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American- Israeli Poet, Michael Dickel (War Surrounds Us) will be in Hamilton Ontario, Tallahassee Florida and Long Island, NY

“That some of those labelled as enemies
have crossed the lines to offer condolences
at the mourning tents; that the mourning
families spoke to each other as parents
and cried on each others’ shoulders;
that we cried for the children who died
on both sides of the divide; that the
war began anyway; that hope must
still remain with those who cross
borders, ignore false lines and divisions;
that children should be allowed to live;
that we must cry for all children who die”

– Michael Dickel, (Mosquitos) War Surrounds Us

“Thanks to musician and artist Zena Hagerty and HamiltonSeen (film-makers) for inviting me [Michael] to Ontario as a writer-in-residence to work in collaboration with other artists.

“Also, thanks to poet Michael Rothenberg and #100TPC for also inviting me to Florida for a residency, later in February.

“If any  people in our wider poetry community seeing this in or around Hamilton-Toronto or Tallahassee areas and have connections to help with arranging potential readings or campus visits during February (first part in Ontarion, second in Florida), please be in touch with me via Facebook chat / messenger if you are willing to help. I expect to be in the NYC-Long Island area the last week of January (28 Jan–03 Feb), also. Paying gigs would especially be appreciated, to help cover my travel expenses (which the residencies don’t have funds to cover).”

—Michael

Watch for more details on time, days and locations to come under “Events” in upcoming Sunday Announcements. ./J.D.

You can read my [Jamie’s] interview of Michael: The Poet as Witness HERE and his essay A Defense of Activist Poetry HERE. Michael’s Amazon page is HERE.

Note: If you are reading this post via an email subscription, it’s likely you’ll have to link through to the site to view this video.

MICHAEL DICKEL a poet, fiction writer, and photographer, has taught at various colleges and universities in Israel and the United States. Dickel’s writing, art, and photographs appear in print and online. His poetry has won international awards and been translated into several languages. His chapbook, Breakfast at the End of Capitalism came out from Locofo Chaps in 2017. Is a Rose Press released his most recent full-length book (flash fiction), The Palm Reading after The Toad’s Garden, in 2016. Previous books: War Surrounds Us, Midwest / Mid-East, and The World Behind It, Chaos… He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36(2010). He was managing editor for arc-23 and arc-24. With producer / director David Fisher, he received an NEH grant to write a film script about Yiddish theatre. He is the former chair of the Israel Association of Writers in English. Meta/ Phor(e) /Play is Michael’s blogZine Michael on Social Media: Twitter | FaceBook Page | Instagram | Academia  Michael is also an a member of The BeZine core team.

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A Little Bit of Magic: That’s what happens when a singer/songwriter and a poet team up

What’s it like for a poet and a singer/songwriter to pool their talents and produce an album? That’s something I’ve wondered about. I thought perhaps some of you have as well.  When I found out that Diane Barbarash and Allison Grayhurst did just that, I asked them to share their experience with us here. / J.D.

Diane Barbarash:

The collaboration for the album River began on New Year’s Eve 2016 when I was reading Trial and Witness –Selected Poems by Allison Grayhurst.

I should first explain that Allison and I were extremely close friends back in Toronto, my old hometown. Several years ago I moved 3,000 miles west, landing in Vancouver on the west coast of Canada. I think it’s hard to maintain friendships with such distance so over time we focused more on our private lives and lost our regular communication.

Sometime in 2016 Allison and I reconnected, and it was as if we had never skipped a beat. I truly felt a piece of myself had returned and so it followed that I downloaded her compilation and was immersed in the book on that auspicious New Year’s Eve. I don’t even know what possessed me, but I remember the moment clearly. I suddenly picked up my guitar, scanned the poem I had just read and a verse flowed from a few of the lines like magic. It came so easily; musically it sounded like “something.”

So I went to another poem and had a similar experience. I should insert here that I was at that time fresh off of a three-year creative block in which I was only able to write a few songs, not many for such a time period. When these two random verses came forward from Allison’s poetry I felt more alive than I had in a long time. I can’t tell you how I knew but I knew something big had opened. The following day I contacted Allison and proposed the project. She very kindly gave me her blessing and her trust, and then I got to work!

The first poem that became a song was Animal Sanctuary. I think I sent Allison the first half, just to see how she felt. She loved it. I remember feeling nervous because I had changed the wording of course, the order of things, because a song is going to demand its own unique rhythm and one that flows with the chord progression. Even with just a half a song, we knew we had something. The writing of the album continued from January until July 2017. It was recorded in four days in August and mixed and mastered that same month.

River has been the most beautiful artistic relationship I have ever experienced. I’ve previously co-written with other musicians and one other Canadian poet, so I have had some collaborative experience, but mostly it’s been a solo road, writing my own material. I admit I am biased here… I think Allison is truly a great writer and I have not read poetry that moves me so deeply into my human rawness as hers does. It’s an honor that I’ve been able to bring her work out into the forefront.

Songs, like other art, cannot be forced by the mind. They have to come from the heart and you have to give yourself over to them as they flow out. This is how I’ve always known I am in the presence of true love, the unexplainable lyrical and musical combination that gives birth to what becomes a song.

Composing with Allison’s poetry became this kind of pure-heart experience. I am changed because of this album and definitely hope that there is more to come.

– Diane Barbarash

DIANE BARBARASH started writing songs even before she learned how to play guitar at thirteen. She was an active performer in Toronto’s folk club circuit before moving to Vancouver where she perused her love of recording. She has released three albums prior to River but considers River her true debut.

River – songs from the poetry of Allison Grayhurst was released in October 2017 and is available on Bandcamp, iTunes, and Amazon.  Diane’s Amazon page is HERE. . . Diane on Soundcloud.

Allison Grayhurst:

When Diane first approached me about this project, my initial response was surprise and trepidation, along with excitement. I didn’t think such a thing was possible – for although there is a natural rhythm in my poetry, I didn’t think there could be music. I was nervous that I wouldn’t like what I heard. Even though I completely trusted Diane and was already a fan of her musical abilities, I was full of scepticism. However, after hearing how Diane combined her musical gifts with my poems to create separate identities – songs – I was blown away. I never imagined such a thing possible and I can’t imagine that anyone but Diane could have tuned in so well to my poems, creating songs from my poems that I would be happy with. Her instinctual genius, both musically and vocally, astounds me and resonates in complete harmony with my poetry. She has honoured my work every step of the way. I am in awe of Diane’s talent and brilliance.
 
Diane wrote the songs using my poems. Once the songs were complete, Diane sent me each song as an mp3 and a word file of the lyrics. I went over the lyrics meticulously and got back to her with any changes I wanted. There weren’t many changes, but there were a few that I felt necessary to keep true to the poems. Diane made the changes upon my suggestion – sometimes sending me back several versions. We did this until it fit musically for her and I was happy with it lyrically. As we both mutually respect each other’s artistic integrity, the process was quick and easeful.
 .
– Allsion Grayhurst
 .

Three poems by Allison Grayhurst

 .
River
 
I will run my breath across your eyelids,
go to you, trace the edges of your hands,
finding infinity inside your torment. I will
drift into you like wind and you will not mind
my lips like a concentrated shadow on your skin,
darkening but leaving no weight. You will let me
be inside your picture, a background to your lyrics,
softly at first, I will heal the red in the whites of your eyes.
I will release my wardrobe for you and you will be the mania
that I climb through to reach tranquility. I will
cup your flesh and stretch you through this intimacy because
I own you as you own me and it is not a bad thing, not
blasphemy or anything
to fear. It is your hands, mine – these
poignant burial grounds that have been excavated,
these days of standing close, depending upon the ease
of our mutual exposure. I will speak in your ear and you
will step into my voice
like stepping into a river.
 
First published in InnerChildPress

Now I am Two

 
It is this way, togetherness:
A covenant with tenderness and speaking thoughts
only glimpsed.
The snow falls like rain as the afternoon moves
without time, our hands pressed as one,
lips and then, something better. Always
miraculous, unexpected, awakening. Always
us, vanishing and then re-emerging with these things
of harmony and friction engulfing our scent and path. Soon,
the tiger lilies will bloom and being just us will be made difficult
with the children gathered in our arms. But this ‘difficult’ is
whole and adds to our liberation – making coffee, laughing
at things shared and only ours.
It is what was prayed for, what years and hardship has not
diluted, but has fused into an unbreakable bond – us –
the summoning of all our parts – ancient, immediate
so that even when death comes or fate and terrible sobbing,
neither of us will ever be again
without the other
alone.
 
First published in Anchor & Plume: Kindred, Issue 5, Nest

Animal Sanctuary

 
He turns his hawk head
to view the shells of turtles streaking
the still-shroud of water in tanks
as blue as sky.
 
He lifts a leg and talons tensed,
pivots to defend against an enclosing shadow.
 
With whitish eyes and an impossible urge
to fly, he hops along his man-made perch toward
the cages where squirrels leap
from metal to wood, scattering like leaves
in unpredictable flurry.
 
He listens to the ducks’ lipless sounds.
 
Spring, he will never experience again, nor know
the scent of a pent-up life released like
sunflowers blooming, or the feel of the moon,
colder but more comforting than being touched.
 
He is without time or tribe,
and like fire, he haunts
by just being.
 
First published in UC Review, 1996/1997
.
All three poems are © Allison Grayhurst, All rights reserved, posted on The Poet by Day with Allison’s permission.
 

ALLISON GRAYHURST (Allison Grayhurst.com)  is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Three of her poems were nominated for “Best of the Net” in 2015, and one eight-part story-poem was nominated for “Best of the Net” in 2017. She has over 1125 poems published in more than 450 international journals and anthologies. Her book Somewhere Falling was published by Beach Holme Publishers, a Porcepic Book, in Vancouver in 1995. Since then she has published sixteen other books of poetry and six collections with Edge Unlimited Publishing. Prior to the publication of Somewhere Falling she had a poetry book published, Common Dream, and four chapbooks published by The Plowman. Her poetry chapbook The River is Blind was published by Ottawa publisher above/ground press December 2012. In 2014 her chapbook Surrogate Dharma was published by Kind of a Hurricane Press, Barometric Pressures Author Series. In 2015, her book No Raft – No Ocean was published by Scars Publications. More recently, her book Make the Wind was published in 2016 by Scars Publications. As well, her book Trial and Witness – selected poems, was published in 2016 by Creative Talents Unleashed (CTU Publishing Group). She is a vegan. She lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay.  Allison’s Amazon page is HERE.

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Art, Architecture and ‘Reicha Rediscovered’ by UK poet, Linda Ibbotson

The Grand Canal in Venice from Palazzo Flangini to Campo San Marcuola, Canaletto, about 1738. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles / This photograph of the painting is in the public domain.
 I stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs,
    A palace and a prison on each hand:
    I saw from out the wave her structures rise
    As from the stroke of the enchanter’s wand:
    A thousand years their cloudy wings expand
    Around me, and a dying Glory smiles
    O’er the far times, when many a subject land
    Looked to the wingéd Lion’s marble piles,
Where Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles!
Lord Byron (1788-1824), Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

I’ve been so enjoying Linda Ibbotson’s Facebook and blog posts about her travels, art and poetry readings and thought some of you might enjoy her site as well. She’s done a wonderful post on Contemplating the Muse, Linda Ibbotson/Poet, inspired by a recent adventure in Venice, a taste of which is included below today. To read the entire post and see the fabulous photographs she included link HERE. You can link to pianist Ivan Ilić’s site HERE. / J.D.

Meanwhile, with LInda’s permission …

“When I seek another word for ‘music’, I never find any other word than ‘Venice’.” Friedrich Nietzsche.

When pianist Ivan Ilić announced his cd Reicha Rediscovered was to be launched in Venice at the magnificently restored Palazzetto Bru Zane, (The Centre de musique romantique française) it was music to my ears and the catalyst that awakened my desire to attend this wonderful momentous occasion. It was also an exciting opportunity for me to rediscover Venice!

Venice, known also as La Serenissima is shaped like a fish, 118 small islands spanned by over 400 named bridges and resembles a theatre of stone!

Visually, a masterpiece! From the ancient splendour of Baroque, Byzantine and Moorish influenced Gothic architecture, particularly in the Chiesa’s (churches), the delicate Murano artisan glass chandeliers, the prodigious work of Renaissance artists such as Carpaccio, Titian and Tintoretto, influenced by light and play of light on water (a legacy to European art) to the contemporary Venice Biennale spectacularly captured in 2017 by Lorenzo Quinn’s giant hands of Support at Ca’ Sagredo Hotel.

After viewing the impressive Piazza San Marco and the Rialto, paradoxically, the only way to find Venice is to lose yourself in the labyrinth. You will discover timeless haunts such as Caffè Florian est. 1720, famous for its delicious hot chocolate and where a plethora of artists, musicians and writers; Byron, Verdi, Hemmingway to name a few frequented, the renowned Libreria Acqua Alta bookshop where books are kept safely afloat in a gondola and bathtubs, Hotel Danielli, the location for The Tourist movie and where George Sand stayed, the decorative mask and costume shops Marega and Ca del Sol well as quieter residential areas of Santa Croce and San Polo where the early morning washing hangs from windows to dry.

The Finale, another glorious concert as Interpreti Veneziani play Vivaldi at Chiesa san Vidal near the Accademia bridge. The final fading notes of a cello, fragrance of a nearby oleander, the creaking crowded Grand Canal night vaporetto indelibly etched in my mind.

Venice is compelling, the ultimate lure for the artistic and intrepid traveller!

© 2017, Linda Ibbotson

Reicha Rediscovered is the first in a series released by Chandos; one of the world’s premiere classical record companies , produced by Swiss National Radio and supported by the Palazzetto Bru Zane. Antoine Reicha was a contemporary of Beethoven and many of his compositions unpublished, stored in France’s National Library. / L.I.

Linda Ibottson

LINDA IBBOTSON is a poet, artist and photographer from the UK, currently residing in County Cork, Ireland. Her poetry, artwork and photography has been published internationally including Levure Litteraire, Enchanting Verses Literary Review, Irish Examiner, California Quarterly , Fekt and Live Encounters, also read on radio and performed in France by Irish musician and actor Davog Rynne.

Her painting Cascade featured as the cover of a cd. She writes a poetry and arts blog Contemplating the Muse.

Linda was invited to read at the Abroad Writers Conference in Lismore Castle, Butlers Townhouse, Dublin and Kinsale.

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PERCEPTIONS OF TIME: a distance-learning poetry workshop delivered by the stellar English poet, Myra Schneider

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.

“Past experience crucially influences how we view the present and future. Earth’s distant past, cosmological time are difficult to imagine … Clock time is fixed but our impressions of time are subjective – an hour’s enjoyable exercise session will seem to be over quickly, but the minutes drag during a boring lecture…” © Myra Schneider via Second Light Network of Women Poets, publisher of ARTEMISpoetry

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.

  • Myra’s Amazon page U.S. is HERE.
  • Myra’s Amazon page U.K. is HERE.

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