Alison Brackenbury loves, lives, hymns and rhymes the natural world and its people like no other poet.
A child—of his laboratory—
Freed from the womb of earth,
I gathered up my errant soul—
And stepped—gravely—forth.
Superior, Colorado, USA
20 January 2013
Mohamed Bin Abdulla Al-Rumaihi, Ambassador
Embassy of the State of Qatar
2555 M. Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20037-1305
Dear Ambassador,
I write with justice in my head,
I write with all impulse of peace,
In fervent hope of Mohamed
Ibn Al Ajami's release.
Please might we find your magistrate
Well understanding of the fact
That poetry surpasses state,
Liberty trumps Sedition Act.
It will be poets who ensure
The glory of your fine Emir
And even when they do incur
Displeasure, they're his vizier.
I pray you grant your poets space
To work the profit of their mind.
Reconsider this Ajami case,
In which all freedoms are enshrined.
Sincerely,
Uche Ogbuji
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For Wendy, Uche, and Walter
T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not an insect was stirring, bedbug or louse;
Our stockings were hung in the bathroom with care,
Because our new washer was under repair.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Where visions of doom pranced though their heads.
Mamma in her hair shirt, and I in burlap,
Well, we were trying so hard to adapt,
When down in the laundry arose such a clatter,
She demanded that I attend to the matter.
So, into the basement, I fell like a flash
Of sheet lightning, with a whopping great crash.
I rose from the floor, exceedingly slow,
First rubbing my head, then portions below.
Well, what in the washer should now appear?
A face full of bubbles, a frothy false beard.
He looked a bit English, pale, eccentric.
He held a pen, which he tapped with a “Click”
Against his porthole. “Help, in God’s name!”
Since Christmas round here is always the same
I was glad to help. He had been fixing
The washer all morning, when he got mixed in
With the wash: a turnip, a turtle, grandmother’s shawl,
Two socks from Argyll, and a flabby football.
Around and around, I watched our friend fly,
First greener, then redder, like his striped tie.
I tried to think clearly what I should do.
I was happy I found a pencil to chew.
I watched him revolve and worked out a proof
That proved quite useless. Far too aloof.
For, soon the great clatter gave way to a sound,
I’d call a great sucking. I jumped with a bound
Across to the washer, where I banged my foot
Against a big toolbox. Wearing no boot,
I shouted and stumbled, I fell on my back,
Banging my head on the stairs with a THWACK!
Around me stars twinkled; Saturn made merry:
He fluttered, and dipped, and danced like a fairy.
But what of our friend? Where did our friend go?
He’s here. He is spinning, with chattering teeth,
With the socks from Argyll, in a dark wreath,
Whirling around the washer’s big belly.
He is covered in turnip and some kind of jelly.
I think that is turtle. I’m not sure myself.
I am mostly vegan. Although I eat elf.
Now, by and by, with a bump on my head,
I crawled to the washer and, calmly, I said,
“Never fear, friend. Now, let’s get to work.”
But I could do nothing, until, with a jerk,
The washer stopped spinning. Then, there arose
A mess worse than turtles and turnips and clothes.
The laundry was done, as clean as a whistle.
No sign of our friend, no bubbles, no bristle.
But I fancy he said, as he was sucked out of sight—
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”
]]>Welcome to the fourth issue of Kin Poetry Journal. We hope you've been enjoying the poetry, prose and multimedia features we've had on offer these past months, and we've also been filling out the site's feature set. If you've missed anything on Kin you should be able to find it through our beefed up archives. Meanwhile we head back to Colorado again for the month's feature, and in fact to the state's poet laureate David Mason whom I interview. Over the coming month you'll see four of his poems, selected for their linked themes of place, starting with Oregon Way. David's interview and poems are illustrated by photographs by his wife Cally Conan-Davies.
In news from Kin contributors, Jenna Le has a poem, "Transmigration," in the current issue of Massachusetts Review, and another, "Riddle," in the current issue of Harpur Palate.
Kelly McQuain was recently nominated for a “Best of the Net” award for his poem “Pussy Chant”, published in the Certain Circuits 2012 print annual and originally in that journal’s Fall 2011 online issue. His new video poem “Clockwork Heart” appears as the a video poem at Apiary Mixtape along with an interview. Recent print poems include “Alien Boy” in Bloom and “Edinburgh, Afternoon Descant” in Chelsea Station. Recent online poems include: “Annabelle” in Stone Highway Review, Vol. 2.1, Sept. 2012; “Constellation”, “First Dog” and “Leather Bag, White Clock, Exit Door” in Press 1, Vol. 6.1, July 2012; “Magic Washing Machine” and “Old House” in Transient, Vol. 1.1, July 2012.
David Rothman will be reading to the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts in Denver on Wednesday, Oct. 31, and then recording a poem about election fatigue to be broadcast on Colorado Public Radio's show Colorado Matters for Wednesday Nov. 7. He shall teach a one-day seminar on ekphrasis for Colorado school teachers, in conjunction with the Van Gogh exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, on Saturday, Nov. 3.
Rothman has also raised $20,000 to fund scholarships for new students in the poetry track of the MFA at Western State Colorado University ("World of Versecraft" on Facebook).
Kin editor Wendy Chin-Tanner is also now Poetry Editor at Stealing Time Magazine and her poem "On the Thamespath" was nominated for the 2012 Best of the Net Award by Umbrella Journal. Kin editor Walter Ancarrow has a review in issue 2 of Angle Poetry Journal, which includes a couple of poems by me, Uche Ogbuji, as well as poems by many Kin contributors: Rose Kelleher, Cally Conan-Davies, Quincy R. Lehr, Marybeth Rua-Larsen, Rick Mullin, Wendy Chin-Tanner, Anna M. Evans, and Ann Drysdale. My poem "À la Recherche" is in the SIngaporean journal OF ZOOS and my incantatory poem, "At Wounded Knee," is in the latest Verse Wisconsin (#110), for which audio is available.
Keep in touch, spread the word, and do enjoy this latest installment of Kin.
]]>The second issue of Kin Poetry Journal is complete, and we have rolled into issue iii. This month's featured poet, Togara Muzanenhamo, hails from Zimbabwe. You've already seen one of his poems, "The Wine of Apes," in issue i and we shall bring you four more in the coming weeks, starting with "The Wheel Brace."
Hi Everyone!
The Kin blog is that one area of Kin where Walter, Wendy, Uche and Eric, are permitted to play around. We do serious things here, too, as you have seen. But we do think that playtime is just as important as poetry. After all, as William Blake will tell you, at length, in The Four Zoas, you cannot commune with the Muses too long without going completely around the bend.
Still, ours is a good-natured sort of madness, we hope, since we are our own jailers here, and we have mislaid the keys to the asylum.
Except maybe Walter.
And Uche.
And Wendy.
And me.
Oh my!
Yes, I have outed myself. I have found an extra set of keys in an unmentionable region of my person and escaped.
...
I am Eric.
In my own moments of lunacy, I often turn to prose for recreation, to work out those little problems in life I can't handle with basket weaving or its sister art: poetry.
Since there are so many such problems, all equally intractable, now and then, I write short stories and flash fiction to see if I can make any better sense of things. The results have been decidedly mixed.
Doubtful as some of these efforts are, I would like to offer you a story today, all the same.
Especially after having so carefully and painstakingly established in the eyes of the court the perfect defense for all of my subsequent actions in this story, a murder story...
[Switching to a British accent, now, and sounding very much like John Cleese.]
...as your Lordship and the members of the jury can clearly see.
May I present, Exhibit A: a bit of flash fiction, Mi'lud. About 500 words.
I am told that the author commited it to paper this week--Monday or Tuesday, I believe--just after a hair-raising encounter with a water-bug in his bathroom.
Indeed, Mi'lud. One cannot help but shudder, Mi'lud, to see these things. One finds a lot of these things in places like Bedlam, Mi'lud.
[Momentarily puzzled.]
No, no, not bathrooms, Mi'lud. There are no bathrooms in Bedlam, Mi'lud. In Bedlam, one is lucky to receive a cracked chamberpot and a death sentence from the State.
No, by "these things," I meant, Mi'lud, "water-bugs." In other words, short stories by Eric Norris. Genius horribilis.
[Nodding to the bench.]
Of course, Mi'lud. I meant no disrespect to the insect. I do beg your pardon, Sir. I should have been more kind and more clear.
[Cuffing the defendant above his right rear with a very sharp elbow.]
This "water-bug," this little tale, is a frail cousin of that unfortunate beetle, Gregor Samsa, in the famous story, The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka.
I call Exhibit A.
[A call for "Exhibit A" echoes from bailiff to bailiff to bailiff to bailiff, almost forever, down the endlessly twisting and turning corridors of Justice, before it arrives.]
I call Exhibit A: Kafka in the Bath.
The story was recorded secretly today.
Members of the jury not already put to asleep by the insanity defense, and those in the press rubbing your inky hands together eagerly, excited by the prospect of a good execution, can listen to Eric Norris read his story himself, in his own voice, in his own defense, on Soundcloud, here.
It runs about 3:00 minutes.
Perfect for a lunchtime adjournment.
Yesterday David Orr of NPR blogged, "It's A Genre! The Overdue Poetry Of Parenthood," in which he suggested that poetry celebrating childbirth and early infancy has been historically rare, but is emerging as a new genre. Maryann Corbett, poet and author of Breath Control, mused on FaceBook that she thought there have long been a fair number of new-baby poems, leading to an interesting conversation on her wall. I've gathered up some of the poems that were brought up in the thread and elsewhere.
I'll start with Corbett's own "Circadian Lament, Sung to a Wakeful Baby" (Umbrella Journal), which was linked by one of her friends, not the poet herself.
Go back to sleep. You’ve made a slight mistake
switching your days and nights around this way.
The time will come for nights you spend awake,
for cough and colic, ear- and stomach-ache.
Though now you babble charmingly and play
the infant hours away (a light mistake), …
I mentioned Catherine Tufariello's "Aubade" (The Nervous Breakdown).
Your language has no consonants.
No babble but a siren’s cry,
Imperious as an ambulance,
Yanks me upright, drains me dry,
Returns me to the languid trance
Of timelessness in which we lie.
Your language has no consonants,
Imperious as an ambulance.
Kin's own Wendy Chin-Tanner ups the ante by touching on all the brute biology of birth, including post-partum marital sex, in "Veteran", also in The Nervous Breakdown.
When our bodies parted, it was without
violence. She slid from me like a sloop
on the crest of that final mighty wave,
the surge sucking her backwards before
spilling over, like breath, like confession,
her arms reaching forward towards the dry
open shore and mine reaching down between
my legs to receive, meeting her, round bright
bud of us combined, her astonishing
glaucous eyes staring steadily,
curiously, seeming to see.
A correspondent mentioned "The Victory" by Anne Stevenson, a taut, sharp lyric.
Tiny antagonist, gory,
blue as a bruise. The stains
of your cloud of glory
bled from my veins.
Some of the discussion was about whether such poems are a new phenomenon. I suspect some of the explicit imagery and language of recent poems is new, but the topic certainly is not, though the article seems tangled upon this point, mentioning, for example, Blake's "Infant" poems from "Songs of Innocence and of Experience." That brought me to mind of the twist represented by To an Unborn Pauper Child by Thomas Hardy. Every good poetic topic wants for a strong, countervailing current.
Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-Wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.
The list could go on and on. One of the correspondents mentioned A.E. Stalling's Olives, which includes poems on early motherhood, and the NPR article itself mentions an anthology, Morning Song: Poems for New Parents, which of course recalls "Morning Song," by Sylvia Plath, one of my favorite poems.
Love set you going like a fat gold watch.
The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry
Took its place among the elements.
Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue.
In a drafty museum, your nakedness
Shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls.
At Kin we would love to publish the best poems possible about childbirth and early parenthood. Certainly if you have any other, already published poems you'd like to bring to our readers' attention, do leave a comment.
—Uche Ogbuji, Editor, Kin Poetry Journal
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Hello everyone and welcome to the blog of Kin Poetry Journal!
We hope that Kin becomes a part of your daily reading. We are working hard to provide the best poems, essays, interviews, video and audio from poets writing in English from around the world. Each day, we’ll bring you fresh content: new poems, neglected poems, guerilla video and other features, including news of new publications and other items of interest in the poetry world. You can keep up with what is going on at Kin though our Twitter feed and through our postings on Facebook.
The first issue of Kin launches on July 18th, 2012. Over the next few months, we’ll be adding links and other features to make Kin more comprehensive, interactive and user-friendly. We will be asking the assistance of readers and writers from every corner of the globe to help improve our site. We cannot do it alone.
Today is just a snapshot of what the future holds. We invite you to join us for the journey. We hope that you will bookmark us and tell your friends, wherever they might be. Or drop us a line at editors@wearekin.org and say, “Hello.”
All the best,
Wendy, Uche, Walter and Eric
The Editors
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