Maggie Hall _______________________________________ Completed: Master of Creative Industries, May 3rd, 2020 Recipient: Margaret Olley Scholarship, Friends of the University Art Prize, 2019 FABLE: The art and heart of storytelling, April 3rd to 28th 2019, Group Exhibition, Writing, Painting & Photography Life in Three Parts: an autobiography, August 8th […]
Isolations. A Video Poem by Maggie Hall
Photo by Pete Denton. Collective poem edited by Antonio Martínez Arboleda. Contributions collated with thanks from the audience participating in the February 2020 Transforming with Poetry using Menti.com
THE CRADLE OF CIVILISATION
The parade is ready!
Plates like moons
modern mugs
with classic pictures
to show to neighbours
or give as gifts
Touting
Julio Caesar
eying up his glory
Tiny soldiers
in plumed helmets
Heads of ancient
Roman gods
Only 5 euros!
Lions, gladiators
also available
Sturdy forearm
bronzed in the sun
Latin phrases
For everyday use.
Room still for more
if someone has more shelves!
Rome,
a montage
of time layered
like a sumptuous
birthday cake.
Encapsulated ages
memories of ruins
grand and orderly
past glorious power
Seize the day
purchase
your culture here.
But watch the man
with his hand in the box.
Oh, holly mess
of the free market
Blue sky overhead
mute and unquestioning
A bell tower in the horizon
Jesus wept
among his Roman captors
Blue skies are free
With thanks to mentimeter.com
Photographer and designer Pete Denton proposed this interesting picture, taken in Marrakech, for our January 2020 Team-Screen Poem. The image captures a man and his film projector, in Cinema Eden, the oldest Moroccan Cinema, shortly before it was replaced by a modern picture house. The picture was part of a collection integrated in a photo essay by Pete Denton.
Members of the public participating in our January event built a collective poem using their mobile phones and the free-of-charge Menti app.
The poem, below, has been edited by Antonio Martínez Arboleda, poet and organiser of Transforming with Poetry.
At the end of this post you can see the image of the poem in its raw collective state at the end of the session. With thanks to Pete Denton and to all poets and readers involved.
Our eyes
I am just a hand-cranked camera
now covered in dust.
Overhead pipes
held together with tape
What whimsical image will come
while I wait for the whirring?
Through the lens of my old, antique eye
I see the world move on,
advancing without me
spinning over and over
sharing jerky pictures
of faces I will remember:
a tile-patterned floor,
disintegrated at the edges
Marylin Monroe
Bette Davies
John Wayne
Take your pick
Old films, new faces
Yousef Chahine,
Um Kulthum
Omar Shariff,
They all played here.
And as Dorothy was led to OZ
by a road of yellow brick,
so are we led to the unknown
by endless ways of geometry.
Flawed and warm
replaced by colder flawless
As we whither away,
Our legacy becomes despair.
I can see the stories of humanity
in your sad eyes.
I can see the world
in our eyes.
SONGS FROM EXILE
You Will remain lonely
As you are.. single..!
The long nights harm
The sleepless eyes
And the wine remains
The only mate of drunkards
And you.. Lonely as you are..
Navigating the seas ..
Crossing cities..
And you come and go
As you always are.. Alone ..!
Perhaps the countryside
Is singing that resembles
The singing of nightingales..!
And you, so crazy
With the love of the homeland,
You also love the sand..
Love orchards..!
This is why you were amazed..
And protected your hands
When the creak of chains
Were too much to stand.
And you became lonely
While « Fairuz » sings for you
“The neighbor of the valley”
Singing it as a struggling memory.
Are you Still requesting
The end of darkness ..?!
While your shadow is still running
Behind the tents ..?!
How would you be able to sing
Morning lights’ songs,
While your heart is shouting:
«O! You Sleepers!?»
You are prisoner to the lust of travels..
And to the melodies of poetry
A cover or palms!
Women or deserts!
And the beautiful voice
A sad and bare sound
Is to you like an Achilles’ tendon
Thrown by exile’s lands …!
And you will remain lonely
As you already are alone ..!
From the winds you come
To the winds you walk
Stranger as a wandering grain of sand
In the wind you grow
And in the wind you suffer
Fugitive like a rhyme in a poem
And you ask for the land of « Saguia »
Asking the clouds about your land of love
« – Is my homeland’s dawn ahead?
Answer me so as I survive.
Answer me so as I heal
My country is my wounds…
My wounds are my country… »
But no one gives you answers.
Nor the clouds confessed.
Neither the morning came.
Neither questions healed your wounds
And there is no land for you
Your home is the wind ..
It is your exile .. /
Your shelter .. /
Your life .. /
Your trip .. /
Your return .. /
There is no land for you ..
Except for this mirage
No hugs for you ..
Except for the hugs of absence
Lonely like Odysseus you are
Struggling against nostalgia to the homeland
Struggling against the waves
Struggling against separation from your people
And deceit of comrades
And the curse of the Security Council of hypocrisy
Lonely …
Strange …
Displaced …
A fugitive …
No land for you
No .. And you don’t have rights
To live without torment
And without destruction.
Yet you’ll read a newspaper one day
And hear in another a resolution.
But what happened ..?!
From the wind you come
To the wind you walk
Stranger like a fugitive grain of sand.
Is it that you will remain alone
In the wind you grow
And in the wind you suffer
Fugitive like a rhyme in a poem
And what happened ..?!
From the wind you come
To the wind you walk
Is it really that you will remain lonely ..?!
In the wind you grow
With the wind you suffer..?!
And remain alone..?!
And suffer alone..?!
And suffer …
And remain …
Lonely ..
And suffer
And remain
Lonely As you are ..?!
Copyright © 2016. Hamza Lakhal
Translated from Arabic by Malainin Lakhal
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
END GAME
i.)
Is the plot
at my window with a broken wing.
ii.)
Time unreal
to the last syllable of recorded time.
iii.)
That is the question
to quantum or not to quantum, time.
iv.)
Race against extinction
a computer brain outside time.
v.)
A quantum moment
the last day, a day of resurrection.
vi.)
To mimic or simulate
a multiverse machine, gnosticism reborn.
vii.)
Time real, Newton, Einstein
out of sync, motion observed from a position of rest.
viii.)
An indeterminate future
Consciousness through non local entanglement.
ix.)
Time real, end game
at my window with a broken wing.
From World at Large Part 2
Copyright © 2015. Robin Ouzman Hislop
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
Robin is editor of on line poetry journal Poetry Life and Times at www.artvilla.com/plt. He edits both Facebook Pages PoetryLifeTimes and Artvilla.com as extensions of the Artvilla site, which he also edits.
EAST OF EDEN
The killing machine kills more animals a day
for consumption
than ipso facto, we in a year’s killing fields.
God made in our image, the anonymous
crowd, knotted
through with confections washed up on
Our coast of humanity, which windows
onto a Zoo
life thrives on deception. A moral mind
An infallible judgement, where everyone
is dead
every tomb unearthed, then resealed
Animal, human remains heaped in fields
as tipped
dumps, where even the horizon’s clouds
Are vapid incineration, a house of cards
crumbling, falling
into one another, into the pit that blots us out.
From World at Large Part 2
Copyright © 2015. Robin Ouzman Hislop
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
Robin is editor of on line poetry journal Poetry Life and Times at www.artvilla.com/plt. He edits both Facebook Pages PoetryLifeTimes and Artvilla.com as extensions of the Artvilla site, which he also edits.
DRACULA HEARSE
Winter’s black mulch bites with old familiarity
this makeshift dream sense of reality
soggy moss fringe on dank tarmac
the traffic din roar, not that I am that
their warm hum passing this pedestrian shadow.
Man plus the machine, an AI chip fixes my brain
sequence the genome by back up copies
Span the multiverse through quantum time
encounter my variant twin, twin variables
gesticulating our apeth grins
in a labyrinth of crazy mirrors.
Entanglement, special attraction, entropy
a hologram, homeward bound
for the multiverse, in my Dracula Hearse
From World at Large Part 2
Copyright © 2015. Robin Ouzman Hislop
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
Robin is editor of on line poetry journal Poetry Life and Times at www.artvilla.com/plt. He edits both Facebook Pages PoetryLifeTimes and Artvilla.com as extensions of the Artvilla site, which he also edits.
DAY OF ADAM
O great grandmother of Eden *
i don’t know
if the sun will rise tomorrow.
The body is a tomb
soma sema
the Orphics say.
Only the flow unfolds
folding
the enclosure of a turbulent dream
Where i wind the shuddering
spectres
of ephemeral yesterdays.
Bits of drift, flotsam
jetsam
on the sea of time transformed
To now where sea horses
leave the waves
only to see, only to see.
* Contentiously the first primate on the Savannah, arguably the original Australopithecus female Eve of Eden from which the Homo Sapient species descends.
From World at Large Part 2
Copyright © 2015. Robin Ouzman Hislop
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
Robin is editor of on line poetry journal Poetry Life and Times at www.artvilla.com/plt. He edits both Facebook Pages PoetryLifeTimes and Artvilla.com as extensions of the Artvilla site, which he also edits.
THE NORTHERN POWERHOUSE
We’re still here as wind whips white powder
across aborted roads till our eyes sting.
It sticks in the throat like surrender
from the slumped union man, red tie flapping
in the coordinated attack from the dust
and the galeforce stink of chicken shit someone dumped
last night to keep the numbers down. They already cut
the cables on number 1, said the shaft was unsafe, couldn’t
leave it, oh Lordy, no, Health & Safety, gone
now but it was safe enough until the last three weeks
to send working men down to keep the lights on.
Now the brass band plays Abide with me
as the handmade banner fights the wind.
This is where we’re from. This is who we are.
We’re still here after Buyout: Closure,
Buyout: Closure, times two; last one gifted
to a rich man’s son. What’s wrong with an old Micra,
like that stolen one that just drifted
over the rubble on the roundabout?
Every time we kept the union alive.
80% ballots left no room for doubt,
just like in the war when they went on strike
for the right to have soap. They hated Hitler
and defended their country underground,
but they didn’t care much for Churchill either.
Record productions followed by shutdowns,
markets rigged by free market excuses.
This is where we’re from. This is who we are.
We’re still here, though they’re determined to wipe us out,
not just because it’s a pit, not because it’s coal,
not just because it’s where our past got its power,
but because we represent a vision, a whole
different world. No wonder we’re bitter with chasers
of ashes in Poundland, bought off with knock-off Prada bags.
It’s a bit late to say, Don’t be political
in top-down class warfare where that black stuff is taxed
to death so they can sob lies at her funeral.
As the band plays Jerusalem we will not cease
from mental fight, will never bow to urbane devils
of privilege who sell us War in the name of Peace,
and sneer hope lies dead after all we’ve gained through struggles.
This is where we’re from. This is who we are.
And we’re still here.
Copyright © 2015. Jimmy Andrex
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
Ask the government to intervene and Save Hatfield Main Colliery Headgear
THE MARXIST DADA STOOL CLUB
We lost our faith in democracy
Capitalism and markets,
So we decided to get creative
And chose some better targets.
Some things can’t be properly
Conveyed just using words,
So we decided to start the fightback
Swapping petrol bombs for turds.
Take it to the enemy,
Strike a dagger in their vampire hearts
On the 7th, 9th and 18th greens,
Being careful not to fart.
We’ve ten years of clean getaways,
They still think it’s just one man,
But they misjudged the power of artists
With our precision bombing plan.
Sneak in and squat on the target,
Though it might seem base and mean,
Bomb the symbols of elitism and privilege,
But wipe your arse: stay clean.
We’re the Marxist Dada Stool Club,
A dedicated crew.
We’re credible and we deliver,
Our policy is always to follow through.
It might look crude and simple,
But I don’t suggest you try it
Unless you’re thorough and committed
And on a high fibre diet.
We’re the Marxist Dada Stool Club,
We don’t need a pooper scooper.
Bare our backsides at austerity,
It makes more sense than Yvette Cooper.
Copyright © 2015. Jimmy Andrex
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
BRAVE GREECE
Daedalus and Icarus by Charles P. Landon
Daedalus and Icarus
On the verge of the abyss
Take a leap of faith,
Against the odds of their myth,
Against the advice of the raptors,
And jump onto paradise
To save their enslaved
Mother and wife.
They proudly left behind
Their burdens and blames
And now they glide light
Through winds of disdain,
Through purgatory’s clouds
Amongst Europe’s cheers,
As they escape from their funeral,
As they escape from their fears.
Copyright © 2015. Tony Martin-Woods (A.M.A.)
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved
REUNION OF THE BROKEN PARTS
(definition of the Arabic word al-jebr, The Times, 9 January, 2015. The quotation from Omar Khayyàm is from verse 51 of his Rubaiyàt)
Social media shifts political correctness.
One minute je suis Charlie swamps the screens,
then someone tweets that Ahmed
was gunned down defending the right
of atheists to ridicule his God.
Does he get seventy-two virgins, too?
Facebook is flooded with homage cartoons:
a snapped pencil sharpens itself, twice.
The moving finger writes, and having writ
Moves on; now, je suis juif
and holocaust memorial day
raises its grizzled head one more.
Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia
a blasphemer receives fifty
of his allocated thousand lashes.
Who can find one deity to hold it all together
while his flayed back begins to knit,
and someone posts je suis Bartholemew.
Copyright © 2015. Hannah Stone
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved.
OVERTIME
Pulling the trigger’s the easy part, because
you never know if it’s actually you
or one of the other Brimob officers
who’s firing live rounds. It might be
that I’ve never fired a fatal shot!
We work in a team, five of us to fetch
the prisoner from his isolation cell.
They don’t protest much, though –
they’ve been on death row long enough.
It takes place in the middle of the night.
If it were light enough, maybe you’d see
more than the whites of their eyes.
They can choose to cover their face
before we tie them up.
That’s the worst bit; touching
men who are about to die,
lacing their hands and feet and limbs
to the cross, using thick rope. God has decreed
whether or not they sin. I say to them:
I’m sorry, just doing my job.
It’s extra cash, you see – we’re police officers by day.
We get $100 a time for this, by way of bonus, earn it
for those few moments of brutal intimacy –
the sweaty palms and rapid breathing. We escort them
to a clearing in the jungle.
In the darkness, a torch is shone
onto a target drawn over their hearts.
You could cover it with the palm of your hand.
In my nightmares I am dazzled
by that beam, but stare into it
for as long as I can because when it drops
below my gaze, I know my brothers are taking aim.
Note: Brimob – term given to teams of executioners appointed to carry out the death penalty on drugs-related convicts on the prison island of Nusa Kambangan, Indonesia (Guardian, 7 March 2015)
Copyright © 2015. Hannah Stone
Todos los derechos reservados. All rights reserved.
EXPLORANDO LO FEMENINO Y LO DIVINO
Spanish poets Inma Pelegrín and Katy Parra join their voices with Irish poet Siobhan Mac Mahon and London poet Hannah Stone in this International Writers at Leeds event. The artists celebrate life and light alongside their exploration, through poetic dialogue, of how the feminine consciousness is embodied and expressed in relation to divinity.
Music by Irish guitarist Sabrina Piggott. Translations and final poetic collage (using exclusively verses by the 4 poets) by Antonio Martínez-Arboleda (University of Leeds).
The video contains original poems in English and Spanish as well as some translations. The event took place at Leeds Central Library on 3 February 2015.
With thanks to Leeds Trinity University, Instituto Cervantes of Leeds and Manchester, Leeds Central Library, School of Modern Languages and Cultures (University of Leeds) and Transforming with Poetry at Inkwell.
FORGOTTEN MEMORY, BY SIOBHAN MAC MAHON
Christopher Schwartz
Reinventing
Todo lo que debes saber de los bancos y el dinero y no te explican.
A Journal of Art and Issues from Mainstay Press
the literary asylum
& Metaphors
the Story within the Story
Legal things important for people
WITHIN ARE PIECES OF ME
Simple words, complex emotions
Words of Wonder, Worry and Whimsy
Chatting to Four Experts about Changing European Politics
Travel, Food, and Slices of Life
Conscious Thought: Driven by Intelligent Awareness
Enuntians Apparenti
En sintonía con la realidad
Poesía Indignada
Tony Martin-Woods
Lifesaving Poems
Yet Another Attempt to Make the World a Better Place by Writing Things
Legado De Un Poeta
This WordPress.com site is the cat’s pajamas
De la edición en papel a la edición integral
Transforming with Poetry 