Here's an article about being a poet that was kindly published by my school, here in Switzerland.
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08.30 am and the gobbling gives it away:
a wild turkey is chewing up attention. Outside the bedroom window where Strawberry mountain’s scruffy fringe tickles well kept habitation, a male wild turkey is passing, Slowly like a top hat and tailed English gentlemen at the races, showing off every filament of finery, the long legs taking luxurious strides. Taking his time, and in obvious denial of his prehistoric appearance: scraggy bald head, ragged feathery garments. The wild turkey passes by in slow-motion, making the most of the cat-walk. Then he turns up into the woods where he is quickly suffocated back into green invisibility. The show is over. Time for morning tea. Published by DASH, May 2019 At night a single tree in the Puting Najing National park lights up with buzzing magic: the fireflies gathering to tell stories as they dance the darkness sparkling like a shower of fizzling stars filling up the spiralling black holes of night. The true stars rise above Borneo, souls of ancestral dancers, elevated to delight Mother Moon while she shies away from The King of Flies, her bright suitor, so bright, no fly can dance while he owns the heavens, searching for her, east to west. All night they dance, playing at being Stars, Mother, Father in their home on a glue-green river in a forest of rain-drenched diversity being hacked into tinier and tinier chunks by palm oil plantations. During the day they hide in the reeds while trees fall and Mother weeps. Published as part of the 'For the Silent' anthology by Indigo Dreams, May 2018 They found walnuts in Pompeii’s Temple of Isis
on that bubbling August day Vesuvius blew. I sift the ash of my middle-aged memory and find Dad in an armchair, cracking walnuts with a silver crocodilian vice that snapped at my fingers every time I tried, the giggling nut skidding out of my hands and rolling on the floor. All evening the grunt and crack of cerebral shells. He would pick out the grey matter, chuckle at the brainy slithers. Pliny the Elder warned that sitting under a Walnut tree brought heaviness to the head, the poison penetrating the brain. Sometimes the show: splitting a softer nut open with his hands and I would marvel that Thor was an electrical engineer for British Telecom. My favourite game to reconstruct the shell in my palm, a thoughtful globe of empty wishes, a toy in the Ancient Chinese Imperial Court. Always walnuts at Christmas, a treat of Dad’s cold childhood with a single orange. Funny how poverty gives the warmest memories. Charlemagne wanted trees in his Orchards. Crusaders dragged home recipes from sieges and sacrilege. They say they are a status symbol in modern China: the oldest ones worth a fortune. To me each one a moment of childhood and as an adult I finally begin to enjoy the taste. Held to my ear I hear Dad cracking and happy. Published in April 2019 in All the Sins. |
Poetry Biography:I have had over 70 poems published in the following worldwide magazines and literary journals: A Handful of Stones, Acta Victoriana (Canada), All the Sins (UK), The Amethyst Review (USA), Amsterdam Quarterly (NL) The Blue Nib (Ireland), Bolts of Silk, Borderless Journal, The Brasilia Review (Brazil), Bushfire Literature & Arts Review (US), Cadenza, Cake Magazine, Carillon, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (Hong Kong), DASH (USA), Clackamas Literary Review (USA), Cooch Behar Anthology, Dawntreader, Dreamcatcher, The Dillydoun Review, Earth Love, The Ear (US), Eastlit (East Asia), Erbacce, Envoi, Finger Dance Festival, Ginosko, Gloom Cupboard, Hidden Channel, Inlandia Journal, IS&T (Ink, Sweat & Tears), Into the Void (Canada), The Journal, The Lakeview Journal (India), Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Lunch Ticket (USA) The New Writer, One Hand Clapping, Orbis, Oregon English Journal (USA), The Passage Between, Prole, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, Sonic Boom (India), Third Wednesday (USA), Of Nepalese Clay (Nepal), New Contrast (South Africa), One Hand Clapping, Opportunity Publishing, The Oregon English Journal (USA) Origami Poems Project (USA), Panoplyzine (USA), Paper Swan Press, The Passage Between, The Peacock Journal (USA), Pens on Fire, Poetry Salzburg (Austria), Potomac Review, (USA) Prole, Pulsar Poetry, Rear View Poetry, Queen Mob's Teahouse, Qutub Minar Review (India), Red Ink, Shiela-Na-Gig (USA), South Bank Poetry Magazine, Stand, Waterford Teachers Centre, (Ireland) We Are a Website New Literary Journal (Singapore), Weber - The Contemporary West Review (USA), Windfall (USA), Writing Magazine, Words for the Wild and Verbal Art (India). Archives
March 2024
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