Cancer Sufferer Bernice Wiemers-Rowden Writes Book of Poetry about Swansea City

A lot of cancer sufferers make wish lists of what they want to do when they are diagnosed with the deisease. Few carry them out.

Bernice Wiemers-Rowden from Swansea in Wales successfully put together a book of poetry for her club, Swansea City.

Ms Wiemers-Rowden wrote a poem about her appearance on BBC Radio Wales and recited it during a chat with presenters Peter Johnson and Felicity Evans, the BBC reported.

And her cancer treatment appears to have worked.

"Bernice Wiemers-Rowden has achieved many of those objectives on her "bucket list", including putting together a book of poetry for her club Swansea City," the BBC reported.

Les Buffham wins two awards at Western Music Association event

I realized a couple of minutes ago I hadn't posted on this blog since July. Is poetry really dead in my life or am I too busy? A combination of both, perhaps. And while this site did rather well without me it has crashed of late.

Anyhow I was woken from my slumber by the earth shattering news that songwriter Les Buffham of Saugus has picked up two awards Saturday night at the Western Music Association’s annual awards banquet in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Yee haw and all that.

Buffham was apparently named Male Poet of the Year, while his song, “No Wilder Place,” cowritten with singer Mary Kaye, was named Song of the Year.

 Buffham, who won his first WMA Song of the Year award in 1997 for “Below the Kinny Rim,” which he co-wrote with Michael Fleming, who organizes Santa Clarita’s annual Cowboy Festival.

It all goes to show poetry is thriving out west, even if cowboy poetry may not be to everyone's taste.

Claude Mckay on Summers in New Hampshire

It's been a long time since I last thought of the lost poetry blog. I was surprised to discover I had posted this summer, although only just. It's funny to also note that the blog carries on without me, racking up hits from old posts. Does it need its initiator at all?

I like this summer poem, even though the season described is so far removed from the heavy, sluggish and humid summer around these parts that it makes me want to move to New Hampshire.

Summer Morn in New Hampshire by Claude McKay

All yesterday it poured, and all night long
I could not sleep; the rain unceasing beat
Upon the shingled roof like a weird song,
Upon the grass like running children's feet.
And down the mountains by the dark cloud kissed,
Like a strange shape in filmy veiling dressed,
Slid slowly, silently, the wraith-like mist,
And nestled soft against the earth's wet breast.

But lo, there was a miracle at dawn!
The still air stirred at touch of the faint breeze,
The sun a sheet of gold bequeathed the lawn,
The songsters twittered in the rustling trees.
And all things were transfigured in the day,
But me whom radiant beauty could not move;
For you, more wonderful, were far away,
And I was blind with hunger for your love.

Verse of the Day - Edna St. Vincent Millay

It's been some time since I posted on here. It't not that poetry is superflous but there's the small matter of life. But poetry can take you places you want to be again in life such as the half remembered cliffs on a May day.

see this photographer at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alphageek/show/

Afternoon on a Hill - Edna St. Vincent Millay

I will be the gladdest thing

Under the sun!

I will touch a hundred flowers

And not pick one.

I will look at cliffs and clouds

With quiet eyes,

Watch the wind bow down the grass,

And the grass rise.

And when lights begin to show

Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,

And then start down!

Ennui by Sylvia Plath

I can relate to Plath's poem as I feel bored today, listless at being part of a factor process that fills space and time because we have always filled time and space. Not with energy and light but with material as dull as heavy gray clay.

And so it goes on.

Ennui by Sylvia Plath
Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,
designing futures where nothing will occur:
cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning she
will still predict no perils left to conquer.
Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knight
finds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheard
of, while blasé princesses indict
tilts at terror as downright absurd.


The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,
compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;
and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,
while bored arena crowds for once look eager,
hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizes
shall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger.

Arizona poets - Alberto Rios

The Chair She Sits In - Alberto Rios I’ve heard this thing where, when someone dies, People close up all the holes around the house— The keyholes, the chimney, the windows, Even the mouths of the animals, the dogs and the pigs. It’s so the soul won’t be confused, or tempted. It’s so when the soul comes out of the body it’s been in But that doesn’t work anymore, It won’t simply go into another one And try to make itself at home, Pretending as if nothing happened. There’s no mystery—it’s too much work to move on. It isn’t anybody’s fault. A soul is like any of us. It gets used to things, especially after a long life. The way I sit in my living-room chair, The indentation I have put in it now After so many years—that’s how I understand. It’s my chair, And I know how to sit in it.

Sonia Sachez is named as Philadelphia's poet laureate

It seems every big city and state is getting its own poet laureate these days. Philadelphia has just named Sonia Sanchez, a West Philadelphia resident as its new poet laureate.

According to phillyburbs.com the idea is to create a "powerful means of communication and artistic expression by creating a citywide position for poet laureate."

4 haiku by Sonia Sachez


(for Eugene Redmond)


Blue atom
poet transcribing
our flesh

2.

your quicksilver
words waterfalling in
sweet confession

3.

you have taken down
the morning turned it into
a roar of blackness

4.

your poems…
butterflies fluttering down
to earth.