Hoboeye internship!

Having met today with its literary editor, Mitchell McInnis, I have just been offered an internship at the literary and arts magazine Hoboeye! (www.hoboeye.com). The position exactly matches my interest in and passion for both the editorial and community-building aspects of poetry and art, the formal mechanics and fostering relationships, the written and conversational communications. The organic sense of community Hoboeye fosters and I will be a part of nurturing is very much what I sought in moving west: to retain substance while linking poetry to other artistics forms, of taking the page and allowing it to be heard, witnessed, and experienced as a form of shared communication. It feels like one of potentially many doors that are opening in Portland, each allowing access to larger parts of the "the house we live in" (to quote Hafiz), each somehow connected to each other. I've finally been redeeming my own literary passions from the solitude of actual writing and submitting, which should only be a part of the life of a fully-functioning, socially-aware artist...

A Sign on the Road

I'm pleased to announce Amarillo Bay has accepted my poem A Sign on the Road for publication in an upcoming issue. This will be the third poem I have published with them over the last year, making me feel a bit like a regular contributor. Please check them out at www.amarillobay.org!

A Molotkov's reading at Three Friends

Here is a video of Tola's reading from the same mic on Mon. 10/19/09. His readings, like his poetry, are a great inspiration to me, and I am thrilled to be working with him on birthing our own literarly movement....

Video of Reading from this Monday

Here is a video of my reading of a few new poems at Three Friends Coffeehouse in Portland on 10/19/09. Please enjoy, comment, and/or critique!

Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg

Yesterday I picked up a copy of this new book of poetry, the author's second, from Powell's. This sophmore journey from the founder of Octopus magazine (www.octopusmagazine.com), resonated with me immediately in a way few contemporary American poetry books are able. Within nearly every poem Schomburg speaks beauty, both natural and human, with a devilish tongue. In fact, he draws no distinction between the natural and human worlds, nor the holy and unholy, as they intertwine in every line. A woman loses her arms, from which grow tree limbs. A grotesque image straight from Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, to be sure, but this is not the masochistic work of man. It is nature within man. Eventually she transforms into a tree and it is beatiful. Elsewhere two people give themselves to the bones of a coyote, another mysterious concept described in such natural, holistic terms, which thenceforth transform the dead coyote in a god of the forest. There is something of Nick Cave's lyrical genius in this. Something of Native American recognition that there are not two, or more, worlds but one, without dividing lines, without a black or a white element.

I would very much suggest it to any reader, even those without a firm grasp nor love of poetry.

Scary, No Scary by Zachary Schomburg
Black Ocean Press- www.blackocean.org
2009

Word Temple

Upon researching Copper Canyon Press for a paper, I realized something quite beautiful about their chosen symbol, which all have seen countless times, as Copper Cayon is a bastion for poetry in America, a symbol itself of how we cannot give up on poetry audiences, that such a venture can succeed both critically and popularly.



The Chinese character for poetry includes two parts. 'Word' and 'Temple'. The accuracy and, in its own way, poetry of this Chinese conception of poetry is something I feel often lacks in our contemporary Western culture. Is this not what each of us seeks in our own writing? To take human words and allow them by our own hands to transcend, not unlike a pagoda, to encompass a basic human experience, to speak directly to both the nature of us and the nature of something greater? Yet have I found a more fitting description for what poetry should have always been and must still be considered today, despite our mass media culture. Words can still ascend, transcend, transform. To say something all can understand intuitively, across our many divides, something all can feel, may be the closest thing we have to Godliness, even for we agnostics....

Upcoming Reading- Mon. 10/19

This Monday, 10/19, at Three Friends Coffeehouse (201 SE 12th Ave, Portland, OR), Tola, Shawn, and I will triple-header their open mic. I think I'll attempt poems written earlier today, which I'm excited about and believe are rather strong...but we'll see. I look forward to the three of us reading together and hope others are able to come for the mic or support!

New Poet's Ink out now!!

The Sept. 2009 issue of Poet's Ink is now available online at www.poetsink.com/poetsinkreview/poetsinkreviewsep09.htm. Please check it out. My poem Hypotheticals headlines this issue....

Here's a glimpse...


Hypotheticals

The sturdy iron pipes supporting our city
will rust. The immutable blast of lilacs
now pummeling our senses
will evaporate into Autumn.
The blood on Achilles’ sword
has long since crusted brown,
cracked, flaked into nonexistence.
Even the sword itself
has regressed to written word.
We are left to imagine its luster.

Day’s sonorous whine, already night.
At night, we mortar the bricks
of impermanence. What if history
gorged more on truth than myth
and our glass-framed bodies
would never crush beneath pestle
to a gentle whiff of bone?
What if our eyes and hearts
spoke the language of shared morning
and for one morning we agreed on an answer?
I’m left to savor him here, amongst inane hypotheticals-
my child left unborn.

Fall 2009 Other Rooms issue out!

As of today, the Fall 2009 issue of Other Rooms is available online at http://otherroomspress.blogspot.com. Please check it out. I'm pleased to see my poem Gregor Samsa upon its pages...

A. Molotkov Reading!

Please check out my friend Tola's wonderful reading from Three Friends Coffeehouse this Monday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIVXkXuzm1E&feature=autofb

The Day Before

The Day Before

Today is no different
and will pass without a word,
will holler and vanish in a storm cloud
that in a season
will return us calm tides and birds.

The shells spiraling toward center
could as easily be heading away.
Is that not reason enough to rejoice?

*

What low tide lays bare
might not be expected
but someone once pitched
everything we find here into the sea,

making this act of rediscovery
its own strenuous abandonment.

*

If we could not remember
the day before
would the waves speak
a less weighty dialect?

Without history would its torchbearers
pine like the rest of us
for definition
and for an image of ourselves
tomorrow?

Without love’s deeds and its failures
would I be left wondering alone by the sea
why the severity of my hands?


-published by Arlington Literary Journal

Open Mic This Monday!!

Open Mic this Monday, Sept. 28, at Three Friends Coffeehouse (201 SE 12th Ave, Portland, OR). Sign up begins at 8pm, mic at 8:30pm. Shawn, Tola, and I will be there, representing the Caravan...I'm unsure what to read, but perhaps some new work, which tend to be shorter and more idea/concept-based...alas, we'll see...
The Show and Tell Gallery, which hosts the mic, can be found at http://showandtellgallery.org.

Albina Press Coffeehouse- New Meetup Location

So, Moonlit Poetry Caravan is trying out a new location for our Thursday night meetings. We'll be at:
Albina Press Coffeehouse
5012 SE Hawthorne Blvd
Portland, OR 97215

Hopefully this locale, of which I've heard many good things and being closer to downtown, will be more suitable to some. Fingers crossed...

Our next meeting is Thursday, Oct 1!

Bad Dancing...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

After watching this in my Graduate Mentoring Training at Portland State University, I felt wholly inspired and filled with both love and, well, a desire to dance poorly, to just embrace, and embrace boldly...please watch...and enjoy....

Seven Cirlces Press- 3 Poems!

Great news! Seven Circles Press, an online and print journal, has accepted three poems for publication: " Accident Of Clouds", " Village South Of The River" and "A Song Without Music". They will be available in print Feb 2010 and online soon at www.sevencirclespress.com.

I'm Reading Sunday's Headlines....

More wonderful news this week! One of my newer poems within my chapbook "The House We Live In", still attempting publication, has been accepted by New Verse News. This chapbook is mainly a series of questions, poltical and social, and is a search for their answers. The poem "I'm Reading Sunday's Headlines That Call for Things Like Justice" is now headlining at http://newversenews.blogspot.com. Please help support and check it out. Comments, as always, are more than welcome...

March 4th on September 11th

After a long conversation last night with two fellow conspirators, friends, and poets bent on removing the astro turf on the uneven playing field of contemporary poetry, I am excited to find Folly Magazine, an online and print journal of poetry and aesthetics, has accepted my poem March 4th. Awaiting word as to publication date. But please check out their website at www.follymag.com...

Infidelities at Mad Poets Review

Upon return from Vienna I have happily found Mad Poets Review will be publishing my poem Infidelities in their upcoming Fall 2009 print edition. Website: www.madpoetssociety.com.

Confessional Hymns x2

Please check out the new September online issue of Stirring: A Literary Collection, www.sundress.net/stirring, where my poem Confessional Hymns has been published for a second time.

CONFESSIONAL HYMNS


Bless us, fertile new morning.

Bless the barrage of tangerine light
streaming through the thawing pines.
Bless the slight wisps penetrating within
these bedroom windows,
balancing upon her forehead.

To whoever misses the conch’s hermetic ocean voice
grinding and honking down the avenues,
bless those ears pressed to concrete
who know history never fully unfurls.

Bless the gathering hummingbirds
who resuscitate night’s lost shadows,
swarming into a single crab
splayed across our bedroom wall,
legs furiously kicking the air.

Bless the beasts conquered and belly up,
accepting without pretense the slaughter and their breath.
Bless all the things each sea coughs up.
Bless their ignorance, their well-lit tree within.
Bless the bountiful cold waves
sleep polishes our wounds,
our nightly flight taken with Icarus
and our awaking moments before the sea opens its mouth.

Bless the moment between waking and understanding,
when such purity of new morning blinds us
to what the night undid.

The Moonlit Poetry Caravan- this Friday

Date:
Friday Sept. 4, 7pm

Location:
Cafe Delirium
308 N Main Ave
Gresham, OR 97030

Portland, OR upcoming reading- friend and cohort A. Molotkov to be reading

Oregon Literary Review co-hosts First Wednesdays, a series of readings, performances and wine-tasting at the Blackbird Wine Shop, 3519 NE 44th off Fremont, 7-9pm. This show is 21 and over. Contact Julie Mae Madsen at maemadsen@gmail.com for more information.

The readers for September 2 are Bruce Greene, David Cooke, Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk, A. Molotkov, & Evan Cooper.

This night features writers of a successful Portland writing group The Guttery (http://www.theguttery.com/)

Bruce Greene taught for 33 years at an urban high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a teacher-consultant for the Bay Area Writing Project at UC Berkeley for the last 20 years, he’s published numerous articles on educational issues in his own practice as well as personal essays based on his experiences and observations. An avid thoroughbred horse lover, and frequent contributor to The Blood-Horse magazine, he served as Northern California correspondent from 1985-2000. Bruce now lives and writes in Portland, Oregon and is currently looking for three new streams to fly fish, two more coffeehouses conducive to writing, and one literary agent for his recently completed memoir, Above This Wall: The Life and Times of a VISTA Volunteer 1969-70.

David Cooke is a former middle school special education teacher who operates a landscape maintenance business aptly named The Lawn Guy. He is a founding member of two writing groups– Leora: A Writing Group and The Guttery. He graduated from both the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Portland State University Masters of Special Education program. Raised Catholic in Oakland, California, he now resides in Lake Oswego, Oregon with painter, Jessica Acevedo. His debut as the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize winner is available in The Hunger Mountain Journal online and in print. He is currently compiling a chapbook entitled Discretion.

Before landing in Portland, Carrie-Ann Tkaczyk lived all over. She learned kickboxing in Turkey, faced-off with a rhino in Nepal, discussed the weather with Queen Elizabeth in England, and was chastised by Mother Theresa in India. She’s now proud to declare herself a coffee mug carryin’, microbrew drinkin’, Powell browsin’, environmental stumpin’, trail hikin’ Portlander. She writes novels about the adventures that occur when the will of the individual and the collective muscle of a culture clash.

A. Molotkov is a writer, composer, filmmaker and visual artist. Born in Russia, he moved to the US in 1990 and switched to writing in English in 1993. He is the author of several novels, short story and poetry collections and the winner of the 2008 E. M. Koeppel Short Fiction Award. The winning story “Round Trip” has been nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Award and accepted by Intramel for publication in Italian. A. Molotkov’s poetry and short stories have appeared in over a dozen publications, both in print and online. Visit him at www.AMolotkov.com

Evan Cooper is a writer of fiction. He holds a B.A. in English Literature from Willamette University and an M.A. in Media and Culture from the Universiteit van Amsterdam. He often rolls them up and uses them for house fly-icide and K-9 reprimands. He lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.

Power Outage acceptance

Pure Francis, an online literary journal, has accepted for their upcoming Winter 2009 edition my poem Power Outage. Please check it out at purefrancis.org. I'll let you know when it's available online.

Black and White (if only Read all over)

My poem Black and White, a musing written in Texas about the Guadelupe Mountains, the clarify of old movies, and the swagger of the soul has been accepted by San Pedro River Review, a print poetry and art publication. The Fall 2009 issue comes out in September. Their website, which gives guidelines and info, is www.sprreview.com. I'm excited that this poem in particular found its meandering way into a journal named after the ancient river flowing from Sonora, Mexico to Arizona...it feels fitting...

Silent in Hand....

A fairly new poem, Silent in Hand, written just before my move to Oregon, has just been accepted for the Fall 2009 print edition of Third Wednesday, a journal who last year published another piece. Their website is thirdwednesday.org. Please support and check them out!

new Literary Bohemian out Monday!

Monday, 8/10, the next issue of Literary Bohemian will be out. It's a unique venue for literary travel writing, poetry, and tidbits: snapshots of our varied journeys. Check it out at www.literarybohemian.com. My poem Icelandic Horses found its way into this issue, via one path or another...

...........A Handkerchief Waving......

A Handkerchief Waving, a two year old poem I'd fought hard to get published, has now been accepted at Wild Goose Poetry Review. In October their Fall 2009 issue will be out. Please check it out at: www.wildgoosepoetryreview.com.

new flickr account

To keep up with my burgeoning interest in photography and to relay some images to friends back East, I've just created a flickr account: www.flickr.com/photos/johnsibleywilliams. Should be new shots up fairly frequently. Feel free to comment on them, as I'm just beginning to understand the rudimentary basics of photography....

Glass: A Journal of Poetry New Issue Out!

Glass: A Journal of Poetry Issue Two Volume Two is now available at www.glass-poetry.com/volume-two/issue-two. There you'll find a segment of my poem And Then Like a Saber, a strange, hopefully dangerous love poem.....

Their motto:
"Poetry that enacts the artistic and creative purity of glass"

poor little Gregor Samsa and his metaphor

Once a little metaphor exhausted of its meaning, crept from the abstraction it was born to represent, and attempted to live within the world itself...that was the little fairy tale dreamt to write the poem "Gregor Samsa", which Other Rooms just accepted. It will be posted soon at http://otherroomspress.blogspot.com.

Help support the hungry, tired metaphors...they need your help!!!

Hypotheticals.......at Poet's Ink

Wonderful news! It's been an astounding week for publications. Upon returning from a photography trip to the Oregon coast, I've received word my poem Hypotheticals will be published in the September issue of Poet's Ink. Please support both myself and their publication by checking it and their other work out at poetsink.com. This poem was a musing on what is left undone in life, particularly the lack of certain concrete things, like children, things expected but oft not fulfilled, and whether that in itself signifies failure....