Magazine Moment (30): Poems in Bengali / American Magazine, Shabdaguchha

Not exactly a [Keatsian] fading rose - as in my poem, 'Swansong' - but more picturesque

I discovered this morning that the latest issue of Shabdaguchha, a Bengali-American publication, is now online and features three of my poems. Hard copies are also available.

Shabdaguchha is under the editorship of Bangladesh-born, New York-based poet, novelist, critic and translator, HassanAl Abdullah. You can reads a feature about him here. 

Issue 53/54 includes a section prepared by Peter Thabit Jones (editor of The Seventh Quarry magazine) and dedicated to the work in English of 'Welsh Poets'. It is always a pleasure (though a rare one) to find that David (Gill) and I have poetry in the same volume! Our first joint appearance in the poetry press was, I believe, in the Pairs Issue of Purple Patch, edited by Geoff Stevens, whose recent death brought shockwaves of sadness to the poetry fraternity. Our paired poems on that occasion were - not surprisingly - on the archaeology and topography of Greece. Our Shabdaguchha pieces have been published alongside poems by Peter Thabit Jones, Aeronwy Thomas (d.2009), Jean Salkilld (leader of Swansea's Tuesday Poetry group) and Lynn Hopkins.

In addition to the Welsh poetry, the current magazine includes sections in Bengali and English. A poem called 'No Cats on the Yangtze' by Stanley H. Barkan, editor of Cross-Cultural Communications in New York, particularly caught my eye. My thanks to HassanAl Abdullah - and many congratulations on the 14th anniversary of the magazine. 

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Details of how to purchase a hard copy of the magazine can be found by clicking here. Issue 53/54 Vol. 14, no.1-2, July-Dec 2011 of Shabdaguchha contains the following poems by the Gills ...

Caroline

• Elegy for Idris Davies
• Preseli Blue
• Swansong

David

• Standing Alone
• From Syracuse to Manhattan
• Gloucestershire in the Negev

Magazine Moment (28): TIPS FOR WRITERS 87

Cover design: Wendy Webb

I wonder how many of us you can identify!

Wendy's latest edition of TIPS contains 31 pages of poetry, along with reviews, competition news and readers' feedback. Many of us became acquainted with Wendy through her new poetry form challenges, but if you are expecting a magazine full of Villanelles, Sonnets, Davidians and Echotains, please think again for this is the Free Verse number. Those of us who feel particularly at home among the poetry forms need not worry, for a few formal contributions may, apparently, 'have slipped in'!

Congratulations are in order, for Wendy has taken Joint First Place with Bernard M.Jackson in the Reach Poetry (Indigo Dreams Publishing) 'Highest Number of Appearances in the Box' category AND Second Place (after Bernard Jackson) in the Reach Poet of the Year section. Well done, Wendy! And the 'Box', for the uninitiated, is the box containing the names of the poets who have received the highest number of votes from their Reach Poetry peers in a given issue. 

Having moved from Wales only three months ago, my eye was immediately drawn to 'Hymns and Arias' by Peter Davies. There are resonances, to my ear at least, with the autobiographical verse of Idris Davies. The speaker (perhaps Peter himself) describes familiar, if diverse, scenes from Ebbw Vale in the heart of The Valleys to the beautiful rugged coasts of Gower (Oxwich Bay) and Pembrokeshire (Strumble Head). Aberfan, Nye Bevan and 'King Coal' are all mentioned. This fine Villanelle, which presumably crept in to the Free Verse issue by virtue of being a prize winning poem in the November competition, draws to a close with a memory of sitting in a 'frosty per' in Pisgah, one of the Welsh chapels. This is a fine poem of love and loss.  

Mention should also be made of Ronnie Goodyer's 'Summer Friendship, Fernworthy' with its arresting lines,

             bell-heather rained violet and pink
             in an abandonment of grass ...

Other poems that particularly appealed include 'Ezekiel's Dream' by Joan Sheridan Smith, 'Lotos Land' (which really made me smile), 'Winter Poem' by Michael Newman (with its harsh and unrelenting refrain of 'again' and 'again') and 'High Tide' by Norman Bissett,

So thank you, Wendy, for another beautifully produced publication.

 

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How did you fare in the Cover Quiz?

• Norman and Faith Bissett
• Anne Mullender
• Gerald Hampshire
• Ronnie Goodyer
• Bernard M. Jackson
• No prizes for this one (or the others, for that matter!)
• Michael Newman - under Bernard Jackson
• Wendy M. Lister
• Kay D. Weeks
• TIPS Editor, Wendy Webb

Publication Pointer (5): Seurat, Pointillism (and the 2012 Olympics)

© Caroline Gill 2012

Well, I wonder how you rate my Pointillistic view of the Eiffel Tower!

I have not been in Paris for over quarter of a century, so my photographs, taken on my small 'point-and-shoot' camera are feeling their age. I cropped one and hope you will feel that Photoshop has helped me to jazz it up ... just a little!

Having recently returned from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, with its truly amazing works (and here - not forgetting the monkey in the painting mentioned below) by Seurat, I am almost ashamed to post my electronic attempt. However, my affinity with the artist's Pointillistic techniques goes back almost into the last century, and earned me the nick-name of the 'Dotty Painter' (or was it the 'Spotty Painter'?) in my Friday art class! 

My poem, 'Harmony in Fragmentation', an ekphrastic piece concerning Seurat's painting, Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (the study for this painting is here in New York), has just been published by Ronnie Goodyer and Dawn Bauling of Indigo Dreams Publishing in issue 161 of Reach Poetry magazine. 

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Curiously, Seurat seems to be currently in the news. This Seurat-style Olympic Games photo might make you smile!

Publication Pointer (4): Rivers of Britain by Stuart Fisher

Book Cover, used with permission

A new book, Rivers of Britain Estuaries, Tideways, Havens, Lochs, Firths and Kyles by Stuart Fisher, has just been published by Adlard Coles Nautical, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. A quotation from my sonnet, 'Egret on the Loughor Estuary', appears as an epigraph in chapter 8 on the River Loughor.

Little Egret,  Loughor Estuary

The photograph above was taken when we lived in Swansea and spent happy hours with our cameras and binoculars at the Llanelli Wildfowl and Wetlands Centre.   

Rivers of Britain is a beautifully produced volume, packed with glossy photographs of Britain's best known tidal, picturesque and industrial rivers. Small waterways are not forgotten. Stuart Fisher, editor of Canoeist magazine, is extremely well qualified when it comes to writing on this topic. He even undertook some of his research from the vantage point of his kayak. 

Most of the 70 chapters begin with a few lines of geographically topical poetry. These chapters are illustrated with an array of fine photographs, not only of the waterways but also of topical postage stamps and book covers (John Buchan Society member that I am, I was particularly pleased to spot The Thirty-Nine Steps on the pages relating to the Firth of Tay). There are wildlife pictures like the urban fox on p.84 and the young seal on p.149. Each river is described in detail. Maps are provided along with brown sidebars of factual information, such as the length of a given watercourse, its OS location and nearest rescue services. 

I was particularly pleased to find quality photographs of familiar haunts such as St Benet's Abbey, the King Harry Ferry, the nymph and dolphin mosaic from Fishbourne and the Chanonry Point Lighthouse, to name but a few. I wonder which of the featured places are favourites of yours, when it comes to 'messing about on the river' ...   

• Rivers of Britain, Estuaries, Tideways, Havens, Lochs, Firths and Kyles by Stuart Fisher can be purchased from the A & C Black online shop. Click here.

Publication Pointer (3): Orizont Literar Contemporan - Anthology on the Way!

The cover of the 'Antologia'

I am much looking forward to the publication of the second Antologia produced by Daniel Dragomirescu, editior-in-chief of Orizont Literar Contemporan (Contemporary Literary Horizon) magazine from Bucharest, Romania. The international list of contributors is up on the OLC/CLH site here, and you will see that they represent places as far apart geographically as Argentina and Nigeria, Japan and Canada - not forgetting India and Italy. Two of my poems have been included.

Publication Pointer (2): The Book of Forms (4th edition) by Lewis Putnam Turco

Professor Lewis Turco's work, The Book of Forms, is now available in its 4th Edition, published by the University Press of New England. This new 'revised and expanded edition' has as its subtitle, A Handbook of Poetics Including Odd and Invented Forms.

A copy of the third edition (published in 2000) has long been my constant poetry companion. I have learned so much about what Professor Turco calls 'the elements of poetry', comprising 'levels of language usage'. I have been fascinated by the plethora of covered forms, from one line adonics to 210 lined sonnets redoubled.

The latest edition contains all these features plus added extras in the guise of 'odd and invented forms'. If I home in on British contributions for a moment, you will find a description of Dr Marc Latham's Folding Mirror Poetry, with an example by Claire Knight and a second one by yours truly. Crossing the Severn and moving on into Wales, you will discover a most inventive, if somewhat discordant, form called The Clang, developed by Llewelyn Hugh Nicholas of Swansea's 'Tuesday Poetry' group. If this form reminds me of anything, I suppose it would be the poem, 'Denial' by George Herbert, but this is just a personal hunch. I can vouch for the fact that The Clang is a fun form to try.

Lewis Putnam Turco is an emeritus professor of English. He was the founding director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and of the Department of Creative Writing at the State University of New York College at Oswega. The new edition, with sample poems by established names like Robert Frost and newer names like Greg Pincus, can be purchased from UPNE: the details can be found here. You can read the reviews on Amazon here.

In these days when 'form' in poetry is not always a prized word, I find it encouraging to know that there is popular global demand for clear explanations about the numerous different styles of poetry. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to writer-editors like Professsor Turco, not forgetting movements such as Dr. H. Tulsi's 'World Renaissance for Classical Poetry', which was founded in Visakhapatnam, India. Many of us enjoy the challenge of experimenting with word and structure.

In drawing these thoughts to a close, I would also wish to express my thanks to those who create these new forms for us to enjoy. For after all ...

"It can be argued that to invent a verse-form which becomes immortal, 

living on in the works of future poets and in other languages, 

is one of the greatest achievements possible for a poet ..."  

Martin Lyon, 'Acumen', issue 71 (Sept 2011), p.71 

For reference

• Professor Lewis Turco's blog
• Dr Marc Latham's Folding Mirror Poetry site 

See also:

• Feature on Folding Mirror Poetry on the Writing Tips for Better Writing site
• This recommendation: I certainly second the hardback for ease of use! 

Magazine Moment (28): Orintont Literar Contemporan - Canary Islands number

Literary greetings from Romania!

I was delighted to receive the first 2012 edition of Orizont Literar Contemporan from editor-in-chief, Daniel Dragomirescu from Bucharest, Romania. This special issue celebrates the work of twelve poets from the Canary Islands, namely . . .

1. Rosario Valcarcel
2. Felix Martin Arencibia
3. Teresa Delgado Duque
4. Teca Barreira
5. Isa Guerra
6. Samir Delgado
7. Antonio Arroyo Silva
8. Russo Rodriguez
9. Berbel
10. Noel Olivares
11. Aquiles Garcia Brito
12. Daniel Bernal Suarez

I am particularly grateful, too, for the smart certificate. Thank you to Daniel and all who work hard behind the scenes in Bucharest. May 2012 be a great multicultural year for the magazine.