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ARTEMIS POETRY

artemispoetrycoverissue9frontNo matter what happens on any given day, when the latest issue of a favored literary magazine crosses the threshold of my home, it’s a good day. Recently I received the November issue of ARTEMISpoetry for review. That was a very good day indeed. The writing and art is by women.The reading is for everyone. I venture to say that this publication of the Second Light Network, while not well-known, is making a mark and growing an audience.

Between the covers of ARTEMISpoetry, I found a rich selection of poems, features, reviews and interviews, biography, and art.

The journal opens with an interview of the Argentinian, Ana Becciú.

“I continue writing because I need to know and to understand … the voices within us, understand the surface of the words we use every day, voices that pronounce suffering, loss, the voices of all of us lost in this present society.”

There follows an exploration on the pleasures of reading and an essay by Myra Schneider on the “mystery of the creative moment.” I enjoyed the detail in Clare Best‘s engaging feature on her project and process for Self-portrait without Breasts. The project evolved from her decision to have a prophylactic double-mastectomy and to go flat chested and not have reconstructive surgery or use prosthesis.

“Cast me and I will become what I must.”

I think the feature I most enjoyed was Judith Cair’s piece on her experience translating passages from Homer’s Odyssey.

“The act of translating is beginning to influence my own writing. Even in writing poems far removed from Ancient Greece, I realize that there is an undertow of lines from the Odyssey, which may or may not be consciously acknowledged. And sometimes I am left with such a strong impression of a particular episode that I must re-imagine it for myself.”

The main course in this delightful menu addressing the interests of poets is the poetry itself. Among the many poems enjoyed is Anne Cluysenaar’s Hearing Your Words, offered here with the permission of the publisher and poet.

HEARING YOUR WORDS
For Ruth Bidgood, reading in Aberystwyth

by Anne Cluysenaar, © 2013, All rights reserved

I used, as a child, to imagine my death, or rather
beyond it. A ship setting out, in flames, at dusk,
counteracting the planet’s roll, on the sunrise path
to a waveless far horizon lit from beneath.

This came to mind, just now, clicking on close-up
through the café window – sea meeting that sky,
distantly smooth, arching high, up above
a jumble of chimneys and roofs backlit at sundown.

I found myself catching my breath, gravity’s curve
seen through such a small frame, from here where we sit
with our cups of tea. Vastness out there, our past.
But on planets elsewhere, other seas, other lives beginning.

Later, among the books, hearing your words,
it was waves I thought of – from land we may never see
reaching across the bulge of this little earth
to break, not one the same, on familiar shores.

taken from a poem diary From Seen to Unseen and Back by Anne Cluysenaar, forthcoming from Cinnamon Press, 2014.

ARTEMISpoetry is published  twice-a-year in November and May. Members receive their copy as part of their membership. Issues are available to nonmembers. For information, link HERE.  The next submission deadline is August 31, 2013. For membership and submission information, link HERE.

© 2013 essay, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
© 2012, journal cover and art, Second Light Network, All rights reserved – Many thanks to Anne Stewart for forwarding the cover and to Myra Schneider, Dilys Wood, and Anne Cluysenaar for the poem

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THE LIVES OF WOMEN

www-cover… For when I shut myself off the outer tick
I find myself listening to the quickening beat
of this dear planet as if it were my own heart’s clock.”
The Composition Hut, Myra Schneider in What Women Want

In this short collection of nineteen poems  – including the ten-page narratively-driven long-poem, Caroline Norton – Myra Schneider manages to cut through our many-layered lives. Her poems often move from the intimacy of  personal experience to a broader frame of reference. The opening poems are nature-and-spirit driven and bespeak a love of and concern for environment. The second part of the collection fulfills the polemic promise of the title to present hard lives and harder times in a clear and righteous outcry.

Among the opening poems is Losing, written for her publisher. Myra starts with the unimportant lose of socks and moves on to finding what is valuable:

“a sparrowhawk perched on your gate, eyes alert
for prey, words that toadleap from imagination,
from heart – to make sure every day is a finding.”

In two poems she hints at the symmetrical beauty of mathematics, “… the square root of minus one you once grasped, dumbfounded.” A visit to the Garden is bursting with color and movement and triggers speculations …

“but what does it matter? You know too well
how the years have shrunk your future,
that the past is an ever expanding suitcase.”

… and further along in the poem she closes with …

“to your feet, to the bees still milking
flowering raspberries. You free a frog
watch it hop back to its life.”

I was riveted by the story of Paula Schneider in Crossing Point, as Paula (probably Myra’s mother-in-law) crosses with her children from Germany into Holland during World War II. This is included in the second half of Myra’s book, which comes to the business at hand: injustice as it affects women and children.

Interesting that this book came my way when I am standing by two friends whose physical and emotional frailty are much entwined with their relations with fathers and husbands or boyfriends. It’s not that things haven’t been improved since our parents’ days…at least for many of us it has. It’s not that there are no kind and enlightened men. Certainly there are. It’s not because women and society are without culpability, because they are not.

The complexity of the gender and social issues examined are clear in Myra’s long poem, Caroline Norton, about the nineteenth century writer and poet,  social reformer and unwitting feminist. Caroline came to the latter two occupations, not so much by choice as necessity. As the poem folds out, we see that the brutal husband who separated Caroline from her children (with tragic results for them), was abetted and aided by the women in his life, influenced as they were by a social context in which women and children are property with no legal rights of their own. No doubt those women were numb to the implications, threatened by the hint of change, and anxious to bolster the sense of surperiority they got out of putting this woman down.

Myra stands firm in her poetic commitment to continue the fight started with Caroline Norton, since half the world is still under siege and the other half still begs improvements. We read about the child-bride (Woman) and the woman who is stoned (Her Story). One wonders what happens to the children – boys and girls – of such women. The short story here is that: What women want is justice.

For two years, I have enjoyed Myra Schneider’s work and appreciated her commitment to encouraging others to honor their inner artist, through her books on writing, her classes, and her support of Second Light Network (England), an association of women poets over forty. I suspect that her work doesn’t have the audience it deserves. I hope the day comes when that is remedied.

The closing poem in What Women Want:

WOMEN RUNNING
by Myra Schneider, 2013, All rights reserved
posted here with Myra’s permission

after Picasso: Deux femmes courant sur la plage
Look how their large bodies leaping
from dresses fill the beach, how their breasts
swing happiness, how the mediterraneans
of sea and sky fondle their flesh. Nothing

could rein them in. The blown wildnesses
of their dark animal hair, their hands joined
and raised, shout triumph. All their senses
are roused as they hurtle towards tomorrow.

That arm laid across the horizon,
the racing legs, an unstoppable quartet, pull
me from my skin and I become one of them,
believe I’m agile enough to run a mile,

believe I’m young again, believe age
has been stamped out. No wonder, I worship
at the altar of energy, not the energy huge
with hate which revels in tearing apart,

in crushing to dust but the momentum
which carries blood to the brain, these women
across the plage, lovers as they couple,
and tugs at the future till it breaks into bloom.

What Women Want, publisher (Second Light Publications)

© 2013, essay, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Cover art and poetry, Myra Schneider, All rights reserved

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SEPTEMBER 26, 2012: Announcing New Website for Poet Mary MacRae

 

The deeper I go into Mary MacRae’s poems the more spacious my own world becomes. Anne Cluysenaar

The English poet Mary MacRae died of cancer in 2009. Were it not for the love and commitment of her poet-friends at Second Light Network, we might not have the gift of her poetry to savor in our quiet moments. Poet, teacher and consultant to Second Light Network, Myra Schneider  wrote and asked me to let you know that they have established a website for Mary.

The wide range of poems in Inside the Brightness of Red includes poignant work written when she was terminally ill but also beautiful lyric poems about childhood, youth, relations with parents, marriage, friendship and her responses to art and nature. Dilys Wood

Mary’s love of life … of nature, birds, flowers, gardens, art and family and friends are evident in precise multicolored layers of her work. She was published in several prestigious literary magazines.

Her enormous warmth and zest for life were balanced with a sensitivity and deep compassion that invited many to confide in her, came into play in her perceptive and incisive criticism and pervaded her poems. Lucy Hamilton

Mary won two poetry prizes: Scintilla magazine’s Long Poem Competition and a joint first prize in the Second Light Poetry Competition. Her work is included in the second Poetry School Anthology, Entering the Tapestry (Enitharmon Press 2003) and in Four Caves of the Heart (Second Light Publications, 2004). Second Light published two collections of Mary’s poems: Inside the Color of Red and As Birds Do. 

To read a small selection of Mary MacRae’s poems – of special note is Jury – link HERE.  You can buy Mary’s two poetry collections through the website.

With permission I published the following poem before on this blog and I post it again as an example of Mary’s work. Please enjoy, but remember that it is copyrighted with all rights reserved. It belongs to Mary’s estate. This poem is from Inside the Color of Red. 

Note: I have also put a link to Mary’s site, Myra’s site, and to Second Light Network in my blogroll under Poets and Friends, which a new and developing section of my blogroll.

ELDER

by Mary MacCrae

·

A breathing space:

the house expands around me,

·

unfolds elastic lungs

drowsing me back

·

to other times and rooms

where I’ve sat alone

writing, as I do now,

when syncope –

·

one two three one two –

breaks in;

·

birdcall’s stained

the half-glazed door with colour,

·

enamelled the elder tree

whose ebony drops

·

hang in rich clusters

on shining scarlet stalks

·

while with one swift stab

the fresh-as-paint

·

starlings get to the heart

of the matter

of matter

·

in a gulp of flesh

and clotted juice that leaves me

·

gasping for words transparent

as glass, as air.

© poem and photograph, Estate of Mary MacRae, all rights reserved

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MYRA SCHNEIDER’S NEW POETRY COLLECTION, HOMAGE TO RAY BRADBURY

WHAT WOMEN WANT: I just finished reading a sampling of poems that British poet, Myra Schneider just sent me. They’re from her newly published collection, What Women Want, from Second Light Publications.

The collection focuses on the ability of words and women to effect change. Myra explains:

“The booklet is in two sections. The main section has poems that examine the lives of women. The central poem in this section is a ten page narrative about Caroline Norton (1808-1877). She was the grand-daughter of Sheridan, the famous British playwright. Carolina was a beautiful society lady in London and a writer who had a dramatic life. Her brutal husband took away her three young children and gave them to his hard-hearted sister to look after in Scotland far out of her reach. Caroline’s difficulties led her to fight for women’s rights. She was the first woman reformer in Britain in the nineteenth century. Her pamphlet, Separation of Mother and Child by the Laws of Custody of Infants Considered (1837) is a work of art. With years of persistence she achieved some changes in the English law. These paved the way for later reforms.
 
CAROLYN NORTON
“The poem, Carolyn Norton, ends by referring to the fact that many women in today’s world are denied basic human rights. It is followed by two poems which look at this situation. Other poems are about the frustrated life of my mother, also my mother-in-law, a stalwart refugee from Hitler. The last poem takes an upbeat look at women. The booklet begins with a section of general and lyrical poems which cover a range of subject matter.” Myra Schneider.
·
 Included in the collection is also this wonderful poem, posted here with permission…
·

WOMEN RUNNING

by

Myra Schneider

after Picasso: Deux femmes courant sur la plage

·

Look how their large bodies leaping

from dresses fill the beach, how their breasts

swing happiness, how the mediterraneans

of sea and sky fondle their flesh. Nothing

·

could rein them in. The blown wildnesses

of their dark animal hair, their hands joined

and raised, shout triumph. All their senses

are roused as they hurtle towards tomorrow.

·

That arm laid across the horizon,

the racing legs, an unstoppable quartet, pull

me from my skin and I become one of them,

believe I’m agile enough to run a mile,

·

believe I’m young again, believe age

has been stamped out. No wonder I worship

at the altar of energy, not the energy huge

with hate which revels in tearing apart,

·

in crushing to dust but the momentum

which carries blood to the brain, these women

across the plage, lovers as they couple

and tugs at the future till it breaks into bloom.

·

Order through Second Light Publications or directly from myraschneider@gmail.com

You can link to Myra’s website that includes information about her other poetry collections and her schedule of poetry classes and other events HERE.

© 2012, cover art and poem, Myra Schneider, All rights reserved
Illustration ~ Carolyn Sheridan, public domain

Δ

“You’re here to have fun …”
 
·
RAY BRADBURY (1920-2012)
American Author
fantasy, science fiction, horror, and mystery
twenty-seven novels
six-hundred short stories
eight million copies sold
thirty-six languages
HE WILL BE MISSED.
·
Video posted to YouTube by  
Photo credit ~ U.S. Government, Public Domain