Tag Archives: BIPF

Readings: Bridgewater Poet Christopher T. George

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Christopher T. George will be speaking “On Using History in Poetry” on  Sunday, January 18th, at 1:00pm.

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Christopher T. George is one of the editors of Loch Raven Review published in Maryland. He was born in Liverpool, England in 1948 and first emigrated to the United States with his parents in 1955. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, near Johns Hopkins University with his wife Donna and two cats. His poetry has been published in Poet Lore, Lite, Maryland Poetry Review, Smoke, and Bogg, and online at Crescent Moon Journal, Electric Acorn, Melic Review, Painted Moon Review, Pierian Springs, the poetry (WORM), Triplopia, and Web Del Sol Review. He is the editor of the Desert Moon Review poetry workshop at http://www.thedesertmoonreview.com and has his own personal poetry site at http://chrisgeorge.netpublish.net.

 

Eating a Bruised Bosc Pear on Armistice Day

My short, serrated wood-handled knife slices
into pear-flesh soft as Camembert: the skin

of the fruit scarred like a map of the Somme
– shell craters, churned, disinterred No Man’s Land;

peeling away puttees, sodden khaki trousers,
a surgeon’s knife dissects a private’s leg.

To ghost machine gun fire, I savor sweet
overripe fruit: care-package from home.

(Second prize winner, Interboard Poetry Contest, December 2012, judged by Polina Barskova, who wrote: “This poem is exciting due it’s being so specific, so precise, so dry – one really can see, sense that moment of pleasure, moment of the Earth’s kindness.”)

Shot at Dawn

We shot him because it was only right,
the lad who had deserted his post at first light.

We followed orders, did our duty by him,
abided by the regulations—every line.

The private never denied his cowardice
—a lack of moral fiber is what it is.

The chaplain gave the lad his last rites.
We’ll have a bayonet less, next fight.

The boy accepted the offer of a blindfold
and faced his death like a man, all told:

the sergeant gave the kid a Woodbine,
lit it for him with a match, most kind.

The private coughed at the drag,
must have been his very first fag.

Our squad obeyed the command from the Sarge.
The boy dropped at the single barrage.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Suzanne Rodenbaugh

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Suzanne Rhodenbaugh will be reading her poetry Saturday, January 17th, at 1:30pm.

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Suzanne Rhodenbaugh is the author of the poetry books The Whole Shebang (WordTech
Communications, 2010) and Lick of Sense (Helicon Nine Editions, 2001), which won the
Marianne Moore Poetry Prize, and 4 chapbooks; and is the editor of a diary, Sarah’s Civil
War. Her poems, essays, articles and reviews have been widely published in journals, anthologies, newspapers and general interest publications. She lives in St. Louis. Previously she lived in Virginia, other states and one foreign country, hailing originally from Florida and
Georgia. Her favorite contemporary poet is Ted Kooser. Her favorite of all poets is Gerard Manley Hopkins. Her favorite word is “gone.”

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Nicole Yurcaba

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Nicole Yurcaba will be reading her poetry Friday, January 16th, at 10:00am.

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Nicole Yurcaba is a Ukrainian-American writer and internationally-recognized poet currently living and working as an English professor in West Virginia. Her love and dedication to words has propelled her into the arms of such publications as The Atlanta Review, The Bluestone Review, Philomathean, Outrageous Fortune, VoxPoetica, City Lit Rag, Hobo Camp Review, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Lake, and many others. Yurcaba’s first poetry and photography collection Backwoods and Back Words is available through Unbound Content on Amazon. She has been twice nominated for the Pushcart Award, and recently received 2nd Place in the Hemingway Contest hosted by Poetry Sans Frontieres for her poem “September’s Onslaught.”

 

The Twenty-First of March

“And we’ll believe yet more in liberty…”-Taras Shevchenko

A scene reminiscent of Kruty:
vigorous, stately soldiers
bundled in their bulky overcoats
and tryzub-adorned ushankas,
armed not with rifles this time,
but steeled with their rich bass-roaring voices
sparring the Russki hegemony’s raising
of the imperialistic flag.
Those Ukrainian boys sang “Shche ne vmerla Ukrayina,
ni slava, ni volya”–“Ukraine’s freedom
has not yet perished, nor has her glory”
in defiance of the bear’s unmarked
Kalashnikov-armed thugs.
Yes, March twenty-first:
Spring. Life. Impending war.
Invasion camouflaged as “annexation.”
A deliberate violation of international law.
The slow premeditated disembowelment
of a nation’s sovereignty.
The history texts, the scholars, won’t be permitted to remember.
The bear will sink its claws into those
who recall the truth,
and the bear will ensure
that those young men who sang at the gates
are booked as “Nazis” and “Fascists.”
What will the bear do to those of us
who, six thousand miles away,
watched via television
as those young Ukrainian men–simulacrums
of our fathers, cousins,
brothers, grandfathers
and great-grandfathers bellowed
for freedom in the face of Russian aggression,
because we stood
and we sang with our bratiya, late into the night:
“Z-hynut nashi vorozhen’ky,
yak rosa na sontsi”–“Our enemies will vanish
like dew in the sun.”

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Matthew Hamilton

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Matthew Hamilton will be reading his poetry Thursday, January 15th, at 4:30pm.

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Matthew Hamilton is a former Soldier, Congressional Aide, US Peace Corps, and Benedictine Monk. He holds a Master of Fine Arts from Fairfield University and is a three time Pushcart Prize nominee. His stories and poems have appeared in a variety of national and international journals, including Atticus Review, Coe Magazine, Noctua Review, Burnt Bridge, Boston Literary Magazine, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, and Muddy River Poetry Review. His chapbook, The Land of the Four Rivers, published by Cervena Barva Press, won the 2013 Best Poetry Book from Peace Corps Writers. Currently, he is the Librarian at Benedictine College Preparatory, an all-male, Catholic Military high school in Richmond, VA.

 

Snakes Belong in the Wild

As a child,
she kept purple-tailed lizards
in a doll house. The girls at school
called her queen of the reptiles.
A boy pulled a frog from his pocket
and told her to kiss it. She spit
in his face and disappeared
up a tree a maggot, wrapped herself
in bark-colored leaves
and waited for the bell to ring.
Years later, after college,
she disappeared again,
this time into the desert.
Her trailer was a rainforest.
She collected rattlers and corals,
mambas, and a gaboon viper
she allowed to curl around her wrist
like a diamond bracelet.
She never invited guests,
the boys and girls from school
an unbroken reminder of provocation.
She was never reported missing
and her ears and nose thrashed red
for days like exotic butterflies in flight.

Readings: Bridgewater Fest Poet Angela Carter

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Over the next week I’ll be posting information on the poets who will be reading from their work at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival, Jan 15th-18th. 

Angela Carter will be reading her poetry Saturday, January 17th, at 11:30am.

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Angela M. Carter was born, and raised, in a Virginia farming town of less than 280 country-folk. As an adult, Angela moved abroad, to England, for nearly five years and returned to Virginia with a new-found confidence, and voice. Her first full-length memoir poetry collection, Memory Chose a Woman’s Body (unbound CONTENT) is a poetic journey that spotlights the effects of the silences endured after abuse, neglect and depression. Angela is a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee, poetry editor of City Lit Rag, a coordinator of arts-related events, Vice President of Spitzer Art Center (Harrisonburg, VA) , a motivational speaker, arts advocate, a painter and photographer. Her publications include Whurk, Vox Poetica, Premiere Generation Ink, City Lit Rag, The Word Ocean, Worst Week Ever, Our Stories Untold, Gutsy Living, and several anthology publications. Angela is an activist that speaks out against the silences that follow abuse, and dedicates all of her spare time to being the voice for many that are unable to speak up. In addition, she is an advocate of the healing ability of the arts, and believes each and every individual is an artist.

Hotel Song

Friday afternoon
we’d wait, noses to hot window pane
for the clicks and dust of mama’s car
to disturb the driveway.
Hurry up before it overheats.
Hurry up because if I turn it off
I can’t turn it back on.
Our weekend homes
had bibles in the drawer;
some I read, and many that I
used as ashtrays.
Sometimes we’d buy a pool for the night
the blue water was our summer beach trip–
we’d dance underwater like we belonged;
like we more alive when nearly drowning.
One night as I left a pool
bathing suit still on,
a man offered me $250 to go back to his room.
I ran away like the hunted, and screamed all the way back to safety.
When I arrived back to the room it dawned on me that
it didn’t matter how many monsters I ran from:
When I’m breathing, I carry the scent of prey.