Poetica Magazine

Over dinner one night two years ago, a friend revealed to me that the great love she had left her husband for was no more than a roommate now. For the last year, they had been pretending in front of family and friends to be a couple, but really they slept in separate bedrooms and rarely spoke. Now here I stood, on the downtown subway platform awaiting the number six train to take me to the man whose love I had been resisting for months. On the train, filled with fear and anticipation, nausea and love, I began my first sonnet.

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As a playwright, I have always favored formal poetry over free verse because the boundaries and rigidity of formal poetry mirror the structural limitations of plays. The word sonnet means “little song.” Here is my first little song about love, in the Elizabethan mode:

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Sonnet for a Heartsick Friend

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We met in P.J. Clarkes, a famous New York haunt,

And we slurped down oysters and drinks with rum,

You leaned forward, silencing the restaurant--

Not really—but I sensed bad news to come.

You told me the love you had was over,

You’d been living a lie, a sham, an act,

And oh, who the hell wants to be sober

When you’re talking of a heartbreak like that?

--Waiter here! bring a round, and make it strong—

You said, “Never again will I love or trust,

And I’ve cried myself empty way too long.

I’m done, I’m finished, and it’s been a bust.”

              But me, I vow to play loose with my heart.

              Here comes the hammer to smash it apart.

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Two years later, the love I was so worried about, has lasted. For two years, I have been deeply in love. Yet love has not made me happy. It has tormented me and bent my mind so that I live in fear of losing the beloved. I want to lock my heart, guard the precious. I decided to consult an expert on love - William Shakespeare. What could a man who’s been dead four hundred years know about love? A lot. After all, he wrote 154 love sonnets, not to mention some pretty great plays on the subject.

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I began to explore Shakespeare’s sonnets, to unlock their wisdom and find relief from my worry. Some of the sonnets have brought me great comfort; others have not. Even Shakespeare doesn’t know everything about love. Still, there was a lot of great beauty, if not enduring wisdom, in the poems. I decided, in an act of monumental foolishness, to write my own responses to each of the 154 sonnets.

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Shakespeare’s last two sonnets, 153 and 154, both deal with Greek myth. In these two linked sonnets, Cupid falls asleep in the woods, and a chaste nymph of the goddess Diana steals his torch and douses it in a cold fountain. The fountain is thereafter supposed to cure lovesickness when a lover bathes in it. But in Sonnet 154, the final sonnet in Shakespeare’s collection, the speaker finds that after bathing in the water, he is not cured of his passion, and he leaves us with this couplet:

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Came there for cure, and this by that I prove:

Love’s fire heats water; water cools not love.

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In other words, there is no hope for the hopelessly in love. Here is my response to Sonnets 153 and 154:

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So, Aphrodite, my lovely dear friend,

You need to shield me now from my own fears,

Because the beautiful man you did send

Penetrated my fortress with his…spear.

And the bitter rushes in with the sweet.

All of the hurts and the ghosts of the past

Are trying to deal me a bruising defeat,

Kicking me, yelling that love doesn’t last.

I want to be untouchable, hard, aloof,

Protected from heartbreak, so please make me

Solid, indestructible, bulletproof.

Too late—Cupid has already shot me.

              Faithful Hera will say love's never sure

              But often a flower grows from manure.

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Robyn Burland, Guest Blogger

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Robyn Burland is a playwright and drama teacher living in New York. Her plays have been produced in New York and regional theatres around the country. She is chair of the drama department at Bronx Performance Conservatory, and artistic director of Skipping Stones, a theatre company for city teens that deals with contemporary issues. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Writing ideas don’t come by FedEx or stork. Almost all ideas, whether for fiction or nonfiction, spring from experience, observation or the experience and observation of others, that is reading, conversation and gossip. Fiction draws on still another source, imagination, when writers ask the question: What if?

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Some of my own essays draw on experience: At the age of twenty-two, I wed a photographer. From that marriage came an essay, THE IDEAL PHOTOGRAPHER, which tells how to turn a nice child into a successful photographer.

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When I took pictures myself, I realized I could not conform to the Cartier-Bresson model of a photographer, an invisible gray man who melted into the background. I was a woman, and women draw attention. That perception led to THE INVISIBLE GRAY GIRL.

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After the divorce, I traveled a good deal. My unfamiliarity with European sizes became the nugget of THE GIRL WITH THE 85 BRA.

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By entertaining friends, I learned that it was more important to have a gourmet kitchen than to be a gourmet cook. From this thought came the piece, HOW TO BE THE MOST SNOBBISH COOK IN TOWN. I also ate out a good deal, thus inspiring two essays, HOW TO READ A MENU and JOUSTING WITH A FRENCH WAITER.

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Some of my essays drew on observation: After reading Readers’ Digest I devised a parody, HOW TO BE HAPPY IN 93 SECONDS A DAY.

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Experience played no role in inspiring my essay, HOW TO GIVE THE PERFECT ORGY because I had attended only one orgy, and I was a wallflower. Neither did observation since I forgot to bring glasses and had only a fuzzy glimpse of a bed covered with writhing arms and legs. Reading came into play. The editors of women’s magazines ran instructions on how to do everything so I used the same approach with a bacchanal. From then on imagination dominated the picture.

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Some of my ideas for books and essays originated with reading: I read about the early French rulers of what is now Quebec running out of coins and paper money and using playing cards as a substitute. That became the first chapter of my children’s book, FROM CATTLE TO CREDIT CARDS.

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Conversation has always been helpful. A friend of two photographers remarked that whenever their toddler son took a tumble, he waited before picking himself up giving them time to focus and trip the shutter. This inspired THE GENTLE ART OF KIDNAPPING.

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Earlier, imagination or asking what-if was the culprit behind THE YEAR PROSTITUTION WENT PUBLIC, where a new MBA returns to her mother’s sex ranch and sets out to make the enterprise more profitable. She installs time clocks, uniforms for the prostitutes and blue sanitizing bands on the beds between customers. The business goes public and, after a while, it also goes bust.

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Writers won’t run out of ideas if only they remember to experience, observe, read and ask what if, or to put it more simply, live, look, read and imagine.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Carol Schwalberg, Guest Blogger

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Carol Schwalberg's stories, poetry, articles and essays have been published on all six continents. She lives with her husband in Santa Monica, California. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

“Dear sir or madam, would you read my book?

It took me years to write, won’t you take a look?”

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I have a serious case of writer’s block. Not the ordinary kind — I’m not struggling to find the perfect couplet to finish off a 14-line sonnet, nor am I wrestling with a plot-line that seems to have struck a dead-end. I’m not chalking up sleepless nights staring into the black abyss of an impending deadline. My block is not about any of these things.

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You see, I recently completed a novel, and now it is time to trot it out before the admiring world. Only ... to do that, I need an agent. And to get an agent, I need to compose (shudder) a query letter.

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This is where I’m stuck. That query letter is crucial, it overshadows the effort of writing the novel itself. If the agent can’t get through my query letter, she isn’t going to read my synopsis, let alone the first few chapters of my book. And she’ll never ask to see the entire manuscript.

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“This should be easy,” I tell myself. “You have a strong product — it’s controversial and current, it has convincing characters and a compelling plot. All you need to do is sell it.”

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This is what I tell myself. But it’s not working.

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Each evening I come home and sit before the keyboard, resolved that this will be the night. I’ll knock that query letter out and have it ready to send off to the scores of agents I’ve already researched. Oh, but first, let me check my e-mail. And Facebook. Oops, now it’s dinner time. And wait, here’s an article in the paper I really must read because it’s all about electronic books being the wave of the future. Look at the time! On second thought, too late to look, the time has flown. All right, this weekend, then — this weekend I’ll buckle my socks and get down to the business of writing that query letter.

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But before the weekend even arrives, it’s booked. There’ll be a show or a concert I absolutely must see, friends who want to go out to dinner, a jam session across the park, and how can I turn any of this down? I call it “gathering material”, because you never know how any of these experiences might turn up in your work, sooner or later. Your work that will never be published, because you will never find an agent for your book, because you never sat down and wrote that query letter.

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The Greeks had nine muses — but the muse I need is the muse of queries. And she refuses to sing. That’s the problem. I expect too much of her. A query letter is a business proposition, not an opera. A query should be straightforward and succinct. Perhaps John Lennon said it best — “Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?” Actually, he sang it, didn’t he?

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I’m beginning to think I’ve been looking at this from the wrong angle. The challenge is not writing a query that will stand out -- it’s sending out a query often enough, to enough agents, that it will beat the odds. Any novel worth reading has likely been rejected hundreds of times. No matter how fine the book, no matter how compelling the query letter.

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In the end, persistence is what counts. Believe in your project so strongly that you can bear to see it fail, again and again. Each failure brings you one step closer to the goal.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Luther Jett, Guest Blogger

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W. Luther Jett is currently working to complete a query letter for his novel, And This I Know Is True. He has seen numerous poems published in various print and on-line journals. Some of his work can be seen at http://www.lutherjett.com . His blog is at http://lutherjett.livejournal.com/  – Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

“The poet disappears behind his own voice, a voice which is his because it is the voice of language, the voice of no one and of all. Whatever name we give this voice - inspiration, the unconscious, chance, accident, revelation - it is always the voice of otherness.” Octavio Paz, Children of the Mire.

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I don't understand inspiration, but I know it is real. A consequence of relinquishing my understanding of this process is that it removed every ounce of arrogance. How can I be proud of something I had nothing to do with except to be available? This knowledge helps me to walk humbly and to review the end result as a miracle that I have had the privilege to participate in.

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After this, of course, the real work begins, but the muse is ever present.

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Inspiration is like being struck by lightning. Lightning cannot be controlled, and when it strikes, it strikes without warning, making the sensitive writer into an oblivious lightning rod walking in the rain during a roaring thunderstorm. When lightning strikes he knows it, where it came from he doesn't. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was willing to take a chance that his preternatural gift would manifest itself and that he would be given an opportunity to harness, to a degree, the power inherent in the creative pistons firing in his brain, similar to the movement of the muscles in his body. I don’t understand lightning or the lightning of inspiration.

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I have been writing since 1969, and I have often considered and questioned the origin of inspiration as it relates to creativity; in my case, how it relates particularly to writing poetry and other fiction. I can, to a degree, agree with Edison who said genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration because I believe most good writers are driven and they hone their craft with significant rewrites and revisions sometimes toiling endlessly to get it “just right.” I think this is a given, and I can attest to laboring to secure the right word, phrase or sentence.

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However, just as I do not believe there are “born losers,” I don't believe there are “born writers” or born “anything” other than human beings with unlimited potential.

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Writing is hard work and requires persistence, diligence, and a host of other positive attributes and, these attributes are part of the creative process. Yet I find myself more intrigued by inspiration, and where it comes from.

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Where do creative thoughts about a particular subject come from, those creative stimulants that can not necessarily be specifically identified, stimulants to our senses that later may become a work of art, or, in my case, a poem? I realize that a writer might see be so powerfully impacted by a particular event that he writes a poem about his experience, but when he puts his pen to paper he cannot necessarily identify the end of the thing, and just as the end of a thing may produce the beginning of a thing such as a poem, the whole, which has become the sum of its parts, remains largely an unknown.

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“A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry,” said Shelly. “The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness...and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure.” - Percy Bysshe Shelley, Defence of Poetry

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Richard Ilnicki, Guest Blogger

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Richard Ilnicki is the author of six books of poetry, his latest of which, The Hatchetman, is currently in the library of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library in Washington, D.C. He has written two unpublished novels as well, Mr. Monstriparity and The Bibliophile. An avid supporter, defender, lover and contributor to the state of Israel, the book deals almost exclusively with the Holocaust experience. Mr. Ilnicki lives and works in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

I write in the dark, comfortably supine, using pencils on unlined paper and my stomach for a desk. I write on spiral notebooks during the countless bus-rides I take because I do not drive. I write at the kitchen table, with ink-filled pens on beautiful stationery. I write at my personal computer  – and that is where FreeCell and e-mails do their best to distract me.

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My version of a paperless office is both my night-time dreaming, and the writing I do in my head when my eyes glaze over where it would be bad form to whip out a ballpoint. Sometimes these words do not get to the physical point, but as far as I am concerned, they’re written anyhow.

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I breathe because I write. I scrawl ideas on the margins of newspapers and the backs of envelopes and receipts.

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I write because I breathe. A letter, a poem, a haiku, or an opinion piece may be written on impulse, but I have to knuckle down for deadlines. Yet I have no “routine” as such; I would never be able to write one thousand words before breakfast.

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People fascinate me. Family, friends, and even perfect strangers often thinly disguise themselves and gate-crash my fiction. For non-fiction I have to keep half an eye on the libel laws. With Malta being such an insular place, this is especially pertinent.

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Credibility is something I treasure. I always get my information from the source. I do not like censorship; yet I do not like people showing that it exists by depicting gratuitous vulgarity, or sex, or violence that are bound to be censored, either.

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Sometimes, a column or a poem write themselves. I have never stumbled over the hackneyed writers’ block; perhaps that’s because I tend to procrastinate since I know I work best under pressure. So, if you want me to write for you, never say “no hurry”. I have always made deadlines (albeit sometimes with seconds to spare) come hell or high water, births and deaths, illness and travel.

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I’m a stickler for using the correct terminology; and since the phrase “editors reserve the right to edit for length or clarity” covers a multitude of their sins, this has given rise to many heated discussions. I have no beef with writers who insist upon being paid for every word they pen; but I am not averse to donating articles (or poems or puzzles) to publications of worthy causes, without being credited – since this would defeat the “donation” principle.

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My writing is eclectic; so I slant my work according to the demographics of the readership of each publication or site. I do insert a couple of “difficult” words in children’s stories in such a way that, even if they are not looked up (as I hope they will be) the tale will not lose anything. I try to get my values across in anything I write, be it a television critique column or an interview with a celebrity. I like puns, alliteration, and idioms. But unless the feature is deliberately meant to be over-the-top, I consciously ration myself not to risk losing the thrust of my piece. I have several dictionaries (some of them esoteric) and thesauruses, which I prefer to online versions.

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Therapy; a weapon; serious fun; a dais. Writing, to me, is all these, and more.

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Thanks for Reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog.

Tanja Cilia, Guest Blogger

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Tanja Cilia lives with her husband and three children on the  Mediterranean Island Republic of Malta. She is an Allied Newspapers (Malta) columnist, blogger, and features writer, and freelances for several print and online publications in Maltese and English. Contact her at tanjacilia@hotmail.com - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

On my computer monitor I have stuck a photo from the 1970s of my sister holding me in her arms when I was a baby and she was thirteen. It was once colour but the chemicals that were used in photographic production at the time do not age well. It is now faded and looks almost monochrome, the image present being seen through a fine warm mist. I was tiny and a month premature my fists tightly balled, my eyes firmly shut. She is looking down at me with affection.

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My sister is no longer living. She died at the end of 2007 because of complications caused by the treatment she received for leukaemia. Now in my mind she will always be a woman in her mid-40s. I will not see her grow old as I once expected. When our parents die she will not be here to take matters in hand and keep us all together. She was very good at keeping things together.

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I remember this when I no longer feel like continuing. The shock of her death has done strange things to me. I liken it to an earthquake that still sends out unsettling ripples. It was the first tragedy I have had to deal with in my adult life and it changed everything. The pieces of my personal jigsaw were thrown into the air ending up fragmented and scattered. I am still trying to locate them all. Sometimes I am unsure if I ever will.

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I think her passing marked the end of my young adulthood and brought about the first real realisation I had that my time was limited. Of course you know you are one day going to die but you do not really accept or appreciate the finality of this until something brings it sharply into view. Then I became fearful. My body is a fragile vessel. What if I wake up tomorrow and discover a lump where a lump should not be? What if my partner did the same? What malevolent bodily squatter am I incubating?

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It is now nearly three years since my sister died and still I am trying to piece myself together. Sometimes I feel as if I am doing fine, that the loss is real but the sun is shining and she would want me to be happy. At other times I am struck by a deep and profound sense of emptiness, both personal and universal. When that happens a slide into mundane depression usually follows. You are told by the doctors that this is biological but it always feels more philosophical.

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I have become fascinated by grief and mourning and how it affects people. In the Western world there is a culture and expectation that you will after a short period step up to the plate, slap a smile across your face and re-engage with the world in a upbeat way. I have tried to do that. I have presented a public face that is amenable and not marked by mortality, the one thing our consumer society cannot rid us of. The bereaved threaten our cosy self-deceit which is why we work so hard to ignore them or chivvy them back in line, shaking the scattered ashes out of their hair, dressing them in bright colours.

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In learning to let my sister go I have given her a new role. She is now the voice behind my shoulder that whispers encouragement to my better self. She is freed from inconsistency and human failings to become an ideal. I remember her in her hospital bed. I remember her as my big sister taking me on fair ground rides for the first time. I see us both on the faded photograph and know that our experiences had and always will intertwine, even though hers is to be felt as an absence in the lives of those who knew her.

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I lost all faith. I look at the sky and it seems empty, but it no longer feels quite as threatening. Certainties might be gone, but love seems real enough.

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Martyn Clayton, Guest Blogger

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Martyn Clayton is a journalist and writer. He is the author of a non-fiction book about the Roma people and his debut novel Take Me Out was published by Subculture Books in 2008. He lives in York, England. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

When I tell people that I founded Ruminate, an arts and literary magazine, I often get blank stares and hear: “Umm…what is a literary magazine?” I realize everyone here is fairly literary folks, but I still think this is a great question—one worth asking and answering. Especially because, in my experience, many writers don’t know enough about the publications they are submitting to or the rich world in which these magazines exist. And getting published has everything to do with researching and understanding the publications out there!

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So, I usually tell this friend how the six hundred or so currently publishing US literary magazines make up a non-commercialized market of small or “little” magazines that promote a variety work and genres from both established and emerging writers. Each magazine typically has a specific mission or niche, like an environmental focus or one that only publishes writers only from the west coast (check for this mission in the tagline under the magazine title, on the masthead page, or the “about us” page on their website). They also have a small circulation—usually between five hundred and ten thousand, are often a nonprofit organization run by volunteer staff and maintained by donations and grants or affiliated with a university. They typically pay only in a subscription or contributor copies, although some of the larger and/or university-funded magazines pay anywhere from $5 to $30 per printed page. And, reputable magazines do not charge a reading fee for general submissions. Most do, however, charge an entry/reading fee for contests.

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The next question I often hear is, “Well, why do they matter?” This was a question we asked ourselves when starting Ruminate, and I think it is also very valid. I usually share how literary magazines provide an important opportunity for new writers to begin and establish a career, how it is easier to find a publisher for a manuscript of short stories or poetry if some of the work has already been published in literary magazines, and how they are one of the few places where experimental/boundary-pushing work or “no-name” authors may find a home. No literary magazine makes a “profit”—therefore, they don’t have to answer to advertisers or commercial marketing and can truly serve and foster the literary arts. What a gift!

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And on a more practical level, many great writers began their careers by first publishing in literary magazines, and most in the publishing world would agree that this is still true today. It is a tried and true process and agents and publishers will want to see that you have published work in reputable literary magazines. Also, many anthologies (such as The Best American Short Stories or The Best American Poetry) select work every year from literary magazines around the country.

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Now the most eager of folks might even ask where they can find our more about these fascinating publications. In which case I’d get their email address and promise to send them a list of resources (see below). And I’d also tell them that they should join the conversation—pick one literary magazine…and subscribe! And help ensure that this rich world of voices and words continues to thrive.

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Online Literary Magazine Resources

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Duotrope - searchable by genre, word count, payscale, response times, rejection rate, etc. 

New Pages - literary magazine database, magazine reviews, and calls for submissions.  

Poets and Writers Online - Lit magazine database searchable by genre with info on reading periods and editorial guidelines. 

Winning Writers - Primarily geared toward poets.

Lit List - Literary magazines, contests, and online litmags, allows you to “follow” your favorite literary mags.

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Print Resources (available in the reference section of most libraries):

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CLMP Literary Press and Magazine Directory - Detailed submission guidelines for online and print literary magazines and profiles of top publishers and journal editors.

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International Directory of Little Magazines & Small Presses - Full editorial information on both book and magazine publishers; 4,000 markets for writers to sell their work.

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Brianna Van Dyke, Guest Blogger

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Brianna Van Dyke is the founder and editor-in-chief of Ruminate: Faith in Literature and Art. She recently completed her MA in English literature from Colorado State University where her thesis was on literary magazines. She has presented at numerous publishing and editing conferences and workshops across the country and last month spoke on a panel of small press and little magazine editors at the Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado, with her husband, two kids, and two dogs. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Most of us have heard the phrases "time is of the essence", "timing is everything" and "patience is a virtue." As a writer, often dealing with deadlines and guidelines, I have heard these quite often. They sometimes sound contradictory, both telling me to wait and telling me to move. I have actually found that the concepts do, in fact, go together, it's simply in the way in which we choose to understand them.

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Time is a constant factor that we cannot stop, disturb or disrupt. However, I do believe we can operate out of "right" timing. There is something to be said for waiting - in fact in Isaiah we're told that if we do so, our strength will be renewed. I believe that learning to wait is a valuable lesson in developing humility. When we're humble-minded about our approach to life, things will come full view and become much clearer to us. I have found that in the circle of poets and artists I deal with, that being humble and waiting are great tools for creation. Some of my favorite and most meaningful written pieces have come from moments of waiting. I view my poems as life being born; therefore, it's safe to say the finished products are often labors of love.

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It's when I decided to put my poetry process into that perspective that it all made sense to me - wait but patiently. Many times I may feel frustrated that I can't write or compose something on the spot as my counterparts do. Or I may try and actually put something together on paper but when I read it back with my soul's eye it's clear something is missing. Since I’m influenced by many variables in my environment, my surrounding space is key to how productive my pen is. I prefer to soak up an environment, whether it's hearing another poet/artist, reading someone's work or simply observing the room. It's there that, through patience, I’m able to take in all that I need to feed the place within me that will eventually release the poetry.

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I am often motivated to write from this contact with other artists and connection to this nurturing world in which the voices not only rise up but also raise up. They uplift their psyches to new levels of inspiration, dreams, goals, peace, love and intelligence.

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Many of the poems I write serve to remind me why waiting is very important when seeking to express a story. Now keeping in mind that time waits for no one, we do however have to learn to patiently wait on our time. When I process this, the term "due time" comes to mind. This phrase has sort of an irony to it. On one hand we understand that time is not promised to us, yet when we're owed something that implies that something rightfully ours is on its way. So I close by saying this - continue to wait on what ever dreamed was promised in your heart. This does not mean we should stop moving forward, but it does mean to press forth with confident endurance in the face of times when you're dream doesn’t seem clear. It takes patience to move with trusted assurance. ~K'~

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Kiki Johnson, Guest Blogger

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Kiki Johnson is a poet originally from New York who now resides in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. She recites poetry at local open mics, works with aspiring young artists, and facilitates programs and workshops with the YMCA of South Hampton Roads, the City of Norfolk and the City of Suffolk. Her work has been submitted to Essence Magazine, to HBO, and to other local publications, and she anticipates publication of her first collection of poetry by year’s end. Her pen name is K'larity, chosen to reflect her purpose as a spoken word artist. For further info on how to contact her she can be found on MySpace at www.myspace.com/Klarity_517 and by email at sj2c517@gmail.com  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

Several years ago, I attended a creative writing class in my neighborhood. For years, I’d been writing poetry but except for some advice from dear friends, I’d never had a serious critique of my poems. Attending the creative writing class was a successful endeavor. The critiques my poems received from the teacher and my fellow students/writers made my writing riper, stronger, and significantly more succinct. However, over time, I noticed that our time in class was spent primarily on analyzing prose pieces.

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We read and write poetry because we have an intrinsic passion for words and their broad spectrum of meanings. Poetry writing is a creative process usually carried out in solitude, yet I believe that most poets yearn for some feedback, preferably in the form of constructive criticism. A childhood friend told me once that he stopped writing poetry because he didn't have an audience any longer.  Reading poetry to an audience could be in itself a powerful motivation to keep writing. This being said, how do you find an audience for your poetry and how do you maintain these readings on a regular basis? Perhaps by founding a poetry group, which I did when I established the Vaughan Poets’ Circle.

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Here is a plan you can adopt to establish your own local group:

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· Find a rent-free venue in which to conduct regular meetings - I live next to a public library. I emailed the Head Librarian of my city, introduced myself, and related my plan to found a poetry-writing group. I asked for a free room on a Saturday (I knew that most of the library programs are offered during weekdays. Therefore, the likelihood of getting a free room on the weekend was higher.) The Head Librarian was delighted to give me the opportunity to organize the program pro bono. The library was even willing to supply complimentary refreshments (and still does).

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· Name the group. Since my city’s public library sponsored the program, the group’s name had to include the city’s name.

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· Create a core group. Once your rent-free venue is set-up, call a few friends or acquaintances, tell them about the new group, and invite them to attend the first meeting. In my case, four of my fellow students from the creative writing class were thrilled to join the new group and have since been attending and participating in the monthly meetings.

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· Publicize the event/meeting in free outlets. In today’s cyber-culture, your local poets may belong to many web groups. Hence, advertising the meetings in national and international websites and forums could bring local poets to your meetings. Announce the meetings, at least in the beginning as the group is forming, on Craig’s List, poetry @ about.com, MeetUp.com, Outsider Writers and allpoetry.com. Winning Writers, a well-organized web resource for poets, offers an extensive list of poetry forums. Alternatively, send announcements to your local newspapers. They usually publish community events for free. Our library printed bookmarks and posters to advertise the new program which the members then brought to other libraries, community centers, coffee shops, and local bookstores.

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· Create an agenda for the meetings. Here is where your imagination can go free. Create guidelines for submissions – start with one to two poems for each member and change the guidelines according to attendance. Structure your time allotment so that the group starts and finishes on time. The Vaughan Poets’ Circle began meeting monthly for two hours. In the beginning, the time span seemed a bit lengthy. As a result, I contacted local published poets and invited them to read from their collections and conduct question & answer periods. As compensation, they were able to sell their books to the members. The readings became quite inspiring to the budding poets in the group. The atmosphere is relaxed, non-competitive, and supportive. Members share their doubts and successes. So far, the group has published a collective chapbook Waging Change: Vaughan Poets Engage in Politics (2007) and a bound anthology Earth to Moon (2009). Both were successfully launched in the community.

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The Vaughan Poets’ Circle has been holding its meetings regularly for the last five years. Its members have since published chapbooks and book-length collections, as well as contributed to national and international publications.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, the Poetica Magazine Blog

Dina Ripsman Eylon, Guest Blogger

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Author and publisher, Dina Ripsman Eylon has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. For the past thirteen years, she has served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal, a gender-related publication, which has engaged and promoted new feminist scholarship in Jewish Studies. Her book, Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism, was published by Edwin Mellen Press (2003). Eylon founded the Vaughan Poets’ Circle and serves as the Thornhill branch manager of the Ontario Poetry Society. - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor

I started out as a Hip Hop head listening to Biggie and KRS-One and Rakim and Group Home. I fell in love with the New York state of things and lyrics. It was something I could relate and respond to. Coincidently, a friend of my mother's lived in New York and she taught me about the Harlem Renaissance and Brooklyn and the Nuyorican Poet Movement. 

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In high school, I was one of the cool kids, but quiet. Most thought I was shy, but I was just reserved. I had a lot going on in my life and I was doing even more just because of the stigmas in my environment. Writing was my escape from that. I printed out my first novel and sold fifty copies. It was a romance novel based on the stories of my brothers and I. At the time writing was like I was having movies play out in my mind what I wanted to write.

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Poetry was an afterthought for me. I started off thinking that everything had to rhyme, but then I adapted to the words. It was amazing to write the hardest things and it would shed a tear. I could write about something horrible to go through and make it soft and running with emotions that it possessed and provoked at the same time.

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Poetry is an elemental blend of so many different things. I write from every angle because there are so many sides to life that we mistake and neglect. I write on different subjects and combine them in topics that might not fit because sometimes it doesn’t hurt to try something different, like sweet and sour or hot and cold. I write things because I know we feel different things and it is worth doing.

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Ready

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these wings,

princed in artistry,

may fall and rise

more now,

these webbed tentacles

will grab air

as if it is solid

and somehow solidify

the fact that dreams

do not fly away

like this,

these annexations

will tilt in a hemisphere

on an atmosphere so stratospheric,

it will be the impeachment

from the reality of normalcy

that the exacerbation and exasperation

will pool off the wing tips

and dovingly,

this body will become

the angel it prey as,

and these wings will go

to a different rhapsody

to be deceitfully docile

within the fruitation

of idle inspiration

being falsified by the sweet glamour

the sun makes the new pond look or love,

still, these wings

will fly outstretched

to eternity

because this is the feeling,

this is ready

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I write now from a place of understanding and curiosity. Losing my mother made me want to know what else I may be missing not only from the world, but myself. I write to challenge others and myself. I write to keep the bar interesting. It’s hard to identify where and why people write nowadays because it’s the same thing over and over. I write to exploit and change that.

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I love prospective writing and I use that in not only my poetry but in my novels and articles as well. We’ve lost our reality in fantasies. That is all we’re interested in now, things we are not used to and things we want because we don’t have. I write reality novels because I love the simple things in life. Something simple can also be the most complex thing in life. It’s exhilarating at times and very special. I write to tap into those moments because it’s relatable.

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So, although I have my mother to thank for my writing, for giving me the tools to be who I wanted to be, from books to the encyclopedias people sold door to door, I know that from the first, writing was familiar to me. No moment is ever dull. I would love to call it my job or passion or hobby, but it’s so much more than that. Writing is who I am and I write because of that. It’s my life.

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Thanks for reading JWorld Café, The Poetica Magazine Blog

Balik Whack, Guest Blogger

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Balik Whack is the creator of "The Vulgarity Report" and is focusing on a company called "The Starworks Company" to help develop writing programs for underprivileged children. He is a columnist for UNIverse.com and working on reprinting his first book of poetry, “Likage” as well as two more books of poetry, “Deconomics” and “Star Conversations.” He resides in Norfolk, Virginia where he is active in poetry open mics, and is a member of Java Poetry Club, Hampton Roads Writers and Virginia Beach Writers. He can be found on Facebook or can be emailed at decskills@gmail.com  - Linda Pressman, Blog Editor