Sunday, January 31, 2010

Counterexample Poetics!


http://www.counterexamplepoetics.com/
What a wonderful day! Just received a second acceptance! Counterexample Poetics accepted one of my new poems, Timepiece, for March/April publication. Timepiece is a one of a series of shorter, concept-based poems centered around a single specific idea/image. General hopes for the future is a chapbook-sized manuscript of these works...but check out Counterexample!

Unfettered Verse


http://unfetteredverse.blogspot.com/

Unfettered Verse just accepted three of my previously published poems for their March 2010 issue! Kafka, Keep Driving, and Surely I'm Convinced will be on the above website in 1 1/2 months! This is the third magazine that has published Kafka, which makes me particularly proud!

Friday, January 29, 2010

Bottle(s)


I've been experimenting fairly recently with short, concept-based poems focusing on a single, unique image that (hopefully) reveals more than the condensed words themselves. Many of these titles have taken the form of having (s) at the end of a single word, the implication perhaps obvious. Bottle(s) is the first of this series to be accepted for publication. It will be available via Bijou Poetry Review in the coming weeks. Please check it out and let me know what you think about this forray: http://bijoupoetryreview.blogspot.com/.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

"Love Outlives Us" performance Feb. 8

"Love Outlives Us"- an evening of words and music involving my friends, whose work I deeply respect, will be held at Three Friends on Feb. 8. This will be a very unique and inspiring event.

7 p.m., Three Friends Coffee House
SE 12th and Ash, Portland, Oregon

Based on texts by A. Molotkov, Bruce Greene, Shawn Austin, David Cooke and Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk, “Love Outlives Us” is a symbolic exploration of the value and meaning of a human life, the character-defining nature of human interaction, and each individual’s responsibility for the world in which they conspire to exist. The tone of this performance is balanced around a stark contrast between A. Molotkov’s mysterious and laconic verses and Bruce Greene’s real life stories, in this case his experiences as a teacher in the years following the war in Vietnam. Shawn Austin, David Cooke and Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk contribute their own unique visions to make up a whole that has a sense of unity, despite its many edges. Ragon Linde’s musical contribution and several sung compositions by A. Molotkov expand the palette. Backed up by music, words acquire a greater levity, contributing to the listener’s ability to be entranced and whisked away on an hour-long tour of self-discovery through meaning and metaphor. Several audience participation numbers allow the listeners to become part of the performance in a more tangible way than possible in a passive listening mode. “Love Outlives Us” seeks to engage the audience on all levels, to ask questions that will linger in one’s mind long after the performers have left the stage.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

New The Write Room out!

The new issue of the online journal The Write Room is now available at http://www.thewritemag.com. It contains three of my poems varying in themes and locations and are matched with associated journal-selected photography. Please check it out!

Sunday, January 24, 2010

HoboEye internship begins

I'm excited that my internship with HoboEye, a literary and arts online journal, is now officially beginning. I met with editor Mitch McInnis yesterday and soon submissions will be sent to me for evaulation, those demanding more attention to be jammed out with Mitch each week. Most importantly, I'll begin working on future readings and events between poetry and art and otherwise, begin creating a rolodex of names and get social marketing asap! Ah, one of the many reasons I moved to Portland is now coming into focus, beginning to take shape!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Sid Miller reading at Powells Tonight!

If you're looking for entertainment tonight, head over to Powell's on Hawthorne @7:30pm to hear Sid Miller read from Dot-to-Dot, Oregon. Sid's a great reader, you won't be disappointed! I coordinated this event myself via Ooligan Press and wish I could be there but for classes...

Everyone is Cold, Sometimes

Unearthed from the white sand
gray feathers and shards of wood
splintered from schooners and boardwalk,
both in this weather abandoned,

cigarette butts dancing red
and blue plastic cups,
leaves and more leaves
leave the wind thick and sharp-edged.

The few passersby grumble
about a nameless hunger that, once sated,
will yield a new thirst.

Oversized watercolors of the North Atlantic
stare defeated from their windows
out at what they depict.
But five p.m. and the moon is too high
to still call it day.

And most seabirds have vanished, naturally,
and the few perched upon the balustrade
listen to our grumbling,
deep in our down feathers and wool.
We the only ones who cannot feel
so must seek god
and the woven strands of energy
behind his name
and a warmth without hand-rubbing.

We who seek absence
to prove its contradiction:
that somewhere
there is enough.

Enough even now to stand huddled
in the closed shops’ doorways,
warm in each other,
looking out at what we depict,
content as the gulls that stubbornly remain
while following those flown
with our eyes.

-previously published by Wilderness House Literary Review

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

new Southwestern American Literature out!


Fall 2009 Southwestern American Literature is now out (http://swrhc.txstate.edu/cssw/publications/sal/2009-fall.php). My older poem titled Escalante Bat Hymn, based on adventures in southern Utah's region Escalante, is graced in this issue, which also boasts an essay from the great James Wright. SAL is a biannual print journal, whose copies just arrived in my box today...

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

"An Aftermath"- recently published by Wilderness House Review

There is a car
exactly like mine
where I parked.

The key will not open.

There is a word she once said
I knew would change
everything.

I am afraid to remember.

There is a child
whose unseeing brown eyes
like me would perceive only silhouettes

and whose vanity would tremble
while releasing all he thought
he held.

He is the door I cannot enter.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Power Outage in Pure Francis!

My poem Power Outage headlines this issue of Pure Francis. Please check it out and leave some comments, if desired. Comments are always appreciated ;) http://www.purefrancis.org/

Power Outage

Tonight a piano
counters the chill
and silence
of a house still standing.

Limbs
and lifeless power lines
snaking paths
through the frost.

Candles upon which
we love tenderest
lining like a runway
the edges of things.

And the somber keys,
black upon white,
warning us
of an icy landing.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Keep Driving

Fluent in the dialects of skyline
two empty silos raise like Braille
above the babbling wheat earth
and pause for a moment upon an early frost
spread evenly across its mother’s lap,
a winter in tow,
furious wingbeats of sun
grown desperate in the long-plowed furrows,
all elements reading each other knowingly,
as an experience feels itself shift to dream,
all silently mouthing in a united cloud of breath:

keep driving, dead man,
farther west the chill has yet descended.

-just published by Concho River Review

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Zachary Schomburg at Three Friends!

Monday, January 25, 2010
3 Friends Mondays: Caffeinated Art #79

Zachary Schomburg
Three Friends Coffee House,
SE 12th and Ash, Portland, Oregon

This great Portland poet, whose new book I reviewed last year on this site and on Facebook, will be reading at Three Friends Coffee House in two weeks! I hope all interested are able to join, though I regret my classes will get in the way of my attendance...

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Concho River Review Fall 2009 Out!


Concho River Review, the literary journal of Angelo State University in Texas, previously accepted my poem Keep Driving for Volume XXIII. The issue is now out! It's not available online, just in print (cover above), but if interested in submitting or ordering, their website is http://www.angelo.edu/dept/english/concho_river_review.html.

Keep Driving is a short poem composed during my cross-country trip two years ago...

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Artificial Light- recently published by Wilderness House Literary Review

In darkness still
clouds are uniting, disbanding,
supporting the steeples
from above

and men are acclimating
their sight to artificial lights
and clothing the world
with songs of their flesh
that ages no faster
if starlight alone
be their measure.

And alone in starlight I
am wondering if a pause
is conversation’s evolution,
a more discernable place and time
to commence movement.
If the single anti-sound
of dying
and the din
of waking again
balances each word
upon its many meanings.

If darkness
is its own light,
supporting the steeple
from below.

New Wilderness House Literary Review out!

The new issue of Wilderness House Literary Review is out, with three of my poems in it. Please check out: http://www.whlreview.com/no-4.4/poetry/JohnSibleyWilliams.pdf!!

Saturday, January 9, 2010

Sophia de Mello Breyner's "I Feel the Dead"

Just critiqued the Portugese poet Sophia de Mello Breyner's "I Feel the Dead" for a poetry workshop at PSU. Is anyone familiar? Beautiful concepts on death and human nature. "But I have lost my being in so many beings/Died my life so many times/Kissed my ghosts so many times/Known nothing of my acts so many times/Th...at death will be simply like going/From inside the house into the street."

new chapbook completion...and now?

I'm recently completed a chapbook titled From Colder Climates, which can be taken both literally and figuratively, as many of the poems were written in Iceland and across the North Atlantic ,and those not retain a bit of that weather in the heart. Now what publisher to approach....any suggestions for one interested in such subject matter?

Thursday, January 7, 2010

new Facebook page

I'm starting a new Facebook page dedicated solely to my literary endeavors and creative communication. It's under John Sibley Williams or jswilliams1307@gmail.com. Feel free to befriend me and we can talk all things poetry and all this not!

Three Poems accepted by The Write Room

The Write Room, http://thewriteroom.wordpress.com, has just accepted three of my poems for upcoming publication in their online journal: Judgment!Judgment!, Graffiti, and Somewhere Over the Vltava, the last having recently been workshopped with the Moonlit Poetry Caravan. I'll post portions of the poems once they have been officially published. So a good week so far!

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

9 Poems Published by Boston Poet Journal

Boston Poet Journal has just accepted 9 of my poems for publication in their third issue. They range on topics, but a few are Boston or Mass focused. Their titles are:
From the Sumner Tunnel
Judgment!Judgment!
Infidelities
In the Wilderness Between
In Peacetime
A Bridge of Sorts
Farmer’s Almanac
Driving Nebraska
Three Carpenters

They will be available soon at www.bostonpoet.com. Please check them out!

Interestingly, the journal is linked with local poetry events and readings, which I can no longer be a part of given my relocation...alas...