Tag: Brad Frederiksen

Red String of Fate: by Brad Frederiksen

When heat huddles by white-hot horizons
and puddles black bitumen blue,
you don’t stop for water poured into a cup
to become cup before it is in you.

When white-hot horizons burn into the wind-
screen and ghost the glass over with ghost-skies,
you’re up to your nose in the end of a road
you’ve been driving so long you’ve gone cross-eyed.

When a breeze cold as glass can be cold in the heat,
and puddles of blue on black bitumen meet,
and plenty of dry leaves and dust are about,
and your eyes are on straight, and the ghosties are out,

the invisible Red String of Fate will rise up
like water still spinning is not yet the cup.

This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

to find more work by Brad Frederiksen on this blog, click HERE.

To read more work and see more photographs by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

IPM 2015: Where do we go from here?

Before the Simplon pass at the Italian-Swiss border, is a Roman bridge over the Diveria River. It's called the "new" bridge, because it was built in 1300 c.e. to replace the previous bridge built in the reign of Emperor Augustus that was destroyed by a flood.
Before the Simplon pass at the Italian-Swiss border, is a Roman bridge over the Diveria River. It’s called the “new” bridge, because it was built in 1300 c.e. to replace the previous bridge built in the reign of Emperor Augustus that was destroyed by a flood.

 

“Poetry gives us the opportunity to offer our observations to present and future readers, be they from the perspective of one standing on the bridge watching events or of one standing below and taking on the current. I’m looking forward to a month of editing and I know that my IPM readers are standing on the bridge waiting for the flow of poems to begin…”

So began International Poetry Month 2015 and the flow of poems was fascinating for me to edit and I hope that both Readers and Poets enjoyed getting their feet wet. I offer my most sincere thanks to the participating poets and to the more than 1000 readers who came from the United States, England, Australia, Brazil, Italy, Pakistan, Canada, Denmark, France, India, Luxembourg, Singapore, the UAE, New Zealand, Trinidad & Tobago, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Switzerland, Israel, Ghana, the Philippines, Belgium, Peru, Romania, Serbia and Portugal to read their work.

Today is the fourth of March and Spring seems only a few days away here in Northern Italy while I know those in other places are still slogging through the snow. Regardless of the temperature, here the snows have begun to melt and these poems will begin to erode away, disappearing a few at a time and leaving only the voices behind. Some you will still be able to find on the web, or in a book. Some will be gone for good. Where do we go from here? Why across the bridge and in search of new images, new experiences and new poetry. Following is an alphabetical list of the participating poets; each name is also a link to the poet’s work posted at IPM where you will find additional links to individual blogs or published works:

Night Like an Empire Falls: by Brad Frederiksen

plushes-bend-of-murray-river-at-civil-twilight (1)
Plushes Bend of Murray River at civil twilight

 .

Night like an empire falls

..to the civil reflection

of one twilight pelican

..dreamily shadow ghost rafting;

 

The spirit that once held me up,

..my love, remote tears of whisky

seen through a series of still frames

..on pixels of wine glass penumbras.

 

The wind slips in whispers

..that ripple the river,

and the last morning after

..the night before raindrops

cool, calm and collectedly

..bead leaves of lilies,

belying what we know already;

 

The strains in relief

..around all of those lily leaves

bear the same burden

..all rain beads are found under.

.

Water lilies at Plushes Bend of Murray River
Water lilies at Plushes Bend of Murray River

.

.
This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

to find more work by Brad Frederiksen on this blog, click HERE.

To read more work and see more photographs by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

Everybody Cut Loose: by Brad Frederiksen

“He looks back for a moment. Looks down at his hand, surprised to see flowers as he was expecting scissors dripping blood.” (Paul Squires: Samba Libretto (excerpt #1))

Mintie wrap rippers and ‘tin-foil loopers’
Tea ceremonies and white goosefoot skewers
Skirmishing bloggers all tied up in tribes
Tripping all over their juvenile jibes

Astronomer women, astronomer men,
Tweet of imbalance within their profession
My timeline streams astronomical scribes
Tripping all over their juvenile jibes

Meanwhile Harvey and Gina and Clive
Are copping ad-hominem crap and cream pies
In the face; Morrison, Abbott and Pyne
Tripping all over their juvenile jibes

Since you’re asking
Since the crow flies
Since I don’t proscribe
I simply remember my left from my right
And I don’t oversubscribe.

“Please, Louise, pull me offa my knees” (Kenny Loggins: Footloose)

This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

to find more work by Brad Frederiksen on this blog, click HERE.

To read more work by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

Day of the Turtle: by Brad Frederiksen

This poem in its written form has disappeared. If you want to know why, click HERE.

This written version of this poem can be rediscovered HERE.

To hear the poet’s reading of this poem, click on the player below:

This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

to find more work by Brad Frederiksen on this blog, click HERE.

To read more work by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

So What: by Brad Frederiksen

This poem in its written form has disappeared. If you want to know why, click HERE.

This written version of this poem can be rediscovered HERE.

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

to hear more work by Brad Frederiksen on this blog, click HERE.

To read more work by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

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

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!

Prequel: by Brad Frederiksen

The written version of this poem has disappeared.

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

This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.

To read more work by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE.

To find more by Brad Frederiksen on this bolg click HERE.

Sonnet for a hungry native tongue. : by Brad Frederiksen

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

To read more work by Brad Frederiksen, click HERE

To find more by Brad Frederiksen on this bolg click HERE.

This work by Brad Frederiksen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License.