English Poet Myra Schneider at her 80th Birthday celebration and the launch of her 12th collection
A full-day workshop (5 hours plus). Price: £8. Details HERE.
“Time plays a central role in every aspect of our lives. The workshop explores ways in which we perceive time and how we represent these perceptions in writing.
To order, contact Administrator, Anne Stewart, +44 (0)1689 811394 / +44 (0)7850 537489 or editor@poetrypf.co.uk
Second Light Workshops
“We aim to fulfil our promise of ‘inclusivity’ for poets who are unable to travel to Second Light workshop events, however, our Remote Workshops are pitched at anyone wanting to enjoy a ‘work-out’ and/or kick-start a new selection of work. We also aim to keep our prices low enough for all to access.
“The workshops involve many varied exercises to stimulate new writing, some involving experimenting with formal forms and other approaches you may not have tried. They include notes and discussion points, simulating thoughts and comments of the sort that might be exchanged between participants in a ‘live’ workshop.
“Poems by women participants are eligible for consideration for ARTEMISpoetry, over and above any submission made under the general submission guidelines.” Second Light Network of Women Poets, further details on workshops HERE.
MYRA SCHNEIDER‘s latest and recent books are Persephone in Finsbury Park (SLP), The Door to Colour (Enitharmon); What Women Want(SLP). More at Myra Schneider website where you can also order Myra’s books.
HERE is a wonderful interview with Myra on the occasion of her 80th birthday earlier this year. Who wouldn’t want to gather and savor the voice of so much experience: thirteen collections of poetry, children’s books, author of Writing My Way Through Cancer and, with John Killick, Writing Yourself: Transforming Personal Material. Myra has collaborated on more anthologies than I can count, is a poetry coach and champion of women poets, a consultant to Second Light Network of Women Poets and a poetry editor. Myra’s professional life seems like it is and always has been full and busy. Yet along the way – even when coping with catastrophic illness – Myra is able to take a breath, pick up her pen and inspire.
“Yang Tongyan was a peaceful champion of human rights and democracy, who made a huge personal sacrifice to stay true to his principles. The authorities feared the power of his writing and did all they could to silence him.He should never have spent a single day in jail let alone nearly half his life,” Nicholas Bequelin, East Asia Director at Amnesty International.
.
News that Chinese writer and recipient of the 2008 PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award Yang Tongyan has passed away, less than four months after the death of Liu Xiaobo under similar circumstances, is a further devastating loss for free expression advocates around the world and a harsh reminder of how critics of the government are treated by Chinese authorities, PEN America announced Tuesday.
According to a contact at the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), Yang Tongyan passed away after being released from Nanjing Prison on medical parole in August 2017 following his diagnosis with an aggressive form of brain cancer. He briefly returned to his home in Siyang, Jiangsu province. Although he was sent to a hospital in Shanghai that specializes in neurological care to have brain surgery, his family were informed that, as he was a “criminal,” he would not be permitted to leave the country for treatment, according to Yang’s sister.
According to Amnesty International, “Yang Tongyan was months away from completing a 12-year prison sentence when he was released on medical parole. His conviction for ‘subversion’ in 2006 was based on his writings in support of political and democratic change in China. He previously served a 10-year prison sentence for criticizing the crackdown on China’s 1989 pro-democracy movement.”
“Yang Tongyan’s death, so soon after that of Liu Xiaobo, is another black mark on the Chinese authorities’ human rights record,” said Karin Karlekar, PEN America’s Director of Free Expression at Risk Programs.
Yang, who wrote under the pseudonym Yang Tianshui, was a brilliant writer, literary critic, and member of the Independent Chinese PEN Center (ICPC), an organization of leading writers working on free expression issues both inside and outside of China. He was known for his critical writings published on web sites such as Boxun.com and EpochTimes.com. His catalog of literary writing includes poems, short stories, essays, novels, and memos, many of which were written during his time in prison. In May 2006, after a three hour trial that was closed to the public, Yang was sentenced to twelve years’ imprisonment and four years’ deprivation of political rights by the Zhenjiang Intermediate Court in eastern China’s Jiangsu province, on charges of “subversion of state power” for writing dissident articles, and for his political activism. He had suffered from poor health for years, and had served eleven years of his twelve-year sentence before his family’s third request for medical parole was approved.
News of Yang’s death comes less than four months after Nobel Peace Laureate and notable writer Liu Xiaobo’s death in custody from liver cancer. Following Liu’s release from prison, the authorities also denied his wish to travel overseas to access high-quality medical treatment. Since his death and funeral, his widow, poet and painter Liu Xia, has been held at an unknown location and has had no contact with family and friends.
China’s extensive censorship apparatus limits freedom of speech both within and outside its borders. The situation has grown more alarming since President Xi Jinping took office in early 2013, with an increased crackdown on free speech and implementation of additional censorship laws and restrictions on the internet. Lengthy prison sentences have long been used in China to silence dissident voices, and many Chinese writers, journalists, and pro-democracy activists live in fear of censorship, harassment, and incarceration as a result of speaking out about sensitive issues.
PEN Americastands at the intersection of literature and human rights to protect open expression in the United States and worldwide. It champions the freedom to write, recognizing the power of the word to transform the world. Its mission is to unite writers and their allies to celebrate creative expression and defend the liberties that make it possible.
Amnesty International is a global movement of over seven million people who, under this umbrella, campaign for a world where human rights are enjoyed by all.
“Only when the last prisoner of conscience has been freed, when the last torture chamber has been closed, when the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a reality for the world’s people, will our work be done.” Peter Benenson, Amnesty International Founder
I’m untangling the past in night time stillness
with Pandora’s box lying under ferns of a fearsome
interpersonal jungle. I couldn’t see
what feet had tread here. The rains had come and washed
away footprints, coagulated into mud.
I released my grip on the chunk of granite curled
in my hand, soothed by the running of relentless water.
Memories of digging for hours in my best and only
friend’s back yard just trying to make it to the next level
of earth. Always hoping to find water.
Granite is made of several types of rock mashed together
by the pressure of the inner earth. Among them, K-Feldspar,
the sweet parts of the conglomeration. Bright pink spots of joy
peeking out from even the roughest earth. That’s where the gods
and goddesses are found.
The lump in the throat when life gets so heavy.
Truth rock, lodged right there in the center
of the neck where it can’t be ignored. It’s the shaky
voice. Truth lodged against the voice box.
But every experience vibrates waves of trauma
the world has offered me and I have excepted…
or not.
Eat the arrow before it’s launched.
It’s perception. Einstein told us that just before
he combed his hair. His wife thinking
she’d witnessed the impossible.
Buddhist monks, weeks of working
on colorful creations of delicate sand and splendor.
They wipe it all away.
Firesong
Fire in the belly of a one-man relief army
in Gatlinburg. Fire in the wounds of the locals
who fled the burning hills and hollers
of those Tennessee towns. Fire won’t ask you
who you voted for before it consumes
everything you knew. Fire won’t ask you
why you have no desire to run from the flames.
Fire won’t ask you about the cutting
on your forearms and legs. It won’t ask you
about the childhood scars that cut so deep
into your emotional cavity that you can’t
trust the burning embers of that longed for
first kiss.
Fire in the words of the digital
battleground. Civility and kinship charred
among the remains. Fire won’t ask you
about the rocks in your stomach
that won’t allow you to eat
after your best friend turned his back on you
leaving you curled up and weeping for days
at the end of that broken down old fishing dock
where you used to write poems together
on Sundays.
Fire on the tongue of a construction worker
singing folk songs in Detroit while nobody knew
but for the whole country of South Africa
and they turned him into an Anti-Apartheid
icon. Guitar pick fingernails in the workingman’s wheel
with the dust and soot of that city pulsing
through down to his capillaries. A song about a teenager having sex
that sparked a revolution. Fire in the sheets of a bed-in
in Montreal lasting two weeks just try to give peace
a goddammed chance. The image singed with the memory
of gunfire splitting open the Upper West Side night.
Fire in every syllable of a civil rights savior—
come to Memphis to stand
with the sanitation workers. The fire that still burns
through the words of Maya, Ta-Nahisi and Michelle.
Fire in the thin bones of a liberator making his own salt
from the sea, in the restless hands of a nun in Calcutta,
in the fire dancer’s visions of co-mingling
cultures. Creating a world without collisions.
Fire in the feat of the marching protestors
on Fifth Avenue, building their tower
of song for the South Shore social
workers and teachers, singers
and Salutatorians. Marine Biologists too late
to save the washed up whale beached on the South Fork
of this divided island. And the burning need to stick a fork
in both forks of that overdone East End of white privilidge.
Chants for the word mavens telling it slant.
Fire in the third chakra on a yoga
mat in Killington channeling the chi,
the life force—balancing
the breath into hope.
RUSS GREEN is a Graduate of Hofstra University. Over the years he has been co-editor at Great Weather for Media and has put on poetry and arts events around Long Island and New York city in addition to hosting and curating poetry stages at various festivals.
Russ has read his work from New York to New Orleans to Santa Fe and cities in between. He is currently focusing on humanitarian based events. His first book, Gimme Back My Radio, is out with Night Ballet Press. In addition, Russ has been published in a number of anthologies. He can usually be found communing with the mountains in Vermont with interesting artist friends or roaming the docks of Port Jefferson Harbor at night looking for signs of life in the starry night sky.
PHILIP ASAPH was a furniture mover for most of his life. He won scholarships and fellowships to Eckerd College, Bucknell University and New York University. His stories and poems have appeared in Glimmer Train, Poetry, The Huminist, Tampa Review and elsewhere. Philip’s new book, Four Short Stories and Ten Love Poems is recently published.
Here is Philip reading three of his poems. If you are viewing this via an email subscription, you’ll likely have to link through to The Poet by Day to listen to the reading.
TONIGHT @ THE SMITHTOWN LIBRARY
RUSS GREEN and PHILLIP ASAPH will read their poetry this evening from 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm EST at The Smithtown Library, 1 N Country Road, Smithtown, New York. The event is hosted by poet and writer, Gladys Henderson. She says, “You are in for an outstanding night of poetry. These men understand life, have experience; you will be mesmerized by their sonics and the quality of their work.”
LUKE PRATER‘s poetry is ever fascinating to me. He will tackle – as he has here – the same subject in more than one poetic form. Dedication, keen intellect and a singular irreverance are the hallmarks of this thirty-five year old English poet who took a degree in English lit with creative writing and performance and subsequently went to SOAS, London to study ethnomusicology at the master’s level. At twenty-seven he took up poetry, which he says saved his life – a thing it has done for many of us. More recently Luke added “iPhoneography” to his formidable list of accomplishments, shooting pictures and “editing the hell out of them.” J.D.
“They say a picture paints a thousand words; I’d argue the opposite.” Luke Prater
Fat Neverland (I’m Loathin’ It) – villanelle
Factory-farm ‘em on rainforest land,
jab ‘em with jittery antibiotics, in
serving a hoodwinked world’s worst burger-stand.
Nutrient nadir damn should have you banned,
even when just drunken teens in your night-kitchen
sucking down scared meat from rainforest land.
Wretched obese bloat and roll at your hand;
farmers on statutory antidepressants been
plying, supplying world’s worst burger-stand.
Consciences slip through ringed fingers like sand.
Wallets are plump; I’m still wondering why? (you grin)
greenlighting greenfelling greenforest land.
Golden the arches, but ain’t worth a grand;
Ronald’s grave future sees past catching up with him –
homeless – McCuster’s last fastburger-stand.
Clown let the kids party Fat Neverland,
Tinkerbell grounded by chow she’s demolishing.
Cattle confused grazing rainforest land,
passed off as food at world’s worst burger-stand.
Fat Neverland (I’m Loathin’ It) – Pushkin Sonnet
The cattle farmed where once was leafage,
force-fed with drugs unfit for us,
supplying world’s worst burger beefage
by farmers in disguised disgust.
Nutrition nadir should be outlawed,
to spare the trees the rasping chainsaw;
to spare the cattle cheap mince fate;
to close the flooding fast-food gate.
In wilful ignorance we swallow,
in sucking down scared meat with Coke.
Obese, they bloat in oily soak,
in lack of self-esteem they wallow.
Let kids carouse Fat Neverland,
at Ronald’s clowning, cloying hand.
Fat Neverland (I’m Loathin’ It) – free verse
Factory-farmed on rainforest land;
force-fed with antibiotics to serve a
hoodwinked world’s worst burger-stand.
A nutrient nadir that should have
them banned, even when just drunken
teens in their night-kitchen, sucking
down scared meat with cardboard and Coke.
Wretched obese bloat oily soak, in
triple chins of self-loathing they wallow;
farmers swallow disgust and
statutory antidepressants
supplying mass substandard beef.
Consciences slip through
ringed fingers like sand.
LUKE PRATER is a seriously talented English poet and musician. Many of you may be familiar with his work. (And I believe his dad was a fairly well know and highly regarded musician in England.) Luke founded Facial Expression Poetry and Critique and WordSalad blog, both of which are gone now. He shared the piece above with readers here several years ago. I present it as an example of his work for those of you who haven’t read him. He’s a very worthy man. If you can help a bit I hope you’ll consider doing so. / J.D.
I’ve been seriously unwell for a very, very long time. Fourteen years, in fact. Some of you know this, others don’t. For Facebook friends, and old friends I haven’t seen since school or my early/mid twenties, the truth is I have often made it seem like nothing is wrong. Which is possible on the internet, and with the crutch of a lot of medication. It almost feels like I’ve been living a lie for years, (when not completely absent), because I just wanted to snatch a few minutes of normal. To pretend everything’s okay. The point I’ve reached is this: I cannot continue — the years slipping away, existing rather than living, the continual pain, dis-ease and discomfort. Therefore my family (including sisters Susie Ro Prater and Joy Prater) are fundraising so I can go for treatment at a private clinic in Germany that specialises in chronic and degenerative diseases using stem-cell therapy and other protocols. We’re two thirds of the way there! Here is the link to the fundraising campaign –
“We aim to fulfil our promise of ‘inclusivity’ for poets who are unable to travel to Second Light workshop events, however, our Remote Workshops are pitched at anyone wanting to enjoy a ‘work-out’ and/or kick-start a new selection of work. We also aim to keep our prices low enough for all to access.
MYRA SCHNEIDER‘s latest and recent books are Persephone in Finsbury Park (SLP), The Door to Colour (Enitharmon); What Women Want(SLP). More at Myra Schneider website where you can also order Myra’s books.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 