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I'm now a published poet! I guess it's about time.

8/7/2016

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My poem is coming out in the anthology, Another London, to be published by Harmonia Press this fall. It’s only the second time I’ve ever submitted a poem for publication. The first time was about 25 years ago, to Descant Magazine, which sent back a letter saying they would publish it if I would just cut out some of the fat first. I could see what they meant but never got around to it, or to ever trying to get another poem published until now.

Why now? Because I couldn’t resist the idea of this anthology, and I can’t wait to get my copy. Imagine: an extremely diverse group of poems written by a very diverse assortment of poets, all about this one small city, and living in it! How could anyone not want to read that?

My poem is a description of my experience taking part in the Guerrilla Poetry aspect of last November’s Words Festival of the Creative and Literary Arts. Tom Cull, who has just now become the city’s new Poet Laureate, created this very weird, strange and scary (for such a shy person as me) event. Four little groups of readers ventured out on the streets of downtown London to startle unprepared pedestrians with poetry. My group contained Tom, Andy Verboom (who is now a member of London Open Mic’s organizing committee), and a wonderful, humourous reader named Aileen House.

Prior to the event, two Facebook friends, Donald Brackett and Al Broudy, suggested I read Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and so I did, two poems called Dog and Underwear. They were perfect for the situation. I had never read Ferlinghetti before and one of the pleasures of the event for me was reading a lot of his poems in advance, as well as ones by other poets I had never touched before. Reading them casually, just to see if they would be appropriate, instead of tackling their intricacies and profundities with as much mental force and energy as I could muster, which is my normal reading strategy, allowed me to just enjoy them, to let them sneak up on me and go, “BOO!” So now I read poetry like that all the time, on my first reading, and then bear down on the second. Big lesson.
​
Plus, I and my shyness survived doing it.

I AM STANDING ON A CRATE READING LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

I am here now. This
is no longer an alternate future, or someone else's.
I am stretched up tight on this crate
looking down at these 
slow-moving bodies,
my spine hard against
the stone edge
of Starbuck's window wall,
buffeted by wind and buses
that bellow around this cold corner--
this dark Richmond and Dundas
where I would not be.

Yet I am only two barefoot beatnik blocks down
from City Lights Book Shop
nicely named for Ferlinghetti's own,
in Frisco way back then.

And now up on the crate I too am wearing
that F-beard in which he preached to his
beat colleagues passion
for all these dead poor
these no fame no friends
these leaning here into the slow tide of the block
drifting through time's 
pool out of jail for a while
getting by as if free
maybe trying
to like each other or one or some.

I am calm standing on this crate,
wearing this body here now
like someone else's or no one's--

and anyway no one looks at me; my eyes
are always in the book, my ears on my sonorous
voice; and elsewhere
with Ferlinghetti
enticing his empathetic, liberal
poet friends:

"Let's go
Come on
Let's go
Empty out our pockets
and disappear,
Missing all our appointments..."

No one hears. 
And these, with no appointments
to miss, don't care. 
His friends aren't here.

Even so, we few crate poets
yes we have left our safe homes
our cars in the overnight lots
our cell phones in our pockets
and like Ferlinghetti we do our hour
up on our soap boxes
dropping loud words 
down into the block.



​

From Facebook: 37 likes....Dave Hinkley, Kathryn Mockler and 35 others
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Back to work on poetry, finally!!

4/22/2016

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I work-shopped a poem at the Poetry London workshop on Wednesday, and consequently read it on the main stage prior to their distinguished poets coming on. Well, afterwards Shelly Harder, one of the volunteers who works with me in London Open Mic Poetry, said she really liked it and asked me for a copy, which I duly forwarded. Next day she shocked me by saying it's one of the best poems she's ever read! I'm not sure how seriously to take that, but certainly to some degree. Shelly has an honours degree in English, I believe, far beyond my paltry level of education, and is definitely one of the local band of creative young geniuses. As well, I've never known her to exaggerate things on a personal level. So now I'm thinking I should dig out and start working on all the poems I've work-shopped over these four intense years of social organizing, organizing which has been since day one pressing down on my creativity with its ponderous thumb.

And it's good timing because just in the last few days I've finally figured out how to get out from under the constant anxiety that makes it very difficult for me to do anything, either creative or work-related.

First, I began to think that if I was to ever do any writing again, or even reading for that matter, I would have to do it first thing in the morning before the day's quota of anxiety builds up. So no matter how many pressing things I had to get done for the open mic in a given day, I instead first began to do some serious reading to wake my brain up and then some actual writing. Well this lasted for a couple days, because I was using up so much of the day reading and writing that I got further and further behind on my work. By the third day, I was panicking.

So then it occurred to me that I should try doing my organizing work first thing in the day instead of my fun stuff, before the anxiety sets in. And I was shocked at the results. During the first day I tried it l accomplished about fifteen things that I was very behind on in a matter of only a few hours. With hardly any anxiety. (This versus the near-revulsion to even looking at the computer that I had developed and had been having to try to overcome each day.) So I've been doing it this way for a few days now, but not getting any reading or writing done! Although I could have. It's just been so thrilling to not be burdened by anxiety all afternoon that I've not wanted to do anything but enjoy the feeling.

Now, as a result of the inspiration Shelly has given me, I have another big kafuffle to unravel. I have to decide how seriously to take my poetry, and what to do with it. If some of it (one poem, to be exact) is as good as Shelly says it is, then I guess I should try to get it published. Which is the opposite direction to the one I've been heading in lately. Somewhere along the way I decided to just start posting all my poems, including my good ones, on the internet, and so forgo ever having them published in a journal. (They won't take them if they've been on the internet.) Then at least a few friends could read them. To this point, I've not been able to see any good reason for journal publication, especially at my age. I don't have thirty or fourty years left to first get a PhD, then wait a decade or more to get published in respected journals just so a respected publisher would be willing to put out a book of my poems, followed by other books, none of which would be read anyway, although just having them to my credit still might earn me "respect". I don't know. But if I do have one valuable little nugget, which might be appreciated by those who appreciate, should I then try to turn this whole train around, huffing and puffing at it with my 66-year-old carcass. Sure. I guess so. These last few years of socializing seem to have changed me from a pessimist into an optimist. If that's possible. So, I'm going to start reworking old poems and writing new ones. Why not?
​
And tomorrow, at the world's first Guerilla Poetry reading that's not out on a street but inside a library, with the library's permission, no - with the library's whole-hearted backing, I'm going to read my poem. That's a start.
​
London Central Library, 2 pm.
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Our new Guerrilla Poetry series at the library

3/17/2016

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Liked by Jaime R Brenes Reyes, Andrei HurricaneDitka Kravtchenko, Charmaine E. Elijah, Yvonne Maggs and 3 others
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