Tag: IPM-2MXII

The very last word in poetry news!

This is the last IPM poetry update for the moment but full of good news and new things to read:

Benjamin Norris, poet, artist, and university lecturer, after a spate of publications in February has continued to write, his most recent work can be found on his website A View from a Carpark:

My sleight of hand grows tepid, shaken
kept unbound, it withers down
the coins invariably end their trail
somewhere behind the ears of a child…(excerpt from Petty Magicks)

—

American poet Tim Seibles’ book Fast Animal became available in February and I found this review at Ringside Reviews the most engaging of the five that I read. The reviewer, Micah Ling, cited a poem entitled Dawn which I found on-line at eleveneleven journal. Here’s a taste:

So, I thought about death and the dying
it requires and the idea of lying
face-down somewhere: I thought

it’s just too much—the not
knowing, the anytime anyplace
of it: my heart running

out of gas—me: tagged
by a bus—my well-meaning self
clipped in the urban crossfire.

Or the giving up on everything,
the world a banquet of good reasons
for clocking out and chomping the black
sandwich. But I thought but…(excerpt from the poem Dawn in the collection Fast Animal)

Finally, American poet and playwright Octavio Solis premiered his latest theatrical work Cloudlands (a musical for which he wrote the script and lyrics in collaboration with Adam Gwon) at the South Coast Repertory Theater in Costa Mesa, California. It received this glowing review in the L.A. Times. We hope that he’ll have time to keep writing poetry now that it’s in production.

All the best to everyone and thanks for reading!

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!

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