New Poetry by Carolyn Gelland

AMBULANCE

Magician, how

did a silk scarf

hide in the hollows

in my heart muscles,

a magic carpet

that eased from its echo chamber,

sparks here and there.

An angel with

whistles for wings

is going nowhere fast

as the ambulance speeds up

to make

telephone poles

a solid valley

of burning crosses.

- Carolyn Gelland 2016

Carolyn Gelland’s two collections of poems are Dream-Shuttle (2013) and Four-Alarm House (2012).  She grew up in Europe and in New York City where she worked as a translator from Norwegian and ran a small art gallery.  She and her husband, poet Kenneth Frost, moved to rural Maine to focus on writing poems.

New Poetry by Martin Christmas

Beach Collection

Into the oily swell

the sun drops

it’s day end heat.

A kite’s rustle sound manoeuvres

wheeling and soaring

like a colourful eagle hawk

tethered to the sand.

Overhead, a lone gull flies

out of touch, calling . . .

until again, the flock

connects.

They fly low across the sand

caught in silhouette

against the failing light . . .

seasoned travellers

on the beach run.

The twin helix trails

spew across the

sun spent sky . . .

flashing beacon lights . . .

passengers sipping wine. 

- Martin Christmas 2016

Martin Christmas has an M.A. in Australian Cultural Studies and is an Adelaide based performance poet, photographer and professional theatre director. He was a Friendly Street Poets mentored poet in 2012 and has been published in several anthologies. He teaches presentation elements to young spoken word poets and established poets. 

Vale Stevie Plunder (1963-1996)

Twenty years ago yesterday the Sydney music scene lost one of its most dynamic performers and talented songwriters. I am referring, of course, to Stevie Plunder, aka Anthony Hayes, who left us suddenly only a short drive from where I am writing. Stevie hailed from a large Catholic Canberra family who still punch well above their weight in the local music scene, with brothers Bernie, Pat and Justin all continuing to carve out a special niche in an increasingly crowded space. As one of the founding members of Newtown outfit The Whitlams, Stevie was thrust for a time into the pop limelight, a situation he was never completely comfortable with. But my memory of him will always be perched on that rickety stool beside his brother, Bernie, Tuesday nights at the Sandringham Hotel in Newtown under the moniker "The Gruesome Twosome". The song, "Pass the Flagon", that I have posted in the sidebar was a staple of those wonderful evenings, and I am merely one of hundreds of people who were lucky enough to be there and who continue to cherish the memory. Thank you Stevie my friend!

Although people continue to speculate why this shining, warm, funny, generous soul left us when he did, I hope you will indulge me, dear reader, while I celebrate this unique presence in the Australian (and more particularly the Newtown) music and arts scene of the 1980's and 90's. Vale Stevie! May your spirit prevail!

New Poetry by Peter Venable

Slow Motion 

A shadow sliding on an afternoon wall is slow 

Slow is glass flowing in colonial houses 

A sixty month stretch at Riker’s is slow 

Slow is squeezing an ice cube until it melts 

A food line at a refugee camp is slow 

Slow is a man on his walker at the Y indoor track 

A kidney stone squeezing through a duct is slow 

Slow is seven cycles of chemotherapy 

A dusk to dawn vigil in candlelit sanctuary is slow 

Slow is 21,600 seconds skewered on a cross

- Peter Venable 2016

Peter Venable, the author has written poetry for over 50 years and some are inspired out of (his) "monsters of the Id", a Forbidden Planet line. 

 

 

Break a leg, Michele!

We get a lot of flyers at Bluepepper, often from poets who seem to regard us as some sort of free community billboard. It isn't, at least not for poets from whom we otherwise never hear. 

Michele Seminara is emphatically not one of these. Not only is she a regular contributor, but she is also one of those rare beings, an effective and no fuss literary facilitator through her work at the august Verity La, while also being a very very good poet. We don't tend to encounter these in the poetry wilds too often. Oh yes, and she is, by all accounts, a damn nice person to boot. 

Thus it is with the greatest pleasure that we post the flyer for Michele's inaugural book launch below....

Dear friends,

 It’s been a steep learning curve but after a year of furious scribbling, editing and proofreading my first poetry collection, Engraft, is finally a reality! I’m honoured to join the stables of Island Press, Australia’s oldest surviving poetry imprint, which for forty-five years have been publishing some of Australia’s finest poets.

 As we all know, financially, writing and publishing poetry is a thankless task, fuelled primarily by passion. That’s why the support of readers is so important!

 It would great if you could come and celebrate the launch of my first book, and in the process support the continuing activity of Island Press. If you can’t make it, copies of Engraft can be ordered using the form below.

 A free copy of a previous Island title is yours with every book purchased at the launch. Children are more than welcome to attend so long as they are under the direct supervision of an adult.

 Hope to see you there!

 Michele

 (Invite and details below. Feel free to pass it on!)

ENGRAFT

Michele Seminara’s first poetry collection Engraft explores the darker aspects of the human psyche and relationships. This debut collection by a strong new poetic voice is being launched by distinguished poet Martin Langford. 

Some commentary on Engraft:

“Engraft is a masterwork. Seminara's deep gift lies in her fusion of the viscera of life with a transcendent poetic vision. By turns terrifying and tender, loving and lost, Seminara is a major new voice in contemporary poetry.” –Charles Bane, Jr.

“Michele Seminara’s analytic prayers, domestic fables and eloquent centos work their ludic wit and charms in the house of loss and disturbance. She is not afraid to say ‘beauty’ in the language of economy engrafted with careful flourishes.” –Michelle Cahill

"Engraft is chock-full of tender, brave poems with emotional depth. Seminara's work displays control, deft pacing, and a fierce commitment to witness with clear eyes the horrors we commit upon ourselves and each other. A book filled with variety and surprise which you will want, and need, to return to many times." –Melinda Smith

ALSO LAUNCHING ON THE DAY

Les Wicks’ Getting By Not Fitting In – the 13th book 

by one of Australia’s most well loved and respected poets.

Launched by Chris Mansell

We are having a launch for both books at:

Friend in Hand Hotel

58 Cowper St, Glebe

(upstairs bar)

Saturday 6th February 2.30pm

For details ring 0414 767 089

...........................................................................................

If you can’t make it you may wish to order a copy (or more!)

I wish to order (       ) copies of Engraft at $20.00 each.

Name & Address................................................

                             ................................................

                             ................................................

Cheques should be made payable to Michele Seminara & sent to 1 Seebrees St, Manly Vale, NSW 2093. Contact micheleseminara@hotmail.com to order via paypal or direct credit. 

You can also order direct from Island Press at 29 Park Rd, Woodford NSW 2778. 

http://islandpress.tripod.com/ISLAND.htm

New Poetry by Jim Conwell

Clearing, off Nordic Drive

The wind has picked up and

is passing through the trees like

freight on the move, whilst

a tiny sparrow works the leaf mould at

the foot of the nearest oak,

it’s dark trunk going straight up to

where the light is most abundant.

Unwitnessed, the

logs over there across

the clearing would

continue to lie,

the symbiotic processes of decay would

still move inside them. Sometimes

the wind would pick up to

a fury and another tree would

go over or simply die from

natural causes. The branch that

has fallen near the corner of

the deck would still

rear up until

its body became too soft to

bear its weight and

it fell prone on

the leaf mould, rolling

sideways a little before

coming to rest again.

Over time, and unwatched, this

clearing would slowly fill with

growth.

- Jim Conwell 2016

With an original background in Fine Art, Jim Conwell has worked in mental health for thirty years. He has had poems published in magazines in the UK, Ireland, and North America and had two poems shortlisted in the Bridport Poetry Prize 2015. He lives in London.

New Poetry by James Walton

At Cumberland River

At Cumberland River
our love burnt itself out
we fucked ourselves senseless
there where the cabins hid away
between the declining sea and track

Now Otways fires
lick around those memories
receding into themselves unquiet
like pages of tumbling favourites loose
among themselves in an unforgiving too hot wind

Blowing open blowing closed
scorched remnants have their say
dropping parachutes of silky words
trying to make a landing of pillowy remorse
where we laid bare the wide brim of what had been


- James Walton 2016

James Walton lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland, Australia. He has been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, and many journals and anthologies. He has been short listed twice for the ACU national Literature Prize, is a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, and Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition.  His collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ is available. He’s been a Librarian, bred Salers cattle, and was a public sector union official for many years.

New Poetry by Ted Bookey

FOR EVA MIODOVNIK OPPENHEIM (1931-2014)

                  —Not just any death

As I have lost the previous generation, one after another,

I cried, “I do not want to be one of the elephants

left in charge of memory and the family stories,

who receives all the confidences.”  And now I am

one of the few left of my own generation.

All around us the feeling of life slipping away.

So much loss suffered.  Wanting to hold onto

every minute, to stop complaining, reassure

all those we love.  It can all disappear

in the blink of an eye.

I stroke the dog, she wags her tail.  The cat

lashes hers.  I too would love to experience

the innocence our pets have

rather than this death-

obsessed human mind.

I think I had that innocence and sense

of certainty long ago, when people

still kept being born

into my life, instead

of leaving it.

- Ted Bookey 2016

Ted Bookey’s Collected Poems With a W/hole in One, 1970-2010 was published in 2010 by Moon Pie Press.  Originally from New York City, he now lives in Maine, where he teaches both poetry and humor in the Senior College program at the University of Maine at Augusta.  He is the author of four books of poems, translations with his wife Ruth of the poems of Erich Kastner, and several plays that have been produced in Maine and off-off Broadway.

New Poetry by Tim Staley

Today They Open the Rio Grande   

                               - for Jon

Today they open the river

dusty arteries charge

as the old farmer in coveralls

races to the red wheel

to twist his own fields

full of muddy water.

Draped in his barn

under a heavy brown canvas

is a coffin lined with velvet

plump as ripe mulberries

but Jon, that’s not for you.

The moon like a tumor

grown to be sliced away.

The current says, I'll let you be,

to the cobweb in the reeds.

Each is impressed

with the other's impermanence.

Hold today’s Rio in your brain

rolling high in the grassy banks

on the gurney when they roll you in

like the Sea of Tranquility

holds that last gist of light

in its darkest hour. 

- Tim Staley 2016

Tim Staley was born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1975. He completed a Poetry MFA from New Mexico State University in 2004. His first full-length volume of poetry is forthcoming from Pski’s Porch Publishing. His chapbooks are available for purchase at the Grandma Moses Press online store. Journal publications include Border Senses, Cacti Fur, Canary, Chiron Review, Circumference, Coe Review, Malpais Review, Magnapoets, RHINO: The Poetry Forum, and Sin Fronteras. His hobbies include thinking, taquitos, and waiting. Actually, just taquitos.  He lives with his wife and daughter in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

New Poetry by Robert David Verdon

real

looking through a cracked window,

always in my own light

… a striped iceberg light,

a strange arpeggio

a lightning flash hissing close

in its own light

light and life is too much for me

suicide is meaningless

I wish my critics only immortality

- Robert David Verdon 2016

New Poetry by Emily Hart

1)

following the bees

they played violins
as we hunted yellow rockets
always calling us on
until we reached
a low stone wall
much worn by sitting
for concerts such as these.

2)

summer dried

long after you had gone
back
to old places
and people
whose burrs you could not pull
out of your mind
i drank tea
made from the blackberry leaves
we picked the day you pulled
a trailer of thorns
from my hair.

3)

then rise

birds make good use
of my failed baking experiments
and the loaves that go stale
before i can finish them
at my solitary table.
they cover the crumbs
like leaves covering
the ground after a storm,
then rise
as the light explodes from jewels.
next baking day
i will give the birds
my best loaf,
fresh and warm.


- Emily Hart 2016

Emily Hart's work has appeared in literary magazines such as Denali. Groundwaters, A Room Of One's Own, At The Crossroads, Fireweed and others under various pens.  In addition to poetry she has won awards in short fiction, essay, and drama. After much wandering Emily has settled in southern Oregon. Really.  Truly.

New Poetry by T.F. Rice

GRIEF AND PARKING VIOLATIONS

We use the same word
for tipping to and fro
as for a piece of
earth heavy and still.
Even rocks move.

I hear in the desert
the wind pushes them
slowly for miles.

You rock. You're the best.
You're awesome,
but don't get a
parking violation
in life.

Even rocks move.

Rock on. Keep moving,
even if only to let
the wind have you
for a while.

- T.F. Rice 2016
 

T. F. Rice lives in Western New York State with her family and with her creative clutter. Like everyone else, she is trying to find the right mix of work and play. Rice edits the long-running small press publication The Other Herald. Her poetry has most recently appeared in Earth's Daughters and Poieses.

Bluepepper would like to wish all poetry lovers a safe and enjoyable Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous 2016.

New Poetry by James Diaz

Anyone Can Light A Match In The Dark

Some say that I never really knew

the things that I needed to know

in order to survive

but if you are reading this tonight

it means that I exceeded 

more than a few low expectations

that I went uphill on my knees

year after year

undeterred 

and that all of the shouting

from over my shoulder

was no angry God

just a few hungry ghosts

that I refused to feed

and when I look back on it now

nothing haunts me,

I stood the test,

not of time,

but of the emptiness that sits between time

what gets filled with the light

you learn to hide from all of the death eaters

the cheerleaders of nothing and nowhere

whose hands 

at the end of the day

have no real creases of their own

no signs of having survived

with only this:

the will and the need to go on.

- James Diaz 2015

James Diaz lives in Upstate New York. His poetry can be found in Chronogram, Calliope, Ditch, The Voices Project and A Long Story Short.

New Poetry by Donal Mahoney

Book Signing

Keep writing,
a famous writer 
once told me
signing his novel,
until you have said
something true.
The thing of it is,
he cautioned,
some never do
yet find no time
for life as it is.

They find no time
to feed the hungry,
give drink to the thirsty,
clothe the naked,
care for the sick,
visit the imprisoned
or call an embalmer
to bury the dead.
Instead, he said, 

writers keep writing 
hoping they’ll say 
something true
and maybe they will.
The thing of it is,
he said, so few do.
Most write about life 
as they wish it to be
and not as it is 
for too many.
A pity, he sighed,
signing another book, 
but so often true.


- Donal Mahoney 2015

Donal Mahoney’s fiction and poetry have appeared in various publications, including Ink Sweat & Tears (England), Bluepepper (Australia),The Galway Review (Ireland), The Osprey Journal (Wales), Public Republic (Bulgaria),Revival (Ireland), print and online magazines in the United States.

New Poetry by Les Wicks

Pop

Just another pain, I
turn away
blood in the pupil, a crookedness on the spine.
This absence of words
is covered by planking
under construction
safety first until we burst
in grief.


- Les Wicks 2015


Les Wicks' most recent publication is Sea of Heartbeak (Unexpected Resilience), Puncher &Wattmann, 2013.

New Poetry by Damen O'Brien

The Flinch

We knew about the flinch, because
time-lapse photography showed
bruised leaves and cut-stems curling,
nearby branches swaying away
in distress, through the same filter
we’ve witnessed rival canopies clashing
and striving in bitter border disputes,
but now we know that in silent outrage
and perhaps also in plea, each plant calls
to its neighbour in chemical messages,
if it is assailed by caterpillars or
by the predations of grazing cattle,
not for its own sake, but to warn
its neighbour to furl flowers or close leaves.
So, anthropomorphic enough to make
vegetarians quail, and meat eaters
smile around the edges of their steak:
empathy Dahl and sympathy salads
and indigestible moral dilemmas.


- Damen O'Brien 2015

Damen O'Brien is a Queensland Poet, previously published in Cordite and Mascara, and winner of the Ipswich International Poetry Feast, the Yeats Poetry Prize, and the Nillumbik Ekphrasis Poetry Award.

New Poetry by William C. Blome

UNTITLED

Lincolns by the balcony,

a Buick toppled in the sculpture garden,

how many times do I have to tell you

there’s no one out there quite like me.

It’s no accident you echo like an owl

when you keep saying I’m in Yellowknife

and emailing I won’t hie back to Minot

till mallards have turned all-blue

in paint-polluted Four Bears Bay.

Well, as much as pistons rise and fall

from fires above themselves;

as much as sound and color get defined

as aimlessly deflected waves—

so too my love for you is random,

because it’s not my own creation.

- William C. Blome 2015

William C. Blome writes poetry and short fiction. He lives wedged between Baltimore and Washington, DC, and he is a master’s degree graduate of the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars. His work has previously seen the light of day in such fine little mags as The Alembic, Amarillo Bay, Prism International, Fiction Southeast, Roanoke Review, Salted Feathers and The California Quarterly.

New Poetry by Nathanael O'Reilly

Solitude

Traveling backwards from Bath to Dorchester

through Freshford, Bradford-on-Avon, Trowbridge,

Westbury, Castle Cary, Yeovil and Maiden Newton,

over hills, through vales, across meads,

reading Time’s Laughingstocks

I delve into the heart of Hardy’s Wessex.

Morning sun glistens on green grass,

cows graze in the shadow of hedgerows,

freshly-shorn sheep lounge on hillsides.

I pass harvested fields, baled hay, falling leaves,

ripening apples, stone cottages with slate roofs.

I walk from Dorchester to Stinsford

beside the gurgling water, visit

Hardy’s grave at St. Michael’s,

explore the church interior,

stand alone at the pulpit

declaiming from the Book of Job.

Through fields and woods I hike

to Higher Bockhampton, stopping

in Thorncombe Wood for sandwiches

beside Hardy’s birthplace, then onwards

across the Roman Road to Lower Bockhampton.

Crossing the Froom I pass freshly-mowed

fields following Hardy’s footsteps to Max Gate.

After a pick-me-up-pint at the Trumpet Major

I stroll back into the centre of Dorchester,

explore the ruins of a Roman villa at dusk,

marvel at intact third-century mosaics

before retiring for dinner at The Royal Oak.

- Nathanael O'Reilly 2015

Nathanael O’Reilly was born in Warrnambool & raised in Ballarat, Brisbane and Shepparton; he currently resides in England. He is the author of Distance (2014) and the chapbooks Suburban Exile: American Poems (2011) and Symptoms of Homesickness (2010), all published by Picaro Press. He is the recipient of an Emerging Writers Grant from the Australia Council. Over one hundred of his poems have appeared in journals & anthologies around the world, including Antipodes, Australian Love Poems, Blackmail Press, Bluepepper, Cordite, fourW, LiNQ, Mascara, Postcolonial Text, Prosopisia, Red River Review, Snorkel, Social Alternatives, Tincture, Transnational Literature, Verity La, Writ Poetry Review and Windmills

New Poetry by John Sweet

the false prophet

held an empty frame up to the

sky said that’s it said that’s everything

and creeley was dead and the

house across the street

had burned to the ground

man i knew had christ locked in a

cage at the far edge of town

gave him bukowski’s bones to gnaw on

gave him the poisoned water

from lake superior

 

touched him but wasn’t cured

- John Sweet 2015

 

 

spontaneous benediction

 

these men in the room of maps,

lying naked on piles of money

these prayers that feed no one

these poems that mean nothing

 

that devour the truth and

shit out empty platitudes and hope,

of course, is not a drug,

but the children are all stoned

the astronauts are falling from

the sky like dreams turned to

fire and blood

catch what you can and make

your small desperate wishes

- John Sweet 2015

John Sweet is a believer in sunlight and the undying power of surrealism, opposed to all organized religion, and has no use for millionaire politicians who claim to have his best interests at heart. His most recent collection is THE CENTURY OF DREAMING MONSTERS (2014 Lummox Press).