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Meet the Poets of Poetic Bond V1.

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THE POETIC BOND VI ISBN-13: 978-1539334682
The Only ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL POETRY ANTHOLOGY
actively sought specifically from New Media, Social and Professional Networking
 
Available at The Poetic Bond
&
Amazon.com The Poetic Bond VI
 
William DiBenedetto – time comes uninvited / 7-May-15
William DiBenedetto is a freelance writer and editor living in and loving Seattle since 1994. Born many years ago in New York City, he grew up in Northern Virginia and worked as a journalist in Washington D.C. He graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in English.
 
Will Walsh – Onion Creek, Utah / As I live and breathe / Evolution of Human Movement I describe nature in a mystical context, illuminating the life and moods of wild places. I also write to encourage people toward their potential, and to thrive without greed, mayhem, hate, or anger. Our actions promoting tolerance, mutual respect, and cooperation will contribute to a more just and peaceful world. http://quietjourneys.blogspot.com/
 
Wendy Joseph – This is America / In my house there are books / when the water rises
Wendy Joseph sailed on cargo ships worldwide for ten years. She holds two Master’s in English, and this is her second appearance in the Poetic Bond. She is also a playwright, actor, and novelist. She lives in the wilds of Washington State with very remarkable people and two cats. www.wendyjosephwrites.com www.facebook.com/TheWitchsHand
 
Swaizi Vaughan – E-Turn Next Left Dead In / Prepubescent Khonsu
Swaizi Vaughan was born in Gainesville, Texas and has always remained true to her emotions in their rawest form.
She is inspired by all things but often illustrates love. Her poignant thoughts and feeling adorn the pages of her
first book to be released in 2017 entitled, Love’s Lobotomy.
 
Rowland Hughes – Lemon Soap / A Valley Funeral
Rowland is a Welsh writer and poet. To care for his brother, he was taken out of school at 14 years old.
Ill health forced him to retire from work as a Local Authority Assistant Surveyor in 1997.
He writes in bustling cafés or in the tranquil confines his shed. www.rowlandhughes.com
 
Robin Ouzman Hislop – Tenochtitlan / In Bed
On line Editor at Poetry Life and Times, Artvilla.com & Motherbird.com. His latest publications are a collection of poems All the Babble of the Souk & Key of Mist a translation from Spanish of the poetess Guadalupe Grande both are published by Aquillrelle.com for further information with reviews and comments see Author Robin .
 
Pushpita Awashti – In my heart of hearts / Words in the Dark
Poetess, fiction writer, translator and literature ambassador, Professor Pushpita Awasthi has dedicated her life for the expansion and proliferation of humanity oriented literature. She taught 20 years university at India. Five years she worked at Indian Embassy now settling in the Netherlands as director of Hindi Universe Foundation. www.pushpitaawasthi.com, https://nrcwebwinkel.nl/boeken/het-beeld-in-de-rots-the-statue-in-the-rock
 
Neetu Malik – dancers / the pianist / wanderer
Neetu weaves life experiences and observations into her poetry and short stories. Fascinated by human nature and its complexity, she strives to convey its intricacies, struggles, and emotions through vivid and visual poetry, often drawing pictures with words to create images that seize and crystallize the transient moments of life. facebook.com/neetuwrites
 
Nana Tokatli – Wheat Fields
Nana Tokatli , painter and poet, is Greek. Graduate of the Fine Arts School of Athens. Has 17 solo shows. Since 2000 writes poetry in greek and in english, short stories in greek. Publications in english: 2003 “to the counter-point” received 5 stars at AbeBooks, UK. 2015 “the Rondo symphony”.
 
Michael Bunny – Cards
My name is Michael, I’m an 18 year old poet / writer / lyricist from Israel. I started writing when I was around the age of 7, and have always been passionate about expressing myself through words.
 
Miklos Mezosi – An Iamblified Inquiry
A published author and scholar, Miklos Mezosi writes on literature and opera. Miklos, who was a Mellon fellow at Edinburgh University,authorized a book on Russian opera. He has published two poetry collections. He writes in Hungarian, English, Latin and Greek.His English poetry is published in anthologies in the UK. http://www.linkedin.com/in/miklosmezosi http://ibs-b.academia.edu/MiklosMezosi
 
Marli Merker Moreira – Drifters
Forever, I am a teacher of literature. Writing emerges from loving words and music. As a Brazilian with German roots and a long university experience in the US, I value the multicultural mosaic of people, beliefs, and cultures. I dream of peace and freedom for us all.
 
Madalena Fine – Lost Letter From Love
Madalena Fine is an anglo-portuguese creative writing student from Sussex. Her writing explores relationships and identity. She was spurred to writing again in 2015, after a public reading of Warsan Shire’s “What they did yesterday afternoon”. Madalena’s bedside reading includes Warsan, Grace Nichols, John Agard, Caroline Bird, Wendy Cope and others…
 
Linda Mills – Abide / Winter Sleep
Nearly blind from birth, language fills my life. I flex my words to communicate this world as I experience it.
For years I’ve had poetry published in magazines around the world and more recently online. Now retired, I am able to write and to travel with my very supportive husband.
 
Lawrence W. Lee – Cynic / Still Life
I have made a good living as a professional artist for almost fifty years. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain.
I have known love and loss in near equal measure. I am interested in almost everything, but have special fondness for language and subatomic physics. I continue to paint. http://lawrenceleeart.com
 
Kwai Chee Low – Cold Winter, Warm Heart
Kwai Chee Low from Malaysia has a love for the English Language from a young age. He started writing poems since 2010 and submitted them to Poemhunter.com and Allpoetry.com. He finds it very gratifying and fulfilling expressing his thoughts and feelings into poems and haiku. He is also a member on LinkedIn.
 
Judith Neale – One Cleft Moon
Jude Neale is a poet, spoken word performer, opera singer and mentor. Her last book, A Quiet Coming of Light, was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award, best poetry collection by a Canadian female.
 
Joseph J. Simmons – 1914
Joseph Simmons entered college a physics major, graduated an English major, began sharing evening s with other poets. He spent years in federal contracts, now writes, publishes, tries to sharpen and refine his voice and vision.
 
Jill Angel Langlois – If the Wind Blows / I remember silence
Jill Angel Langlois grew up in Park Forest, IL. Her poems and short stories appear in literary magazines, nationally. Collections: Scattered Petals explores the healing power of nature. Whiskey Nights inspired by whiskey and music. “Tell Me The Story,” a memoir, portrays growing up adopted, reuniting with her birth mother.
 
Ian Colville – A Cliché for our Time / Ploughing
Ian Colville was born in Scotland, but is presently exiled in England where he is open-mic regular at Ouse Muse in Bedford. Ian has over 50 poems published in curated magazines and anthologies, including The Poetic Bond. When he’s not writing, he’s reading, and sometimes he goes cycling… for hours. http://iainthepoet.blogspot.co.uk/
 
Hongvan Nguyen – Becoming
Hongvan Nguyen is an English and philosophy graduate from George Mason University. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Under the Stone, and The Chickadees. Her third book, Crossing Places, is in the publication process and will be out on the market by the end of 2016.
 
Greg Mooney – Insecurities
I am an active duty United States Marine, I am 3 classes away from my bachelors in Marketing, currently writing a book that will be dedicated to a deceased friend.
 
GK Grieve – The Final Moment Before The Death of Swans / Addict
Travelled here and there, picked up a few observations, my book “The Final Moment Before The Death of Swans” is to be published in November. Website under construction. Still married. All in all, tickety-boo.
 
George C Robertson – Engraved / A Burning Desire
Worked for many years in telecommunications in the UK and abroad. His Kindle novel Terror at the Towers relives his Human Shield time in 1990s Kuwait. George has been praised for his humorous verses and short stories, published in English and Scots. Song lyrics commended; looking for a music partner/promoter. geo.dor@tiscali.co.uk
 
George Carter – When I got there
George showed an interest in poetry and music from an early age, and is currently working towards university
intent on pursuing a career in music and sound.
 
Diane Collette – Fields of Asphodel
Hails from Bucharest, grew up in Jupiter & traveled the globe in US uniform and is now Corporate Analyst in NYC area.
My love of writing came to fruition over many years while in military life, seemed like pleasant way to deal with tough times, emotions and life in all its wonder.
 
Diane Burrows – Speechless / Take a Look at the Hills
At 9 years old, my teacher predicted: you’ll be a poet. Since then, encouraged by adverts for poetry, I have written in many published anthologies and I was awarded prizes at a poetry- readings. Thanks to the encouragement of Poetic Bond, here I am back again, enjoying sharing my contributions.
 
Cigeng Zhang – Hey, Starling / Special Reunion / Wa Lan (瓦蓝）/ One-line Tide
Cigeng Zhang is a freelance English translator from China. She started writing English poems in 2012. Her poems ‘Drunk Smile’, ‘What Was Left’, ‘The Moon, The Poet’, ‘At 8 O’clock’ and ‘Still for You’ were included in the Poetic Bond III, IV and V respectively since 2013.
 
Christine Anderes – The Ossurary of James / The Unquiet Heart
Christine Anderes …a conservationist and passionate animal advocate is currently working on three collections of poetry and a series of critical essays attesting to the beauty and resilience of nature using lyricism and humor to bring more mindfulness to the critical state of the planet and its inhabitants.
 
Carey Link – Blur Distinctions
Carey Link is from Huntsville, Alabama. She has been writing poetry for over twenty years. Link’s two collections of poetry are What it Means to Climb a Tree (Finishing Line Press) and Awakening to Holes in The Arc of Sun (Mule on a Ferris Wheel).
 
Bonnie Roberts –Cautionary Steps of Love
Publisher at Mule on a Ferris Wheel; poet; activist; ocean-swimmer; silent retreatant; dog “herder”; graduate poetry-writing professor; Fulbright Scholar; NEH Fellow; winner, an Alabama Book of the Year Award.
 
Bonnie J. Flach – At the Crossroads
Bonnie J. Flach – Poet, writer & photographer, for the non-profit “Ocean Artists Society” & member of the Shelter Island Art Assoc. in San Diego. Bonnie writes primarily, but not limited to, poems & stories on nature, wildlife and indigenous people themes. She also submits her poem for The Australian Times Poetry electronic magazine
 
Betty Bleen – Grandma’s Jesus / The Cutting Edge
Betty Bleen’s poetry appears bi-weekly in the Ohio Chinese American News, Columbus, Ohio. She has read at various venues in and around Columbus. Her book of poetry, Bad Red Shoes, is available on Amazon and she has contributed to three anthologies. Betty lives with husband Doug and Mittens the cat. www.toocutetoboop.com https://www.facebook.com/poet.BettyBleen/
 
Belinda Dupret – Isobel
Belinda Dupret won her first poetry competition aged 9 – never won another! She’s been a music promoter; freelance writer; Television Journalist and PR Chief, working in 6 different countries including New Zealand, Australia, and the USA. Her life experience means she brings a world of humanity and imagination to her writing.
 
Beki Behar – Procession
Rebecca Behar is a French writer, poet and slam performer. She has published fiction and children stories, CDs of poetry and music, philosophy and literary criticism. Recent book published : “Poèmes urbains” (Edilivre)
 
Amanda Eakin – The Broken Repairman
Amanda Eakin is an Ashland University graduate who enjoys reading, writing, and surreptitiously looking for grammar errors in social media. She taught English for a few years and is currently enjoying her time in a Communication Center for a Fortune 500 company
 
Trevor Maynard – Take Flight / crushed
Published three books of poetry, the last GREY SUN, DARK MOON, in 2015; appeared in several magazines, as well as performing open mic sessions. Also edited several books of poetry, written and directed plays in London and Edinburgh. Married to Jo, has four children, eight grandchildren, and two cats. www.trevormaynard.com
 
 

          At 8 o’clock
           
          At 8 O’clock in the morning
          She saw the sun as a hawthorn
          She saw the cloud as an oleander
          She saw the chimney as a river
          Who did appear over there?
          Surprised, on crutches was an old man
          Sitting in a boat along a canal
          Singing aloud an odd song —
          In front of me there is a devil
          Going to catch the Monkey King
          Going to seize the trip taker
          The devil is weird and tempting
          She is a White Bone Demon
          At 8 O’clock, this morning …
           
          Cigeng Zhang

 
 
37 poets from 12 Countries Canada, China, England, France, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Netherlands, Scotland, Spain, USA, and Wales THE POETIC BOND VI
 
 
 
 
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Key of Mist. Guadalupe Grande.Translated.Amparo Arróspide.Robin Ouzman Hislop
 
goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk

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Announcement. Collected Poems. Key of Mist. Translated from Spanish

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guadalupe-grande-2001

GUADALUPE GRANDE
Madrid, 1965.

She has written the following books of poetry: El libro de Lilit (1995), La llave de niebla (2003), Mapas de cera (2006) and Hotel para erizos (2010).

She has been translated into French in the book Métier de crhysalide (translation by Drothèe Suarez and Juliette Gheerbrant (2010) and into Italian, in the volume Mestiere senza crisalide (translation by Raffaella Marzano (2015). She made the selection and translation of La aldea de sal (2009), an anthology of Brazilian poet Lêdo Ivo, together with poet Juan Carlos Mestre.

Her creative work extends to the territory of photography and visual poetry.http://guadalupegrande.blogspot.com.es/

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Amparo Arróspide (Argentina) has published five poetry collections: Presencia en el Misterio, Mosaicos bajo la hiedra, Alucinación en dos actos y algunos poemas, Pañuelos de usar y tirar and En el oído del viento, as well as poems, short stories and articles on literature and films in anthologies and international magazines. She has translated authors such as Francisca Aguirre, Javier Díaz Gil, Luis Fores and José Antonio Pamies into English, together with Robin Ouzman Hislop, who she worked with for a period as co-editor of Poetry Life and Times, a Webzine. Her translations into Spanish of Margaret Atwood (Morning in the Burned House), James Stephens (Irish Fairy Tales) and Mia Couto (Vinte e Zinco) are in the course of being published, as well as her two poetry collections Hormigas en diáspora and Jacuzzi. She takes part in festivals, recently Transforming with Poetry (Leeds) and Centro de Poesía José Hierro (Getafe).

robin-portrait-july-sotillo-2016-by-amparo

Robin Ouzman Hislop is on line Editor at Motherbird.com, Artvilla.com & Poetry Life & Times, his recent publications include Voices without Borders Volume 1 (USA), Cold Mountain Review (Appalachian University, N.Carolina), The Poetic Bond Volumes, Phoenix Rising from the Ashes (an international anthology of sonnets) and The Honest Ulsterman. His last publications are a volume of collected poems All the Babble of the Souk & Key of Mist, a translation from Spanish of the poems by the Spanish poetess Guadalupe Grande, both are published by Aquillrelle.com and available at all main online tributaries. For further information about these publications with reviews and comments see Author Robin..

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Key of Mist. Guadalupe Grande.Translated.Amparo Arróspide.Robin Ouzman Hislop

goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk

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All the Babble of the Souk. Antonio Martínez Arboleda ~ Reinventing

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all-the-bable-of-the-souk-image-with-tony-martin-woods
 
https://martinezarboleda.wordpress.com/
 

Before I provide my views about All the Babble of the Souk (Aquillrelle, 2015), I must declare my admiration for its author, Robin Ouzman Hislop. He is a person of great intellect, determination and generosity, a combination of traits that is unfortunately not so common in our world. In his work as an editor Robin promotes literary quality and innovation whilst helping hundreds of artists to feel and become part of a global community of equals which expands through Poetry Life and Times. He has demonstrated his commitment to grassroots, popular and digital poetry by supporting Transforming with Poetry and Poesía Indignada, two of the platforms I run. Knowing him personally makes this review a pleasant experience. I think the reader is entitled to be aware of the subjectivity of my views and I wish people were more open about declaring all the reasons informing their personal preferences when they write about other’s work. Our “professional” world is polluted by a false duty of objectivity which often takes away the most valuable information one can provide about the work of someone else: the human qualities of the author.
 
In his work All the Babble of the Souk, Robin takes us through a fascinating journey into the painful complexities, and the beauty, of the universe, with a very honest, informed and uncompromising cosmovision. Robin’s poems are enlivened with very opportune geographical, physical, scientific and human ingredients, including what seems to be autobiographical references. These are also the stepping stones for Robin’s insightfully critique of our constructed social reality and our species. But make no mistakes: the reader will not find a political programme in the poetry of Hislop. Instead, he offers an impressionistic yet refined understanding of what is wrong, and what is right, with humanity: we humans are an indistinguishable and intertwined part of the matter that surrounds us. We are as immense as the galaxies we dream with, as little as the atoms that sustain us and as problematic as the viruses who kill us. We struggle in our lives with the symmetries and asymmetries that underpin nature and the universe.
 
Robin’s work is an invitation to discover the necessity and expressive value of sometimes relatively uncommon words that reveal the richness of the world he encounters. Words for him are the commotion of the intellect, a statement of fiery consciousness where signifier and signified can often melt. But the reader should not be afraid of this. The poems are very enjoyable and thought-provoking, even if one feels inclined to consult the dictionary now and then. The use of occasional rhymes and repetitions or the combination of monosyllables in some poems is very effective. With no exception along the whole book, the pace of Robin’s prosody is light and elegant like the walk of a playful Arab horse.
 
Overall, a very recommended read. Thank you for your poetry, Robin!
 
 
 
tony republic
 
 
Tony Martin-Woods started to write poetry in 2012, at the age of 43, driven by his political indignation. That same year he also set in motion Poesía Indignada (Transforming with Poetry), an online publication of political poetry that he edits. Tony is a political and artistic activist who explores the digital component of our lives as a means to support critical human empowerment. He is also known in the UK for his work as an academic and educator under his non-literary name. He writes in English and Spanish and has published his first volume of poetry Los viajes de Diosa (The Travels of Goddess) 2016.
 
 
 
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http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
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Miriam C Jacobs Reviews All the Babble of the Souk.

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Poet Robin Ouzman Hislop’s first full-length collection, All the Babble of the Souk, is appropriately titled. With a remarkably consistent ear for the market’s noise, for “[t]he broken lights of the bazaar/spangled] with glistening promise/in the eyes of the dusky beggar …” (Laminations in Lacquer ) Hislop’s poems, many of them cinematic-style montages of sounds and images, show us the metaphoric souk of the world, on the beach or in the street, its glitter, its sadness, its ragtag glory:
 
“pets, flower pots framed captive in a moment
outside the house of the painter, a robot
in chains with an alms bowl” (“Departures”)
 
These impressions are not confined to the scenic. Individuals, too, flash like rich arcades:
 
“there is not time enough to love
before the tram whisks her away
a creature of the costume of the moment
in a parade of parts.” (“In the fish-eye window”)
 
So marked is Hislop’s interest in the external world, readers may long for a glimpse of the speaker. It comes rarely. There are one or two musings on the phenomenon and surprise of feeling oneself age, the odd disjointing of it, but otherwise these poems proclaim their perhaps unique impersonality. In “Laminations in Lacquer” we sight what is, perhaps, the poet, but in third person, one who rises, observes, and then folds in at last with the “throng”:
 
“Below the rift of its eye
the sealed beak that will open
gleams on the lee …
in a room that roams without corners
he must rise with a chalice of blood for lips of shades
where the vertigo edge of the flower distills the dish
together with the quantities of immeasurable throng
on watery groves billowing with ivy bowers
sprung over hidden lairs of concealed hoards.
Night begins and the dogs draw nigh
scavenging for scraps
yapping at the walker’s naked ankles
in the dust of unknown alleys.”
 
Among other reoccurring themes – shadows, mirrors, the moon – is Hislop’s interest in physics. In a variety of contexts he reflects on time and infinity, the imagination-daunting galaxies, quantum theory and space:
 
“Man cannot live on myth alone
he shall earn his soil somehow, between
the Big Bang, the Big Slam ….”
 
One admirable quality in this work is that souk places us firmly in the precariousness of the current moment in history. These poems are exactly right for the age, and who we are now, those of us born 1945-1960, with our particular view of past and present, our grasp of the sciences and technologies that have overtaken the known world in our lifetimes.
 
“The world is a patchwork quilt,” Hislop concludes in “Lucky hat day,”
‘stitched up to the hilt its seams/which we quarter in our dreams
on which our edifice is built …”
 
 
Jacobs recent head
 
 
MIRIAM C. JACOBS is a alumnus of the University of Chicago and teaches college writing, literature and humanities. Jacobs is the editor of Eyedrum Periodically, the art/literature journal of Eyedrum Art & Music Gallery, Atlanta. Her poetry has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, The East Coast Literary Review, Record Magazine, The Camel Saloon, Bluestem: the Art and Literary Journal of Eastern Illinois University, The King’s English, and Oklahoma Today, among other publications. Her chapbook of poetry, The Naked Prince, was published by Fort!/Da? Books in September 2013.
 
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goodreads.com/author/show/Robin Ouzman Hislop
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk

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Richard Vallance Reviews All the Babble of the Souk. Collected Poems. Robin Ouzman Hislop.

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Review of All the Babble of the Souk by Richard Vallance
 
If “All the Babble of the Souk” is anything but memorable — as it surely is — it is so because of its sweeping portrayal of the tumultuous market that is humankind. The “babble” of this bazaar is that of all the markets in the world — irrespective of nation, language, culture or race or for that matter, at the symbolic level, of any manifestation of our nature, be it “good” or “evil”, which are not opposing psychological or spiritual states as all too many naïvely imagine, but rather their subtle blending in our psyche. There is no suggestion of the presence or absence of God or a “god”. It is irrelevant. There is just humanity.
 
The poems, mostly quasi free form, some of them highly reminiscent of haiku, range from very short to a few pages long. Except for one poem and one only, Scale Free, in which we come face to face with some of the most beautiful imagery in the entire collection, and I quote:
 
A cuckoo taunts
high in the mountain
where are you?
 
there is not a single question to be found in the rest of the book. All the rest of the poems consist only of statements, some of them brief, others rather too long for my taste and some even downright convoluted. When this approach to poetry composition is carried to its extreme, it can and sometimes does result in the overly prosaic. That is the only real quarrel I have with this collection. Fortunately, there are only only a handful of poems which are painfully prone to the prosaic. Among these are Mannequins, the whole series Maps 1,2,3,4, The Prisoners, Non Linear and in particular Rust (which reads more like a scientific tract than a poem), none of which have any real appeal to me.
 
The rest of the poems run from agreeable at the very least to the truly amazing. Among those poems agreeable to the mind and/or the ear I count: Passage, At the Party, Here Comes the Moon, Multiverse, The Pine at the Summit and Wind upon a River. Others like these will more or less please the reader. But as everyone knows, we all have our own preferences for the kinds of poetry we like. The poems which appeal more to one person appeal less to another. The aforementioned choices are merely my own.
 
Next come poems which display remarkable talent, such as: After Dylan on the Ninth Wave (which I for one particularly like), Africa North (haiku-like), A Witch for Halloween (in which we find some of the most striking chthonic imagery in the book), Core (commendable for its brevity, economy of verse & imagery), Entanglements (haiku-like), Sequence 1 & 2 (haiku-like) and Story of a Rose.
 
I have a marked preference for the poet’s haiku-like poems. Haiku have always strongly appealed to me. In fact, I myself, along with Robin Ouzman Hislop and so many other truly talented haijin, have composed a considerable number of poems of this nature, many of which were published in the print quarterly, Canadian Zen Haiku (2004-2010), which is now out of print. Brevity is the soul of wit, and indeed of the memorable. It is Robin Ouzman Hislop’ s more compact poems which please me the most. There are exceptions, poems which are not haiku-like or are somewhat lengthier. There are some truly memorable lines in these poems. For instance, we have:
 
from Africa North:
A winnowing canvass tosses corn
and
... as fireflies in the blazing day.
and finally
In the gloaming a solitary reaper reaps its shadow.
(Reminiscences of Wordsworth’ s, The Solitary Reaper, one of the most astonishingly beautiful poems in English.)
 
from After Dylan on the Ninth Wave, there are a considerable number of memorable lines, which you can explore for yourself. The poem is not quite up to Dylan Thomas… a very tough act to follow!
 
and from Core:
reaching my eye’s peninsula
…
sudden scene, solitary strand
 
All of the poems in this class pleased me a great deal.
 
Now we come to the downright brilliant poems, of which there are naturally only a few. I might as well cite them all. They are Scale Free ( a series of haiku-like lines & almost pure haiku), A Split Second Later’s Late, Laminations in Lacquer, Lucky Hat Day and Red Butterflies, all of which had a powerful psychological and spiritual impact on me. Here are just a few of the lines from these truly remarkable poems which really struck me, and I mean really —
 
from A Split Second Later’s Late:
… a serpent’s spit according to legend.
 
from Laminations in Lacquer, the gripping lines:
Fireworks like a diaphanous lithograph
print an emblazoned sky
on the craggy mountains of the night
where comets play at kites
& glistening the eerie beak hisses.
 
and from Red Butterflies, where we find some of the most highly inspired, truly imaginative lines:
but as a collage on shifting sands…
…
A sword brazed in a fire
that does not distinguish
between the battle
& the field.
 
I believe we can safely say that the poet has achieved a level of poetic style and content which can hardly disappoint. Some of the poems in in “All the Babble of the Souk” remind me of T.S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”. Perhaps the most striking feature of this volume is the poet’s portrayal of humanity, which deprives us of any escape from the darker, more insidious depths of our human condition. The most striking imagery in the entire collection forces itself on the least flattering trait of of our nature, our tendency towards — I might as well say it flat out — bestiality, which leaps to the fore in the poet’s all too frequent comparison between homo sapiens and apes (King Simian, seeking simian), gorillas, baboons and other fierce beasts of that ilk, all the way to neanderthals, Australopithecus and the odious nocturnal lupine, the proverbial werewolf. Lines such as: the hairless ape, go ape, going bananas… all mercilessly zero in on our ape-like nature bedeviling our s0-called civilized veneer.
 
There is also frequent reference to eating meat, and being eaten (we grow the meat we eat, those she didn’t eat alive, children simply to feed her, how they like human flesh, to be consumed by hell), all the way through to witchcraft and Zombie imagery. The dreadful presence of these creatures of the night inexorably lurks just beneath the thin veneer our blasé urbanity.
 
To cut to the quick, the most memorable qualities of Robin Ouzman Hislop’s poetic gifts are his penchant for economy of lines and the puissant imagery of the chthonic. Where these features dominate any poem, they impel it towards the nonpareil! Such poems soar. When it works, it works supremely well. As for the rest, there is much to please the reader.
 
Overall rating: 3.75/ 5
 
Richard Vallance
 
 
Richard Vallance
 
 
Richard Vallance, meta-linguist, ancient Greek & Mycenaean Linear B, home page: Linear B, Knossos & Mycenae, https://linearbknossosmycenae.wordpress.com
 
PINTEREST Boards: Mycenaean Linear B: Progressive Grammar & Vocabulary,
 
https://www.pinterest.com/vallance22/mycenaean-linear-b-progressive-grammar-and-vocabulary and, Knossos & Mycenae, sister civilizations, https://www.pinterest.com/vallance22/knossos-mycenae-sister-civilizations
 
Also poetry publisher, The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième millénaire Friesen Press, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © August 2013. 35 illustrations in B & W. Author & Title Indexes. 257 pp. 315 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian.
 
http://vallance22.hpage.com
 
 
 
 
 
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A Review by Norman Ball of All the Babble of the Souk, Collected Poems. Robin Ouzman Hislop.

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All the Babble of the Souk
By Robin Ouzman Hislop
Aquillrelle, 2015
 
Norman Ball, writer, author of Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments –
Before I get to the book itself, I’d like to offer up a confession. Robin and I have, over the years, engaged in some fascinating discussions on such far-flung topics as Big Bang contrarianism, the mystery of consciousness, theories of memes, multiverses, Popper falsifiability and vitalism, just to name a few; in short, the usual water cooler chatter. Or maybe not. Robin’s a whole lot smarter than me. Nonetheless it’s a lot of fun trying to keep up. If you’ll forgive a mixed metaphor, we’re odd ducks of a feather.
 
For one thing, Hislop is not averse to the occasional Latinate or ism getting tossed into a stanza. Of course poetical exploration of High Concept puts one at odds with the prevailing penchant for concrete image and tactile adhesives. There are many in poetry today who insist that, if you can’t say something nice about a spatula, a garden hose or a lamppost, you have no business trafficking in periphrasis. Everything must be grounded in the real, they say—as if such a thing as the real really existed. If I may say, oh prevailing sentiment in poetry, get real.
 
So, perhaps All the Babble of the Souk is not for everyone. But then, what of any value ever is? Poetry marches under a Big Spatula and we all can’t be flipping fried eggs and hash. Besides, in the hands of a deftly abstract mind, abstraction is not exactly a kick in the head. Nor will it break the yokes and spoil your breakfast. What is a speculative poetic excursion, after all, but high imagination and eccentricity commiserating via language? Let the arbiters of bric a brac catalog the quotidian like good flea marketeers. Such people are born to rummage about in the attic and log their heirlooms on eBay. Hislop doesn’t trammel their kiosks. He has Big Thoughts to mull.
 
Fresh off a personally intense eye-mind exploration , I found myself greatly predisposed to ‘Maps’, a four-piece series of poetic aphorisms that offers some dazzling insights into how we demarcate our space, time and existence, and especially how these elements are conveyed, if not even defined, by our senses:

      Time links the auditory, the visual cortices on the retina which maps a fission between the unseen form of sound, the unheard sound of seeing


This notion of time having a real job to do immediately put me in mind of John Archibald Wheeler: “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” Hislop may be onto something even more subtle: Does time keep chaos at bay, allowing time for our disparate senses to marry their qualia into a coherent universe? Perhaps those with Synesthesia are more evolved creators of worlds, their gaps between sound and vision less discontinuous.
 
‘Maps’ delivered me to a speculation I wouldn’t have reached otherwise. And I find that’s a critical function of Hislop’s poetry. It gathers, then points away. More important than the resolved landing place is how it offers a hospitable ‘symposium’, couching philosophical fields of inquiry within poetic metaphor from which the reader’s own speculative arcs can then rise and take tangential flight; speculations feeding speculations. What does resolution ever resolve anyway? Conclusions are overrated. The concrete of the concretists doesn’t exist in a world:

      Imposed as
      an impression
      seeking an ineffable concrete
      in an abstraction
      which defies location.—from ‘Red Butterflies’


Tumbling down rabbit holes beats rabbit stew any old day, especially when the universe may have us fixed for the next tasty, sentient bunny-in-line. In this sense I would call Hislop’s poetry inviting, intelligent, and refreshingly non-binding.
 
In ‘From Here to Silence, three’, he sets up a free will versus determinism tug-of-war stalked by Nietzschean recurrence and Leonard Susskind’s holographic 2D picture-show. You got a problem with that, Rod McKuen?

      Say we are not sui generis
      (the cause of yourself)
      we are homeostatic holographs
      dimensions in spectral parallel membranes
      our near eternal process to err
      along such a line we pass time in, time out
      but could we not cheat the butterfly effect?


The stanza ends on the plaintive hope, reminiscent of Kafka that our cycle of error could end if freewill achieved grace but for an instant. Let us hope that moment arrives as I’m so tired of breaking my shoelace the day before Thanksgiving forever.
 
Am I losing the yucksters in all the heavy universe lifting? Not so fast. Hislop can be funny too. ‘At a Slant’ has a droll quality that still draws a snicker if for no other reason than that we’re stuck, all together (‘but it’s the same for all of us!’):

      The con of life
       
      the weirdness of its melodramatic sham
      how good we are at yesterday, tomorrow
      always better than before
      like,       being had – in the process by it.

The juxtaposed tenses of being had cement the interminable predicament we share. No exit. But at least we perfect our yesterdays until such time as we resume them anew, becoming rank amateurs all over again. But amateurs with a difference, with a modicum of acquired wisdom and an almost imperceptibly elevated rank. Okay, so it’s bleak, black humor. But there are shafts of light. One day, though maybe yet a half-eternity away, some butterfly will escape the dark matter of our descending shoe. (Butterflies pervade Hislop’s poetry.) We’ll be released to the next pristine universe armed with a butterfly-brain’s worth of hard-earned prescience. So yes, each successive Big Bang is not an unadulterated singularity. Some kernel of hard-earned wisdom gets borne through. Each new universe is a tooth on a slowly revolving gear that turns towards…perfection? In short, something barely better.
Since Hislop asks, that’s what—I think, I hope—may be ‘next’:

      Pack, the near infinite
      (in—the moment before you munch)
      take a bit of the biscuit
      before the Big Crunch
      it’s an eternal packet
      & having all, what’s next?—from ‘Lucky Hat Day’

All the Babble of the Souk will have you pondering your predicament in a whole new imaginative light. Reflect well my friend, as mindless impulsivity, and materialist inanity, is precisely what dangles this eternity over the interminable abyss. Therein may lie our paper-thin chance for freedom: by insect increment, one pardoned butterfly per eon at a time.

—Norman Ball
 
Editor’s note: for more of this Poet/Writer’s scintillating script please do not fail to overlook the hyper-text link eye-mind exploration included in the above review.
 
 
Norman Ball FBP
 
 
NORMAN BALL (BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA, George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch, The Western Muslim and elsewhere. His new book “Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments” is available here. Two essay collections, “How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?” and “The Frantic Force” are spoken of here and here. His recent collection of poetry “Serpentrope” is published from White Violet Press. He can be reached at returntoone@hotmail.com.
 
 
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http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
http://www.innerchildpress.com/robin-ouzman-hislop.All the Babble of the Souk
 

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Reviewed by Marie Marshall, Robin Ouzman Hislop’s 2015, All the Babble of the Souk. Collected Poems.

by
    Robin Ouzman Hislop’s new collection of poems – I find myself wondering instead of just reading on and enjoying the ride. Because Robin’s poetry is often just like that, a ride, which contains lines like –

    The hag in her rags begs her bag
    holding all shadows to account.

each a new thought after a pause for breath, or so it seems, each with an image that sparkles, almost with effrontery. That’s how I like my poetry – image, sound, and bare-faced cheek.
As the images pile up, or maybe I unearth more as I drill down, discovering depth in the poetry, the typographical puzzles pile up too, and I begin to wonder if they are deliberate cantrips on the poet’s part. I hope they are. I hope they are, because I want to trust the poet’s intentions. I know he’s not your average Internet Joe, but a man with a mean, keen pen. He knows how to play, how to make free, how to brew poetry:

    Riding along in our dream machine
    our virtual reality all but a scream
    no exit
    blood on the wind screen, faithful Fido’s gone
    the machine’s a mess, – every where’s a gas.

    A trickle through a diaphanous sheen
    a thin crust peels, roll the dice
    a question of ethics, the cost of life.

Y’know, somewhere along the line, Ezra Pound and John Cooper Clarke rolled dice for this man’s soul, and I can’t say who won. Maybe he walked away laughing while the bones still tumbled, soul intact. I hope so. He has the measure of our suburbs, seeing how

    gleamed cleaned cars
    the phallus of a Sunday afternoon

let us (you’re here too, and I have morphed into ‘we’) catch our reflection in that polished surface, wondering how to measure the depth of the shine. Meanwhile

    Danger, Deep Water, Keep Out

As if we could. There are caesuras in this collection, but they almost seem accidental, as though titles, page breaks, and stars merely interrupted a flow of thought momentarily. The collection has the feel of a single work, as though the poet sat down, started at the beginning, wrote the middle, and stopped at the end. See? The golden arches of a fast-food outlet, the taunts of a cuckoo, big Sunday words like ‘bifurcation’, ‘pheromone’, and ‘olfactory’, all rub shoulders, and rub along. We ride. It’s the same ride all the time, but the scenery outside the window shifts, and fellow passengers come and go. Occasionally we get off, but only to stretch our legs

    As we celebrate
    life lies dead on the table
    we eat it.

and then the ride starts again. But a short offering like that reminds me that on the return journey I must insist on long enough to read each poem on its own…
and I’m by myself again, closing the book at its final page. Second impressions:
The poet is aware of the shape of his work on the page, of its concreteness. The poet knows when to be serious and when not to, and he knows when to muddy the water of each with the other. When he says ‘Watch my stick’, you hear ‘This means you!’ The poet can make a dream return from the rubble of artifice. I know poetry when I see it.


 
 
Bio – Marie Marshall (3rd person)

MM is a middle-aged Anglo-Scottish author, poet, and editor, who says little about herself, preferring to let her writing speak. She has had three novels published, two of which are for the young adult / older children readerships. Both of her collections of poetry are currently in publication. Naked in the Sea (2010) in its 2nd imprint, is available in e-book form direct from publishers P’kaboo and in Kindle version on Amazon; the 1st imprint may still be available in print, if you enquire at Masque Publishing of Littlehampton. I am not a fish, nominated for the 2013 T S Eliot Prize, may be bought direct from publishers Oversteps Books. Marie has had well over two hundred poems published in magazines, anthologies, etc., but has not submitted anything since 2013. The most unusual places in which her poetry has appeared are on the wall of a café in Wales, pinned to trees in Scottish woodland, and etched into an African drum in New Orleans Museum of Art.


 
 
 
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http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
https://www.amazon.com/author/robinouzmanhislop
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Aquillrelle. Press Release. Robin Ouzman Hislop. Collected Poems. All the Babble of the Souk.

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robin2705
 
All the Babble of the Souk
 
All the babble of the Souk
all the life of the planet &
so little part of it, that I breathe
 

Posted by Poetry Life & Times on Saturday, 31 October 2015

 
Also available at Amazon.com All the Babble of the Souk Robin Ouzman Hislop
 

All the Babble of the Souk
By Robin Ouzman Hislop
Aquillrelle, 2015
 
Norman Ball, writer, author of Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments–
Before I get to the book itself, I’d like to offer up a confession. Robin and I have, over the years, engaged in some fascinating discussions on such far-flung topics as Big Bang contrarianism, the mystery of consciousness, theories of memes, multiverses, Popper falsifiability and vitalism, just to name a few; in short, the usual water cooler chatter. Or maybe not. Robin’s a whole lot smarter than me. Nonetheless it’s a lot of fun trying to keep up. If you’ll forgive a mixed metaphor, we’re odd ducks of a feather.
 
For one thing, Hislop is not averse to the occasional Latinate or ism getting tossed into a stanza. Of course poetical exploration of High Concept puts one at odds with the prevailing penchant for concrete image and tactile adhesives. There are many in poetry today who insist that, if you can’t say something nice about a spatula, a garden hose or a lamppost, you have no business trafficking in periphrasis. Everything must be grounded in the real, they say—as if such a thing as the real really existed. If I may say, oh prevailing sentiment in poetry, get real.
 
So, perhaps All the Babble of the Souk is not for everyone. But then, what of any value ever is? Poetry marches under a Big Spatula and we all can’t be flipping fried eggs and hash. Besides, in the hands of a deftly abstract mind, abstraction is not exactly a kick in the head. Nor will it break the yokes and spoil your breakfast. What is a speculative poetic excursion, after all, but high imagination and eccentricity commiserating via language? Let the arbiters of bric a brac catalog the quotidian like good flea marketeers. Such people are born to rummage about in the attic and log their heirlooms on eBay. Hislop doesn’t trammel their kiosks. He has Big Thoughts to mull.
 
Fresh off a personally intense eye-mind exploration , I found myself greatly predisposed to ‘Maps’, a four-piece series of poetic aphorisms that offers some dazzling insights into how we demarcate our space, time and existence, and especially how these elements are conveyed, if not even defined, by our senses:

      Time links the auditory, the visual cortices on the retina which maps a fission between the unseen form of sound, the unheard sound of seeing


This notion of time having a real job to do immediately put me in mind of John Archibald Wheeler: “Time is what prevents everything from happening at once.” Hislop may be onto something even more subtle: Does time keep chaos at bay, allowing time for our disparate senses to marry their qualia into a coherent universe? Perhaps those with Synesthesia are more evolved creators of worlds, their gaps between sound and vision less discontinuous.
 
‘Maps’ delivered me to a speculation I wouldn’t have reached otherwise. And I find that’s a critical function of Hislop’s poetry. It gathers, then points away. More important than the resolved landing place is how it offers a hospitable ‘symposium’, couching philosophical fields of inquiry within poetic metaphor from which the reader’s own speculative arcs can then rise and take tangential flight; speculations feeding speculations. What does resolution ever resolve anyway? Conclusions are overrated. The concrete of the concretists doesn’t exist in a world:

      Imposed as
      an impression
      seeking an ineffable concrete
      in an abstraction
      which defies location.—from ‘Red Butterflies’


Tumbling down rabbit holes beats rabbit stew any old day, especially when the universe may have us fixed for the next tasty, sentient bunny-in-line. In this sense I would call Hislop’s poetry inviting, intelligent, and refreshingly non-binding.
 
In ‘From Here to Silence, three’, he sets up a free will versus determinism tug-of-war stalked by Nietzschean recurrence and Leonard Susskind’s holographic 2D picture-show. You got a problem with that, Rod McKuen?

      Say we are not sui generis
      (the cause of yourself)
      we are homeostatic holographs
      dimensions in spectral parallel membranes
      our near eternal process to err
      along such a line we pass time in, time out
      but could we not cheat the butterfly effect?


The stanza ends on the plaintive hope, reminiscent of Kafka that our cycle of error could end if freewill achieved grace but for an instant. Let us hope that moment arrives as I’m so tired of breaking my shoelace the day before Thanksgiving forever.
 
Am I losing the yucksters in all the heavy universe lifting? Not so fast. Hislop can be funny too. ‘At a Slant’ has a droll quality that still draws a snicker if for no other reason than that we’re stuck, all together (‘but it’s the same for all of us!’):

      The con of life
       
      the weirdness of its melodramatic sham
      how good we are at yesterday, tomorrow
      always better than before
      like,       being had – in the process by it.

The juxtaposed tenses of being had cement the interminable predicament we share. No exit. But at least we perfect our yesterdays until such time as we resume them anew, becoming rank amateurs all over again. But amateurs with a difference, with a modicum of acquired wisdom and an almost imperceptibly elevated rank. Okay, so it’s bleak, black humor. But there are shafts of light. One day, though maybe yet a half-eternity away, some butterfly will escape the dark matter of our descending shoe. (Butterflies pervade Hislop’s poetry.) We’ll be released to the next pristine universe armed with a butterfly-brain’s worth of hard-earned prescience. So yes, each successive Big Bang is not an unadulterated singularity. Some kernel of hard-earned wisdom gets borne through. Each new universe is a tooth on a slowly revolving gear that turns towards…perfection? In short, something barely better.
Since Hislop asks, that’s what—I think, I hope—may be ‘next’:

      Pack, the near infinite
      (in—the moment before you munch)
      take a bit of the biscuit
      before the Big Crunch
      it’s an eternal packet
      & having all, what’s next?—from ‘Lucky Hat Day’

All the Babble of the Souk will have you pondering your predicament in a whole new imaginative light. Reflect well my friend, as mindless impulsivity, and materialist inanity, is precisely what dangles this eternity over the interminable abyss. Therein may lie our paper-thin chance for freedom: by insect increment, one pardoned butterfly per eon at a time.

—Norman Ball
 
Editor’s note: for more of this Poet/Writer’s scintillating script please do not fail to overlook the hyper-text link eye-mind exploration included in the above review.
 
 
Norman Ball FBP
 
 
NORMAN BALL (BA Political Science/Econ, Washington & Lee University; MBA, George Washington University) is a well-travelled Scots-American businessman, author and poet whose essays have appeared in Counterpunch, The Western Muslim and elsewhere. His new book “Between River and Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments” is available here. Two essay collections, “How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable?” and “The Frantic Force” are spoken of here and here. His recent collection of poetry “Serpentrope” is published from White Violet Press. He can be reached at returntoone@hotmail.com.
 
 
www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes
www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com
robin@artvilla.com
editor@artvilla.com
 
 
http://www.aquillrelle.com/authorrobin.htm
http://www.amazon.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop
www.lulu.com. All the Babble of the Souk. Robin Ouzman Hislop

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