Between Black & White PoetryPotion2013.01

ISSN 2304-8107

ISSN 2304-8107 editor & publisher duduzile zamantungwa mabaso graphic design & layout Black Letter Media (Pty) Ltd All images by Black Letter Media, accept where indicated.

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editorial by zamantungwa featured poem: Sharp-ville by Obakeng poetry: On The Road Again by Mwape Mumba Incomplete by Jerome Cornelius Letter from Propaganda School by The Black Poet Bully by Mzilikazi South by Sihle Ntuli Failed Father Figure by Charl Landsberg Passersby by Tonye Willie-Pepple Player’s Prayer by Tosin The Politics of Romance by Alyssa Country aflame by LFS Europeans by Bruce Cooper Poor Contempt Heart by Oninowu Fortune Magwinya woman by starrider Wasted brains lie in the gutter by Mis2ly

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writer’s block: poetic voice poetry seen: Word N Sound Print Quartely & submissions guidelines

editorial

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across the ages from Timbuktu, a scribe etches on stone. the sun at her finger tips burnishes runes on the Sahel. in time, the winds will blow them south feet will stampede a tapestry across the warring lines where kin were split. you see, the past is scrolled into eternity where abaphansi await us all. the ink bloody, the tales riotous border on yesterday’s trance dance where branded souls ululate our names singango tshani singango boya benkomo. buried under the dust of scrolls aging under ancient Alexandria’s ashes, the phoenix rises, telegraphed in the sky. it is sung to children, tattooed in ritual cast in precious metals lodged in our hearts . it is engraved in dark caves through time like melted desire it flows to Robbers Island where our imbongis whisper it into our digital ears we are the sons and daughters of soothsayers neo griots readings fortunes written in ciphers. when our past selves read the stars, the signs are in every groove of our skin. we rock paintings on our bodies like protective amulets each word a sacrament for all our muses because our future is divined from studied pasts. by zamantungwa

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Sharpville

Obakeng

i am a Johannesburg theatre performer, started theatre poetry in 2008, and since then i have performed on many stages. i have won a number of slams, like house of hunger and the word n sound slams to name a few. i have performed around the country, in pretoria, johannesburg, witbank and vereeniging. i have also performed in the country’s best theatres, like the joburg theatre’s fringe, the state theatre etc. i am well know in the campus poetry scene especially at UJ, Wits and VUT.

Bathe in their blood And be swathed in their flash they live in a sharp-ville They browse the city at night And moan to unborn souls that rest in pieces of contraceptives And WE label them names We burn flames in their hearts And leave them in the cold every time we break their hearts And leave permanent scars on their souls And THEY reap what WE sow I know good timber doesn’t grow with ease But please, do not blindfold my mommy with your bandages And imprison her in your pyramid schemes Let me build a rhyme scheme So you can skim through every syllable Like the Pan African Congress they march in their Sharpeville With FREEDOM, pass every blunt corner That swallowed their virginity and brought misery To the scenery of this concrete jungle I bathe in their blood And swathed in their flash Moan their precious birth And I celebrate their hideous death Because I often wonder if they’ll ever hear me cry The distance between them and I Is a thin line between black and light Thus I dream in black and light And I whisper a rhyme to my shadow So they could drop jaws to my perverted punch lines We feed the full stomach of their spirits with lies And they follow blindly like bunnies in an oven So allow me to break the silence because talk is cheap Speak till I smother to my own breath That wrap around her neck And slit her throat for me to shower in her warm blood Because her motherland is a sharp-ville Her eyes rein stars that crown her my angelic queen And I that stupid cupid

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Who broke her heart with my bow and arrow I never realized I was dancing with my own shadow So I coloured my feathers with her blood And dressed in her precious skin Observed as the face of the earth swallowed her And I became that infant that now drowns in her weeping eyes.

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On The Road Again

Mwape Mumba

I am an innovative, assertive guy, who loves to write and have fun! My inspirations, are broad, from real life, sci-fi, to abstract. I love art and anything that challenges the mind to think out of the Box. Love my country Zambia

On the road again I remember when we first met and then I did whatever just then to sit next to you then This road reminds of you Vividly the thoughts linger in my head of you Our minds laced together at every scenery having the same point of view Joking, laughing, I let myself be me in your presence Gave you a big chunk of me felt like you were my deliverance You bestowed peace and even balance Bringing joy and plenty memories of remembrance I saw you at 1st sight awed by you beauty And so to sit next to you was my duty When we sat I couldn’t stop staring over and over because of your beauty...

Your eyes of crystals sparkled Fell in love with your hair startled Cute face lovely cheekbones I still remember that beauty beheld Such awesome beauty me not believing I took your hand in mine and I held Your soft skin Only a few hours and I already wanted to meet your next of kin You possess the total package everything from outside and within Could never get enough of that sight I felt your light and would move heaven and earth with all my might Just to be by you side and keep you in sight On the road again Even in your absence I fall in love again...

And heart broken again...

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Incomplete

Jerome Cornelius

Jerome Cornelius is a young writer, aspiring adult and professional student from Cape Town. His interests lie in gender activism, ghost stories and science fiction. He is currently trying to write a thesis and attempts to dabble in poetry.

The waves look like canoes, coming for us.

You say you wish you could lie on the mirror-water and float.

Shooting star, we both see it.

You, out the corner of your eye.

You in the corner of me, the cradle where I hold you, we face the sky.

You tell me you feel safe; I believe you.

Maybe it’s true.

Your mind is elsewhere, is it on me?

We are in the world, within our own, the real world metres away.

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Letter from Propaganda School The Black Poet

Mbizo Chirasha is an internationally acclaimed performance poet, writer, and creative projects consultant. He is widely published in more than Seventy-five journals, magazines, and anthologies around the world. He was the poet-in-residence: from 2001-2004 for the Iranian embassy/UN Dialogue among civilizations project; the United Nations Information Centre - 2001-2008; Convener/Event Consultant THIS IS AFRICA POETRY NIGHT 2004-2006; official performance poet Zimbabwe International Travel Expo in 2007; Poet in Residence of the International conference of African culture and development/ ICACD

Letter from PROPAGANDA SCHOOL Sister…

See the ballot dust bins seething with propaganda condoms, political abortions, Freedom stillborn Violence is a see through pit coat that uncovers city buttocks marked with political boils Bring me beer bottles frothing with sanctions venom and slogan vitriol Cigar butts dripped by tears flowing from hardy sandy faces of street vendors, Blood gushing from rough clay palms of peasants Empty promises and concrete bread from executive offices Sister…

Propaganda is the appetizer before the ballot dinner Bring the slogan gloves to condomise against imperialistic gonorrhoea Marxist encyclopedia potassium to my intellectual blood Leninist Wikipedia calcium to my mental bones Bring me apartheid marinated Mandela profile Crude oil soaked Kaddafi resume Communist bleached Castro biography Sister…

Election is the deodorant defining the beauty of democracy Perfume suppressing the rot of autocracy Constitution is the detergent washing away sweat stains from the ballot box Referendum is the aftershave powder drying pimples of injustice

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Bully Mzilikazi

I am cornered because she smiled my way Concerned by the way she shapes my day a concert of beauty that conducts my wordplay and corrugates fear, breath and the autumn situated in May I danced to the harmony that is the breath in her voice It suppressed my September renderings allowing me to hide behind the choice to render our encounter another of our few rememberings

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South

Sihle Ntuli

Sihle Ntuli (@Solosihle) is a writer from Durban. His other works can be seen on Sang Bleu, Litnet and Itch.

Only Black and White Other coloureds feel left out “The Rainbow Nation” A mere figment The dark key The only key that opens every door A joke, I once overheard Most company cars are generally...

White Blue overalls Their chests feel like this...

On the inside Red paint and black smudge Spearheaded towards my eyes I concur Is Top Billing even shot in this country?

I hate Top Billing!

“Bitch Please!” who are you again Ah yes, life of a miner You’re that gold digger with a book Jail for secrets Time is the currency you’ll pay for...

The Secrecy bill Marikana occurred in broad daylight Even a Lunar Eclipse couldn’t hide that Nowadays The assholes have no aim They leave brown stains on the ceiling fan The compass point is no coincidence South of Africa

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Failed Father Figure

Charl Landsberg

Charl Landsberg is a South African academic, activist, artist, musician and poet. His interest surround theology, atheism, homosexuality, poverty, feminism, HIV and AIDS, issues of justice, and occasionally good food.

Uncapitalized by your hatred I manage just fine You sick bastard I manage without your stupidity And find my love refreshing My white skin gives me Undeserved privilege and advantage But that does not give me the right To abuse and hate the way you do You feel you are entitled And you feel threatened that I do not You scream at me with your vitriol Trying to shape me with your fists To make me like you with your abuse But I will never be like you I do not hate like you do With your angry hands clenched around my throat And your vicious teeth gritted at my soul And your hating eyes stabbing at me And your lustful, arrogant hypocrisy When you sleep with other men’s wives Women who are not white When you rape children But you forbid me from marrying the black skin Because this is ‘undignified’ and ‘immoral’ and ‘unbiblical’ I fail to see why I should hate Model myself after you The faded white demiurge When you fail to do the most basic thing And act like a human being

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Passersby

Tonye Willie-Pepple

Tonye Willie-Pepple was born in Enugu Nigeria, he is an ijaw from Bonny Island and holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the Federal University of Technology, Owerri. His poems and short stories have been published in Sentinel Magazine, The Muse Nigeria and Saraba Magazine. Recently he participated at the fifth edition of Fidelity Bank’s International creative writing workshop held in Lagos. He lives in PortHarcourt, Nigeria

They flow with passions Rivers of life They meet in Conclaves Confluence of souls Packed in black and white They arrive many shores Their goals the same To paint pieces of love Some paint and mold Their names in gold Some sell their gold To a thousand fold Time’s breeze Covers both with dust In morrow’s washing streams The golden name will always shine This painting board, covets colors of love As best you can, Rainbow it today Black or white, We are all passersby

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Player’s Prayer Tosin

I teach engineering analysis in a Nigerian university. I have published collections of poetry including Comrade (2010) and Yalla! (2011). I blog at www.LifeLib.blogspot. com

Preamble: “All the world’s a stage...”

Let me be happy, Lord.

Let me feel sad.

Just as long as my face is lined with experience, I accept a wrinkle or a dimple.

Let me live long, Mother.

Let me die young, Father in heaven.

May it be painful and chronic, or let it be instantaneous, my corpse frozen in innocence.

Let me have too much money to know what to do with.

Let me work hard to barely make ends meet.

Let me have no work, no food.

Let me be a nobody, Let me doubt you, God, asking to see your face.

Let me believe instead, and win the holy race.

Give me your peace or leave me roiled with angst.

Let me search my soul and find it vacant.

Let me be full of prayer even when you don’t hear, or let me just accept my fate as a player.

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The Politics of Romance Alyssa

I work as a cook at the University, love reading, baking and writing in my spare time.

When love is left and leaving feels right opposites don’t always attract, they fight.

When love has left and nothing feels right opposing it doesn’t always work, don’t fight.

It’s sometimes painful But the truth does mean well in various ways and shades of grey It daunts us and like past familiars it haunts us chills us ask we know we’re in the same room as it a shadow cast from what once was watches us objectively A cloud that hangs Between our love, in the way You try to ignore it As it rains on your parade.

When love is extreme left Fascist and invasive Cold and abrasive You’re right to be a communist and say, “we should be the same”.

But we’re polar opposites It dawns on us at last like callouses from continuous struggles we never could look past we’re fighting to unite ideals too vast.

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Country aflame LFS

South Africa is burning The people are hurting South Africa is dying The people are screaming Racial this Democracy Hatred that Democracy Constant reminders Corruption Crime Poverty Why must the people suffer?

For their masters mistakes Why do people starve?

While their masters drive BMW’s We hate each other We steal from each other We murder each other But don’t we all bleed red?

Are we not brothers?

Are we not siblings?

This is our country This is OUR mother land!

South Africa is burning!

Someone save us!

South Africa is dying!

Let’s save ourselves!

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Europeans Bruce Cooper Editor and journalist

Europeans came, Invaded, Struck us dizzy with their cultural blow.

Thought They had discovered paradise.

We thought the sea had sent them to our land.

We did not know.

We watched them – wife, child, dogs in tow.

There had to be a reason for their coming …

More came … and more …

We watched Bewildered as they spilt out on the shore In thousands …

We retreated From the lands that we had wandered, Retreated deep into the veld Unsure about this strange occurrence.

Talked for hours Of this thing we did not understand.

As the years went on The tide of white men did not ebb But flowed.

We wondered why the sea had sent them Why the ancestors approved.

Until at last we gave up wondering And sank back into the desert veld Exiled from our land.

Not long ago an aged Pondo Said to me The sea had suffered indigestion And spewed them on the beach.

Maybe he was right.

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Poor Contempt Heart Ononiwu Fortune I am undergrad industrial chemistry student just seeking to make a difference in my generation through my upcoming writings and poems.

Even in the little things they do they find joy Finding time to smile amidst all that toil Watching them makes my spirit soar higher Do you know that having all life’s riches Does not mean you get all your wishes They live without life’s riches Surviving only on their farm harvest and a few pennies Yet they have no worries Watching them makes my spirit soar higher And yes they live in their little villages Faraway from the city noises and life’s treachery Closer to natures beauty and its peace and tranquillity Watching them makes my spirit soar higher Yes, five naira keeps them happy That’s because they have greater joy within They do not have to worry about enmity You know they say more money, more problems, more jealousy

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Magwinya woman starrider

I am a published writer, former National Arts Merit Awards (NAMA) nominee, a writers’ association chairperson, an English lecturer, an international ESL and EFL teacher and tutor, book editor, conference producer and researcher, and more recently, a freelance journalist. In 2005, my nationally acclaimed book, Love O’clock was published. In 2006, I edited a poetry anthology, IT’S TIME… In 2007, I was in a team of young writers, editors/mentors on a British council project, Echoes of the Young.

2010 saw me contribute to an international edition -Poems for Haiti, a South African anthology.

She wakes up before dawn. Mounts her cardbox cubicle on the pavement at a street corner. It is chilly and windy.

Without delay she pours cooking oil into the aluminum container perched on a three-legged stand under which there are popping flames of fire.

In the yellow bowl she stirs the flour with vigour. The fire is warming her up.

With her hands she squeezes the flour into fist-sized lumps and drowns them into the blistering oil.

Over a short space of time the blazing oil turns the floury swellings into brown round buns commonly known as magwinyas.

With her fork she pierces each baked brown roll and shrugs it off into another vessel.

She yawns. The heat is soothing. It is coaxing.

She has to sell these chignons to eke out a living.

A single parent with four dependents. Like a thief something sweeps her away. Siesta says sister let us go…

Her mouth is agape, there is a cascade of saliva going down her chin, down where lies her vessel. The sun’s rays are peeping. Her customers of school children and factory workers halt and scream, “wow!”… and proceed.

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Wasted brains lie in the gutter Mis2ly

I am a media studies graduate and my interests lie in human rights more specifically socio-economic rights. I’m fascinated by drug abuse; prison gangs and prostitution. I work as Managing Editor for a publishing company. I love poetry because I find it easy to express myself and describe the world through poetry. I’m an artist and I specialize in abstract art, experimenting with the female body in my drawings.

Focus on my right eye It will lead u inside my mind There lies a gallery of lost lives struggling 2 survive Black and white alike Standing on the pavement waiting Xe is wasted Fixated on her next fix Wondering how xe is going to get it Dirty hands held out xe stands waiting for a rand to drop and litter her sordid palm Who is xe?

Huddled under a bridge he sits Rolling dice, before he decides which robot he will occupy Engulfed in shameless smoke that feeds his life A life sentence that requires no jails Drugged by the merciless drugs of a dependent kind Who is he?

They where once more than just students of life Who are they?

Xe was a mother and a child He was a brother and a friend But one wrong decision resulted in a domino of destruction in their imperfect lives The government pays no homage to these seemingly faceless plights.

They have crashed to the ground with no hope of a single life line.

People just pass them by allowing this web to persist Who are we?

These pictures in my mind are reflections of our so called democracy But then again how much can be done for people who “don’t want help” We can’t blame it on race because in the gutters of wasted minds lies both black and white alike.

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writer’s block

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poetic voice A poem begins as a lump in the throat, a sense of wrong, a homesickness, a lovesickness.” ~ Robert Frost

Langston Hughes, Shakespeare, Sarah Jones, Lebo Mashile, Saul Williams, Tumi Molekane, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Lesego Rampolokeng...

Poets whose names, voices are clear, distinct and unmistakable. Each of these poets have had imitators but the followers have never been able to stand out. You can’t mistake these poets from any wannabe.

Often, you don’t need to see the poet’s name before you know who the poet is.

This is where poetic voice comes into play.

Poetic voice is about personality. We’re talking about the way a poet selects words, uses grammar, syntax, form, persona, rhythm and rhyme. The use of these devices can set one poet apart from any other poet. Without a clear and distinct poetic voice, a poet is forgettable or sounds like an imitator, poetry then becomes boring, bland and fails to engage the reader.

Consider this: 5 nights of horror and of bleeding Broke glass, cold blades as sharp as the eyes of hate And the stabbin’, it’s War amongs’ the rebels Madness, madness, war Five Nights of Bleeding, Linton Kwesi Johnson dis poem shall speak of the wretched sea that washed ships to these shores

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of mothers cryin for their young swallowed up by the sea dis poem shall say nothin new Dis Poem, Mutabaruka Both poets are Jamaican and their work is influenced by dub, however, one can never confused LKJ and Muta. This is poetic voice.

Poetic voice is what gives us originality. consider this: I wore you today Like a raggedy coat For the feel of how warm it used to be I wore you I Wore You, Lebo Mashile If you love me, baby, Help when I’m down and out, I’m a po’ gal Nobody gives a damn about.

Down and Out, Langston Hughes Both poets have written about love but through the use of persona (Hughes is a man yet the persona in this poem is clearly a woman “I’m a po’ gal”), grammar - Mashile doesn’t use punctuation and the breaking of the lines flouts certain grammar rules.

So, in a world where everyone is a poet, how do you set yourself apart?

Subject matter is not the only thing that makes one poet from another - I could focus on political issues while you write about nature but we both need to do more in order to stand out as poets. Often subject matter is about what interests or moves a poet. While some poets work is clearly protest, activism other poetry are more interested in love, of human stories or nature or religion/spirituality. This of course doesn’t mean that a poet must pick one and stick to it. Poets often find inspiration in many things but you’ll find that there’s one or two topics that greatly interest that poet. For example, Lebo Mashile writes a lot about women and the women experience while Napo Masheane’s body of work has a strong body politic strand.

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Some times the starting point is persona (speaker) - who’s voice are you suing in the poem? As you’ve seen, Langston Hughes’ Down and Out poem is “spoken” by a woman. Hughes uses the female voice in a lot of his work. Sometimes even the “I” in the poem isn’t the poet.

Kwame Dawes spoke about a writer’s ability to empathise: I think the artist is always both inside the world that we are in and yet outside looking in. That’s what we call empathy. The ability to imagine what someone else is feeling so thoroughly that we can then act upon it.

The artist is going to ‘feel with’ through the imagination and then be able to express that through language. (Poetry Potion 2012.01) Inhabiting the “I” allows the poet to write from a point of view other than their own. So are all your poems just about you?

In school we learnt how to use proper grammar - punctuation in the correct places, words in certain order and spelling a certain way.

These rules, the poet takes and reshapes in order to give deeper meaning. The poet uses syntax to rearrange words to make the lines read smoother, to bring the reader closer to the subject matter or put distance between the reader and the text. Poetry, even when simple, is never obvious or bland. Some poets deliberately break grammar rules in order to deepen meaning - to point to something else.

Form - poets that pay attention to form, do more than just express themselves. Because, you know, poetry isn’t just lines broken in an interesting way on the page and attractively exhaled on stage. While we don’t have the kind of preoccupation with form as the poets in the nineteen century or before had, we create better poems when we take form seriously. Wikipedia explains poetry as follows: Poetry uses forms and conventions to suggest differential interpretation to words, or to evoke emotive responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. The use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations If we are to take this an a useful definition then we realise that poetry is about interpretation, interpreting what is not the obvious because

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the poet has done more than just arrange words nicely for you.

The thing to ask yourself is “what is your style”. Often we only think about this when thinking about our performances but this also applies to our writing and to each poem we present. Remember that ultimately we want evoke emotion. Humans are driven by emotion we all are. So all these devices while making your voice, your opinion, personality, distinct help to invoke something within the reader.

With consistency your voice becomes clearer, more distinct and stronger. What this means is that you don’t write each poem in exactly the same way but rather that you find something that becomes your distinct signature. Sometimes this may be, like Ntozake Shange writing in slang, or like Langston Hughes drawing strongly from Jazz music or like Audre Lorde who’s work is about the lesbian feminist experience.

The point of finding your poetic voice is - who are you and what are you about? You must answer those questions with your poems.

Being able to answer these questions will lead the reader into being able to identify with you and therefore give your work relevance and resonance.

further reading: http://www.writersdigest.com/writing-articles/by-writing-genre/poetry/ find_your_poetic_voice http://www.utmostchristianwriters.com/articles/article3006.php

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Word N Sound

The first Saturday of every month. diarise that!

The Word N Sound crew kicked off the 2013 Open Mic League with new poets, bigger prizes, bigger goals, a new venue and a BANG! The new venue was the Market Theatre Lab, the beautifully named Ramolao Makhene Theatre at the Bus Factory in Newtown. Since the theatre was flooded late last year and is currently being fixed up, the set up was just outside. I really dug this set up, because I worried that the theatre may be too small.

Recently, I had started to worry that Word N Sound was closing in on itself by having the same poets competing in the Open Mic League.

But I was pleasantly surprised when the open mic was filled largely with new faces. A familiar face, in fact part of the Top 5 last year was KB Kilobyte. That had me frowning a bit because I wondered if being in the previous year’s top 5 shouldn’t automatically disqualify a poet from the next season. I don’t know. Suffice it to say my worries aren’t that big of a deal because the new faces soon proved themselves to be serious competition. The competition is fierce.

Some of the new faces were mic virgins. They had never performed in front of an audience of that size much less compete. It showed, shem.

The nerves got the better of a few but some, despite the nerves, showed a lot of potential.

Stands out were Roach, Mapule, KB Kilobyte, Gratitude Fischer, Nubia Queen, Pilgrim and No Life.

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Once the Open Mic League section was done, more established poets, the winner would be announced at the end of the show.

Likwid Tongue opened up with an emotional, energetic performance

by Vallentine. I do wish Val would perform more and public more because she brings to poetry more than just words, she brings a sense of theatre which isn’t boastful and narcissistic. Her performance is not just about standing out and making an impression but it’s about enhancing the poetry and advancing the layers of meaning. I really respect that she gives herself on stage not just the words.

Quaz performed next a mix of “page” poetry and hip hop tracks. The two sides of Quaz are equally powerful. Quaz is, for me, a special kind of writer. He has so much respect for form and this has led him to having quite a large range of work to play with. From reading a short piece in his book, to performing, full power, a piece backed by a great hip hop beat - I contend that Quaz is something of a triple threat.

He’s a writer’s writer and performer’s performer.

And then there was Flo… one can’t think of Flo without thinking of “Hi, My Name is Flo”. A piece that regardless of how many years ago it was written still manages to capture new fans and recapture old ones. Flo has for the past several years focuses on his work as a photographer. He barely touches poetry but somehow this isn’t something that one can take much issue with because he’s entertaining.

Mandi Poefficient, a poet a interviewed for the Up & Coming section in our anniversary edition was amazing. Mandi is the 2012 Queen of the Open Mic Poetry League. It was quite obvious that this performance was important for Mandi. One could just see on her face, how she loved being on that stage. Mandi clearly respects the stage and the audience. She performed some pieces that I had heard before but didn’t just perform them in the same way that I had heard them before. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Beauty is a Beast that involved a quartet of women who interpreted the poem through dance and “mime”. This showed so much growth in her work. I hope to see more of this sort of collaboration from her. Mandi was my absolute highlight - I look forward to more of her work.

The event was topped off with a musical performance by Lilly Million.

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Lilly has an absolutely grand voice. I, personally, find her music a little too folksy for my taste but that is not to take away anything from her performance. I enjoyed her energy and just how much talent she actually has. I mostly enjoyed her interpretation of the Gnarls Barkley hit, Crazy. Lilly is going to far with her music and I think that she will have cross-over appeal too.

Mapule, who’s performance what really, in my opinion, unrivalled won the Open Mic League. She will go on the defend her title in the next session in March.

Congratulations to the Word N Sound crew for the work they have put in these past three years. They have truly revived the Jozi poetry scene and every month I look to see what new thing they are coming with.

I’m actually properly excited about the 2013 season because ultimately this is about our love for poetry and all things poetic.

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Print Quarterly Poetry Potion is primarily a digital publication but from this year, we are going to produce a print quarterly. Each of the print editions will be themed.

Here is the first theme:

on being human I'm looking for poems that go beyond just "expressing yourself".

DEADLINE: 21 FEBRUARY 5PM (+2:00 GMT) The best poems will do more than use the theme phrase in a poem. The best poems will pick the phrase apart and a interpret and discover something amazing in the theme "on being human".

The best poems will play with form - stanza, rhyme, syntax, aesthetic, language, subject. The best poems will challenge, dazzle, move, inspire the reader.

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poetry is accepted in any language.

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if you submit in any language other than English then please provide an english translation of the poem or submit a paragraph that explains what the poem is about.

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since the persons assessing the poem for publication may not understand the language the poem is submitted in, then poetrypotion.com reserves the right not to consider work that comes without a translation of an explanation paragraph.

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poetrypotion.com does not edit poetry - so make sure that you submit your work in its final publishable draft. DO NOT SUBMIT FIRST DRAFTS.

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poetrypotion.com accepts, poet profiles, essays, think/ opinion pieces and social commentary on various subjects.

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