December 2, 2019: In honor of a valued poet, a reblog of this 2017 post on Reuben and HERE is the link to Paul Brookes’ interview.
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.”
A portrait of Woolf by Roger Fry c. 1917 – Leeds Art Gallery / Public Domain
“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.” Virginia Woolf, The Waves
The New York Public Library just announced the acquisition of an extensive Virginia Woolf Collection. This collection provides a rare glimpse into the life of the iconic writer and, merged with existing Library collections related to Woolf, formulates one of the world’s most complete and important collections of Virginia Woolf material.
The Library has acquired by purchase and gift this collection of rarely seen Virginia Woolf material: correspondence, rare printed books and unique material such as photographs, original artwork and ephemera, including Woolf’s passport.
Patience and Fortitude, the “Library Lion” statues, in the snowstorm of December 1948 / Public Domain Photograph from the now defunct United States Information Agency
The collection of 153 items was assembled over decades by William Beekman. It will join the Library’s existing Virginia Woolf holdings in the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, accessible from the Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. With this new acquisition, The New York Public Library holds what is arguably the most complete and important collection of Virginia Woolf material in the world.
The Library’s Berg Collection is currently home to Virginia Woolf’s diaries and notebooks; draft material for all of her works of fiction; nearly 3,000 pieces of incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as photographs; books; legal documents; and her walking stick. The existing collection, which spans the years 1888 to 1941, numbers nearly 3,700 individual items and began with the acquisition of Woolf’s diaries in 1958, directly from her husband, Leonard Woolf.
“Virginia Woolf’s writings are essential to literary modernism, long one of the core collecting areas—and one of the most frequently accessed—of the Berg Collection at The New York Public Library,” said Andrew W. Mellon Director of the Research Libraries, William Kelly. “The acquisition of the William Beekman Collection of Virginia Woolf and Her Circle adds extraordinary depth to what is already one of the Berg’s strongest collections. With this acquisition, the Library reaffirms its commitment to Virginia Woolf, to literary modernism, to early feminist writing, and to documenting the creative process through incomparably rich collections.”
Highlights of the new acquisition:
Extensive correspondence, including a set of eight letters from Virginia Woolf’s husband, Leonard, and sister, Vanessa Bell, to Vita Sackville-West regarding Woolf’s disappearance and suicide.
Showing a different side of the author’s personality, a humorous “proclamation” written on the eve Vanessa Bell’s marriage, which Woolf wrote from the perspectives of three apes, Billy, Bartholomew, Mungo, and a Wombat.
Copies of the first editions of Woolf’s books, including Jacob’s Room (1922), Mrs. Dalloway (1925), and To the Lighthouse (1927). Each retain the original jacket illustrations designed by Vanessa Bell and several are inscribed to intimate associates
Unique items such as Woolf’s passport name card with picture, unpublished poetry by Vita Sackville-West, and books from Woolf’s own library.
Letters and gift books inscribed to Florence Hardy (widow of Thomas Hardy), David Garnett, Clive Bell, and other prominent members of the Bloomsbury group.
The Beekman collection complements the Library’s holdings, while providing greater breadth and important context for many of the items. This is seen with the addition of the letter from Leonard Woolf to Vita Sackville-West regarding Virginia’s presumed suicide and finding her walking stick floating in the river. The Berg Collection is home to the walking stick.
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) was an English novelist, essayist, biographer, and feminist. Woolf was central to the Bloomsbury Group*, a coterie of British artists, writers, and intellectuals active in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1917, Woolf founded with her husband, Leonard, the Hogarth Press and published what would become foundational works of Modernism, including T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land in 1923. She also wrote nine novels, two collections of short stories, a biography, and three book-length essays in addition to other works. She wrote approximately 400 essays and 4,000 letters, and kept a diary for most of her life before committing suicide in 1941.
*The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century,[1]including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strachey. This loose collective of friends and relatives was closely associated with the University of Cambridge for the men and King’s College London for the women, and they lived, worked or studied together near Bloomsbury, London. According to Ian Ousby, “although its members denied being a group in any formal sense, they were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts.” Their works and outlook deeply influenced literature, aesthetics, criticism, and economics as well as modern attitudes towards feminism, pacifism, and sexuality. A well-known quote, attributed to Dorothy Parker, is “they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”. Wikipedia MORE
“I could not be more delighted to see my collection find a permanent home with the marvelous Woolf material already held by The New York Public Library in the Berg Collection,” said collector, William Beekman. “The Berg’s wealth of related holdings and its curatorial resources mean that these books and documents, which have given me so much pleasure, will be available to scholars and the general public to study and enjoy for years to come.”
The collection has been processed and is available for research purposes at the Berg Collection.
This post is complied courtesy of The New York Public Library, Leeds Art Gallery, Wikipedia, and my bookshelf.
Rose Main Reading Room
The New York Public Library is a free provider of education and information for the people of New York and beyond. With 92 locations—including research and branch libraries—throughout the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island, the Library offers free materials, computer access, classes, exhibitions, programming, and more to everyone from toddlers to scholars, and has seen record numbers of attendance and circulation in recent years. The New York Public Library serves nearly 17 million patrons who come through its doors annually and millions more around the globe who use its resources at nypl.org. To offer this wide array of free programming, The New York Public Library relies on both public and private funding. Learn more about how to support the Library at nypl.org/support.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
“My advice is simple. Poetry has feeling. It must address its subject with depth and conviction. It must be unbiased and true to its feeling in order to touch another.” Nancy Ndeke
My introduction to Nancy Ndeke comes by way of a deepening connection with exiled Zimbabwean poet, Mbizo Chirasha, WOMAWORDS LITERARY PRESS *Literary Dope* Extra-Revolutionary*Creative Crazy* (Liberated Voices). I thank him for giving me another platform for having my say and for introducing me to Nancy and other African poets. I’ve read quite a number of Nancy’s poems and writings. I’m impressed with her ethic and insights. I’m also pleased with this evolving African connection. We have been short on African representation and representation from those of the African Diaspora. Foundational to the work of The Poet by Day and The BeZine is to take advantage of what I think of as Global Living. This is a gift of the Internet. If we share art and stories across borders, it helps defy the often dehumanizing rhetoric of mainstream media and the always dehumanizing rhetoric of those who benefit from fomenting national, racial, and religious fear and bigotry, not for sake of the people but for sake of their own power and wealth.
*
“If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.” Malcom X
– Jamie Dedes
*
INTERVIEW
*
JAMIE: Please tell us of the life experience that brought you to your activism?
*
NANCY: What brought me to activism is both personal and public. At the age of ten, I was involved in accident. I suffered seizures as a result, a most misunderstood illness especially in rural Africa in the seventies. I was traumatised and stigmatized by the mis/treatment that birthed in me a spirit of defending vulnerable persons in whatever situation.
*
Then, in the late nineties, I worked with an NGO in a civil war torn country in Africa. The inhumanity of humans was the most shocking. This again led to my writings exposing the vagaries of war and especially toward the weak.
*
JAMIE: What made you decide on poetry as a vehicle for activism?
*
NANCY: Poetry has always been the love of my life since it was introduced to me in junior high school. Its ability to borrow strongly from emotions and sentiments ensure feelings are conveyed as near accurately as possible in order to identify with the subject matter. Poetry, I also find, has its own freedom in expression, especially free verse, which is my preference.
*
JAMIE: We have some readers here who are just beginning to use poetry as their nonviolent weapon of choice in combatting injustice. What words of advice and encouragement can you give them?
*
NANCY: My advice is simple. Poetry has feeling. It must address its subject with depth and conviction. It must be unbiased and true to its feeling in order to touch another.
*
POEMS*
LAST TESTAMENT,
Is the un-gluing of ancient loves,
Is the dying songs of fairy tales,
Is the admonishment of lullabies ,
Is the scattering of kin bonds,
Last testament,
Is a leftist swing from right,
Is Maths without formulae, and
If there is,
The sum total of outcome is dearth
Knocking family hearth with rebellion
Un-commanding the commandments with mad commendations,
Topsy Turvy is the imbalance of status quo long overthrown
Alas!! In celebrating birth we forgot death
In chanting arrival,we forgot the end is the beginning,
Children of clay baying for the moon shine in shadow of truant machismo
Is there light except light?
How about love? Does it come with color?
Who knows the day before birth and the one after death?
We are quite a mouthful us who think we know for we know bias
Ask the wind, ask the tides, ask the fog and mist about the mysteries of life,
Humility is prayer,
Gratitude is song
We are poverty itself without the two.
WHEN THE BEDROOM,
Erupted on fire and milk coagulated,
The honey dried into an angry plastic.
Impenetrable and
Blatantly nasty
War is synonymous with death
Except from profiteers
Who grin with pomp and flair
At boosted arms deals
Heaven disagrees on principle
Earth receives the rogue principal
His mastery of greed as an incentive
The undoing of civilizations
Chanting empire slogans
Lads and lands are tagged
Boundaries defined and minions positioned
Henceforth learning starts
Of half truths and pure lies.
Gods multiply
God is ridiculed and sold as a fairy tale
Men lord it over the earth
Dimming thoughts of seekers
Till, darkness dot the irises of populations
Praying to rights of theorem
While wrong sips grape juice
At the heaps of gold and diamonds
Stacked close to crude barrels
Deliverables from the smoky ruins
Of recent massacres,
Of children of the Same God.
What became of men?
NARRATIVE.
Am a narrative of the road riding the wind
The shooting star in the sleepy eyes of earth
I speak the light on tree tops whispering ancient oaths of love
Am new on an old journey cheering pain on to an unknown end
Am the biased child of the moon holding secrets of lovers in tender arms
Am the invisible flow of emotions walking the isle of oaths
My foot leaves no footprints except the faith of chartered beginnings and ends
My song is the silent rays of the sun warming the bones of men at the edge
My dance is the sway of the palm tree laughing at the insulting tides
I am a narrative that is a chorus in the rapids of wild waters,
My father is the King of the words and my mother is the mysterious keeper of secrets
My siblings may be rogue but no less divine
Nuisance has embedded its parts on my narrative and now the road suffers hiccups
Potholes rival the narration soiling it with twisted beliefs of another
Now, my narrative stings with the fumes of borrowed ideology, am reduced to an uprooted stump
The agony so prevalent i have learnt to live the lie of the liar
My narrative has been hijacked by a puppeteer I tell ends before beginnings
Am embroiled with inner turmoil reducing my speech to a slur,
My narrative has been invaded by a strange tongue and I admit to being afraid
But woe unto you if you hazard my defeat
Am the child of the mugumo tree that fetches its water from the Indian ocean
And all your mutated lessons shall like a leaf in the fall, fall
And i shall rise with the wind of first light and tell it to the birds
Am not ashamed to have slipped over your slippery tongue
But damn me if I ever fall again
And this narrative of the skin on my bones shall forever thrive
A reminder that am here as no accident, so dear, deal with your lying tongue
Am a narrative of the road riding the wind,
My echo of joyful living is the screech of gravel on your ears,
You, denier of colors.
AM MANY THINGS,
As variant as the oceans’ emotions,
Spectacular like the sky and its unknown splendour,
Am the lone flower in the forest,
Differently the same with dead trees and bees hunting nectar
Am the fool chasing a speck of light in clouded breathes of conflict,
Am the song in the windpipe of a newborn
Am the voice of silence singing twilight dirges of animals on the path of extinction
Am the word in the phrase that refuses praise to common camouflage of peeling skins of graduates of ideology.
Am a son of the sun
Blemished with innuendos of a vagabond restrained from apostasy,
My home threw me out and replaced me with the after birth
Am the old gnarled tree with crooked roots and bent branches,
I sing of stars and realms of yesterdays that tomorrow shall witness,
Am the stone death to denial of the rights of the weak
Though my walk is feeble and my eyes rheumy,
I see life as more than breath and showmanship
And I roam the hostile home of my ancestry with the hymn of creation
As I wait for dust to welcome my tent,
And I shall flee to the beginning.
NANCY NDEKE is the Associate Editor of Liberated Voices, a Poet of international acclaim, and a reputable literary arts consultant. Her writings and her poetry are featured in several collections, anthologies and publications around the globe including the American magazine Wild Fire, Save Africa Anthology. World Federation of Poets in Mexico. Ndeke is a Resident Contributor of the Brave Voices Poetry Journal since mid-2018. African Contributor to the DIFFERENT TRUTHS, a publication that sensitizes the world on the plight of Autism edited by Aridham Roy. SAVE AFRCA ANTHOLOGY, edited by Prof. Dave Gretch of Canada and reviewed by Joseph Spence Jr., has featured her poetry and a paper on issues afflicting Africa and Africans.
Ndeke’s poetry and other literatures in WILD FIRE PUBLICATION in America published by Susan Joyner Stumpf and Susan Brooke Langdon. ARCS MAGAZINE in New York Edited by DR. Anwer Ghani. Her women Arts Presentation was recently published by WOMEN OF ART (WOA) in Cape Coast in Ghana. Soy Poesia, in Peru, Claudette V pg 11 featured her writings with great reception. AZAHAR from Mexico, with the initiative from Josep Juarez has also featured her poetry as has in WORLD FESTIVAL OF POTRY (WFP) from Mexico under the able editorial team comprising Luz Maria Lopez. She has been featured by INTERNATIONAL AFRICAN WRITERS from Nigeria, under the able hands of Munyal Markus Manunyi; Patricia Amundsen from Australia featured her poetry on this year’s international women’s day at Messenger of Love, Radio Station; and, esteemed poet Jolly Bhattacharjee featured Ndeke’s works on her greatly acclaimed awareness anthology for 2019, India.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
See a procession of young mothers chattering their way From water fountains in grenade torn sandals And blood laced bras Decade of Bullets, Mbizo Chirasha
Is fading the memory of its son,
Who for words must ride the night
Fleeing ears that hear thunder on a babies purity guggle,
Zvegona, my homestead,
Ancestors are watching
Elders on a scheming mission
Trading lies with more lies
The road to Zvegona
Your Sideroads sigh
Your song is silent
Only hiccups of mothers greet the sun
Yearning for the return of the bearded child
Who lives on the strings of truth
Truth refused a seat at the council of baboons on the lagoons
Goons settling scores on the assumptions that a boy has a price,
Well, the boy true has a price
But not one you can pay with looted coins
The boy has shaved his hair not his brains
The boy has slipped his boots on and truth has raised its flag
And the spirits of truth sing his Achilles heels on,
So Zvegona, the village of the lucky poet,
Grow thistles and thorns
Feed cattle and goats
The boy has shaved his beard
Ready for a walk back, to shave the land of all pretentious shenanigans
Uprooting the weeds and weevils
Repair the kraal too,
Where roosters shall announce light unto the land,
Currently bent double under the gargantuan weight of lying tongues.
Zvegona, you are my yesterday
Zvegona, you are my tomorrow in whatever form, shape or …….
The first New Look Brave Voices Poetry Journal will be out by the 15th of December 2019. It is a Christmas gift. Our deadline for articles [and poetry] is the 10th of December 2019. We look forward to contributions and features with a length of 1500 words. You can send these in the body of mail with photos as attachments. Please include your publishable photos and a fifteen line bio to bravevoicespoetry@gmail.com
We’ve received letters of support to go in Mbizo’s applications for grants and safe harbor, but the Go-Fund-Me effort is still not to goal, which would provide for the immediate need for pantry staples, computer, and so forth. Without predictable computer access, Mbizo has not yet been able to do his interview with the Canadian radio show, though the offer still stands.
International Human Rights Festival, the entity that sponsored Mbizo’s Go-Fund-Me, has attracted $480 and raised the goal to $750. They have cut him some partial funding for now. Meanwhile, folks, I suggest that if enough of us donated the price of one morning latte, we’d make the goal. What do you say? A whole bunch of tidbits would combine for a whole lot of success. You can make your donation anonymously HERE.
If you are able and interested in helping in any way, you can contact Mbizo directly at: girlchildcreativity@gmail.com
“We remain resilient in the quest for justice, freedom of expression and upholding of human rights through Literary Activism and Artivism. ALUTA CONTINUA.” Mbizo Chirasha
MBIZO CHIRASHA is a recipient of PEN Deutschland Exiled Writer Grant (2017), Literary Arts Projects Curator, Writer in Residence, Blogs Publisher, Arts for Human Rights/Peace Activism Catalyst, Social Media Publicist and Internationally Anthologized Writer, 2017 African Partner of the International Human Rights Arts Festival Exiled in Africa Program in New York. 2017 Grantee of the EU- Horn of Africa Defend Human Rights Defenders Protection Fund. Resident Curator of 100 Thousand Poets for Peace-Zimbabwe, Originator of Zimbabwe We Want Poetry Movement. He has published a collection of poetry, Good Morning President, and co-created another one Whispering Woes of Gangesand Zembezi with Indian poet Sweta Vikram.
Jamie Dedes. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage The BeZineand its associated activities and The Poet by Dayjamiededes.com, an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights and encourages activist poetry. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments.
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. I’m a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. I also manage 
NANCY NDEKE is the Associate Editor of Liberated Voices, a Poet of international acclaim, and a reputable literary arts consultant. Her writings and her 
upholding of human rights through Literary Activism and Artivism. ALUTA CONTINUA.” Mbizo Chirasha
MBIZO CHIRASHA
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 