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"The Bowl Hat" - inspired by Mike Cannel's pwoermds - is also taken from the unpublished collection Carmine Carnival.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