The Choral Singers in Uniform

And at the river where we slumber
The crystalline prism’s encumbrance
Where shall we gather remembrances
Horse galloping towards endurance
Not this way, not that way, what ever way
We parse our accomplishments in umbrage

How Did It Go?

A one stanza presentation of the Gwawdodyn Hir poem (a Welsh poetic form, a sestet); It is an interesting form requiring four lines of 9 syllables, two final lines of 10 syllables, and end rhymes on 1-4, and line 6. This lent to me something both formal and mysterious, being a Canadian and growing up inside a colonial-commonwealth society. I took bravado, envisioned the brio of a children’s choir (of which at one point in grade school I was a member of – a most ghastly experience), and imagined the Titanic (as a school/ a sinking deck – slanting down into an ocean, everyone on board still singing) – I really feel that forms are interesting to explore – for just these reasons – opening up old patterns to visions, exploring social-history, and what is embedded in and can be opened up thru language. Any one out there – a Welsh speaker – who would like to take a crack at translating this into a Welsh-language version?

Robert Frede Kenter

Enquiry

The ghosts of thousands line London’s streets
drifting to the house where MPs meet
from rest they come, drawn by pure deceit;
the obfuscation and lies that cheat
them of an answer; they must wait and see
if truth can free us from this mad elite.

How Did It Go?

Took a while to do this one, and I’m still not 100% happy. The same rhyme ending makes it tricky, I think.

Tim Fellows

Bio and Links

Robert Frede Kenter

is a writer and visual artist, the EIC /publisher of Ice Floe Press (www.icefloepress.net), who lives in Toronto with MECFS. Robert is an editor, pushcart nom, finalist in the 2023 DaVinci Eye awards for book design, and a widely published poet, playwright and Vispo practitioner. Work recently in or forthcoming from: Olney, Watch Your Head, Anthropocene, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acropolis Magazine, Erato, Fevers of the Mind, and other venues. Books include EDEN (visual poetry collection, 2021), the micro-chap Office Crime, & contributor in the anthology, The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022).