sonnet

Sea Song of the Crazy Poet.Poem.Sonnet.Sondra Ball(Deceased2010)

by

 

It’s been a long time since I wrote a song.

I used to write beside the bay at night.

The music made me feel much less alone.

Night shadows forced a lashing, screaming fright.

Music was comforting. I’d sit and write

Until the sun wove light forms on the sea.

Then dawn would bind the shadows. I was free.

At last my music grew completely clear.

Then shadows shattered every pitch and rhyme.

They scream and dance. No note can stop my fear.

My loneliness grows with the measured time.

The shades are odorous. They smell like brine

The sea has tossed with rotting fish and shell,

Or like dead music, a stillborn dream or tale.

 

Sondra Ball (deceased March 17 2010) touched the lives of many with her passion, spirituality, intuition, outspokenness, and love. Born in Kentucky to migrant workers, an active Quaker and child of the Creek Nation, Sondra was passionate about race relations as well as the environment. An accomplished and passionate poet and writer, Sondra published the online poetry journal, Autumn Leaves, where she took great pleasure in encouraging new voices, especially among children and Native Americans. Sondra has been published many times in several anthologies, E-zines, journals and sites, such as Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508, Matrifocus, Poetry of the Desert ISBN 0974197548, Spirits in Peace (see Richard Doiron) and Sonnetto Poesia.

 

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. 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 Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

 

 

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian

30 sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.

 

http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Conformal Mapping.Poem.Sonnet.Vera Rich(1936-2009)

by

 

 

I cannot come to you without a sleep,

And travelling through sleep, I cannot know

If through one firm continuum I go.

Night is an involution which may keep

 Strange secrets, map our plane from sphere to sphere,

 And though we travel post-stage, can we swear

 Nights in strange inns preserve invariant “there”

 And “thither”? One brief day embeds our “near”.

 So, meeting, can we claim a mundane path

 Maps me to you in spatial translation?

 Rise with the dawn – however swift we run,

 Time draws its radius around each hearth,

 And hence we meet, sped by night’s transformation

 Where children dream gold lands beyond the sun.

 

***

Vera Rich(1936-2009)

Educated at St Hilda’s College, Oxford and at Bedford College, London, Vera Rich, a respected science journalist and a tireless campaigner for human rights, was a fine poet. Her wits were quick, her memory prodigious and she had a wonderful sense of humour.

During the 1960’s she had three books of her own poems published, and founded the poetry magazine, Manifold. This ran with some success for 28 issues before publication was suspended in 1968, when Vera became Eastern European correspondent for the science magazine, Nature.

Once asked to translate some Ukrainian poems, she learned the language to do so. For the next three decades, she travelled extensively in eastern Europe, becoming the foremost translator of both Ukrainian and Belarusian poetry into English. She reported on the activities of dissident Soviet scientists, the Chernobyl disaster, psychiatric abuse and AIDS in the Soviet Union. Her anthology of Belarusian poetry, Like Water, Like Fire, published by UNESCO, was subsequently withdrawn under pressure from the Soviet Union.

Manifold, which she revived in 1998, regularly published foreign-language poetry with parallel text in Engtlish and, occasionally. foreign poetry untranslated. In 2006 Vera travelled to the Ukraine to receive the Ivan Franko Award for her 40 years service to the translation of Ukrainian poetry. While on a visit to the Ivan Franko Homestead she gave an emotional reading of Shevchenko’s poem “Testament”. On her next visit in 2007, she wore her medal, the Order of Princess Olha, which had been presented to her at the Ukrainian Embassy in London. Vera could fairly be described as a Ukrainian patriot, an unusual distinction for an Englishwoman.

In 2006 Vera underwent treatment for breast cancer. But she always insisted her illness was an inconvenient obstacle to her work. On 18 December 2009, her doctor advised her to go into hospital, but even then Vera gave priority to her translations. On 20 December, 2009, she died peacefully in her bed. She will be greatly missed, not least for her kindness and the support she gave to so many. Alan Flowers (UK)

 ***

This sonnet and bibliography is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:

Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. 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 Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian.

30 sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 

 

Share and Enjoy !

Shares

Winter Departure.Poem. Sonnet.Trina Gayon

by

 

The early light reflects the short gray hairs

among the brown, and still he’s just a boy

of twenty-five, who rises slowly, turns

to stare down at the bed where she coils

asleep, the dreamless sleep that only comes

on nights when he has filled her up with rain.

He brought it with him out of Dublin slums,

to blanket California hills in gray

soft shrouds. He waits for gold to turn to green.

He lingers over tea and toast until

he’s read the Times. Packing his bag to leave;

he has no ties to things that keep her still

 beneath their weight ― a job, this house, her car.

 It’s almost Christmas, and Ireland’s not so far.

 ***

Trina Gaynon is a graduate of the M.F.A. writing program at the University of San Francisco. She currently volunteers in Los Angeles with WriteGirl, providing workshops and mentors for young women in high school who are interested in writing, and works with a literacy program in her community. Recently, her poems have appeared in Natural Bridge, Runes, 26, Southeast Review and the anthology Bombshells: War Stories and Poems by Women on the Homefront and Yemassee. She says, “My deeply divided personality moves back and forth between writing sonnets, a way of exploring what I have to say, and more experimental work, a way of exploding into what I need to say.”

This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:

Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. 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 Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA

300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian.

30 sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. http://vallance22.hpage.com/

 

 

 



 


Share and Enjoy !
Shares







			


					
			





	

					

				
The Wife of Pain.Poem.Sonnet.Becca Menon
		

			 by  		

					

			
			

				
 


***


I’ve learned deceptiveness since he moved in: 


How to distract him from a brutal rage or try


To trick his jealous need for all of my


Attention — yet defend him when I grin


Contentedly for loved-ones who suspect


 His secret violence; to take the blame


 For something that I’ve done or some neglect


 That sets him off, and hide the sticky shame


 I feel for letting him destroy my life.


 And while it never stops confounding me


 To realize that it’s true I am his wife,


 There’s one thing that I face with honesty:


 Because it was by illness we were wed,


 This demon, Pain, will always share my bed.


 ***


Becca Menon (1958― ) of New York City writes formal, often narrative poetry that makes use of both received and nonce forms. Her verse novel A Girl and Her Gods (2008) led poet Katha Pollitt to declare “No poet I know of writes anything like this ― Becca dances to a tune of her own Panpipes, and the reader follows, entranced,” while Herb Leibowitz, Editor of Parnassus, wrote that her “language is supple and nuanced {and} her sleight-of-hand as a story-teller keeps the reader from worry about what technical devices she uses;…” Poet Mark Rudman, editor of Pequod, noted that her poetry is “playful, philosophical, and subversive.” Also a translator and prize-winning author of nonsense, Becca has works appearing in numerous print and on-line journals, both nationally and internationally. To learn more, please visit BeccaBooks.com


***


This sonnet is pre-published with the permission of the Editor-in-chief from:


 Richard Vallance, editor-in-chief. 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 Presse, Victoria, B.C., Canada. © 2013. approx. 240 pp. ISBN Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Price: $28.00 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 Price: $18.00 e-Book: 978-1-4602-1702-3 Price: TBA


300 sonnets & ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German, Chinese & Persian.


30 sonnets in this anthology are to be pre-published by our permission in Poetry Life & Times (UK) which has exclusive sole rights prior to the publication of the anthology itself. 




 Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information. 


http://vallance22.hpage.com/


 


 


 


 


 


Share and Enjoy !
Shares







			


					
			





	

					

				
Coming to Terms. Sonnet. Poem. Catherine Chandler
		

			 by  		

					

			

						
						
							
						
					

			

				
***


I set aside my white smocked cotton blouse,


 my pants with the elastic belly panel.


The only music in the empty house


strains from a distant country western channel.


My breasts are weeping. I’ve been given leave –


a week in which to heal and convalesce.


I peel away the ceiling stars; unweave


the year I’d entered on your christening dress.


 I rearrange my premises – perverse


assumptions! – gather unripe figs; throw out


 the bloodied bedclothes; scour the universe


 in search of you. And God. And go about


 my business as my crooked smile displays


 the artful look of ordinary days.


 


***


Catherine Chandler


Catherine Chandler (1950 ― ), an American-born Canadian poet, teacher and translator and graduate of McGill University, is winner of the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award 2010, and nominee for six Pushcart Prizes, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the 2013 Poets’ Prize. She is the author of five books of poetry, the latest, Glad and Sorry Seasons, forthcoming from Biblioasis Press. Her poems, translations, essays, reviews, interviews and podcasts have been widely published in print and online books, journals and anthologies, including The Alabama Literary Review, Orbis, Quadrant, Iambs and Trochees, Measure, Able Muse, Raintown Review, Sonnetto Poesia and The Centrifugal Eye. Catherine writes sonnets because it is her way of trying, as she writes in her sonnet “Sonnet Love”, “to modulate unmanageable grief”. Her website, The Wonderful Boat, welcomes visitors at cathychandler.blogspot.com


“Coming to Terms” by Catherine Chandler, is the winner of the 2010 Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award. It now appears in 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. 


Some 300 sonnets and ghazals in English, French, Spanish,German and Farsi―publish at Friesen Press. Canada 2014. ISBN: Hard-cover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3. Available at Amazon & Barnes & Noble




 We urge readers of these sonnets in Poetry Life & Times  from The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phénix renaissant deses cendes to visit the site http://vallance22.hpage.com/


 Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at: vallance22@gmx.com for further information.


 


 


Share and Enjoy !
Shares







			


					
			





	

					

				
Doors. Sonnet.Poem. Ma Li. Translated Chinese Tang Yao. Howard Giskin
		

			 by  		

					

			

						
						
							
						
					

			

				
门与门


 


我一直注视着一个人，一个陌生人


我在楼梯口遇见过他，他打开了一道门


正是冬天，我正在浴盆中洗澡的时刻


这个人从某一个方向朝我走来，破门而入


这个人的眼睛在一开始的时候就装满了


关于门的故事，医院的门，公墓的门


这个人走遍了黑夜，站在一个小镇安静的门外


这个人左手藏着一把西班牙小牛角刀


右手握着一卷爱伦坡式的恐怖小说


身上有酒，还有心爱女人的照片


我与这个人匆匆一瞥，他招呼我开


我不慌不忙地去开门，门被推开了


但我醒了，门把我从现实推向幽蔽的梦境


门又把我从梦境扯回现实的一个角落


 


Doors


 


I have been watching a man, a stranger


I met him at the stair-head, he opened a door


In wintertime when I was in the tub


He came to me from somewhere entering


Eyes filled with doors; hospital doors, cemetery doors


Passing the night standing outside the 


Quiet door of a small town, hiding a Spanish 


Horn knife in his left hand, horror story in the right 


Bottle of wine in his pocket and a photo of a beloved woman


I caught a glimpse of this man who asked 


Me to open the door; in no hurry, door 


Pushed open from reality I woke into 


Dreamland confined when again a door pulled 


Me from dreamland to a corner of reality.


 


***


Ma Li is a contemporary poet, painter and essayist. She is also the chief editor of the writing column of South Weekend, the most famous and widely issued weekly newspaper in China. She was born in the seaside town Zhanjiang in 1960. She began to write poems in the 1980’s, and essays in 1990’s. She is a member in the Chinese Writers Association. She has published several poetry collections, like “Ma Li Poetry Collection,” and “Ma Li’s Golden Sonnet,” the latter which won first prize in the “Chinese New Classic Poem Award” competition in 2007. In addition, she has published several essay collections and held her own art exhibition.


 


Tang Yao comes from Xuzhou, China. At present she lives in Nanjing. Her area of specialization is foreign and applied linguistics. She focuses on translation both from Chinese to English and from English to Chinese, and has co-translated two books from English to Chinese. She has also done research on the translation of ancient Chinese poems.


 


Howard Giskin has taught in the Department of English at Appalachian State University since 1989. He works mainly in the area of World Literature, with particular interest in Asian culture, literature and philosophy, as well as Latin American literature. He has co-edited An Introduction to Chinese Culture through the Family (SUNY Press, 2001), and has edited a volume of Chinese folktales (NTC / Contemporary, 1997), as well as written articles on Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges, and published poetry. His interests also include the intersection of the sciences and humanities. He has taught in Asia, Africa, Europe and Latin America, and lives with his wife Vicki in Millers Creek, North Carolina.


 

Phoenix  Book Image

 

 Ma li’s Sonnet Doors in its original Chinese text together with its translation by Tang Yao and Howard Giskin appear in 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 –at Friesen Press. ISBN: Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3. 

http://vallance22.hpage.com



 


 


 


 


Share and Enjoy !
Shares







			


					
			





	

					

				
Fireworks. Sonnet.Poem.Candice James
		

			 by  		

					

			

						
						
							
						
					

			

				
 

 

 


Bold fireworks splashed against a blackened sky
Flared up to burn night down to raw red dawn.
We travelled light with broken compass nigh,
With nothing left of value we could pawn.
We trusted in the knowledge of the wind,
And drifted on the wet silk of her lip,
Until our vows of love became unpinned.
Untangled heartbeats.  Unjoined at the hip.
An ancient masterpiece now out of fashion,
We spun beneath the axis of the moon.
Two star crossed lovers in a web of passion,
We witnessed midnight crashing into noon.
Erased, we’re the collision of two comets;
New ink stains blurred on antiquated sonnets.
 
 
IMAG0706
 
Candice James was born in New Westminster, BC and is a poet, artist, musician, and 
singer/songwriter. 
She is currently serving her second  three year term as Poet Laureate of the City of 
New Westminster.
 
CANDICE IS ALSO
President of Royal City Literary Arts Society
Advisory Board Member Muse International (India)
Advisory Board Member of the Federation of BC Writers
Past President of the Federation of BC Writers
 
Author of 7 poetry books:
”A Split In The Water”; 
“Inner Heart – a journey”; 
“Bridges and Clouds”; 
“Midnight Embers – a Book of Sonnets”
“Shorelines” – a book of villanelles 
“Ekphrasticism – Painted Words”
“Purple Haze” 
 
Awards Received
Writers International Network “Distinguished Poet 2013”
Pentasi B – Phillippines  “Woman of Prestige 2013”
Honorary Professor International Academy of Arts (Greece)
 
Keynote speaker/panelist at
“Word On The Street” Vancouver, BC
“Black Dot Roots Cultural Collective” Vancouver, BC
“Write On The Beach” White Rock, BC
“Writers’ Etc” Los Angeles, CA
 
Phoenix  Book Image
 


 
This Sonnet Fireworks appears in the 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. 
Vallance, Richard, Ed-in-Chief. Victoria, British Columbia: Friesen Press, ©
  
Some 300 sonnets and ghazals in English, French, Spanish, German and Farsi 
―published at 
Friesen Press, and now available.   
   
Friesen Press will do all the marketing and distribution. 
   
To be available in major bookstores & through all major online order channels 
such as Amazon.com, Alibris.com, Smithsbook's, Ebay and Barnes & Noble: 
For more information on the anthology, please visit our site. 
The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendres 

http://vallance22.hpage.com/ 


 

editor@artvilla.com

robin@artvilla.com

www.facebook.com/PoetryLifeTimes

www.facebook.com/Artvilla.com




Share and Enjoy !
Shares







			


					
			





	

					

				
Sometimes I Can’t be Arsed with Poetry.Sonnet.Poem.David Seddon
		

			 by  		

					

			
			

				
Sometimes I can’t be arsed with poetry
and syllables that crash when they should dance
like marionettes pulled by industry
or inspiration due to muse or chance.
And what’s the point of words however good?
Does anyone read them and fall in love
or curse them, gut them, spill or drink their blood?
Save poets and critics, who gives a shove?
I tell you, some days I would rather think
myself a man moved more by luck than verse
or plumb pipes together than words that stink:
at least dignity’s there in fuller purse.
And what’s a sonnet but weight round your neck?
An afternoon’s work or a lifetime’s check?

David Seddon

David Seddon has been writing poetry and sonnets for over 30 years. 
He is from Liverpool in the North West of England and is a member
of various poetry groups in that area. Among other venues, his poetry
has appeared in various anthologies, and in Ink Sweat and Tears, 
Obsessed with Pipework, Other Poetry, Poetry in the Waiting Room, 
Poetry Scotland, Sonnetto Poesia  and Under the Radar. He has  a BA in 
Philosophy and an  MA and Diploma in Counselling. He works as a person
-centred and existential counsellor in private practice.

Sometimes I Can’t be Arsed with Poetry' appears in 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. -now in galley production stage at Friesen Press
scheduled for release June 2013. ISBN: Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 
Paperback: 978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3. 



 


We urge readers of these sonnets in Poetry Life & Times pre-published 
from The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendes. 
Victoria, B.C., Canada, Friesen Press, © June 2013  300 sonnets in English, 
French, German, Chinese & Farsi, http://vallance22.hpage.com/, to visit the
site. Readers may also contact Richard  Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at:
vallance22@gmx.com for further information. 



 


Share and Enjoy !
Shares