Conversation Poetry Quarterly
Spring 2009
7
Edited by: David Nettleingham Christopher Hobday Conversation International Poetry Project This magazine is part of a new initiative beginning in April 2009. Conversation Poetry Quarterly was born in 2007 in Canterbury, UK through the dialogue of a small group of poets. We developed the idea of a philosophical poetry magazine, that would acknowledge the poet as critic, commentator, even utopian - as the architect of philosophical discourse. Aware that different cultures and countries produce vastly different philosophical discussions, and that each language constructs a poetry unique to its own voice, it seemed that an English language magazine can only go so far. With this in mind, 2009 sees the launch of the Conversation International Poetry Project - a series of sister publications, which while keeping with a dedication to the philosophical and political potential of the poet, opens the project to new languages, readers and contributors. The first of these will be in Italian. Trimestrale di Conversazioni Poetiche will be launched under the editorial eye of Federico Federici in April 2009. The Turkish Söyleşi Üç Aylık Şiir Dergisi will follow in July, edited by Dr. Nesrin Eruysal.
For more information visit: http://conversationipp.com
Editorial: Those that leave; those that remain. by Christopher Hobday
p. 1
Poetry: Fabiano Alborghetti Poems from: L’opposta riva/The opposite shore p. 3 Abha Iyengar Overwrite
p. 9
Nancy Charley Pre-programming
p. 10
Maggie Harris Grandmothers of the Morning
p. 11
Michael Mirolla The Vanishing Man... At 95
p. 13
Christian Ward The Year the Blackbirds Died Friday Afternoon at the Maternity Ward
p. 14 p. 15
Stefanie Maclin Bones, and Stones Civility
p. 16 p. 17
Gary Studley Dartmoor
p. 18
Maria McCarthy Car on a country footpath
p. 19
Charli Wiggill current account Underberg Road
p. 20 p. 22
Toby Collins Mr. McGregor’s Cabbage Patch Clay Villi Army Alone in Its Knowledge of One Easy Word
p. 23 p. 23
M.V. Montgomery Three English Kings
p. 24
Frances Roberson Suffocation
p. 26
The Contributors Submissions
p. 27 p. 31
Editorial: Those that leave; those that remain. by Christopher Hobday If exile is the leaving behind of the old way of life, a sloughing off of the traditional, the comfortable and the familiar, then it is also an escape from daily horrors. Yet just as Conrad’s Marlowe finds in the jungle: a gigantic mirror of his own inner darkness, those that leave find that they carry the weight of their pasts with them. Francis Bacon argued that we find virtue through adversity, yet compassion requires us to see suffering as something other than a formative experience. Poets have one duty – to be honest with themselves. Living in a world in which regimes compete to see how many people they can displace, and major powers are either viciously impetuous or officiously apathetic, grinding distant nations into third-world ash-trays, poets cannot help but engage with what they feel. Theodor Adorno echoed the feelings of the Surrealists decades earlier, when he said, “nach Auschwitz, ein Gedicht zu schreiben, ist barbarisch” (‘after Auschwitz, writing poetry is barbaric’). The Second World War highlighted the perceived frivolity of artistic endeavour, just as the First World War had done. But poetry, when written honestly, is never frivolous; nor is it ever irrelevant – especially in the wake of human tragedies singular or global. Poetry can examine the plastic, encoded world of the exile, with its mysterious horizons that promise freedom, those open-mouthed avenues explored in Charli Wiggill’s Underberg 1
Road. It can also tell us – as in Fabiano Alborghetti’s L’opposta riva – how it feels to remain, to live in the midst of the settling dust. It can tell us how it feels to return and find things changed, as Abha Iyengar discovers in Overwrite. Accompanying these pieces are poems about exile in microcosm; a new world on a personal scale begins to form at the end of Frances Roberson’s Suffocation and Christian Ward’s Friday Afternoon in the Maternity Ward rests on the cusp of an old life, approaching the abyss of the new. So poetry continues to tell us how it feels to leave, how it feels to remain; but what it can never tell us is how not to feel at all – and that is its greatest virtue, and the mark of its nobility.
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Fabiano Alborghetti Poems from: L’opposta riva/The opposite shore
(LietoColle, 2006) Translated by Anthony Robbins
And where else do you think I could be if even my own land is against me? Nothing else remains but deletion he repeated turning to being somewhere even without a place. Now count them he said count up those who are left. Once you subtract the blows the flashes the nameless sacks or heaps of bones and stuffed mouths full of emptiness you’ll get what it means to remain, the nameless waste.
E dove altro credi possibile la mia presenza se anche la mia terra è contro? Non rimane niente altro che la cancellazione ripeteva un dirsi presenti anche senza il luogo. Adesso conta diceva fai la somma dei rimasti. Sottratti gli urti i lampi i sacchi senza nome o le cataste di arti e bocche colme di vuoto avrai la misura del rimanere, l’innominata ampiezza.
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The exodus is less of an outrage than the sepulcher believe me, thus absence inters but only in the memory: on the disappeared bodies the empty place lies less heavy than on those who dig…
L’esodo ha meno oltraggio del sepolcro credimi, cosi l’assenza seppellisce ma solo nella memoria: agli scomparsi corpi non pesa il luogo vacante come a chi scava…
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You see, the people from the life before last reordered with the insistent vow of those who spend their life without losing it, at least not completely. On the quayside reordered at random they started the headcount: who is coming has come or has already left. Those who start over and those who leave from the step to the wave, in line one by one ferry me they said. Even sinking is staying above the bottom…
Ricompone vedi la gente dalla penultima vita col giuramento insistente di chi la vita spende senza perderne, non del tutto almeno. Sul piazzale ricomposti a caso iniziavano la conta: chi viene chi è venuto o è già partito. Chi ricomincia e chi lascia dal gradino per l’onda, in fila uno ad uno traghettami dicevano. Anche affondare è finire più in alto del fondo…
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There’re people hanging even from the ship’s masts the stare that accuses and softens or won’t believe: after the Italian shout the motor’s off and any sound is absorbed in the pitching, to the motionless bodies: procedures he says your laws always the same. Under escort into harbor and then anchorage disembarkation straight to the pen to heap up presences like goods in a warehouse. No more than a little he repeats then you go home just as you came. You can’t see the number you can’t even count how many legions per ship per day hope for land and despite their pleas are cast back.
C’è gente appesa perfino sui pali delle navi lo sguardo che accusa e spunta o non crede: dopo la voce italiana il motore spegne e qualunque suono riassorbe fino al beccheggio, ai corpi fermi: procedure dice le tue leggi uguali sempre. Sotto scorta fino al porto e poi la fonda lo sbarco diritto fino al recinto a cumulare le presenze come merce di stoccaggio. Non più di poco ripete poi si rimpatria cosi come si arriva. Non si vede il numero non si conta nemmeno quanta legione per nave al giorno sperare la terra e nonostante le preghiere rimbalzare.
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He talked of his profession at home, his studies his private lessons and traveling for concerts: my life has changed and out of shame he hid his crooked hands. He still played: the hands the soldiers broke still remember what to do, he said.
Raccontava del mestiere svolto a casa, degli studi le ripetizioni e certi viaggi per concerto: è cambiata la mia vita e le mani storte adesso nascondeva per vergogna. Suonava ancora: le mani rotte dai plotoni lo ricordano il mestiere, diceva..
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As in the workshop the mattress-maker, the low-down position a small wage in exchange for a name and having to stay. Take it or leave it they told me: sooner or later the papers will come. So I stayed half invisible and more a space than a person. They got it wrong when they called my name but no one bothered since it mattered so little who or what chewed the job: easy flesh with hunger in the mouth and the mouth no use for talking and a long queue of would-be stand-ins at the door, the unchanging state of beggars crowding for little, all the time…
Come all’officina il materassaio, la posizione bassa era offerta una poca paga tra il baratto del nome e il dovere restare. Prendere o lasciare mi dicevano: a lungo andare il documento arriva. Cosi restavo metà invisibile e più spazio che persona. Sbagliavano il mio nome nel chiamare ma nessuno ne curava costando poco chi o cosa mastica il lavoro: carne pronta con la fame in bocca e la bocca inutile al parlare e del rimpiazzo all’entrata la fila piena, la stessa condizione questuante affollare per poco, per tutto il tempo…
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Abha Iyengar Overwrite Mumbai was when I was thirteen And suffering from drug induced hallucinations For the treatment of nephritis A city of pavements. I would look out of Glass panes and find Only a lone tree in the distance, that too Deprived of leaves, stark and naked, a Rough truth. The sun beat down mercilessly. It was a summer holiday, a prescribed change, Without salt in the diet. Who thought of ice-creams then, They would melt with the idea itself. Decades later, Mumbai is green For me, I notice parks, trees, Some flowers as well. The path I walk on Has leaves wet with rain. Their colours excite me. It is my daughter’s spring. She is twenty one. I am visiting Mumbai again with her. My eyes are bright, my step sure. The sea is salt-spray. We lick ice creams that melt in the sun.
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Nancy Charley Pre-programming I’ve been reading some of those American conversational poets and wondering if they know where they’re going when they start their thoughts spinning, and if anyone’s really interested in something so mundane as, say, me hurriedly cleaning the bathroom before I dash out to work, liberally spraying bleach in my haste to blitz the grime only to spot, once I’m driving the car, too far gone to return, a blonde blot on the left knee of my chocolate-coloured trousers. And can we say this is reality cleaning, maintaining standards, or is that the thinking of my upbringing or some inbred perfectionism, and if I then became neglectful, or used my energies elsewhere, would I be condemned or free?
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Maggie Harris Grandmothers of the Morning Mama dying slowly in that Berbice bedroom images of the worlds she’d known flickering behind darkening eyes the river in the mosquito season high tide on the sandbank the morning light clean as Columbus’ sword a bevy of bats in the mango tree fireflies above the porch a kerosine lamp swinging Massa’s cold blue eyes Read me that passage again, Jimbo boy that verse from Solomon
Mother Through the waves of the morning tide her dead sister’s head breaks why you left mih girl child? only tek the boy fetch she, fetch she o sister mine or is haunt I gon haunt you till kingdom time Portuguese woman Black man at her side rises and gathers Demerara children into the brown Berbice land of many waters 11
Mummy mermaids have no place by the mangle only maids with hands wiry and unclasped unlike yours welded in prayer Gene Pitney and Jesus on the airwaves A town without pity evangelical, those red fifties colouring your vision so even now, decades later the thought of Cuba fills you with rage
Me remembering hallelujahs hurled across a morning and wearing grand-daughters’ kisses on my face I board a flight to Havana.
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Michael Mirolla The Vanishing Man… At 95 When last we speak, my father and I (Easter, I think, the lamb much too obvious on the dining room table), he reveals he weighed “all of” 30 kilos at the unlatching of those “not a summer camp” gates. Blown open after the welcome mat bombing had cleared a bitter path through the Polish countryside. An iron constitution, he claims, had kept him intact. Had kept him, as he put it, “from being ground down by the devil’s mortar and pestle.” The stalagmite foundry where Schnell echoed the gentlest word of the day. I feel the urge to remind him it had been “40 kilos, skin plus bones” the time before (Christmas Eve, perhaps, the salt cod ready to seal all wounds). But who am I to break the spell? To halt the shrinkage? The chair squeaks. His mottled hand gropes for the squat, lead-heavy glass resting somewhere before him. Somewhere beyond the cataracted tunnel that selects but a few splotches of ruby, rings of gold, in the re-building of elementals. He lifts the brimful vessel, molecular-taut, to his lips. And sips, spilling not a drop. I think of Juvenal and his savage taunt of “mortars that cure old blind men.” Unfolding the rough edge of decades like tissue paper, where then bleeds into now, stain by stain, he moves on to a new re-telling. Oracular. His voice grinding the phrases like crystals 13
into a sprinkle of swallowed meaning. A finely-parsed powder to prolong himself.
Christian Ward The Year the Blackbirds Died They found the birds impaled on white picket fences; in fist-sized nooses, circling like trapeze artists trying to find the safety net; slumped over tables, wings hoarding nests of pills. And all the while, cats were waiting outside, their scratching tremors trying to eek out confessions from empty mouths.
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorising the imprisonment of all Japanese Nationals and tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent living along the West Coast.
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Friday Afternoon at the Maternity Ward
Hours scuttled across the walls of the waiting room like rodents. Goldfish in the depilated tank lowered their heads like old women in heavy rain and drifted towards the comfort of their castle. Visitors came and went. The pay phone never emptied its secrets. Names of people I will probably forget were called out, the women walking towards the midwives as if they might be lighthouses; the men following far behind, like children afraid of venturing far in shallow water, uncertain of the depth.
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Stefanie Maclin Bones, and Stones In the earth, they find Lucy’s daughter – Perfect teeth, and perfect bones, but no skin, no eyes, and no hair. Small, but arms too long. She is the missing link, the scientists claim, Heralding her in. She is the key, The cipher, and first walk. She is Lucy’s daughter, and Lilith’s daughter, and Eve’s. Eve had no daughter, the disbeliever says, She had three sons, and Lilith never was. Then who bore Eve’s grandchildren, the philosopher wants to know.
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Civility A woman holds a sign, and a pram, you ask her if her child could be gay, and she screeches: Her child never will be. Walking past, early morning, a man claims Jesus said, marriage is between one man, and one woman. Pause to ask him, “Why does it matter?” And hurry away. Walking home, early evening, caught in the crowds. Six o’clock news, I see a rabbi holding a sign.
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Gary Studley Dartmoor down in the hollow light lies oil yellow, tepid as if in sickness
breaking the tree-line soles sink, spring on sphagnum moss, black rooted, scratch gorse
swish of gortex and denim, grass on leather, rhythmic crossing of moorland,
cracked spine of burn-spills cutting peat and grazing, as if the world’s splitting
marking great feats with toast stacks of granite tors, storm flung tile mornings
across the curve all stutters of sheep, rainbow backs domino bonnets 18
peel away until only binocular lens flashes keep tabs or
disappear under warnings and deluges born to wipe the scene clear
but after the blast I crest and stretch arms out wide at the majesty
Maria McCarthy Car on a country footpath Twig fingers probe where windows no longer wind down. Russet windfalls tumble in the foot well, rot on skeletons of once-upholstered seats. Long-since scavenged of mirrors, tyres, headlights, a bramble-clamped car on a country footpath, though human-placed, is not out of place, as much a part of the landscape now as the planted poplars.
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Charli Wiggill current account with rich and varied struggle history feted internationally South Africa is blessed many Robben Island graduates orchestrate a peaceful revolution advise world bodies in various affairs glorious leaders amongst men sitting with a blank cheque able to fill in any future masses scribble a bouncer placing balance in the red certain account holders deposit an expired cheque African Renaissance not considered banking integrity never questioned other account holders, many deposit a false cheque moral balance never considered banking integrity never questioned of all possible transactions positive inter-account transfers probable interest on investments is this the sum of our current account! two questionable cheques – one dud one stale, neither signed on policy! with two unsigned cheques battling it out in the ledgers banking regulations are flouted 20
future policy lies disguised account holders are uninformed or apparently do not really care so many possibles for excellence yet our account hangs in the balance
In December 2007, South Africans waited with bated breath as the African National Congress heavies met for a national conference, primarily to vote for the new party president. Two candidates were considered - SA President Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. Mbeki had already served two terms but was looking at re-election for a third term (this, against the constitution). Zuma, a highly controversial figure in SA politics, was facing charges of fraud and corruption and had been acquitted on rape charges some time before this. Zuma was voted in and a purging of the old ‘regime’ began, a youth leader stating that he would ‘kill for Zuma’. Mbeki was soon ‘recalled’ by the party a few months short of seeing out his term. A new President was sworn in to serve SA until the upcoming elections in 2009. South Africans, the general population, had no say in these decisions and felt alienated and left out. A breakaway party was formed and a number of leading figures in the ANC jumped ship to join the Congress of the People (COPE). Accusations and counter-accusations are the order of the day and 2009, with its national elections, is sure to be a very interesting year indeed…
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Underberg Road In the dense, dark mist just oozing through slowly warily wearily via Underberg, having left too late. Smothered in space by gusts of blind faith. Grey shadows with feint haloes spirit by, floating cautiously Travelling on the edge of time. Roads department throws a lifeline, a rosary for safe passage bright fluorescent beads strung together with white, luminous road paint. So, dangling from this precarious string we thread our way and gradually encounter our destination
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Toby Collins Mr. McGregor’s Cabbage Patch Clay Villi Army Mr. McGregor’s cabbage patch Feet-in-the-clay, villi army All call-centre cruel Across the whale-road To a tricky Bombay sapphire Treading the frothy lip of alcoholism A bellow gut gasping calls The villi army with their sodden flag Triumphantly riding the ripple of alcoholism And the villi army whose feet Are in the clay And who leave themselves prone To crimes of heart flutters and bile squirts of the bilge pump Squit, squit, squit-squit Squit, squit.
Alone in Its Knowledge of One Easy Word Alone in its knowledge of one easy word The hexaplegic fly on the beer mat Waited The once high on its dainty fumes Rotated.
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M.V. Montgomery Three English Kings I. Arthur He is identified in the History of the Britons as the victor at Badon, but the account there is most incredible: nine-hundred-sixty men killed by no one but himself alone. And he is credited with victories in battles he could not have fought, not as a Dark Age warlord defending the land of the Britons against Anglo-Saxon invaders. At Guinnion, he is said to have carried an icon of Mary into battle on his shoulders, so frightening his pagan foes that they instantly were turned to flight and a great slaughter was made upon them. In the Annals of Wales, Arthur becomes even more Christ-like. Our monk-author writes that he carried the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ on his shoulders for three days and nights, then later achieved a martyrdom, killed with Medraut (Mordred) at Camlann. That is all: two gospel accounts, composed centuries after the fact. No more than a rope and bucket to raise the greatest English hero. All the same—we will ourselves to believe the unbelievable, yet, sifting through ruins at Cadbury, hoping to call into our own time any faint ray of light from Camelot. II. William I What are we to make of the execution of King Harold at Hastings? William was there with his men, according to Guy of Amiens. First, they came upon the wounded leader, shot through the eye with an arrow—then they carved him up like an English roast. One knight stabbed him in the chest, one decapitated him, another disemboweled him, the last cut off a thigh (or his genitalia, perhaps). William had certainly picked his moment well, landed his army just as his foe finished a devastating war with the Norwegians. It was no great matter to defeat them or to consume their wealth. The Domesday Book was not simply the Conqueror’s account of anything of value in a land laid to waste, but also, of anything left to be taken. This was a man who thought with his stomach: 24
by the time of his death, he had grown so corpulent his body burst when forced into its sarcophagus, leaving behind a great stink. III. Henry VIII He had read his Leviticus and found no grey in it. It did not take a theologian (though he was that, too) to recognize the grounds for annulment. But his wife’s nephew, with whom he had fought against France, would not have it so. This Spanish Charles, not content with all his kingdoms in Europe, whom Hernán Cortés called the ruler of the world, had taken the title Holy Roman Emperor and now had the ear of a weakened pope. The golden keys had for centuries been controlled by the politics of investiture, the reichsregiment, and a line of German kings, seven of them Henrys. The irony of being an eighth of that name was not lost on Him once and forever called “Defender of the Faith.” Nor was the pointed challenge found in Charles’ self-description: “God’s Standard Bearer.” Surely the Church had need of protection against this Machiavelli, this would-be conquistador of Heaven. So awakened the English lion.
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Frances Roberson Suffocation Death has come to life It permeates every pore, Clinging to every cell like smog. The mind is ambushed By thoughts of him. The last minutes Before his death Recounted to old friends. There is no anecdote to chill The sudden blow Nervous laughter Masks a grief so deep Its borders have yet to show their lines.
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The Contributors Fabiano Alborghetti was born Milan (Italy) in 1970 and lives in Lugano (Switzerland). He has worked as a photographer and as a playwright (the latest work is an adaptation of Michael Ende’s The night of desires that immediately obtained a nulla-osta from Ende’s heirs and the German publisher). His work is included in several poetry anthologies, and he collaborates closely with magazines as well as with various publishing houses as consultant editor. He’s the former Editor in Chief for the Free Press collection of Le Voci della Luna publishing house. He has published Verso Buda (LietoColle 2004) and L’opposta riva (LietoColle, 2006) whose theme is “clandestine” immigrants in Italy, with whom Alborghetti lived between 2001 and 2004. Divided into three sections – dedicated respectively to country of origin, journey and integration in the country – this collection is structured around the interweaving voices of the protagonists themselves, a sort of Spoon River of the living. He recently published two limited edition poetry art-books: lugano paradiso (Edizioni Pulcinoelefante, 2008; with a unique oeuvre by Chiara Curti for each of the 25 copies) and Ruota degli esposti (Edizioni Fuoridalcoro, 2008; with uniques Indian ink drawing by Italian painter Gianni Bolis for each of the 60 copies) His new collection of poems, Registro dei fragili, is forthcoming from the Swiss publishing house Casagrande Editore. The main theme of this collection is a news story of infanticide in northern Italy. In 2008 he gained one of the four literary aid grants allocated by Pro Helvetia (the Swiss Foundation for Culture) for the Canton Ticino. The same year – in San Francisco - he represented Italy for the VIII Giornata della lingua italiana nel mondo as per invitation of the Italian Cultural Institute as well as Switzerland at the International Poetry Festival Other Words as per invitation of the General Consulate of Switzerland. Abha Iyengar is an internationally published writer, poet and scriptwriter. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, magazines and literary journals, such as the Chicken Soup series, Breakaway Books, Citizen 32, Arabesques Review, M.A.G., Nothing but Red, etc. She is a Kota Press Poetry Anthology contest winner. Her story, ‘The High Stool’ was nominated for the Story South Million Writers Award. She is a member of The 27
Poetry Society of India and ‘Riyaz’ Writer’s Group at The British Council, New Delhi. She writes articles on health and spirituality for several Indian magazines. She is Fiction Editor with Frog Books, Mumbai. Abha has recently produced a poem film ‘Parwaaz’ (flight) that is being screened at international film festivals. www.abhaiyengar.com Nancy Charley chooses to live on borders - places of sight, of exchange, of vulnerability. Geographically she lives at the SE tip of England, but she also chooses to live on the borders of the natural/supernatural, the marginalised/mainstream, past traditions and values/future openings, practical, organised mum/creative introspective. As she continues her writing journey, she hopes that her work will reflect some of the possibilities presented by her border living. Maggie Harris is a Caribbean-born writer who has lived in Kent since 1972. She was very involved in the literature scene in Thanet and created and ran a literature festival there, Inscribing The Island, for three years. She has worked for Music for Change and Wedg on occasion and has taken part in some of their projects in the past. She currently teaches at Southampton University and freelance as a performing poet around the country. www.maggieharris.co.uk Michael Mirolla is a Montreal-Toronto, Canada, novelist, short story writer, poet and playwright. Publications include two novels—the recently-released Berlin and The Boarder—and two short story collections—The Formal Logic of Emotion and Hothouse Loves & Other Tales. A collection of poetry, Light And Time, was recently published with an English-Italian bilingual collection of poetry Interstellar Distances/Distanze Interstellari is due out later in 2009. An Italian translation of The Formal Logic of Emotion has been accepted for publication. His short story, “A Theory of Discontinuous Existence,” was selected for The Journey Prize Anthology, featuring the ten top short stories published in Canadian literary journals in the previous year, while another short story, “The Sand Flea,” won first prize in the Arkansas College Media Association Convention and was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. His short fiction and poetry has been published in numerous journals in Canada, the U.S. and Britain, including several anthologies such as Event’s Peace & War Anthology, Telling 28
Differences: New English Fiction from Quebec, Tesseracts 2: Canadian Science Fiction, the Collection of Italian-Canadian Fiction, and New Wave of Speculative Fiction Book 1. Christian Ward is currently working as a Freelance Journalist whilst moonlighting as a writer. His poetry has previously appeared in Iota, Other Poetry and is forthcoming in Poetry Wales and Crannog. Stefanie Maclin currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts, where she is a Master’s candidate in Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science studying Archives. She has previously been published in Abyss&Apex, Vagabondage Press’ Battered Suitcase and Kaleidotrope, and has had work appear in Suffolk University’s Venture and in Shalhevet. Gary Studley was Sussex born and studied both Fine Art and Creative Writing in England, Holland and America before setting up home in Kent. After many jobs to pay the rent and support his studies, Gary has found what may very well be his vocation and now teaches on Kent’s East coast. A member of both Luigi Marchini’s Save As writers’ group and The Deal Writers, Gary writes poetry, plays and prose pieces covering politics, the quest for love and the meaning of identity, as well as humorous self-deprecation and an instinctive enjoyment of word-play. He recently designed the cover art for Save As’ inaugural anthology, Between the Lines and co-edited the collection. Gary, Luigi and colleague, Christopher Hobday, founder of www.canterburypoets.co.uk released a three man collection called Stubborn Mule Orchestra. Both SMO and BTL were published by their independent print Stubborn Mule Books, which is currently collating an all female collection. In a recent combination of work and pleasure, Gary has been teaching primary school pupils to write and perform their own poetry. He is currently involved with two cross-educational and community based projects, working with primary and secondary children and locals, using paintings, music, poetry and the spoken word to connect across themes on Communication and Endeavour.
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Gary loves to perform live and has done so at Covent Garden’s poetry Café and in clubs, pubs and libraries across the South East, with his happiest and most satisfying moment occurring during the latest Canterbury Festival. He created, promoted, compeered and performed at Words and Beats with Christopher and Luigi, the rapper, Baba Brinkman and a host of local poets to a packed audience at Alberry’s Wine Bar. Stubborn Mule Orchestra are on You Tube or contact Gary via stubbornmuleorchestra@hotmail.co.uk, or cornerstonewriters@hotmail.com Maria McCarthy has an MA in Creative writing from the University of Kent. She writes prose, poetry, memoir and reviews, and has written and broadcast as a columnist for Radio 4’s Home Truths. www.medwaymaria.co.uk Charli Wiggill was born in 1963 of a South African bushveld father and Swiss mother and raised on a game farm in the then Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). The early years were a wonderful mix of extended family, boarding school and awesome nature (including, on occasion, lions in the front garden), but also an awakening of social injustice and inequality. Bidding farewell to the Lowveld, he qualified as a teacher of English and Physical Education at the Johannesburg College of Education and taught in Johannesburg before moving to KwaZulu Natal in 1989. He educated boys at senior school level for eighteen years, trying to promote a balanced view of life that includes academics, sport and cultural activities. In 2003 he accepted a post with Crawford Schools and is currently the Head of Eden Middle School, Durban. Whilst the days are filled with the excitement of managing a prestigious independent college and creative approaches to marketing and advertising, the evenings and weekends are jam-packed with family, music, DIY, gardening, gym and … writing (when time permits). Having always enjoyed poetry and dabbling a little in writing poetry at school, it was only in recent years that the muse really became a resident. Recurring themes are wild life, human nature, politics and the tasty morsels of what is unique South African satire. This includes our vibrant dialects and sociolects, platteland logic, and the pulsating rhythms that can only be the heartbeat of Africa. Having travelled and observed nuances of other cultures, he believes that there is no place like home – South Africa offers the most vivid palette! He is passionate about life and, in particular, leadership and education. 30
Toby Collins M.V. Montgomery is a professor in the Atlanta area whose poetry has appeared recently in journals such as Babel Fruit, Birdseye ReView, Dream People, Honeyland Review, and Tangent Literary Magazine. Frances Roberson has been writing poetry on and off for a long time but has been a member of online writing sites for the last 4 years. She is 27 years old and currently engaged in a short-story writing course. Working full time, her spare time is taken up with a blog on a career advice website, amateur acting, walking, spending time in pubs with friends, wandering round London and writing.
Submissions •
We welcome submissions from all over the world in the English language, or accompanied by English translations. If you wish to submit in other languages visit the Conversation International Poetry Project site at http://conversationipp.com
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Up to 6 poems of any length and style. We recommend reading the Who Are We? page on the website and past issues before submitting, though we are always open to interesting new forms of poetry and subject matter.
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Include a short biography explaining a little about yourself.
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Copyright for submitted work must lie with the author. We will not be held responsible for any breach of copyright that may occur.
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Online submissions can be in .doc or .rtf format and should be sent to submissions@conversationpoetry.co.uk 31
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Conversation International Poetry Project
http://conversationipp.com
ISSN 1759-9393
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