Ninth Poem Published in Three Days

Isère, France

I Wish It Would Snow for Christmas is the latest poem from one of the collections written this year: The Year the World Ended... Not. After Post Mayotte Trauma (French) and Carmine Carnival (English) from which most poems were published in various publications worldwide but that are still under publishers' consideration...

Just six days before the end of this peculiar year, I have had hundreds of poems published, not counting non fiction posts I published on blogs such as Poet & Geek.

These last three days, there were poems in Flutter Poetry Journal & Rolling Thunder Press, Winter 2012 Issues, MadSwirl Poetry Forum, Reprint Poetry Magazine, The Gypsy Art Villa (thanks Belinda Subraman) and another poem The Divine Earthling/La divine terrienne written in English and translated into French for and sent to Cathy Garcia who posted it on two of the blogs she edits delitdepoesie.hautetfort.com and cathygarcia.hautetfort.com.

After almost twenty years spent writing, I start feeling kind of professional and thinking that what Alexandra Berdah wrote in the French poetry journal Libellé in 1995 when I first published my poem "Zelda" - translated into English since then, and printed and reprinted (Poetry Super Highway Yom-Hashoah 2011) here and there - that I would be one of the must-read writers of the 21st century. OK, she exaggerated a lot. What are we in this tiny world of the independent press and al. Yet, I haven't felt that well for months really; and if the first half of the year was awful, the second half has been awesome.

Thanks to all who trusted me this year and published my work, read my blogs and submitted work to mgversion2>datura & mgv2>publishing.

Reprint Poetry Magazine

In May 2012, I read on Facebook that Ben Nardolilli, one of the American poets I admire the most, had published poems on this site which I checked out. They offer space for previously published poems that have become hard to find in the world of independent publishing.
I sent half a dozen poems that were once published online on Magnapoets blog between 2007 and 2009. One of them, divided into three different parts was actually written in Manchester in 1997 and is the one the editors of this site chose to publish. Here is Fireflies.

Revue Nouveaux délits 44

Janv. Fév. Mars 2013

Stopper l’immonde

Si vous avez cette revue entre les mains, c’est que nous aurons, une fois de plus, raté la fin du monde. C’est plutôt une bonne et non surprenante nouvelle, mais l’humanité a besoin de se faire peur, peut-être pour comprendre où est l’essentiel. Aussi, puisque nous sommes en l’an 1 après la non-fin du monde, ce qui serait merveilleux, ce serait d’assister cette année et les années qui suivent, à la fin de l’immonde. L’immonde, pas besoin d’en dresser la liste, nous la connaissons toutes et tous même si chacun(e) y va de ses variantes, mais peut-être n’avons-nous pas encore tout à fait conscience de la façon dont nous y participons ou pas. Nos façons de penser, de vivre, de consommer, la façon dont nous entrons en relation avec l’autre et avec nous-mêmes, participent, qu’on le veuille ou non, à l’immonde. Personne ne peut, à elle, à lui tout(e) seul(e), changer ce monde, mais chacun(e) d'entre nous a la possibilité de réfléchir à sa façon d’en être et il est temps, il est urgence, de changements radicaux. Les alternatives, les solutions, elles sont là, à portée de main, de clic, de choix, qu’elles soient citoyennes, écologiques, spirituelles, ces trois termes étant étroitement liés, c’est à chacun de s’y intéresser, d’en parler, d’y participer autant que possible - autant qu’il reste encore de possibles - parce que vraiment là, il nous faut stopper l’immonde avant qu’il ne nous dévore...

CG

Nombreux sont ceux qui disent :

on ne peut pas aider tout le monde,

et n'aident personne.

Christiane Singer

nd44-10hmc.jpg

AU SOMMAIRE


Délit de poésie :

Fanny Sheper ; Walter Ruhlmann ; Pascal Batard ; Jean-Michel Hatton ; Hosho Mc Creesh (Usa)

Résonance :

Le vent d’Anatolie - Zyrànna Zatèli (Grèce)

Dernières nouvelles du Sud - Luis Sepúlveda et Daniel Mordzinski

Ici comme ailleurs de Lee Seung-U (Corée du Sud)

Et quelques délits d’(in)citations tombés sur les coins de pages en flocons d’encre.


Vous buterez sur le bulletin de complicité au fond en sortant, attention, il se peut qu’il cherche à vous séduire. Si ce n’est pas déjà fait, sortez abonnés, c’est bon pour la tête, surtout en hiver.

Illustrateur :

Jean-Louis Millet

jlmillet@free.fr


"jlmi ? Grand spécialiste en rien mais curieux de tout :

dessin, peinture, photo, écriture, édition virtuelle, chasse aux alternatives…

le tout mis en actions très concrètes dans l'animation toute virtuelle de blogs et de sites :

"Au hasard de connivences" un potlatch poético-artistique http://jlmi22.hautetfort.com/

"Evazine", une petit île d'asile poétique http://evazine.com/

"Zen-évasion", un egosite http://www.zen-evasion.com/

La croisée des "Voix dissonantes" http://jlmi.hautetfort.com/

Allez y faire un tour...

Rolling Thunder Press Winter 2012 Issue

Rolling Thunder press Winter 2012 Issue
Front & back cover

Edited by Tommy Anthony. Order your copy here.

Featuring: Jeff Dupuis, PD Lietz, Kim Farleigh, Samantha Memi, Jeff Kappel, Nicky Yurcuba, Penelope Maru, L. Wayne Russell, Crazy Lombardo the Master of Pork, Rachael Delamar, Rodney Foster, David S. Pointer, Sheryl Gillard, Christopher Barnes, Mark Blickley, J. Bradley, Walter Ruhlmann, and Sarah-Joy Elizabeth.

Running Up That Hill

Not a KB's song but one of WR's poems - one after the other - they all come in bulks - published on MadSwirl poetry forum. There will and must be a moment in time when I have to talk about this editorial team and bunch of mad poets from Houston, TX. "Hills Filled with Fright" is the seventh poem published on this forum. Am I becoming a regular? I know with them, it is not a question of who I am, but what I submit. Each time I do is like doing it for the first time as I never know if the work I submit will be selected. Whether they select it with blind eyes or discuss it for whatever time needed, I always know that if they take it, it is because they liked it. Here it is.

Keeping Couched in Flutter Poetry Journal

Flutter Poetry Journal Winter 2012 Issue Cover
Steampunk Book courtesy of Pinterest

I send poems away to editors I have never worked with, not really knowing what they like, who they prefer publishing, though you may read their publications, you may fall out of their interest.

This is quite a challenge really. Sometimes, you end not knowing whether the editors/publishers you are used to sending poems to accept your work just because it's you and you have set more than just publishing tasks between you and them, or because your work is worth it.

That's why it is necessary to test it - your work - to the eyes and taste of other publishers.

Sandy Sue Benitez accepted one of my poems written at the beginning of the current year and featuring in that collection I have been working since I completed Post Mayotte Trauma and Carmine Carnival.

They were just random poems at the beginning but I soon collected them into something coherent, where the main topic is about the life cycle, how one starts from one point to land somewhere else where things should/could have been pretty much different but aren't.

This poem can be read here. There are more to read in the Winter 2012 issue.

EEA Chroniqué

Une note de lecture ou chronique littéraire de Patrice Maltaverne éditeur de la revue Traction-Brabant sur son blog à lire ici.

Ppigpenn's 10 Questions

Nancy by Karlos Gallagher

Big bad boys, big bad wolves? I answered ten questions sent by Catfish McDaris and the answers are posted on a blog he seems to own with Ben John Smith - an avatar, a persona, his Mr Hyde, or a genuine man I haven't heard of?
Anyway, some answers by other artists or writers are mindful and/or hilarious.
Have a go! It's here:
http://ppigpenn.blogspot.fr/?zx=876b36f1c499e787

Etranges anges anglais publié chez mgv2>publishing

Unicorn by Craig J. McCafferty

« Je n’ai rien gardé de toi, si ce n’est cette brûlure qui colle à la peau.

Peau rouge de mes nuits sans sommeil, à quelle ombre appartiennent tes veines ? »

Voilà peut-être pourquoi je me suis récemment appliqué à remettre en état et à réunir sous un même titre ces trois recueils écrits entre 1995 et 1997 en Grande-Bretagne, de Bath à Manchester. Parce que comme le laissent comprendre ces deux vers, l'un de ceux par lequel toute mon activité littéraire – autant comme auteur que comme éditeur – a pris son envol a aussi été l'un de mes plus grands inspirateurs – puisque la muse est réservée au genre féminin.

Oui, ce sont des poèmes d'amour pour la plupart, mais sont-ils sirupeux pour autant ? Je ne le crois pas. Je me trompe peut-être, mais le climat social dans lequel ils ont été écrits a annihilé l'eau de rose et la fleur bleue sans scrupule et pour le plus grand bien de ces poèmes.

La naissance des anges et Deux anges sous la lune sont deux recueils écrits en observateur de l'illustrateur anglais Craig McCafferty (auteur entre autres de l'avatar de la revue Mauvaise graine/mgversion2>datura), tandis que la troisième partie Au sortir de la nuit, témoigne du recul pris après la séparation. L'ange est tombé, il a ouvert les yeux et s'est remis à vivre pour lui-même ; souvent dans l'angoisse de l'abandon et du désert affectif qu'il abhorre au plus haut point pour en avoir souffert pendant plusieurs années auparavant.

Si le jeu et la variété de la langue ne sont pas toujours à la hauteur des attentes d'un lecteur ordinaire de poésie contemporaine, l'utilisation des images, fortes, parfois crues, est un atout majeur pour le transport vers l'art poétique.

Dans ce texte, comme dans tous ceux que j'ai écrits, je fus surveillé de près par mes maîtres à penser que sont Baudelaire, Hérédia, Cros, et les germanophones Kafka, Zweig et Rilke.

http://www.lulu.com/shop/walter-ruhlmann/etranges-anges-anglais/paperback/product-20547730.html

Pyrokinection November 30

Two more poems published this week that's lot of them. Here again AJ Huffman's Pyrokinection selected two fresh poems November Children and Concrete Stairs to be read here.

Poetic Diversity Issue 8 December 2012

art by tatiana tulskaya

That's so weird: sometimes you can hear the wind blowing, feel abandoned, then all he words you had sent out there are finally caught and transferred onto paper or screen.

Two other poems are published in the online journal of literature from California: Poetic Diversity run by Marie Lecrivain and co edited by a team of undoubtedly brave and interesting people among whom her mascots Puff and Mr Poe - I think they are her cats.

"Another Appointment" is the poem echoing the opening piece of the collection Carmine Carnival "Another Waiting Room", published in Touch Poetry Journal last March.

"The Bowl Hat" - inspired by Mike Cannel's pwoermds - is also taken from the unpublished collection Carmine Carnival.

Both can be read here.

Cables & Fuses from Oxidation Published

Patricia Carroll

That was a strange time, the mid-1990s. I had this concept of writing inspired by all the science fiction movies and novels I had read since as early as 11. An apocalyptic context - a time when machines take over human beings before they are themselves conquered and stricken down by artificial otherworldly beings.
I wrote this collection - Oxidation - around 1994. It was once read on a local radio and published only lately  in French by L'Être.
A part of it - Cables and Fuses - appears in the latest issue of David Fraser's Ascent Aspirations, the Canadian online journal of literature and the arts. It is also hosting many poets and artists I admire a lot, which pleases me even more: RD Armstrong, Lyn Lifshin, Norman J. Olson.
This new issue can be read here.

Kind of Hurricane Press - The Mind[less] Muse

Lately I submitted three poems from this work-in-progress collection: poems written since I came back from the Indian Ocean. The publisher I submitted them to, Amy J. Huffman, runs Kind of a Hurricane Press to which are linked several online journal: The Mind[less] Muse, Pyrokinection, Jellyfish Whispers and Napalm and Novocain. I love these titles by the way.
Anyway, one of these poems Late Epiphanies appears on The Mind[less] Muse and the two others will soon be posted on Pyrokinection.
Updates soon.

Posts and poems

Two things today.

I published a new post on Poet&Geek's blog. This is Gutenberg's Heirs - The Sequel, in which I use Cathy Garcia's and Jean-Pierre Lesieur's answers to my previous post about online publishing vs inprint. Poet&Geek' blog is here

Then I answered Joseph Ouaknine's call for submission for Les cahiers de poésie earlier this month and had the great surprise this morning to see a message coming in the mail box asking me to proof read the pdf file attached in which the whole of Les engelures pendulaires/The Pendulum Chilblains appear. The English translation was published earlier this year by Gregory Vincent St Thomasino in E.ratio. It is the first time the French version is accepted somewhere.

That was quite a surprise really.
Les cahiers de poésie n°32 - Décembre 2012 - 20€

Poet & Geek issue 5

Lately I wrote about my brand new occupation as guest editor in Poet & Geek team. Well, that's also because the recently accepted three poems from the collection I am currently working on. These poems can be found here.
Image by Susan Bell Poet & Geek issue 5 cover

***

There have been so much work done throughout the year. Mind you, I have been off work for five whole months and as a TESL - teacher of English - I always have plenty of time ahead of me.

You know - well, French readers know - that I am trying to collect funds to publish a poetry collection I polished up lately that dates back to the time I lived in the UK: 1995-1997. Etranges anges anglais - Strange English Angels - I submitted it to several French publishers and one answered with what we call an author's contract: when the author has to pay for or at least buy a certain number of his own books, which I found actually outrageous. I refused at first, but then tried to turn it into my advantage by raising a subscription to be able to pay the publisher and have the book printed. I won't make it to what I need apparently and already plan to withdraw the book from the hands of this publisher who I don't blame that much for what he suggests - I never pre-sold more than he would probably have.
So this manuscript will also be self-published in a way, as it is going to be sent to mgv2>publishing who I am the editor of and will accept of course the work. I sometimes feel schizophrenic...

I kind of want to "get rid" of these old collections as fast as possible and concentrate on the ones I am currently working on or have even completed. As some of you know, Lapwing Publishing, Belfast (Northern Ireland) accepted De Maore from which most poems were published in the years 2011/2012.

I have this other collection in French Post Mayotte Trauma which poems were, there again, nearly all published in journals and magazines. That one will also keep unpublished for some time I reckon.
Carmine Carnival, which as I said in a previous post is under consideration at several publishers in the Americas and the UK.

That other one Caves Full of Absence - erotic and autobiographic poems - from which excerpts have been and will be published here and there.

I now have over thirty poems - some of which have already appeared in publications - collected in a single untitled document and still to be completed; I know this collection to be has not come to a term yet. That one will be more about the cultural similarities and differences of my homeland - Normandy - and the place I currently live in - Bresse, plus a squaring up with my family and a few other things.

Anyway, as I wrote before, winter is favorable for writing. I am not done with it yet.

New Editorial Occupation

Recently, poems from a yet new collection I am working on were accepted by a British-Scottish online journal of poetry. As they were looking for an input in their editorial team, I applied and got the new job :-p.
I have just placed my first post on their blog which can be found here.

Their website  where soon issue 5 will be available for everyone to read with new work from Andrew McCallum, Stephen Pardue, Sue Bell (who took this picture), Amanda Dales, Laura Kayne, Rehan Qayoom, Amy Ekins, Bridget Khursheed, B.Z. Niditch, Stella Pye, Michelle D'costa and Ed Waverley, and myself of course.

Illustration by Sue Bell from http://poetandgeek.blogspot.com

Bulletin de souscription - Etranges anges anglais

Bulletin de souscription

Etranges anges anglais, de Walter Ruhlmann

à paraître aux éditions Le chasseur abstrait

Prix de la souscription à prix d'auteur 13,00€

Présentation par l'auteur

« Je n’ai rien gardé de toi, si ce n’est cette brûlure qui colle à la peau.

Peau rouge de mes nuits sans sommeil, à quelle ombre appartiennent tes veines ? »

Voilà peut-être pourquoi je me suis récemment appliqué à remettre en état et à réunir sous un même titre ces trois recueils écrits entre 1995 et 1997 en Grande-Bretagne, de Bath à Manchester. Parce que comme le laissent comprendre ces deux vers, l'un de ceux par lequel toute mon activité littéraire – autant comme auteur que comme éditeur – a pris son envol a aussi été l'un de mes plus grands inspirateurs – puisque la muse est réservée au genre féminin.

Oui, ce sont des poèmes d'amour pour la plupart, mais sont-ils sirupeux pour autant ? Je ne le crois pas. Je me trompe peut-être, mais le climat social dans lequel ils ont été écrits a annihilé l'eau de rose et la fleur bleue sans scrupule et pour le plus grand bien de ces poèmes.

La naissance des anges et Deux anges sous la lune sont deux recueils écrits en observateur de l'illustrateur anglais Craig McCafferty (auteur entre autres de l'avatar de la revue Mauvaise graine/mgversion2>datura), tandis que la troisième partie Au sortir de la nuit, témoigne du recul pris après la séparation. L'ange est tombé, il a ouvert les yeux et s'est remis à vivre pour lui-même ; souvent dans l'angoisse de l'abandon et du désert affectif qu'il abhorre au plus haut point pour en avoir souffert pendant plusieurs années auparavant.

Si le jeu et la variété de la langue ne sont pas toujours à la hauteur des attentes d'un lecteur ordinaire de poésie contemporaine, l'utilisation des images, fortes, parfois crues, est un atout majeur pour le transport vers l'art poétique.

Dans ce texte, comme dans tous ceux que j'ai écrits, je fus surveillé de près par mes maîtres à penser que sont Baudelaire, Hérédia, Cros, et les germanophones Kafka, Zweig et Rilke.

First Frost

Winter has come and though I like hot countries and the sun, I must admit that since I was a child, I have considered winter as one of my favorite season; Quietness, cold, keeping warm, the purity when everything dies just to make sure it is going to resuscitate some months later.
Winter is my hidden brother, my secret lover. I am an October child, and know of some French poet who has called his blog: Enfant de novembre - November child. I guess the link between he and I is that we both like winter or at least that we are thankful to winter for giving us so many ideas, concepts, so much inspiration throughout our writing process, I cannot say career - still too young and that would be snooty.

Anyway, what does the winter drive me to do? What am I up to? I am waiting for some great publications to come out: Poet & Geek (Scotland), Traversée (Belgium), others I mustn't talk about not to spoil anything and in which poems - in French or English - will appear. More excerpts from Post Mayotte Trauma aka PMT - a collection that was written earlier this year and has been widely acclaimed by fellow authors and publishers and from which most poems have been published here and there. No one is taking it for publication as a collection though, well not yet. Patience... I have plenty of collections left unpublished, that's why I translated most of them into the English language and submitted the poems to various publications worldwide. Successfully.

Meanwhile, I have been writing quite a few pices, not so much as in the first months of the year during which, besides PMT, I also wrote another collection based on the color red: Carmine Carnival from which poems were published throughout the year, and started another one Caves Full of Absence - erotic poetry with a few poems published. This one needs reworking hard though and there are many poems still to be written.

Since July - earlier actually - but really since I settled here in my new house, new place, new job, new life, I started writing poems - single and singular.
Some have been published, others will be... I started collected them into a single document, over twenty pieces... I don't think I have as many poems written in English since 2005 as I have poems in French since 1994, but that must be close.

Some time around this year, there may also be the publication of my collection De Maore (From Mayotte), written last year and that Northern-Ireland Lapwing Publishing was interested in - earlier this year. I have no news, but I guess Dennis Greig needs more time to manage the publication of this collection.

The publisher is busy too. X & Friends saw its first volume published earlier this month Amber Decker & Friends, available to buy from lulu.com and to read from issuu.com and calameo.com. Another volume will be out in December Norman Olson & Friends, while in November, I will edit Alphabet City by poet(s) Anon Ymous... A strange encounter and a beautiful piece of work I am proud to have the opportunity to have read and to publish.
Then, January, mgv2_71 GOLF: Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden; a pain-staking issue that hasn't met its goal, yet.

Next year, if we survive the blast, and we will as I am sure no blast will occur, promises to be a very busy year. mgversion2>datura turns quarterly and I will publish a volume of X & Friends every two months, while other collections of poetry will also be published by mgv2>publishing. And more of my poems to be published here and there. Winter is my cozy lair, my dead leaf mold, my shaky pal, the triggering of the best I have ever done .

Blue & Yellow Dog Fall 2012 Issue

Blue & Yellow is the last publication in which the last excerpts from Night Observatories are published. Some were published in the past years in man other publications: Inclement, Madhatters' Blog, Ygdrasil and Mad Swirl.
Early 2013, this short collection will be published again by mgv2>publishing, it had been self-published 16 years ago.
Indeed, Night Observatories - Les observatoires nocturnes in French - was written in the mid-1990s and published as a supplement to the journal Mauvaise graine in 1997.
I translated these poems into the English language and submitted them to various publications which accepted them - most of them.
This collection is now ready to be released on a wider scale: on line (through issuu.com) but also in hard copies which will be available through lulu.com

This month will also be the time to launch the first volume of a new series X & Friend, with poems written by Amber Decker and her fellow poets. The basis of this series is to invite a poet, writer, artist and make them co-editor. So far, ten poets and artists have responded to my invitation. This leads us to the year 2014.
Hopefully, more will follow, and maybe French authors too, who knows.

Meanwhile, the Fall 2012 issue of Blue & Yellow Dog can be read here.

The IMPpress Issue 4 now on line

It's out and it's full of good poetry. Besides, those of you who would like to know what my voice sounds like can hear me reading these two poems - "Bath" and "With Love from Euphor" - published in this excellent poetry journal run by John Richardson, the editor.

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

Golden Triangle Issue 3

Last Spring, I was inspired by a call for submissions emanating from some publication I cannot remember the name of. Anyway, I submitted some of these pieces grouped under the title Flashes and two of them 7 & 9 are published in the now late but unforgettable magazine The Golden Triangle. It is amazing how some publications pass away so fast making it even more amazing to me that mgv2>datura has been going on for over 16 years now.

Anyway, these Flashes are here for you to read.

Requiem Magazine Issue 9

Lately, I got puzzled at how most French publishers and editors rejected the poems I wrote back in the 90s early 2000s. These poems, I translated them into English and all of them - or most of them have now been published by all sorts of publications from the English-speaking world - French say anglo-saxon. This is commonly accepted to refer to the English-speaking world which also gets on my nerves as it refers to the middle-ages to most of the English-speakers.
Anyway, this is no linguistic post here, but first an announcement for issue 9 of Requiem Magazine - an American on line poetry journal that has existed for several years now. Editor Jamie Collins does a precious and excellent work with unity and audacity.
Then, a question I have been asking to myself and fellow poets & writers: how comes my work, mostly translations into English from older poems originally written in French, are better received by Americans, Canadians, British, Irish, and so on and so forth, than by the French speking editors and publishers. Not angry, again, puzzled.
Never mind... Better promote this excellent publication, Requiem Magazine.
So far, 9 issues have been published and I did not find any of them weaker than the others.
So, it is with great pride that I announce that five poems from a former collection written in French, Snow Can Wait [La neige peut attendre] now adapted to the English language feature in this brand new issue of Requiem Magazine. Here.

Free Pussy Riot