-Ron Whitehead, Lifetime Beat Poet Laureate
Poem and photo by Ron Whitehead. Graphics by Jinn Bug. Poet, writer, editor, publisher, professor, scholar, activist, U.S. National Beat Poet Laureate Ron Whitehead is the author of 24 books and 34 albums.
Month: September 2022
NEW FEATURE: SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS I will feature your work photos and writing individually on the Wombwell Rainbow. A special feature for you alone. Please DM/message me if you’re interested. Photo essays are great, poems should accompany one of your images that inspired them. Poems within the photos are also great, such a haiku, and so forth. Any theme you choose, at the moment. May get more specific as time goes by. Experimental work most welcome. Our third Synergy is from Jinn Bug.
Homeless in the Mist (photo by Jinn Bug)
NEIGHBORS
The junkies in my neighborhood
have names, these young men
who gently haunt our streets,
our woods, who sit on my stoop
and talk about their favorite books,
who hobo-style scratch softly
at the door asking for a bite to eat.
It’s true I know the names of a few
of these lost boys in this shabby town
poised at the edge of gentrification
and true I keep a handy bit of cash
and I suspect you would not like to hear
me say, “Get some food first and then
get what you need with my blessing.”
It’s also true that there
but for grace go I,
you know.
The junkies in your neighborhood
have names too. Perhaps you say
you choose to live where there are
no junkies and I reply perhaps they
are all around you, behind doors
in your safe suburb, having not yet
spectacularly lost everything
and become both visible and invisible,
shamed and nameless
all at once.
***
Bio
-Jinn Bug
is a poet, photographer, gardener, activist, visual artist and life-long dreamer. Her photography, vignettes, and poems have appeared in Appalachian Heritage, New Southerner, LEO Weekly, Fiolet & Wing—An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism, Aquillrelle, For Sale, Pure Uncut Candy, The Rooted Reader, Gyroscope Review, Necro Magazine and other print and online publications. Her most recent book of poetry is “Nights at the Museum”. Visit her at http://www.JinnBug.com.
The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose by Franca Mancinelli Translated by John Taylor (Bitter Oleander)
The Bitter Oleander Press have already published two books by Franca Mancinelli, a book of prose poetry and another of poetry, both translated into English by John Taylor, and this paperback of prose, poetic prose and poetics will only add to the evidence of Mancinelli as a major contemporary Italian writer.
The short prose which makes up the first section of the book is a surprising mix of the romantic, personal and gently shocking. Childhood memories and fairy stories turn into stories with corpses, frozen tears which form stalactites in the eyes, blood and portentous signs. Yet these are deftly written, engaging and lucid tales, written with an accomplishment and flair that does not linger on the darkness but works to produce worlds of magic and light, and of promise, even when things seem grim. Here’s the end of ‘Walls, Rubble’, a story of claustrophobia, paranoia and ‘not feeling at…
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The High Window, Autumn 2022: First instalment
The High Window’s Resident Artist:Autumn 2022
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Rowena Sommerville introduces herself:
I was a lucky baby-boomer, able to go to art school to study Graphics and Illustration despite my parents’ (perfectly justified) anxieties, and despite knowing nothing, either on arrival or on graduation, of how one actually earned a living from these skills. I then worked in a variety of youth justice, psychiatric and social care settings while picking up bits of illustration work (including for Spare Rib!), and gradually learned how to put together a creative life. When I had children I also began to write ‘for them’ and eventually had my first children’s book published, which I had written and illustrated.
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Like almost all practising artists nowadays, I have had to earn a living through a ‘portfolio career’, parlaying varied skills into varied income streams. My craft skills have generally been those considered as traditionally female – particularly knitting and sewing – and…
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Sam Milne on the Poetry of Jack Clemo
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Reginald John Clemo (11 March 1916 – 25 July 1994) was a Cornish poet and writer who was strongly associated both with his native Cornwall and his strong Christian belief. His work was considered to be visionary and inspired by the rugged Cornish landscape.[1] He was the son of a clay-kiln worker and his mother, Eveline Clemo (née Polmounter, died 1977), was a dogmatic nonconformist.
Clemo was born in the parish of St Stephen-in-Brannel near St Austell. His father was killed at sea towards the end of the First World War and he was raised by his mother, who exerted a dominant influence on him. He was educated at the village school but after age of 13 his formal schooling ceased with the onset of his blindness. He became deaf around age twenty and blind in 1955. The china clay mines and works around which he grew up were…
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American Poet: Autumn: Karen Petersen
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Karen Petersen has travelled the world extensively, publishing poetry, short stories, and flash both nationally and internationally in a variety of literary publications. Her poems have been translated into Persian and Spanish, and she has been nominated for numerous prizes, most recently long-listed for the UK’s international Bridport Prize. She is the first person in the history of the Pushcart Prizes to receive nominations in all three categories of poetry, short story, and flash. This year, her chapbook, Trembling, won the Wil Mills Award, judged by Annie Finch, and her first volume of poetry, Twelve Cities, and Other Places, is forthcoming with the Able Muse Press. More information can be found here: https://karenpetersenwriter.com
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Karen introduces herself:
I’ve been writing for almost five decades, wearing a variety of hats: poet, editor, journalist, short story writer. As a poet, I made a decision a long time ago to…
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Autumn Poetry 2022
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The Poets
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs • Robert Beveridge • Rip Bulkeley • Pratibha Castle • Michał Choiński • Phil Connolly • Jim Conwell • Peter Daniels • Sue Davies • Roger Elkin • Linda Ford • Oz Hardwick • Charles Lauder, Jr • Christine McNeill • Kathleen McPhilemy • Mark Mansfield • DS Maolalai • Sally Michaelson • Kate Noakes • Stuart Pickford • Vic Pickup •Edmund Prestwich • D A Prince • Frances Sackett • Fiona Sinclair • Sue Spiers • Victoria Twomey • David Underdown • Polly Walshe • Jim Ward • Margaret Wilmot • Dorothy Yamamoto
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Previous Poetry
THW26 : June 6, 2022 • THW25: March 6, 2022 • THW24: December 3, 2021 • THW23: • THW22: June 6, 2021 • THW21: March 8, 2021 • THW20: December 4, 2020 •THW19: September 5, 2020 • THW18: May 4, 2020 • THW17:
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NEW FEATURE: SYNERGY: CALLING ALL WRITERS WHO ARE PHOTOGRAPHERS I will feature your work photos and writing individually on the Wombwell Rainbow. A special feature for you alone. Please DM/message me if you’re interested. Photo essays are great, poems should accompany one of your images that inspired them. Poems within the photos are also great, such a haiku, and so forth. Any theme you choose, at the moment. May get more specific as time goes by. Experimental work most welcome. Our second Synergy is from Lennart Lundh.
A Postcard from Where I Live Now
A Postcard from Where I Live Now
There’s a barn here where all the words live, and we make stories of them for people.
“Mister,” the letter said to me, “my husband’s always loved words. Age is taking him, and he can’t tell the stories that he hears inside. Is there a tale I can give to thank him for all the places his words have taken me?”
I sat on the floor of the barn. Instead of calling the words, I read them the letter. They heard me out, and I listened to them rustle-shuffle as they will when they see the path. When all was quiet again, I took the ones who’d volunteered and put them in a box, last at the bottom and first at the top, to be unfolded as a gift to a man loved by a woman.
Aluminum Overcast
Aluminum Overcast
To understand the title,
do the math in your mind’s eye.
One silver fuselage. Two wings.
Four engines, ten men.
Twelve guns and sixteen bombs.
Multiply by ten.
Again, then again.
You’ve reached a thousand folded
into tight formation: The Big Birds.
Is it any wonder the air shakes
the roots of trees before the
blast of bombs gives voice?
It is any wonder the sun is obscured
before the pillars of fire give birth
to climbing pillars of smoke?
If there is any wonder,
it is that walls still stand
and men still walk among them.
Chicago; Rainy Night
I came to town a
one-bag stranger you
held a picture of,
the plane and I in time.
And now
I’m looking at this city
from your window,
trying not to think of
what’s to come.
Jazz Me
start me deep with jungle rhythms add sugar cane and soils containing languages we’ll learn to soon discard give me baptism by fires in the darkest of the night and then escape with me while our others wallow while our others follow missionary tracts and black motes noted on white sheets we will fix on fusion we will find the star stuff in each free improvisation I will riff your body with my fingers bring forth emanations with my lips while you pluck counter notes and melodies to see us off this stage beyond percussive endings deep in god
Ripples
In a crowded Sunday afternoon rotunda,
fingers ripple across keys
and the stream pauses, breathes deep,
moves off changed, change-filled.
Pen and paper meet, declaring your objection,
and the unmet friend of a friend,
tracing the whorls your hand describes,
refuses his recall to battle.
Set your hands in forms of water
(glassy pasture pond, sun-washed snow,
steam rising sibilant from city sidewalk grates)
and see the impact of your movement spread.
Urban Ivy
gray pipes climb
to enter brick wall
urban ivy clings tight
What is it about a house
standing empty in its overgrowth, windows boarded or stoned while the front door’s welcome is kicked in by untended roots and branches, that sharpens our senses, raises those small hairs the barber missed, and leaves us edgy for hours? The animal brain keeps whispering what if what if what if about rats snakes and spiders rotten floorboards tetanus nails black mold ceilings a dead body or worse an axe killer in need of one to leave behind for the next explorer. Breathe. Center. If it would shush a moment, we could hear the heart reminding us the time for this place has come and gone, explaining nothing remains, good nor evil, not even the memories of those who left this shell behind.
-Lennart Lundh
is a poet, photographer, historian, and short-fictionist. His work has appeared internationally since 1965. He can be found on Facebook as Lennart Lundh, and on Twitter as @lenlundh. Len’s books are available at Etsy.com/shop/VisionsWords and through numerous physical and online retailers. Recordings of his poetry are at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVop7qstg59vLG3VaAQWW_g. The Web site for his photography is lennart-lundh.pixels.com.
Drop in by Stewart Carswell
Today it’s my privilege to welcome rising star, Stewart Carswell, to drop in to reflect upon his collection, Earthworks (Indigo Dreams, 2021).
Throughout the book there are a number of poems that all share the Earthworks title, each one exploring a different historical earthwork in England. This poem was the first of those to be written.
I like exploring wild landscapes, and entering a new place will often kick-start a poem. In early 2019 I visited Offa’s Dyke in Gloucestershire and a few months later I was at Welshbury hill fort, exploring a similar set of ideas about ramparts, woodland, boundaries, and defences. I compressed my pages of notes about those two places into this one poem. The rest of those Earthworks poems came together pretty quickly later that summer, helped in part by walking the Great Stones Way…
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