International Poetry Month – Page 14 – Bonnie McClellan-Broussard

Cultural Atlas of a Displaced Life: Embellished Errors (cover)

I’ve started working on my ‘Sketchbook Project 2013’. I tried once in 2010 (starting late) and couldn’t finish in time. Maybe I’ll make it this year. I chose the theme ‘Atlas’ because I’ve been considering Cultural Atlas as the theme for IPM 2013.

We all come into our adulthood with a series of images, advertising jingles, cartoons, and some language appropriate icons from pre-school coloring pages that helped us learn our alphabet, equivalent to “A is for apple and B is for Ball”.

How the houses were built where we grew up, what form the windows took, the layout and width of the streets and how much of the sky’s expanse could be seen, all form part of an internal cultural atlas that we carry with us. We may remain unaware of how deeply etched these ‘maps’ are until they are challenged by living in a different cultural context.

The image above is a small panel of black steel on which I drew with white gold leaf and rust converter. The image is of the sky, something I love watching change where I live in Northern Italy and also something I miss from my birthplace, Texas. I tore the soft, cardboard cover while trying to insert the rigid panel and then glued the torn bits back together and sewed over them with turquoise thread. Thus, the subtitle of the book, “Embellished Errors” refers both to my way of making art – often so impatient to see the results of an experiment that paper is torn, fingerprints are left where glue and ink have smeared that are then ‘fixed’ by pointing out their presence and letting it become part of the work, sometimes even the focus – and the series of, sometimes painful, decisions that have made the beautiful and densely embellished ‘stuff’ of my life so far.

I hope that my readers will enjoy the upcoming ‘visual poetry’ and that poets interested in submitting poetry for International Poetry Month next January will keep this theme in mind.

What’s New Too…

Here are a few more updates to let readers know what this year’s IPM poets have been up to since February. If you missed the first ones, click HERE to find out what’s new with Gilles-Marie Chenot, Maxine Beneba Clarke and Chris Fillebrown.

Meanwhile…

Australian poet Brad Frederiksen has been posting a fabulous series of written and visual poems, photographs of natural and digital ‘ready-mades’ and other intriguing explorations of word/image/sound. My favorite so far is a jazzy riff on power-stations and paranoia whose staccato language had me running this one through my head to the tune of Miles Davis’ So What:

they say it’s a brown coal power station.
so what.
they say it “supplies approximately 22% of
Victoria’s electricity needs and
8% of the National Electricity Market”.
so what.
they say it burns 2,400 tonnes of brown coal per hour
and turns it into coolable hot steam.
i’m paraphrasing here.
so what. (excerpt from: it’s a power station. so what)

To see the image, the capturing of which this poem tells, click HERE for an epic visual commentary.

Italian poet Giacomo Gusmeroli kindly sent me a copy of his latest book Lucore d’acque which is a real joy, I’m hoping that someone will take up the project of translating more of his work. He tells me that he is busy at work on another book in which his IPM poems from this year will appear.

Danish poet Christian Stokbro Karlsen very generously sent me copies of his latest books, including “FJERNARKIV” from which this year’s IPM poem was selected, that have inspired me to try and learn some Danish. He’s currently working as an editor along with writing poetry for his next book.

After a serious illness in February and March, Texas poet Tom McClellan is back to his keyboard and editing engaging, round-table discussions on life, politics, and the nature of things via his e-newsletter (available by subscription with highlights posted at http://tommcclellan.wordpress.com/) while writing the occasional poem:

Holy Saturday, 2012
Sunrise and a trailed bar of cloud above
The blazing sun, a gold coin caught in the tree.
Across the sky another coin, the moon
… Chock full of hope and promise, glowing silver in the sky.

Some time later in the dawn
A brave falcon strides the wind
Like Christ forever on His way
Arriving all debts paid.

I’ll be back tomorrow with one last update on what the other poets have been up to. Happy reading!

"POWER" copyright Matthew Broussard 2009 all rights reserved — “POWER” copyright Matthew Broussard 2009 all rights reserved

What’s new….

For anyone who’s been feeling that spring-time urge to read poetry or creative prose; over the next few days I’ll be giving you an update of what some of the writers from IPM 2MXII have been up to:

Gilles-Marie Chenot is as prolific as ever and, for anyone who reads even a smattering of French or has the time to poke around and find the works he writes in English, his website is like getting lost on the streets of Venice: a transcendent pleasure that makes you forget about time in its immediate, pressing sense and instead, re-imagine history as a fluid while peering through the water at the roots and flow of things:

On fleurit ce qu’on veut
En l’éternel printemps
La rivière coule au pied d’un roc
Pas une molécule qui ne sourit
Devant les stèles qui rendent hommage… (excerpt from “A LA SEVE”)

Maxine Beneba Clarke is the incoming poetry editor of Social Alternatives journal and continues to write and speak boldly about social, artistic and personal issues:

packing bars / & radio waves
doesn’t seem to mean a thing
they just want to see the paper
where r you publishing your poems

as if all that matters is print destination… (excerpt from ” An Open Poem to Australian Poetry, from Australian Slam Poetry”)

Chis Fillebrown has been writing a serial novella about the cracking open of the suburban life of Phillip Young. Anyone who has tried to comfort a crying baby, made a to-do list, waited in a Starbucks or in a hospital, will find his images resonant:

Coffee shop crowd, taking coffee orders took less time than making the cups of coffee ordered, resulting in a crowd relieved of its money but heavy with a collective expectation of coffee, fresh hot coffee, shoulder to shoulder, not really mingling with not really friends, jitter of anticipation, Brownian motion, all ears listening to orders called out, all eyes watching cups placed on the counter quickly removed, waiting… (excerpt from part 12 of “The Father of Caves and Clear Water”)

There are now 20 installments available and a new one available each week. You can check his website every Monday or subscribe to his FB, Twitter or RSS feed updates to keep updated.

I’ll be back tomorrow with more up-to-date poetry news; meanwhile, happy reading and enjoy your Monday!

Where are they now?

“It is this gesture towards real communication, offered in the midst of the flash-flood of information that our culture deluges us with every morning as soon as we open our eyes, that is being offered by the poets who will be presented over the next 29 days. An arbitrary flower in the midst of chaos for you, the reader.”

I hope that you’ve all enjoyed the 29 flowers that were offered from Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Italy, the United States, and Wales by way of Budapest.

International Poetry Month 2012 is over. The marauding hordes have left the library ablaze, the flood has washed away the ashes, the caravan carrying the last copy of the precious poetry collection has vanished in the desert; at least that’s what it feels like to me as I hit the delete key and erase the written versions of the poems.

Now what?

What remains is the oral tradition; I have made audio files of each poem available where the poem used to be posted when permitted by the poet. When the poems can be found elsewhere on the web I’ve left a link. Anyone who is on my mailing list has a ‘fragment’ of each work. Perhaps, like the poems of Sappho, this is all that will remain.

I would like to extend my profound thanks to the following guest poets for their contributions:

Anonymous 2oth Cent. Poet

Matthew Broussard

Gilles-Marie Chenot

Maxine Beneba Clarke

Lee Elsesser

Chris Fillebrown

Brad Frederiksen

Giacomo Gusmeroli

Michelle Lee Houghton

Christian Stokbro Karlsen

Helen Martin

Tom McClellan

Benjamin Norris

Angel Raiter

Adina Richman

Liliane Richman

Tim Seibles

Octavio Solis

Some of these poets have blogs or websites where intriguing writing, images, or biographical information may be encountered. I encourage anyone suffering from poetry withdrawal to visit these sites by clicking on any of the names that appear in color. Others are tantalizingly unavailable, if you want to see more of their work you’ll have to hope that they come back next year. Of course my work that is or has been posted throughout the rest of the year is still here.

Thanks as well to everyone who has stopped by to read and comment on the poems either here or on Facebook. It has been a real joy to present so much fine poetry again this year. Now I have to start thinking about next year and get back to writing.

A presto!

sexta-feira, 20 de maio de 2011: by Angel Raiter

I am making an exception to the normal practice of IPM in which all of the text versions of the poems are deleted on March 2nd.

The following English translation of the poem was made by the poet, Angel Raiter, just two days before his untimely death on 3 February 2012 at the age of 33.

His voice will be missed.

This is What Democracy Looks Like: An Occupy Everywhere Poem by Maxine Beneba Clarke

The written version of this poem has disappeared from this blog, read this poem at Maxine’s blog HERE.

Find more poetry, essays, and visual poetry by Maxine Beneba Clarke HERE

her work can also be found at, among others, OVERLAND and CORDITE POETRY REVIEW.

Jesus Saves: by Adina Richman

The written version of this poem has disappeared, to listen to a reading of this poem, click on the player below:

To hear more poems by Adina Richman, click HERE.

…per cancellare: by giacomo gusmeroli

La versione scritta di questa poesia è scomparsa. Una versione audio possono essere trovate qui sotto con i link ad altre informazioni sul poeta:

lettura di: Marisa Colognesi

Trovate QUI più informazione sul Giacomo Gusmeroli, incluso il suo nuovo libro Lucore d’acque

The written version of this poem has disappeared. More information about Giacomo Gusmeroli and his work can be found in Italian at the links above. A reading of this poem in English can be found below:

to listen to more poems by Giacomo Gusmeroli on this blog, click HERE.

Song for Sisyphus: by anonymous 20th century poet

To listen to a reading of this poem, click on the player below:

To hear more poems by anonymous 20th century poet, click HERE.

The scent of her gloves: by Liliane Richman

The written version of this poem has disappeared from this blog.

To listen to a reading of this poem, click on the player below:

To hear more poems by Liliane Richman, click HERE.

Category: International Poetry Month