21st Century Autoimmune Blues Brent Terry Unsolicited Press 2022 Click here to purchase or for more information. ** The Ekphrastic Review: A handful of the poems in your new book are ekphrastic. But in a way, most of these works are inspired by art of some kind, fueled by visual and other creativities. Tell us about that. Brent Terry: To me, the world is one giant interactive art installation. Even I don’t know what might set my antennae aquiver. In general, though, the two things that make me want to sit down and write are the natural world and other people’s art, particularly music and visual art, most especially painting. Since my poetry tends to treat narrative as a fractured and reassembled mosaic of sound and image, I guess this relationship makes sense. My most thrilling, ecstatic, transformational moments seem to come at concerts, museums and galleries. The first time I visited the Museum of Modern Art in NYC I sat on a bench in a room full of Pollock paintings shaking and weeping. I swear I could actually hear them. I just spent an entire Wolf Alice concert on the edge of leaving my body. As a poet I want to join in a duet with other artists, I want to make people feel like I do at a rock concert, jazz show or symphony, like I did in front of those Pollocks. Tell us about your process when writing ekphrastic poetry. My process varies a little depending on whatever work I am writing in response to. Sometimes I riff on one element of a painting, collage or piece of music, then another. These poems tend to be kind of a loose, looping dialogue with the original work. This is especially true when responding to abstract painting or collage. Other times I kind of enter the painting and move around, describing what is happening, or retelling the story of what is happening on the canvas from a new point of view, or in a new moment. A lot of my ekphrastic work is like, “Hey, this makes me think of (or feel) that.” With music, it’s more of a synaesthetic thing: sound making me see – and say – images and textures, colors and events. How is this different from your process for writing in general? It is not much different at all. Something catches my eye or ear, I start riffing and free associating, become absolutely obsessed, then come out the other end with a poem and a slightly stunned feeling, wondering, “Wait, what just happened?” Do you ever teach ekphrastic writing? What are your approaches? I do teach it. It seems to be a bit more hit or miss than other types of exercises, as it sort of has to match a writer’s innate sensibilities. One thing I do is have the students give a narrative account of what’s happening on the canvas, either in omniscient third person, or from the perspective of a character in the work. Oddly enough, having the student give a narrative account of an abstract or collaged work leads to very exciting, interesting poems. Sometimes I lead them through a guided association exercise, asking questions about the work, which they must answer immediately with a line of poetry. I have had students listen to a piece of music in class, free-writing in response, without regard for sense, then building a poem from that. Your poetry is difficult to describe. It is swirling, psychedelic, chalk full of references that are stunning in their specificity. How would you explain what you’re doing? Aside from particular artists, films, musicians, etc, what or who are your influences? I try to notice everything, engage the world with all of my senses. In fact, I can’t turn it off. Everything gets into the head and the heart, then onto the page. We are all, at every moment dealing with an incredible array of thoughts, feelings, memories and sensory stimuli, and though we mostly function by juggling just a very few of these, while making the rest into background noise, my approach is to more or less reject the very possibility of a concise, coherent narrative, and let these myriad wee beasties traipsing the head and heart all hold sway simultaneously. I just try to herd them into the corral that is the poem, let them mill about until they make a sort of sense, tell a sort of story. Or, as I think I mentioned before, make a mosaic that up close seems just a swirl of colour and texture, but at a distance begins to tell a story, paint a picture. So many of my poems are written after a run, where the world has been reduced to a psychedelic kaleidoscope of shape and colour, bits of sound, the kiss of wind, rain or sweat on skin, a whiff of flower or mold, perfume, salt-tang or exhaust. This very much dictates how my poems appear on the page. Whew! Did that even answer your question? What kinds of art move you the most? Tell us about styles or isms, or about particular artists that speak louder than others. Abstract art seems to reach out, grab me by the scruff of the neck and yank me in. The first art that made me want to write was definitely Abstract Expressionism, the NY School work of America at mid-century. I too respond strongly to Surrealism, the idea that combining two or more things that are not usually related will help one understand the “real” world more completely. This makes sense to me completely, especially in a world that grows more surreal by the hour. I love the slightly askew realism of Hopper or Ruscha. I can get lost in it, write the journey of finding my way out. Music works this way too. I lose myself in many kinds of music, muddle about in melody, rhythm, thorny thickets of mood and texture, then let this guide the poems that come after. I love French music from the era of Satie, Saint-Saens, Debussy and Ravel. Joe Jackson and Green Day make me see stories in the air. The lush harmonies of Warpaint, the paint-peeling guitars and lovely melodies in the music of the aforementioned Wolf Alice create a delicious tension I try to inhabit or lasso. God, it’s endless, really. Your work, obviously! What’s next for Brent Terry? What kind of projects do you have in the works? I am involved in a collaboration with a certain painter/collagist you might know, with each of us responding to the work of the other, work that I hope ends up as a gorgeous, album cover-sized art book, as well as a gallery show involving all the senses. I am beginning work on a collaboration with nature/Jazz/sports photographer Frank Poulin, and am trying to find time to work with jazz legend, bassist Nat Reeves. I am about 110 pages into my second novel, and am writing a collection of personal essays about my life as a runner. So many projects! Keeps the despair at bay. ** Read ekphrastic Brent Terry: The Addictive Futility of Hope Runners in the Snow Tinker Bell Gone Bad Nude Descending a Staircase Live Model at the Salon for Abject Expressionists An auto-cento for Joan Mitchell Painters in Nirvana T-shirts shout colour at canvas, keep their eyes peeled for the future writhing in clots of viscous smoke. They swag tradeshow totebags. They polish their pistols in your blood, whistle through badlands of slag and ash, flash their Underoos, blackout drunk and cracking wise about shotgun weddings or pigment that’ll set your hair on fire. The river rages with snowmelt. Remember when silver hammers knocked you in the knees among summer’s tender tufts? Here, even the flowers are trying to kill you. Somebody says a blessing over the tater tots. Your head is white noise, but your footprints litter the lawn like eighth-notes thunderclapped from some sentient symphony. You’re a valentine with a switchblade inside, geyser of figments splashed faster than retinas can register. Red, red pickup truck. Stubblefield crusted with snow. Hey, maybe you should shatter yourself, seduce them into swallowing shards. Mayhap you should hang a mosaic of baby pics and dropped crockery, murder your crows in a burst of blood and feathers, conjure an onomatopoeia of spangles and flash grenades, bluenotes and crab shacks and stars. You can’t sit still, so you gallop a hundred different directions, one part pink ladyslipper, two parts bullet in cahoots with the sky. Not sin, but satisfaction at first light. The gods be in your head, your brush ablaze. Your name? It doesn’t matter. Brent Terry from 21st Century Autoimmune Blues, Unsolicited Press
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On the Board It was an honour to be asked to serve the city thus, to dress in finery and sit with other matrons. If the verve of such a portrait should be dignity, the painter has done well, since now like then distinction holds its own. Gowns are jet-black, long, even layered, gauze or lace slipped in- to proper places, often clasped. Slack around the wrist or neck lie strands of pearls, while specimens depend from every ear surrounded by an ample set of curls. Rings circle fingers of each volunteer as staff hold cloaks or usher children through, the latter’s tattered clothing well in view. Jane Blanchard This sonnet, first published in Snakeskin, is the work of Jane Blanchard, who lives and writes in Georgia (USA). Jane’s latest collection with Kelsay Books is Never Enough Already (2021). Join us Thursday night for a fascinating lineup of art to inspire your writing. Our workshops are interactive, intimate sessions designed to stir creativity and ensure a supportive atmosphere to spark ideas, poems, and stories. Discover intriguing artists, discuss with other writers, and launch new works. Our workshops are an amazing place of community and creativity. We'd love to have you join. We have an afternoon session on Sunday as well.
Creation of the Birds That autumn at the factory times were hard. We had no silken threads left to stitch wings, and plumage stocks were dangerously low. In warehouse D no chirruping was heard, so, grudgingly, they called The Expert in. His voice was soft – he made no great impression. The bosses said to leave him well alone. Something about his gold eyes made us shiver, so we kept quiet, asked him no questions; his workroom’s light still shone as we went home. ‘You could see his heart and all its strings,’ our children said, ‘he painted feathers with a mourning sound, a sound like violins.’ They said he held a prism in his fingers, made latticeworks of song, sadness and sun and breathed a fluttering pulse into each one. At dusk, we left our factory posts with ears full of their words, while branches overhead sighed with the soft weight of new birds. Jen Feroze Jen Feroze lives by the sea in Essex, UK, with her husband and two small sleep thieves. Her work has recently appeared in Capsule Stories, The Madrigal, Gingernut Magazine and a number of zines from The Mum Poem Press. Her debut collection, The Colour of Hope, was published in 2020. Find her on instagram @the_colourofhope and on Twitter @jenlareine. Onna Alone, back upright, cross-legged I sit in front of a blackboard and look into my future. I just recently learned to cross my legs. As a child, in white blouse and blue pleated skirt, I sat, knees together. As a young woman, in a loose white cotton gown opened at the back, I first learned to spread my legs, just a bit, for my health, the Doctor said. As a lover, my warm skin basted with sweat, I extended my legs and moaned in sync with the spasms of my thighs. As a wife, hands mined a life from my vault and I cursed my husband. Never again, I thought and threw out my calico dresses. Today, I enter this classroom, sit and begin to follow the white signs on the blackboard that will lead to my future. I sit alone, legs crossed, back upright like a raised nail and dare anyone to hammer me down. Tou Notice the horizontal divisions between upper and lower eyelids? Bedroom eyes. They filter the invading light armed with crude images, sound and colour. Notice the mouth, opened in awe that, like a sluice, discharges unprocessed images, like slag from a smelting pot, still struggling to solidify into some recognizable pattern. Kawa Two parallel currents, finite in scope, rush adamantly upward. A third enters from below and changes course to align itself parallel to the other two. Whether forced to conform to the existing flow or consciously redirecting itself to mimic its partners, the result is the same: the channel has broadened. Mark Russo Mark Russo, born January 1, 1950 in Queens, New York City, New York. As a student of the University of Cincinnati he focused on the Greek, Latin, German, and French languages and World Literature. After running the family business for 20 years, he graduated from the University of Maine School of Law and was accepted to the Bar in 2002. He practiced Immigration Law in the State of Maine for over 18 years. He has published stories with Flash Fiction Magazine, New Reader Magazine, 34th Parallel Magazine, Knot Magazine, Literally Stories and Potato Soup Journal. How I Want to Be Wanted That man who painted me nude in his Paris studio and later seduced me on a velvet divan-- he was no kind of match for his lions and snakes. I missed being ravished by wildness. In the end, I dreamed myself back to the rain forest, to those tropical snakes so inflamed by my beauty they had to be soothed by a flute player while they writhed into shapes that mimicked my hips, my breasts and my thighs. That’s how I want to be wanted-- with the type of desire the lions had for my throat. Laura Ann Reed Laura Ann Reed, a native of Berkeley, California, was a dancer in the San Francisco Bay Area prior to becoming the Leadership Development Trainer at the San Francisco headquarters of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She and her husband now reside in Western Washington. Her work has been anthologized in How To Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope, and has appeared in Blue Unicorn, Grey Sparrow, The Ekphrastic Review, Verse Virtual and other journals. Stunning photography by our very own! Contributor John Paul Caponigro is a photographer and this is from his series in Antarctica. We are thrilled to use John Paul's work to inspire our writing. Click here for information and rules for the challenge. All are welcome. Join us! Accepting poetry and fiction. Under Matariki Mother, where are we and why are we here? Daughter, we are in the land and of the land, and we are here because we are here. Mother, who or what is the land? The land, Daughter, is Papatuanuku, our Earth Mother, who cares for us all, and for whom we must care. And the land is you and me, and all that has gone before, and all that will be. But Mother, how can we be part of the land? How can the Earth Mother be you and me? Daughter, human life originated from the land, and the hand that painted us mixed clay, ochre, lime, and burnt kauri gum together with oils to create our earthy, muted tones. We are therefore earth and art. But Mother, what about all the blue and grey and light far above us? My daughter, the blue and grey are also part of us. We are the descendants of Ranganui the Sky Father and Papatuanuku the Earth Mother, and the hand that created us gave us shared colours, contours, and brush strokes, and an inner light that shines through like a mighty waiata that we all sing in harmony together. So, Mother, what about those other lights that shine so brightly up there? Daughter, some say that they are stars and that they shine even more fiercely than our sun. Some say that they are the eyes of an angry god. Others claim they are the seven Pleiades sisters who were turned by an ancient Greek god into doves so that they could fly away from danger on earth. Still others would call it “Starry Night”. But then, there are those who say that they are Matariki and her daughters who will use their mana to guide the winter sun safely around our earth. And are the bright lights also part of us, Mother? Yes, Daughter, for our eyes reflect all that is out there, including the stars. And, like Matariki and her daughters, we are Mother and Daughter. Mother, does that mean that one day we may be up there with them? Of course, Little One, but we may also rest in the breast of Papatuanuku, or just be ourselves in the present moment. I’m confused, Mother, it all seems so vast and impossible. It is vast and impossible, Little One. But you don’t need to worry. I am your mother. And we have a mother above, a mother below, and the mother beyond, who brushed us into being in art, and in symbiosis with the earth, and sky, and stars. And her name, Little One, is Star. But Mother, what can we do? Daughter, just look up at the sky and stars with me, lean with me into the land, rest your head upon my shoulder, and feel my arm around you. And know that you love me, and I love you, and that two are one, and one is all. Thank you Mother. Goodnight. You are right, Daughter, it is a good night. Vivien Van Rij Link to Maori myth https://www.tepapa.govt.nz/discover-collections/read-watch-play/maori/matariki-maori-new-year/legend-matariki-and-six-sisters Vivien was born and brought up in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her first career was as a performing artist during which she travelled the world, working in professional theatre in places as diverse as Europe and North Africa. Vivien's second career was as an academic lecturer in English in Education at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and she has a doctorate and several published scholarly articles to her name. Now that she has retired, Vivien has time to pursue her ongoing interest in the visual and performing arts and literature, and to write poetry. She particularly enjoys writing poetry about art works by Star Gossage. I Won’t Let You Drown Broken pieces of you float on a blue mirror sea, shards of light and color pierce the doldrums of your heart; the best parts of you drifting. I want to net and steal you from drowning, throw you a line, lift you up and let you drip dry in the sun over the edge of the deck, drape you like slack rope on a boom. I want to hoist you high, set loose your compass luff you in the wind that might breach your sharp edges. and soften your scars until smooth as beach glass. I want to collect your flotsam and jetsam and pack them away in the cabin where you can open them one box at a time instead of watching the mess of it waste on waves out of reach, lost. Let me take the con, paint the blue band on the hull. Let me fly the blue flag on the mast, and look for the albatross that bears your name, I will point it out if it flies too far above your horizon, like calling “Land, Ho!” at dawn after a windless water night. I want to take the tiller, turn the rudder, steer you back toward yourself, or at least back toward dry land, where I can tie your mooring line, cleat to pilon, where you can soak in sorrow for a while, turn transom to your unimagined future, but not drown, never drown, even if you feel like you might until you can finally see a buoy of light. Julene Waffle Julene Waffle is a NYS public school teacher, a writer, a business owner, a wife, a mother of three boys, two dogs, and three cats, and more fish than she can count. She loves nature and feels at home among the trees. She earned degrees from Hartwick College and Binghamton University. Her work has appeared in several journals such as La Presa, The English Journal; River, Blood, Corn Literary Journal; The Nonconformist, the anthologies of Civilization in Crisis, Seeing Things, and American Writers Review, and a chapbook entitled So I Will Remember. in which I imagine Gustav Klimt's The Kiss is about infertility rather than lust, by Annie Marhefka4/1/2022 in which I imagine Gustav Klimt's The Kiss is about infertility rather than lust The painting hangs heavy, a burdensome cloak of thick, layered oils and glinting flecks of gold, seventy-two inches of life-sized, soul-sized, figures enmeshed in golden embrace, the Viennese viewing room empty, but for me and my love. We cannot see his face but we can feel his yearning. Others see it as romantic but I imagine it is mournful; a longing not for what could take place under his golden robe, but what has been and has passed, the desire for what used to be. Her eyes are closed; I wonder if she dreams of a time when a kiss was just a kiss, and not a prelude to the act of conception; if she grips his neck to remind him of making out drunk on red wine and two bodies moving to music and lust. His hold is less embrace than panicked clutch, as if his sun-kissed hands are all that keep her flaxen body from crumbling to the garden floor, a desperate clinging on to protect her from dirt and the strangling weeds that pursue her and crawling into herself. Her dainty hand does not drape dreamily around his neck, but rather knuckles scrape and claw and grasp at flesh and muscle and the familiar need to save what is left of her womanhood, a hood that is without mothering. Gustav has drawn a peculiar cliff off the edge of the floral blanket below them; we glimpse a peek into the drab void, the precipice of which is wedged with her lengthy, aching toes pressing downward, feeling the breath of the air below and craving its blight. He presses lips into cheek as if to let go of skin is to let go of her, of them, of love, their togetherness slipping into the meadow below, awash with the soil of infertility and despair and shame, of failing him. Some say he must be Orpheus and she—a translucent, fading silhouette—Eurydice; and perhaps even they too, struggled, I imagine, she—trying to procure for him a child, before her descent to Hades; he—trying to hold onto the she she was before, keep her in the now. Annie Marhefka Annie Marhefka is a writer in Baltimore, Maryland. She delights in traveling, boating on the Chesapeake Bay, and hiking with her toddler. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Coffee + Crumbs, The Phare, Sledgehammer, Capsule Stories, Cauldron Anthology, The Elpis Pages, For Women Who Roar, Remington Review, and The Hallowzine. Annie is working on a memoir about mother/daughter relationships; you can find her writing on Instagram @anniemarhefka, Twitter @charmcityannie, and at anniemarhefka.com. |
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