Interpreter’s House, Domestic Cherry, The Stare’s Nest and Ink Sweat and Tears. His collection, the king is dead was published in 2014 with Oneiros Books and a chapbook, dying notes, in 2015 with Erbacce Press. Reuben was runner-up in the Overton Poetry Pamphlet competition and the Erbacce Prize in 2015. A new collection on the refugee crisis, skins, was published by Hesterglock Press, 2016:
Reubensays, he “pretends to be busy editing the online magazines: I am not a silent poet and The Curly Mind.”
I am not a silent poet is a zine dedicated to poetry and artwork of protest against abuse in all shapes and forms. Reuben’s motivation for founding the site: “I have seen such increased evidence of abuse recently that I felt it was time to do something. I am not a silent poet looks for poems about abuse in any of its forms, colour, gender, disability, the dismantlement of the care services, the privatisation of the NHS, the rape culture and, of course, war and its victims are just the examples that come to mind at the moment.”
The mind in chatter mode will do you in
Like a car without a driver
It’s a good tool gone rogue
It will numb you with its burden of
old stories and wishing wells
could have beens, should have beens
crowd teasers and ego pleasers
It will desecrate your sacred space
with the rotting carcass of old resentments
tired rivalries, rigid renunciations
It will domesticate your dreamscape with
the dreck of times gone by and
tedious, trivial, trumpery thinking
With mind in chat mode trapped in earthy ken
your most wonderous inner worlds go sadly
unimagined and unexplored and you – YOU! fully chattered, shattered, scattered
will never even know
“The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”
This isthe great paradox of our times. Thanks to science and technology we have the means to modify or control the external landscape but our internal landscape languishes. Anxiety reigns in the Western world and one article I read recently said that one-in-four CEOs suffers from depression.
The scriptures of our various religions provided us with spiritual technologies that have been well-tested in the laboratories of time. The Vedic scriptures teach us to use devotion, education and culture to address the internal enemies: lust, greed and anger.
The Christian scriptures teach us that there are seven deadly sins: pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, wrath and sloth. The Catholic Church suggests we counter them with the four virtues derived from the wisdom of the ancient Greeks: prudence, justice, restraint, and fortitude. These are to be partnered with the three theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
The Buddhist’s have the best – in my opinion – technology for addressing anxiety and depression: meditation.
Echart Tolle in The Power of Now suggests that mind-chattering represents a false self and that accessing the “Now,” the present moment where everything is complete, is the antidote. When Tolle’s book came out – a good valuable book – the idea of living in the Now was seen by many as a new idea. It’s actually an old wisdom. It’s very Buddhist and, among others, the great German theologian, philosopher and mystic, the Dominican Priest Meister Eckhart (1260 – 1328), said much the same thing.
Prompt: Write a poem or story that illustrates the habits that cause our distress, anxiety and depression. If it feels natural to approach the subject from the point of remedy, do that. If you like, put a link to the piece in the comments section so that I and others might read it.
SWIMMING WITH ELEPHANTSis a nonprofit publisher based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, working with its local community and with authors nationwide. A primary focus is poetry and this publisher has a small line of chapbooks, poetry collections and anthologies, available through Amazon and one of their local bookstores. Monthly beginning this month, Swimming With Elephants will feature a writer along with interview and samples of his or her work, all by way of helping to grow the writer’s audience. Explore the site HERE to see where your work and the publisher’s interests might intersect.
HERMENEUTIC CHAOS PRESS is largely a publisher of chapbooks – poetry, prose and hybrid. The current reading period ends on January 31. Submission guidelines HERE.
GUERNICA / a magazine of global art & politics was founded in 2004, staffed by volunteers, and supported by federal and private funding sources. It is a free online publication with contributors from all over the world and featuring essays, art, poetry (verse, prose poetry and hybrid) and fiction from emerging and established writers, poets and multimedia producers. It is published twice monthly with quarterly special issues. Take the time to check it out HERE as both reader and writer.
NO DEAR is a Brooklyn-based poetry journalthat comes out each fall and spring, accompanied by issue release readings for the featured poets. Submissions for the next issue (theme: Republic) are being accepted through February 15th. No My Dear also publishes chapbooks. Details HERE. NYC poets only.
THE BeZINE‘s January issue comes out on the 15th. You still have two days (deadline end-of-day January 10) in which to submit work – poetry, essay, short fiction, music videos, art and photography on this month’s theme, which is “Resist.” Details HERE.
JAMII PUBLISHING “seeks to foster the communion of writers by gifting books to authors who are out there shaking up the world . . . we believe that poetry is not a solitary art. Poetry is an art form that brings people together.” Jamii forms a community in San Bernadino as well as a publishing house. It is open for literary submission until January 31. Jamii offers detailed guidelines on submissions HERE. Read carefully. The focus now is women and minorities, non-academic.
MISTAKE HOUSE MAGAZINE “is committed to creative and intellectual refreshment in the form of poetry, fiction, and visual art.” Reading period ends on March 5th. It “welcomes graduate and undergraduate writers from around the world, including work by previously unpublished writers”. English only. Details HERE. There is a nominal reading free.
DRAGON POET REVIEW is an eJournal that features poetry, flash fiction, short memoir, photograpy, art and reviews. It is published twice a year and the deadline for the summer issue is March 1. Submission guidelines HERE.
Please be sure to check information on all sites. Literary publications often come and go and sometimes close for short periods of time.
EVENTS
DODGE POETRY FESTIVAL 2017will be held in October in Newark, New Jersey. Exact dates are not posted yet. Watch the site if you have an interest in attending what is the largest and most exciting poetry festival in the U.S. Each year the Dodge Poetry Festival reportedly attracts from 14,000 – 17,000 attendies. It was founded in 1985 and is funded by the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation. The website is HERE.
READINGS AT McNALLY JOHNSON on January 10 at 7 p.m. with Joshua Bennett (The Sobbing School, Part of the National Poetry Series ) and Jennifer Kronovet (The Wug Tes, Part of the National Poetry Series) . Admission is free.McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince Street, New York, NY 10012
POETRY IN DELHI announces seventeen events. “Passionately in love with a language, poets unite pleasure with truth. Poetry is considered the crown of literature and being poetic is more a condition than a profession. Poets the ever dramatic, most romantic and not much realistic, play with words and make beautiful verses. Poetry readings, open mic poetry and poetry recitation as part of a play, keep the art & heart alive.” (The emphasis above is mine. Love it.) Details HERE.
interNATIONAL POETRY MONTH, thinking ahead to April, which is National Poetry Month in the United States. At The BeZine we celebrate it every year as interNational Poetry Month. Think about some things you’d like to do to celebrate: a poem in your pocket, meeting with friends and sharing a poem at lunch or after work, writing about what poetry means to you on your blog, If you want to submit something for poetry month publication, now would be the time to consider what and to which publications you want to submit.
If you are reading Sunday Announcement from an email subscription, you will have to link to this site to hear Linda Gregerson read her poem for Dear Poet 2016.
KUDOS
Congrats to:
M. Zane McClellan for two poems selected as contest winners for a chapbook being published by Praxis Magazine for Arts & Literature. “Tear Down These Walls,” and “And Still I Shrive” are two of seventeen selected out of 163 poems sent to the final judge for selection. Michael is also the newest member of the The BeZineCore Team.
Michael Dickel on the publication of his newest book, The Palm Reading After the Toad’s Garden, available now in paperback. “Michael Dickel’s highly engaging fourth book gathers flash fiction written in recent years–from a series of surreal memoryscapes to flash thrillers to psychological experiments. This hybrid writing blurs genre lines across poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and cultural criticism in an entertaining montage of imagery.”
Aprilia Zank for the remarkable number of recent photographs chosen as cover photos for magazines.
Silva Merjanian for the money raised on behalf of Armenian-Syrian refugees. Silva writes that “To date Rumor (alone, without Uncoil a Night) has raised one book short of $5K for refugees.” Silva is a shining example of the many poets working hard for the greater good. xo
Sharon Frye for her lovely poem Last Night in Dublin published in Anu 52/A New Ulster
SPECIAL NEWS
Coffee, Tea and Poetry
I am currently developing a new website that will celebrate the simple soulful things in life. In a world gone mad we still have morning coffee, afternoon tea, kindly baked goods (no animals harmed), gardens and nature in all her glory. Though Coffee, Tea and Poetry hasn’t gone live yet you can bookmark it for future reference. I hope you do. When It does launch in a week or two, I’d value your opinions. Thank you!
SUNDAY ANNOUNCEMENTS
Submit your event, book launch and other announcements at least fourteen days in advance to thepoetbyday@gmail.com. Publication is subject to editorial discretion.
EFFECTIVE DECEMBER 11, 2016 Posts on this web/zine include links to The Poet by Day store (The WordPlay Shop, an Amazon Affiliate), a natural extension in support of this site’s mission to champion poets and writers and to broaden and continue to offer resources and inspiration, including information on opportunities for writers.
Silent, but for cunning Corvidae, they
of song, sub-song, caw, click and rattle
On ghostly air currents they levitate
high above the quiet fragrant turf
And all the while the heart spins
on the rose garden’s pulsing colors,
kindling fancy into inspiration
A fabled coalition of migrant birds
arrives to sit a spell, to catch a breath of
white jasmine on a breeze that speaks
the tongue of Aleppo, while under the ginkgo
words are braided into narrative thread,
yarns pulled from earthy green waves
and that blue echo of peace called sky
Skins (Hesterglock Pess, 2016) is going to be a gift to myself next month. Proceeds from sales go to CalAid.
Reuben Woolley is published in various magazines including Tears in the Fence, The Lighthouse Literary Journal, The Interpreter’s House, Domestic Cherry, The Stare’s Nest and Ink Sweat and Tears. His collection, the king is dead was published in 2014 with Oneiros Books and a chapbook, dying notes, in 2015 with Erbacce Press. Reuben was runner-up in the Overton Poetry Pamphlet competition and the Erbacce Prize in 2015. A new collection on the refugee crisis, skins, was published by Hesterglock Press, 2016:
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 