“across her heart lizards were treading tenderly” – Guest Poetry Blog Series #24 – Part Two of Two – U.S. Poet J.I. Kleinberg Introduces U.S. Poet/Artist Joanna Thomas

January 11, 2024 – 6:24 pm

—15—

wolfsbane.bumblebee.
buttercup.rununculus.
bela lugosi.

Joanna Thomas, from u.v.u.lar.i.a.: wild flower haiku field book , a haiku chapbook inspired by participation in the 2023 Seabeck Haiku Getaway.

J.I. (JUDY) KLEINBERG FEATURES U.S. POET AND ARTIST JOANNA THOMAS

I was well on my way to writing about Ellen Bass, a poet whose work I so admire, when I veered delightedly off-track to introduce a person whose work you may not know, but should: Joanna Thomas. Brilliant, prolific, and deeply imaginative, Joanna (“Joey” to her friends) is artist and poet in equal measures.

From her home in Ellensburg, a university town in the middle of Washington State, Joanna creates collage, poetry, and books that reflect her eclectic interests and passion for language. Her work has been widely published and anthologized and her chapbooks include [ache] [blur] [cut]: sonnets (Open Country Press, 2023), winner of the Open Country Chapbook Prize, selected by Melissa Kwasny; blue•bird (bloo-burd) (Milk & Cake Press, 2021); plus hand-stitched, limited-edition booklets, including Leonardo’s Lady Explains Herself (Dogtown Press, 2018) and u.vu.lar.i.a: wild flower haiku field book (2023). Her oeuvre also includes one-of-a-kind artist’s books such as Modern Dressmaking Made Easy and Fodder, plus an assortment of volumes in the Untitled series.

Whether her medium is collage, words, or both, here’s what most impresses me about Joanna’s work: her expansive imagination; her ability to embrace, invent, and discard form; her flexibility and responsiveness; her blending of the visual and the verbal; her unpredictability; and her sense of humor. Her visuals are enormously rich, achieved with a limited palette: grays, blacks, browns, with a splash of color imparted by carbon blue, red pen, or a collaged snippet of ribbon or paper.
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , ,

Comments (6)

Poetry and Paper Magic with Found Text – Guest Poetry Blog #24 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, American Artist, Poet and Freelance Writer , J. I. Kleinberg – Part One of Two

January 10, 2024 – 3:33 pm

American artist, poet, and freelance writer J. I. Kleinberg.

From here

the days will fatten, sipping seconds of light
through the chilly straw of winter to brighten
and brighten among the blue-snowed crags.

Soil will sweeten toward tenderness, simple
cravings, as your mouth hungers for the taste
of peaches. Air not yet languid but eager

will reel, adolescent, all shoulders and elbows,
teenage air, tumescent. And the plum tree, bride,
slippers slopped with mud, will shimmy

her gown to lure her flighty groom, the bees,
as tulips and peonies foam with color and you
gulp new light, your mouth all round with kisses.

J. I. Kleinberg from Solstice: Light & Dark of the Salish Sea, Chuckanut Sandstone Press, 2021

RICHARD INTRODUCES GUEST POETRY BLOGGER J. I. KLEINBERG AND PART ONE OF HER TWO PART SERIES

Such a pleasure to introduce J.I. (Judy) Kleinberg before she introduces herself (below) and her richly textured (pun intended) journey to poetry. Part Two of her guest poetry blog series will feature American poet and artist Joanna Thomas. I met Judy first at a poetry retreat led by the celebrated Canadian poet and teacher Patrick Lane. She was there with her partner, the poet Luther Allen, whose first guest poetry blog post was posted a few weeks ago. A wonderful literary couple.

I can’t remember if I knew of Judy before that retreat. But, no matter, her passion for poetry and her poetic footprint is large! Since 2010 she posts two poetry blogs pretty well every day. Truly!  The Poetry Department, focuses on the Cascadia bioregion with some poetry news or quote. To connect to the blog please click here. I read it everyday. And invariably every week I find something of interest that was previously unknown to me. An invaluable resource for poets or fans of poetry. Chocolate is a verb is her  personal blog featuring her life and poems and can be found here. A hugely rich resource.

Through The Poetry Department I became aware of the fabulous Poetry Postcard Festival sponsored by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Paul Nelson since 2007.  Judy has participated in this festival since 2011 and became a board member of the Festival last year. And in 2017  she was the co-editor of the Poetry Postcard Anthology – 56 Days of August. And to read a wonderful description of how she manages her participation in the festival click here to read her Cascadia Poetics Lab post from last July. Her record keeping of her cards and the ones she recieves is somewhat overwhelming and inspirational!
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments (0)

Catch and Release – Poems by Palestinian Poet Mosab Abu Toha Who Has Now Shared his Harrowing Story of Being Detained at a Border Crossing By Israeli Soldiers in Late November, 2023

January 2, 2024 – 10:56 pm

Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha

Doves perch on the roof of our hen coop, guzzle
water from rain puddles. In the neighborhood,
ducks and hens pick what the wind has carried and
laid on the earth: a seed, or a dried leaf, or a piece
from a newspaper soaked in a child’s urine.
Universities closed for a long time. Warplanes have
damaged all roads, especially leading to hospitals.
Mother still reads Quran every day and fasts on
Mondays and Thursdays. Father plants eggplant
and tomato seeds while mother watches through
the door, muttering prayers hoping the seeds would
sprout soon, Mother and Father usually share with
neighbours what grows in the little garden.

And the neighbours pray, too.

Mosab Abu Toha, October 30th, 2023, published through NPR and Instagram, January 2nd, 2024

What horrific suffering was unleased by Hamas in the utterly brutal attacks of October 7th, 2023. More detailed stories of some of the depraved atrocities committed during that day continue to appear. And now the horrific destruction of Gaza and death of what Palestinian authorities say is more than 20,000 Palestinians.

Now, a story of Mosab Abu Toha, a 31 year old poet who lived in Gaza for much of his life and through the current bombings, including the destruction of his house now imortalized in his widely circulated poem (see below) What Is Home? And then, while trying to get his family to Egypt including his three year old son who is an American citizen, he was arbitraily detained and by his gripping account, mistreated by Israeli soldiers.

Seamus Heaney famously said: In one sense, the efficacy of poetry is nil – no lyric has ever stopped a tank” But for  Mosab, stopped by Israeli soldiers nearby a tank and then taken from his family at gunpoint at a border crossing bewtween Gaza and Egypt on November 19th, 2023 his lyrics may have stopped him from enduring a long imprisonment by the Israeli Army. After an international effort to have him found and released he was sent back to Gaza on the afternoon of Nov. 21st after a nightmarish fifty hours when he was says he blindfolded, beaten, tripped, and then clothed again before being detained further. And later Mosab and his family made it safely through a checkpoint to Egypt where they live, for now, in Cairo.

Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Comments (2)

At the End of a Tumultuous Year a Celebration of Resilience and Hanging In – Five Poems by Hilbert, Stafford, Orr, Hayden and Holm

December 31, 2023 – 4:46 pm

An Ancient Western Red Cedar – Still Standing

Red Paint

If you look at the cedar
ʔəbil’ čəxʷ gʷəšuuc tiʔəʔ x̌pay’

you’ll see how it bends
č(ə)xʷa šudxʷ ʔəsčal kʷi suqəčil

and doesn’t break
gʷəl xʷiʔ gʷəsuxʷəƛ̓

and you have to learn how to be like the cedar,
gʷəl yaw’ čəxʷ ləhaʔdxʷ ʔəsčal kʷ(i) adsəshuy
ʔəsʔistəʔ ʔə tiʔəʔ x̌pay

how to be flexible and pliable
ʔəsčal kʷi səsq’əčil gʷəl ʔə(s)səpil

and you yourself will not break.
gʷəl xʷiʔ kʷi gʷ(ə)adsux̌̌ʷəƛ̓.

Violet taqʷšəblu Hilbert, translated by Zalmai ʔəswəli Zahir, from Red Paint: The Ancestral Autobiography of a Coast Salish Punk, by Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe, Counterpoint 2022.

from Any Time

“Daddy, tell me your best secret.” (I have woven
a parachute out of everything broken; my scars
are my shield; and I jump, daylight or dark,
into any country, where as I descend I turn
native and stumble into terribly human speech
and wince recognition.)

William Stafford from The Way It Is – New and Selected Poems, Graywolf Press, 1998

Aftermath Inventory

Shattered? Of course,
That matters.
            But
What comes next
Is all
I can hope to master.

Knowing, deep in my
Bones,
Not all hurt harms.

My wounds?
         If 
Somehow, I
Grow through them,
Aren’t they also a boon?

My scars?
         Someday,
They might shine
Brighter than stars.

Gregory Orr (1947-) from The Last Love Poem I Will Ever Write, Norton & Co, 2019

These three simple yet powerful poems. And two others that follow, below. They carry my wish and hope for 2024. That any challenges facing me and you, my readers, can be met by Cedar-like pliability and bending. That we will not break. But if we do, my hope and prayer is that, like the speaker in William Stafford’s poem, we can say: I have woven/ a parachute out of everything broken; my scars/ are my shield…” Or like the speaker in Gregory Orr’s poem we can say: My scars?/Someday,/They might shine/Brighter than stars.

I was so taken by the first epigraph poem of this post above written by Violet taqʷšəblu Hilbert (1918-2008). Violet was the great grandmother of contemporary Coast Salish poet and memoirist, Sasha taqʷšəblu LaPointe. Violet was an indigenous American tribal elder of the Upper Skagit tribe of the greater Coast Salish community in Washington State and her Lushootseed name was taqʷšəblu, the name also given to her great granddaughter, Sasha.

Red Paint, the poem, stands as the epigraph for Sasha’s stunning memoir Red Paint published in 2022 and Winner of the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award and Winner of the 2023 Washington State Book Award for Creative Nonfiction/Memoir. And it is clear from the sexual violence in Sasha’s life and other challenges as an indigenous woman in the U.S. she took her great grandmother’s poem to heart. She has not broken.
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments (2)

Checking for an Archangel or the Buddha. Guest Poetry Blog #23 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, American poet Luther Allen – Part One of Two

December 31, 2023 – 11:54 am

American poet Luther Allen. Photo Credit: Dean Davis

rising

first thing every morning
i look into the yard
and check for elk.

 

there has never been an elk here.
the nearest one miles away
with no reason to wander.

 

i might as well be checking
for an archangel.
              or the buddha.

 

but the elk might be the buddha.
or something more important.

Luther Allen, December 2023

RICHARD INTRODUCES GUEST POETRY BLOGGER LUTHER ALLEN

I remember the meeting room at the Honeymoon Bay Lodge and Retreat center so well. It’s where I attended countless four-day retreats with the master Canadian poet and teacher Patrick Lane. And it’s where I remember seeing the American poet Luther Allen, from Sumas Mountain, Washington,  across the circle for the first time. He was sitting there with his partner Judy Kleinberg, poet and poetry blogger.

I remember from that time I was struck by how soft-spoken and reflective Luther was which somehow stood out for me considering his height and rugged build. And it seems so appropriate that for his guest blog I remember him so clearly from that time at a Patrick retreat since his blog post, below, ends with such a reflective and thoughtful tribute to his mentor and mine, Patrick. (For a full biography of Luther’s writing history please see below at the end of his post.)

To say that Luther and Judy are a force in Washington State poetry is a huge understatement.  Their reading series, SpeakEasy, held in Bellingham, south of the Canadian border is a knock-out. One of its trademarks (something they do occasionally) is to invite a group of guest poets to collaborate in a round robin of poems that are thematically linked. Each poet that directly follows another links their poems in some way to the two previous poems written by that other poet. This all happens and is collated into a book form before the reading occurs.

I was lucky enough to participate in one of these round robins six years ago, back in early December 2017. I was joined by other Canadian poets, Barbara Pelman, Susan Alexander, Terry Ann Carter and Linda K. Thompson. Most recently SpeakEasy hosted a another round robin of spiritual poems. Those poems will be coming out in a new collection published by Other Mind Press and will be released at the SpeakEasy series on February 25th, 2024 in Bellingham.

Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Comments (6)

Gaza, Ukraine, Darfur -Too Many Wars – Too Many Young Men Sacrificed by Old Men – Three Poets – Owen, Crozier and Amichai

November 29, 2023 – 8:49 pm

The Sacrifice of Issac by Caravaggio. Uffizi Gallery, Florence

The Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isac the first born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When Lo! An angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not they hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in the thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son, –
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918) from Poets.org

I wrote this blog below six years ago. But tonight while reading a Facebook post by Keith Digby, a former teacher at Brentwood College School, I was reminded by Keith of Wilfred Owen’s searing anti-war, anti-old-men-sending-young- men-to-war poem: Parable of an Old Man and the Young. And my rage at the war’s all around us taking lives of all ages came back to the surface. Ukraine, Gaza, Darfur, DR Congo and on and on.

Here, now three poems by Wilfred Owen, Lorna Crozier and Yehuda Amachai. How Owen’s and Crozier’s poems use the story of the sacrifce of Issac to address  the horror of young men put to sacrifice by other, often older, men. And lastly Amachai’s celebrated poem: The Place Where We Are Right. A poem that for me has become a hymn for what is happening now in Gaza. If only, if only doubts and loves could
Dig up the world/Like a mole, a plow/so…… a whisper will be heard in the place/Where the ruined/House once stood.

All those countless ruined houses in north Gaza, now the literal hard ground in Amachai’s poem, the place where we are right. And all the wrong that comes from this!

Blog from November 11th, 2017

Some poetic medicine on a day when we remember the end of World War I and also all wars, their devastations. And why today more than ever we must remember – war is not the easy answer!

Owen’s poem! This poem sears me every time I read it. Its horrific last two lines. And it is gender specific. The men who call us to war. Often, old men. How Wilfred Owen takes the myth of Abram and Isaac and makes it a metaphor of the old men who sacrifice the young men in war. No sticks carrying jubilance, just grenades, carrying death.

Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in Poetry | Tagged , ,

Comments (0)

Things That Give You Pleasure – Guest Poetry Blog Series # 22 – Part Two of Two – Canadian Poet Yvonne Blomer Features the 10th Century Japanese Female Author of The Pillow Book, Sei Shōnagon

November 29, 2023 – 5:20 pm

The Pillow Book by 10th Century Japanese Poet Sei Shōnagon

Yesterday it was a cold, crisp and sunny day on the West coast of Canada. As the day warmed, the garden steamed in sunlight, thick frost warming to dew and mist. No rain for weeks. Birds gather seeds all day in a frenzy and a few have flown into the bright kitchen window. We took an evening walk, and the moon shone bright amongst the Gary Oaks. My breath was nearly showing, but not quite yet. Still, in our neighborhood park rhododendrons are blooming, a few Red hot pokers from the summer linger and glow in the dark night.

Yvonne Blomer, previously unpublished

[7] The first day of the year and the third day of the third month should have glorious weather. The fifth day of the fifth month is the best when the weather is overcast all day. The seventh day of the seventh month should also be cloudy, but the evening sky should be clear, with a brilliant moon and the stars clear and bright.

It’s charming when a light rain begins to fall around daybreak on the ninth day of the ninth month, and there should be plenty of dew on the chrysanthemums, so that the cotton wadding that covers them is thoroughly wet and it brings out the flower’s scent that imbues it. The rain ceases in the early morning and it should remain overcast and continue to threaten rain at any moment.

Sei Shōnagon, translated by Meredith McKinney from The Pillow Book, Penguin Classics, 2007

YVONNE BLOMER FEATURES THE 10TH CENTURY JAPANESE WRITER SEI SHŌNAGON

Above, the first prose paragraph is my way of capturing the season and shifting seasons this November, inspired by the 10th century Japanese writer Sei Shōnagon. The second is from The Pillow Book Shōnagon’s collection of short writings or zuihitsu from court life.

Not a lot is known about Sei Shōnagon. In fact, it is unlikely that is even her name, but we can talk about women’s rights and women’s literary history another time. Her dates are around 966-1017, but as Meredith McKinney writes in her introduction to The Pillow Book: Verifiable facts about Sei Shōnagon are sparse, and information about her life depends overwhelmingly on her own record in The Pillow Book.
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , ,

Comments (0)

Fate As In Destiny. What Is Yours? Guest Poetry Blog #22 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Canadian Writer Yvonne Blomer- Part One of Two

November 20, 2023 – 7:09 pm

Canadian writer Yvonne Blomer. Photo Credit: Nancy Yakimoski

Sonnet for a newborn now seven

Underground we were, below the citadel,
my son, newborn, asleep on my chest.
On the streets above, Italian flowed like mother’s milk
in heat. We were in a cathedral or under it. We felt
the etched walls for markings—birds or other animals.
The monks, or a priest above, began to sing. Was it Ave Maria
that fell through stone, through the ages and knowledge of stone?
Sound, thrum in the chest, entered us. Out of the corner of my eye
or my imagination, I saw a boy leaning in, he was my son, now.

His hands are small, perfect, though one pinky finger
a little crooked. Chords he plays while standing there, he
flicks his fingers, idle or bored
flicks and when he’s lost interest, he flicks again,
taps nail to nail, he picks a low baritone song, Gratia Plena.

From The Last Show on Earth, Caitlin Press, 2022

RICHARD INTRODUCES GUEST POETRY BLOGGER YVONNE BLOMER

This is not my first introduction of the multi-genre writer and anthologist, Yvonne Blomer. The first time was more than eight years ago at the 3rd Cascadia Poetry Festival held in Nanaimo in May 2015. This is what I said then:

Born in Zimbabwe, educated in Canada and in the UK, Poet (3 full-length collections, two chapbooks), editor, (Poems from Planet Earth) MC and artistic director extraordinaire for the Planet Earth Poetry Reading Series in Victoria and for this wide range of poetic passions, recently appointed Victoria’s poet laureate. Yes, this is all the same person! Canadian poet Yvonne Blomer. Her poems are anchored in her celebration of this one earth, but they still know how to fly! In her latest collection As If A Raven, published last year she writes: “To live in these two worlds:/ whether held to earth and all it demands or to flight”. She does both so well! 

Well, that was then. In 2017 she released her memoir: Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur and edited the anthology: Refugium: Poems for the Pacific. In 2020 she edited Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds and in 2022 her full-length poetry collection, The Last Show on Earth was published by Caitlin Press. And this past Friday Yvonne launched the anthology, Hologram – an Homage to P.K. Page which she co-edited with DC Reed. And so appropriately she launched it  back at her old haunt where she was artistic director for six years, Planet Earth Poetry in Victoria,
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Comments (1)

Freedom Within Constraints – Guest Poetry Blog Series # 21 – Part Two of Two – Canadian Poet Kate Marshall Flaherty Features the Canadian Poet Ronna Bloom

November 15, 2023 – 1:51 pm

The book cover of Ronna Bloom’s 2023 poetry collection, A Possible Trust.


Grief Without Fantasy

What I lost
was not going to happen.

I had
what happened.

There was no more.

Ronna Bloom from A Possible Trust, Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2023

KATE MARSHALL FLAHERTY FEATURES RONNA BLOOM

I first met Ronna Bloom at a League of Canadian Poets Conference many years ago. I remember she gave an astounding talk about her role as Poet in Residence at Mount Sinai Hospital and the healing properties of poetry. She writes, or prescribes, poems of consolation on Rx pads for patients and their families. Her authentic, easy manner sets folks at ease, and her poetry is real—concise, courageous, and witnesses the ephemeral and the everyday. When she reads, she introduces her poems with touching and often humourous stories of the encounters that were the kernels of her poems. She brings tenderness and vulnerability to her poems about suffering and weaves her experience as a psychotherapist and meditator into her unflinching explorations of the human condition and unexpected surprises and lessons in life.

I  chosen the short epigraph poem above and the short poem below because Ronna illustrates freedom within constraints, and moves me with her spare, dense poems. I want to re-read them and let them settle. She proves that less can be more in Grief Without Fantasy. It is both personal and universal, and Bloom condenses an entire disappointment into five lines. The two couplets wrestle with an expectation and an experience, and the final line, There was no more, forces reflection, reorientation, and ultimately wisdom and perhaps detachment. This poem is like a koan, almost, that I want to turn over and over to see kaleidoscope facets in my own life, and in the overall wisdom of it,

PERMISO

There’s a tree in my heart
and I don’t know its name.

It stands straight behind my breasts
like a closed tulip.

Permiso, it says.
Allow me.

Ronna Bloom, ibid
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Comments (0)

I Am Counter Current – Guest Poetry Blog # 21 – Introducing the Latest Contributor, Canadian Poet Kate Marshall Flaherty– Part One of Two

November 14, 2023 – 8:48 pm

Canadian poet Kate Marshall Flaherty. Photo Credit: John Flaherty

salmon—

i am shimmer-skinned,
spawning              flecks of red, 
     shiny-finned, 
i flick
       my gills wide for breath 
and wriggle 
     side to side in fresh water

i must swim up against
smoothed rocks, the current, 
splashes and curls 
of small rapids         that gush 
      fresh water through me 

i am counter-current;             push
up against downspouts 
   and falls, 
i fall
back, fin on tail, tumble in trying
and trying to jump 
out of my skin-river,
up the waterfall 
             pounding me down

dorsal-finned and spine-supple,
i can do this—
can thrash            against 
the backwards tide 

flipped 
            and frantic, 

i right 
myself, sparkle 
in droplets and spray—
crescent-curve, 
                  wrestle 
                           against water weight

to spawn, 
         lay and leave 
                  my golden roe—
Kate Marshall Flaherty from Titch, Piquant Press, 2023.

RICHARD INTRODUCES GUEST POETRY BLOGGER KATE MARSHALL FLAHERTY

So pleased to have Kate Marshall Flaherty join the Recovering Words Guest Poetry Blog Series with this Part One of her two part series. Part  Two will feature the Canadian poet Ronna Bloom.

I remember so clearly the first time I connected with Kate Marshall Flaherty. It was at a poetry reading hosted by Quattro Books of Toronto where I was launching my debut poetry collection: Hyaena Season. We might have been introduced before the reading. That I don’t remember. But I do recollect when I heard her read her poem Every Boy Needs a Stone. I was electrified by its images, it repetitions and the way she created such mystery around the image of a stone. A poet’s true gift. Here’s an excerpt from the last part of part one of the poem and the stanza that is part two:

from Every Boy Needs a Stone

Every boy should have a stone
to suck on
when words have gone dry
or rage has cracked his voice box— so he can speak again

that sorry sound.

Every boy could
have a stone just to batten flaps in a storm,
shim a structure,
dam a crack,
flint a light
or tap at a window
where love looks down.

ii
Every boy needs
to swallow
at least one stone,
to feel it lodged in his throat, that breathless choke, fish-mouth gape and gasp— every boy
needs to be silenced just once. To be a stone.

Kate Marshall Flaherty from Stone Soup, Quattro Books, 2014

How wonderfully Kate uses the image of the stone to highlight so much of a what a boy can be. And there is an edge to the poem as well. Not just sweetness and light. Part two for me bring something almost ominous into the poem. An initiation, a rite of passage, of sorts. The gravity of this phrase: everyboy/ needs to be silenced just once. To be a stone. The shocking power and wisdom in this lodges deep in me, once a boy. Did I swallow that stone? If so, how did I or my life remove it? Ouch!
Read More »

By Richard Osler | Posted in General | Tagged , , , , , , ,

Comments (0)