Celebrating International Dylan Thomas Day 2022 by Vatsala Radhakeesoon (Editor and Organizer, Mauritius)
Dear Artists /Art-lovers, Every year International Dylan Thomas Day is celebrated worldwide on 14 May .
I would like to thank Hannah Ellis, granddaughter of Dylan Thomas (UK) and Lidia Chiarelli, founding editor of Immagine and Poesia (Italy) for inviting me to conduct this event on my blog for the third time.
Many thanks to all the 7 artists from various continents who have contributed their works for this special event.
Hope you will enjoy going through the artworks featured here.
Sending Blessings of peace, love and light to Everyone!
Ruben Molina Homesickness Oil on canvas 50 x 40 cm 2017 Venezuela
Ruben Molina was born in Barinitas Venezuela on October 23, 1969.He started in the plastic arts at a very young age when at the age of 9 he took lessons in Drawing, Painting and Graphic Arts. In addition to his passion for painting, he experiments with sculpture made from recycling. He studies the great masters like Rembrandt, Goya, Monet, Sorolla and Pollock who influence his work. In 2018 he exhibited his works in solo in the museum of modern art in Merida Venezuela and in the Dubai Design District.He has been invited to participate in the 1st Sculpture Symposium in Egypt. His work has been awarded by The Paintbrush community art community in Dubai. They are also present in various collections in several countries such as: Colombia, Peru, Panama, Spain, US, UK, Holland, Egypt, Dubai, Al Ain. He currently lives and works in Merida Venezuela.
Gopakumar Ra Who am I ? Acrylic on paper 40 x40 cm 2010 Bahrain/India
R. Gopakumar is an Indian contemporary multidisciplinary NFT artist. He works in different media including Digital Art, Motion Photography, Installation, Drawing, Painting and Print.
He uses art & technology to discuss and expose the environmental and social issues of the society. He believes the work of art should change the existing visual, intellectual and aesthetic sense and experiment with finding new visual phenomena.
His works exhibited The Saatchi Gallery, London, UK, Tate Britain, UK, Kochi-Muziris Biennale (Collateral Projects) Kochi, India, Sofia Underground – International Performance Art Festival, Bulgaria, CICA Museum, South Korea, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, India, Arte Città Amica, Torino, Italy, V-Art Digital Art Spaceship Exhibition – Ukraine, CADAF Crypto and Digital Art Fair, Paris, France. Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea Grafica Manzoni, Torino, Italy, Kinsey Institute Art Gallery, USA, ISE Cultural Foundation, New York, USA, Bahrain National Museum, Manama, Bahrain, Kerala Lalithakala Akademi, Kerala, India.
His motion photography was shortlisted by the Saatchi Gallery London and Google+ for their inaugural Motion Photography Prize.
Lidia Chiarelli All Fishes were Rayed in Blood Dylan Thomas Portrait- Iron sculpture on round steel table 180 x150 cm 2022 Italy
Lidia Chiarelli is one of the Charter Members of Immagine & Poesia, the art literary Movement founded in Torino (Italy) in 2007 with Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan Thomas’ daughter. Installation artist and collagist. Coordinator of #DylanDay in Italy. She has become an award-winning poet since 2011. Six Pushcart Nominations (USA). Her writing has been translated into different languages and published in more than 150 Poetry magazines, and on web-sites in many countries.
Gianpiero Actis Tribute to Dylan Thomas 2022 Seascape painting, Iron sculpture book on round steel table 180×150 cm 2022 Italy
Gianpiero Actis (Italy) is one of the co-founders of the artistic-literary movement “Immagine & Poesia”.He often creates his works as “responses” to the poems of different authors. He has participated in numerous international exhibitions. His paintings can be found in permanent exhibitions / collections in Italy and abroad. https://gianpieroactis.jimdofree.com/
Juliet Preston Marlais great blue-green sea Digital abstract 4.2 Megapixel ,2048x 2048 resolution 2022 USA
Juliet Preston is a poet at heart, an artist by passion and an engineer by profession.
Neerja Peters The sublime Acrylic on linen canvas 48 x 36 inches 2021 India
Dr. Neerja Chandna Peters is a trained physician. she found her passion in art, about eleven years ago and she decided to pursue art full time. Through spiritual expression she found her language. To her, creating art is a form of meditation, a means to reaching bliss, so characteristic of a mystical unison with the Divine.
Her geometric abstracts are a search of the ‘real’ through abstract expression.
Winner of third prize in First International Biennale by International Association of Visual, Performing and Other Arts, Lithuania, she received Critics Choice award, Artist of the year award-and Wallace Hartley World Art Day award from World University of Design, Bharat Nirman, International Association of Art (Official Partners of UNESCO) respectively.
She participated in Biennale of Miniature Arts, Timisoara, Romania, first World Art Virtual Biennale, Columbia Arte, U.S.A., VBIG Guarulhos International Bienal of small format 2020, Brazil, World Health Organisation x Create 2030 Covid -19 Arts Festival, exhibitions at Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art, Lutsk, Aerogramme Centre of Art and Culture,USA ,North Dakota Museum of Art etc.
Her works have been published in Bluebee magazine, London, Flora Fiction Literary Magazine and Quarantine Zine, New York, Art-hole UK, The Knack Magazine U.S.
Faisal Mateen Based on Fern hills (1945) By Mr Dylan Thomas watercolor 15 x 28inches 2022 India
Faisal Mateen is the founder of *Art for Cause* “I Design Dreams” and “Surma Bhopali fictional character” . He is 51 and had got his PG degree in Fine art (Drawing & Painting). He has over 40 group and solo art exhibitions in India & abroad (Including 2 exhibitions, held in famous Jehangir Art Gallery Mumbai) to his credit. During pandemic ,Art for cause organised 27 international online exhibition and got many international awards.
Celebrating International Dylan Thomas Day 2022 by Vatsala Radhakeesoon (Editor and Organizer, Mauritius)
Dear Poets/ literature-lovers, Every year International Dylan Thomas Day is celebrated worldwide on 14 May .
I would like to thank Hannah Ellis, granddaughter of Dylan Thomas and Lidia Chiarelli, founding editor of Immagine and Poesia for inviting me to conduct this event on my blog for the third time.
Many thanks to all the 16 poets from various continents who have contributed their works for this special event.
Hope readers will enjoy reading the poems featured here and continue to support Dylan Thomas’s works.
Sending Blessings of peace, love and light to Everyone!
Poems
Ken Allan Dronsfield USA
Spring on the Beach
Wild rambling roses of a pinkish bloom dance to the winds down by the sea. Roots grasping deep in the tall sand dune.
Pussy Willows growing in a grandiose plume. Cats birds cry from tall shimmering trees. Pheasant strut in their feathered costume.
Spring is now here, so we all assume. A white seagull soars in the blue sky above me. Sunshine’s bright chasing away winter’s gloom.
Nocturnal shadows creep into my room. I fill my cherished cup with a nice green tea. Colors fill my mind as twilight now looms.
Essence of lilac, such a lovely perfume. Soon to be May Day and the wonderful jubilee. Cleaning the kitchen with a sweep of the broom.
Strong winds blow the sand like a simoom. I sit on the deck with a glass of Chablis, lost in thought as my old cat grooms. The last of the sun’s rays do heavenly illume.
Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran and prize winning poet from New Hampshire, now residing in Oklahoma. He has six poetry collections to date; ‘The Cellaring’, ‘A Taint of Pity’, ‘Zephyr’s Whisper’, ‘The Cellaring, Second Edition’, ‘Sonnets and Scribbles’ and his latest collaborative book, ‘Inamorata at Twilight. Ken has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize and seven times for Best of the Net. He was First Prize Winner for the 2018 and 2019, Realistic Poetry International Nature Poetry Contests. He has recently begun producing Creative Content on his YouTube channel and has had wonderful success sharing his poetry with the social media community. Ken loves writing, thunderstorms, coin collecting and spending time with his rescued cats Willa and Yumpy.
Gopikrishnan Kottoor India
Caitlin is Back Home
(Recalling the life of poet Dylan Thomas )
I
Laugharne did not expect this, The way things ended.
Late night fights,
Sex, and more beer. Hazy
Fire-fly meanderings And the smallest cigarette stub Crushed by the last flickering post.
II
Bright bricks swim to view, as first light
Bursts to blood. His pug fingers already squat on cork Drowning in early beer foam.
By the blue bay,
The Boathouse is a crab stink, its closet tittering By the old faucet that howls for water.
(Love is crushed on the unwashed bed Where Caitlin sleeps drunken Without her knickers on).
III
Through small burns under the Swansea sky
October birds, the things of light,
Whirl bible-black into the overgrown child Whose coat pocket drips salt,
Of bright sea ferns washed ashore.
So, when she comes in stomping the crucifix
To ‘Is the bloody man dead?’
The snail horns of his coma in quiet vapor Have shut the chained mouth of the singing sea.
IV
And he waited, glowing white upon the hill,
His small curls growing wild under Until they caught and wound the lost bitch Fused to his waiting bones.
It was not to lie at all to each other again
But just to lie face to face
Beyond poetry and other lies,
Among a dozen slugs
Waking blind to darkening clay,
And he no more asking to get back to Browns For one mug, for Caitlin, with no more hops in her hair, Is back home, her cartwheeling done.
Gopi kottoor’s recent poems appear in Best Asian Poetry 2021, The Year book of Indian Poetry in English 2020, among others. He has won national prizes for his poetry.
In the stilly night, we reviewed our lives, recalled our best treks through the deepest dells, through steep wooded valleys called The Dingle.
Handed glad tidings to watchmen we passed, smiling through dreams, strolling in the green mead, through aged eyes, searched for high empyrean.
Wondered our fate as the ether darkened, strove to espy all that made life favored, tried to keep our thoughts from going afar.
Yet, the sun set with all celerity, cold seeped into bones, turned corpses niveous. We were warned such gelid fate would happen.
The best son of Wales gave us the caution, do not go gently, we should have listened.
Linda Imbler is the author of five paperback poetry collections and four e-book collections (Soma Publishing.)
This writer lives in Wichita, Kansas with her husband, Mike the Luthier, several quite intelligent saltwater fish, and an ever-growing family of gorgeous guitars. Learn more at lindaspoetryblog.blogspot.com.
Juliet Preston USA
Even when there is no star –
The torture of ordinary everyday life.
Yet bestowed on you, a gift of rhythmic ballads.
Such spirit comes alive in Fern Hill, Under Milk Wood, Light breaks where no sun shines.
When did it begin that the passage of time became too much to bear?
Did you find liberation in alcohol, or an escape? What happened to your dream?
When the sky grows dark and stars are hidden, your words of “do not go gentle into that good night”…
Still shines like the neon blue light even when there is no star.
Juliet Preston is a poet at heart, an artist by passion and an engineer by profession.
Heath Brougher USA
24 Hours in Llareggub
(Dylan Thomas was one of the consummate artists to ever pick up a pen. The following poem was inspired by his masterfully delicious play “Under Milk Wood”—a play that bears the hallmarks of a True Artist. In fact, it looks as if Dylan Thomas is asleep. Let’s hang him on the wall!)
We sit upon the moonlessly quiet nighttime hills of Llareggub and watch the dreams and conversations fall upward. They flow unfailingly cosmically into the luminiferous ether— the hefty nightwhispers of a blind captain hearing his drowned crew speak again. In this world it’s ok to laugh at the Mares. Even the voices would agree. At noon we bring jelly and poems to the sick.
The warming words “fach your life!” ring in a vibration of a married-on-a-daily basis halfhurrah in the Swanseaesque morning as I try to fit the sheer Everythingnessism of a particular speaking portrait into my hatshapped head:
oddly insidish jokes
the upside down frown of gossamer goatbeards
we know the Earth will eventually
arrest itself for having so many babies
sparrows and daisies strung out on buttermilk and whippets
here comes that tangent wave!
I was gutted when I saw how knackered and legless you became from the twee amount of alcohol you half-fisted. All of us, the equestrian included, were ripely angry after you called bagsy during your vomitriddled verbal Dadaist screed on butterfly nets only to kip once you floundered your flabby way into the driver seat. Even the headless horse will confirm the bloody bloody mess you left us in. We had to hire a team of polar bears to pull the car home. Two of the wafer-thin icebergs they lived on snapped in half as they fell dropdead into the frozen antivelvet water stale with cooked lime and rust and soot and rotten vegetables that populate the warped mutation of modern existence.
Still, the voices continue throughout the day to eve. We wink at Finnegan and continue letting our dreams and thoughts uprise. Luckily beauty is still legal in Llareggub.
We bask in knowing how to get lost in the sadly beautiful bizarreness of our da(ze)ys.
If God is Love then Love must be God—
if only God hadn’t taken that Phentonyl of idiots of ideas and the Daid Day could’ve held a trifle of the fissure of fusion among the outlandish wonder on that particular pocket of proximity.
Heath Brougher is the Editor-in-Chief of Concrete Mist Press and co-poetry editor of Into the Void, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards for Best Magazine. He received Taj Mahal Review’s 2018 Poet of the Year Award and is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. He was awarded the 2020 Wakefield Prize for Poetry. He has published 11 books and, after spending over two years editing the work of others, is ready to get back into the creative driver seat. He has four books forthcoming in 2022
Lidia Chiarelli Italy
Water Prayer
to Dylan, Son of the Sea
Seagulls and restless rooks challenge the wind on this winter morning.
Under a pearl sky the waves sing the rising sun – the first glimpse of light on the horizon fades too soon.
Here and now Dylan’s words resound: The waters of the heart push in their tides…*
And from the ancient cliff I pause and listen to the voice of the sea:
a water prayer
that softly evaporates among the fleeing clouds.
* From: light breaks where no sun shines
Lidia Chiarelli is one of the Charter Members of Immagine & Poesia, the art literary Movement founded in Torino (Italy) in 2007 with Aeronwy Thomas, Dylan Thomas’ daughter.
Installation artist and collagist. Coordinator of #DylanDay in Italy.
She has become an award-winning poet since 2011. Six Pushcart Nominations (USA).
Her writing has been translated into different languages and published in more than 150 Poetry magazines, and on web-sites in many countries.
“I like your letters like whiskey and cherries and smoke and honey…”
-letter from February 11, 1937 to Emily Holmes Coleman
We drink each others’ love berries and fall drunk into immortality. Our anniversary was your sunbath– and o! Love, do you know prayers?
How can we speak to the Divine Utterance if we cannot speak to one another? Distant in time, the afterglow warms our engagements on tables of conversation.
Were we the light from the candelabra or were we some distant music from the sea? O Love, why do we no longer need each other?
Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press and founding editor of Harbinger Asylum. He has contributed writing to Huffington Post, Café Dissensus Everyday, The Statesman (India), Journal of Liberty and International Affairs, The Colorado Review, World Literature Today, and several other publications. He is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee. He placed in the top 100 out of 12,500 entries for the erbacce prize in 2021, and was a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s first short fiction contest. He was also honored by the Friends of Guido Gozzanno. He hosts the popular interview series World Inkers Network on Youtube.
Manuel Renaud France
Fear Not
Fear not my Beloved Fear not my sweet Darling I will stay in the distance I will return to silence I will keep grief a secret This wound always opens I will hide it from your eyes Whether time comes The industrious With ardour, him, the obstinate Whether absence lasts by my side Fear not my Dulcinea Fear not my Heart However long solitude had been However, cruel it had been I wouldn’t have ceased loving you
Manuel Renaud is a French musician and poet. He writes lyrics and excels in playing various musical instruments such as the guitar, bass, ukulele and mandolin. He also teaches guitar, bass and singing. His passion for poetry originated when he was at school. At the age of 14, he was awarded a prize at school for his outstanding achievement in French language. The prize comprised of Les Oeuvres Complètes d’Arthur Rimbaud (The Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud). When he was much younger, he was much influenced by British pop music. This roused his eagerness to learn and understand English. So, firstly he wrote lyrics in English and French. Then afterwards, he seriously started writing poems and still keeps writing regularly.
He’s been already published twice in French by Les Éditions Inclinaison :
– 2018, Des mots pour le voyage
– 2019, Retour au centre du monde.
He has also been published in English by Leaky Boot Press (U.K) :
2019, Beatlemania (and other real tales).
Santosh Bakaya India
What is the metre of the dictionary? [For Dylan Thomas]
You were a short story writer, poet, a playwright, a literary artist, I admired so much. Reading your words such a pure delight. Astounded by your obsession with words, half rhyme, rhythm and sound, so profound. I tried to emulate you in my poetry so -called, embarrassingly appalled by my own audacity. Especially entranced by the texture of sound of that October poem [The name slips my memory] Ah, now I remember, ‘Especially when the October wind’.
No, your imagery was not ‘overweighted’ or leading to ‘incoherence’, as you confessed. What is the metre of the dictionary? You asked in Altarwise by Owl- Light, and urged your father to ‘rage against the dying of the light,’ in that most popular villanelle, ‘Do not go gentle into the good night’.
That satirical piece, ‘A letter to My Aunt discussing the correct approach to modern Poetry’, was my favourite. I can still visualize you mentoring your aunt, tongue firmly wedged in your cheek. ‘The paths are hard and you are not A literary Hottentot Do not forget that ‘limpet’ rhymes with strumpet in these troubled times, And commas are the worst of crimes; Few understand the works of Cummings, And few James Joyce’smental slummings, And few young Auden’s coded chatter, But then it is the few that matter.”
Well, this poem was a part of my growing up years. Was this the time when I got hooked on to rhymed verse?
Pray, tell me, why did you die at such a young age? Why didn’t you rage, rage Rage against the dying of the light, as you had so poignantly exhorted your father? Rather timid of you. I must say. Thirty nine is no age to die! Why were you in such a hurry to reach that final rendezvous? Fie on you, Fie on you Death!
Critically acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu [Vitasta, 2015], Dr. Santosh Bakaya, an academic, poet, novelist, essayist, recipient of the International Reuel Award for literature for her long poem, OhHark! [2014], the Universal Inspirational Poet Award [ Pentasi B Friendship Poetry and Ghana Government, 2016,] the Bharat Nirman Award for literary Excellence[ 2017], the Setu Award, 2018, [Pittsburgh, USA] ‘in recognition of a stellar contribution to world literature. Keshav Malik award 2019 ‘for her entire staggeringly prolific and quality conscious oeuvre’, is also a TEDx speaker whose talk on The Myth of Writers’ Block is popular in creative writing classes. She runs a column, Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity website, which is now a n e-book. [Blue Pencil, 2020]
Other books:
Where are the lilacs? [Poems, Authorspress 2016] Flights from my Terrace [Essays, Authorspress, 2017 ] Under the Apple Boughs [Poems, Authorspress, 2017] A Skyful of Balloons [ Novella, Authorspress, 2018 ] Bring out the tall tales [short stories with Avijit Sarkar, Authorspress, 2019 ] Only in Darkness can you see the stars [ A biography of Martin Luther King Jr, Vitasta, 2019 ] Songs of Belligerence [ Poems, AuthorsPress, 2020 ] Her e-books, published by Blue Pencil, Vodka by the Volga, with Dr. Ampat Koshy, and From Prinsep Ghat to Peer Panjal with Gopal Lahiri are amazon bestsellers. Runcible Spoons and Pea-green Boats is her latest book [Authors Press, 2021]
William Thomas Fearby UK
Dylan Thomas
Your words were like pure nectar Sent down from the heavens above Spoken only to your guarded ears Of mortal men and love
Your words all fell together in rhymes all so sweet Laid down in droves of passion and heartache The likes never before we would ever encounter The mold you were truly destined to eventually break
You were born before your time an enigma of the day| Your words were like satin ribbons tripping from your soul Filling the world with gems of literature Making all our lives feel complete and whole
Your poetic lines hooked me like a trout in midstream I was mesmerised by your storytelling It painted vivid images in my eager mind The world will always be grateful Of the great legacy that you left behind
The world will never forget your name You were a genius long before your time Dylan Thomas the pride of the valleys| Your life will be remembered Through your beautiful words and rhymes.
William T Fearby is a Poet/Writer born on the 10th of May 1951. He left school in 1966 at the age of fifteen to make his way in this World with no qualifications. All that he had was the determination to succeed. He grew up as a child of the 50s and 60s and carved his way in this world with a young wife and children from a one roomed bed sitter working two jobs for years to eventually owning his own business and buying their own four-bedroom house. In 2013 he unfortunately became ill and had to give up his business. Then, he took up the pen and started to write choosing health over Wealth, a step that he had wished he had done many years ago.
He started a poetry group on Facebook in 2017 and called it Poems of Life to promote his poetry. It has been so popular. Now, it has grown to over 240,000 members. He has been published in various online publications and magazines. He has also published his first book called Poems of Life and it is available on Amazon.
Nell Jones Australia
In Ceremony of a Fire Raid Past
The 21st Century’s future is the past, Darkness brings the resurrection, And the entrance of bear and beast, Perpetuity dressed in old aged robes, Arrives to raid with vengeful pillage, To deliver us Caine, reborn, In renewed defiance, to stain the earth.
Through Dylan’s words, We witnessed London’s child, burning, In fire raid ceremony, An elegy to the first life lost. His verse to Mankind, told of what we had done.
At nightfall, We shoot the stars again, from wars weary sky, To our future in the past.
Profound and sombre, his voice, Called to us in melancholy, for the comets, To cast out the rapacious robes of imperial dictators, And rip them from the dry crumbling earth, Instead gift liberty, to the innocent sunflower in new bloom.
Through Dylan’s eyes, We are ruined in, The erupting future in his vision past. The nightingale shows no sorrow, Only bravery to the machinery of war. A requiem sings in loud voices to the Hypocrisy of long arms, In reprisal for the husk of generations undone, Shackled and forced into the glory of the murdered night.
His prose, Plays out on the stage once more, The half-covered faces bound and buried in ditches, In landscape, boasting mass and single grave, Dug deep into Europe’s epic wound.
But his thoughts, Have passed through us like rushing water, And the rippling companion of the past, Pools the future in still silence, To wear a vacant blank stare for the ominous cloud. Spring torn from the ebb and flow, Drifts from peaceful, blue slumbered sleep, Woken in milky white breath, To fall from the sky, Into black abyss, Slaughtered at the altar once more, A lamb buried into the constant earth.
Through his words, but not alone, We have shrouded the small child with elegy, Her demise for decades, rewarded with medals and marches. On the bloodied streets of Bucha’s last dawn, A town laments without song, Forgotten in, The snow-covered cinders, that ignited the siege, Forgotten in ceremony of a fire raid, past.
Nell Jones (Daniella) was born in Adelaide in 1964. She has Dutch and Welsh heritage. Writing since the age of 12, Nell had her first play, Dead Man’s Alley, a work focused on the plight of homeless men living on the streets of Melbourne, performed at the Nimrod Theatre, Sydney, a second play, The Blind Forty, set on the Torrens River during the Depression in Adelaide, performed at the Seymour Centre, Sydney. She has been the recipient of a Master Writers Grant, from the Australia Council and has written several other plays for youth theatres and schools, as part of her role as a drama teacher and director in those organisations. Nell has published many works over the years, including Jack and Lily, a chronicle of short war stories and poetry. Nell’s first novel, The Lost Sister of Groningen, based on the life of her mother in WW2 and 1950’s Australia, was launched at the Tap Gallery in Sydney in 2010. It was later launched at the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival in 2011. Her second novel, A Token for Perry was launched by Libby Hathorn in Sydney at the 371 Gallery Marrickville. Her poetry volume, The Sky Is My Religion was also launched in Ubud Reader’s and Writer’s Festival in 2012 and with the support of the UWRF, was opened by Australian writer Libby Hathorn. Nell performed her poetry daily with Balinese musicians and dancers in an art space in Ubud, with paintings that were specially created to reflect her poetry volume. At the opening she performed with Balinese dancers and a 30-piece orchestra as part of the Ubud Readers and Writers Festival celebrations. She had poems published last year for the ‘How Time Has Ticked A Heaven Around the Stars,’ E book Poetry Anthology, by Infinity Books as part of Dylan Day celebrations and was featured on a poster with her haiku poem. Poem, Blazing Star for Dylan, was also featured on Vatsala Radhakeesoon’s blog, for Dylan Day Poetry Celebrations in 2021.
Nell has two degrees in education and lives by the sea in Newcastle, Australia. In 2021 she retired from teaching and is a full-time writer. She has just completed an Artist in Residency placement at Lighthouse Arts in Newcastle in 2022, while working on her third novel, Patience Perry.
At fourteen, the tenebrous river Enoree flowed through me, child of fleeing light. Natural isolationist, I curled in my room on my old, sagging bed with the grass green embroidered spread, books bleeding stanzas and rhyme, flowing free verse, the comfort of a sonnet.
The cricket song outside had nearly lulled me to a dream, until I read, lastly, a page held too close to the sun, Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs… These words, in this poem, reached inside, rearranging my senses into a crevasse, so many were my emotions, so deep they were that I feared I may not be able to hold them all close.
Yet I feared that I might; that I would be torn apart by sheer beauty, ripped by this terrible grace, To drown in it, To plunge my sorrowing spirit in it, was all I wanted to do. Deep and deeper still, take me there, filling every sense that I can bear.
And the sabbath rang slowly in the pebbles of holy streams. This was my sabbath, holy words descending, dripping, settling, into the un-nameable me. What language shall I borrow, “Fern Hill,” you bringer of windfall light, whose pages, now thin as water, first found me in my frustrated cocoon of a girl, and finds me now, silvering and tender still, in deep sabbath walks, through fire green as grass, passing the fields of praise, one day to ascend the swallow thronged loft.
Yet for now, for now, I will lay me down in the holy streams, passing cold, to one day be awakened to these words, forever fled, into the rivers of gossamer light.
Melissa Chappell is a poet and writer residing in South Carolina, USA. She gains much of her inspiration from the natural world around her. Her poems have been published in BlazeVox, Adelaide Literary Journal, and Amethyst Literary Journal, among others. Her most recent book was For the Next Earth (Wipf and Stock, 2021). She was a Pushcart Nominee,and has been recognized on a few other occasions for her poetry and non-fiction. She is grateful to the many in the literary community who have helped her along her continuing journey to become a poet and writer, One spring day, she hopes to pack her bags and travel to Spain.
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Don Beukes France/South Africa
Good Night, Dylan
Dear Dylan – Your love light for life inspires us still to this day as we float on the updraft of your literary legacy continuing to drink your lexical cocktails of symbols and images of nature sublime, closing our eyes to see through you the inspiration for your word weaving universe as you dip your toes once more in the waters of Swansea, making us see your longing for belonging in a universe where love lives and thrives within your poetic lines whilst you search for the meaning of life itself or who to trust in order to to avoid sliding into the abyss of humanity’s ignorance of promoting equality amongst communities to establish a cohesive mindset where literary liberty reigns supreme, free from binding constraints preventing you from speaking your mind, so we bid you a restful night as you rage against the dying of the night whilst we ponder about the wonder of your universe.
Love Light – You love light as you raise your eyes to the morning of your mourning but the shadows of death only darken your mood temporarily – Blinding your joy, yet you refuse to be engulfed in sorrow as you chase a new morrow, hoping for us to follow along that cliff path where a priestly heron echo your deepest lamentations and frustrations, so you find sweet peace in the rush of the waves crashing over your fears and pains, knowing and hoping to continue believing that death has no dominion over you as you gently slip into another endless revelatory embattled accusatory night.
Symphony of Humanity – You lament our discontent with futile senseless wars causing generational eternal scars as we become mere fragments of ourselves in the search for the meaning of life – Who we are or who we were meant to be but we are not afforded such luxury to gain insight into our reason for being so we internalise our obvious inevitable deterioration as we prepare half-heartedly for our aging minds yet grasping on to the belief that our grief is inevitable, so when we ponder about the wonder of your words, let me tell how your soul still echoes in our hearts as we walk each day to the beat of your heartbeat still making sense of this existence, whilst wishing you a restful peaceful and calm good night and a heartfelt bon a nuit…
Don Beukes is a British and EU Poet and writer, originally from Cape Town, South Africa. He is a Poetry Chapbook Reviewer at The Poetry Café. He has written Ekphrastic Poetry since 2015 collaborating with artists internationally. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’, ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection and ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’ (Concrete Mist Press) and ‘The Girl in the Stone’ (Impspired). He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French, Kreol (Mauritius) and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (eBook) (Libbo Publishers) and his second, ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing Cape Town). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019.
Lauren Scharhag USA
Naked They Shall Be One
Is the bloody man dead yet?
When he met the blue-eyed dancer, he didn’t even know how to prepare his own eggs, this poet, whose brain was already spinning immortal verse when he was still a lad, which just goes to show the untrustworthy nature of organs, foremost the loins that speed bodies to the mattress, genetic drivers urging us to reach for what the Yanks call firewater, flame chasing flame, tongue and larynx caressing eardrums over the BBC airwaves, and from either end, these candles devour each other. Let’s see which one of us immolates first, my love, which one of us succumbs to this mutual flux. After all, old poets neither die nor fade away, even if their lungs are liquifying, even if they’re left blue and gasping, dark as his mythical namesake, fly blown, on dry land drowning, latter-day Son of the Wave, and gentles writhing hatch to bear his pall into that good night. Thirty-nine years of sucking on inhalers the way he sucks down eighteen shots in one sitting, a belly full of mash, a chest full of slag.
And when his friends were called to war, he called himself, with clever synecdoche, an unreliable lung, too sick to serve his country but well enough to blitz his liver like the Luftwaffe levelled Castle Street. The ancient Egyptians believed the liver was the seat of love, and she called their relationship raw, red bleeding meat, and she called the bar their altar. She could never trust a man who didn’t partake at least a little in the sacramental hooch, coming to love the taste even of his rotgut sputum. One might say that love will flush these toxins from our souls, but still we wear these carcasses, still we’re weighted down by aches and glands, and we, conjoined at the frailties, could never truly hope to separate.
They said it was the pollution that did him in, that late autumn at St. Vincent’s, over two hundred dead of smog, and such a man as this– no tube poked through Adam’s apple could ever suffice to infuse him with air enough to fuel another thirty-nine years. Neither the first nor the last artist to famously check out of the Chelsea, just another tragic soul among all the suicides, the Sids and Nancies, and the Titanic ghosts. (Though we were Spungen and Vicious long before anarchy ever came to the UK.) And while he lay dreaming at the threshold of death’s kingdom, she sat, straitjacketed in detox.
And from this pyre we shall be delivered, borne on smoke and ash and whiskey fumes, to that place that holds no dominion, to the place of darkness and transparency, where mad and sane are the same, where sober and drunk are the same, where fury and joy are the same, where foot and elbow are the same, where daisies and hammers are the same, where fall and rise, where love and loss, where what is and what could have been, and all and nothing are the same, and the broken sun yet shines above and the drowning dead may laugh again, and there, my love, with no lips to drink, you and I naked shall be one.
Lauren Scharhag (she/her) is an associate editor for GLEAM: Journal of the Cadralor, and the author of thirteen books, including Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press) and Languages, First and Last (Cyberwit Press). She has had over 200 publications in literary venues around the world. She is the recipient of the Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Contest Award (finalist) and the Seamus Burns Creative Writing Prize. She has also been nominated for multiple Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Rhysling Award nominations. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com
Tony Carty Ireland
To Dylan Thomas
Those whispering Welsh valleys laid bare upon his soul His words enkindled many with passion truth and whole. Vast amounts of tenderness reached deeply in his wounds The solitude of plentiness Golden sands and dunes A legacy of literature encapsulates his mind A momentary genius Rhythmic beauty- bind.
Tony Carty was born in Dublin in 1961. He has written poetry and is involved in various poetry groups, mainly on Facebook. He is honoured to be a member of ILA magazine. (International Literature & the Arts). Tony currently lives in Crumlin, Dublin and is a musician in a Blues and Rock band.
Sekhar Banerjee India
Probably Geranium
I need a cane chair on a plot of land somewhere, a small place, may be in the provinces where buildings are lower than a tree’s canopy when I finally give up
Every place has its own flaws, like us Some are permanently doubtful; history made them what they are and the tourists search out what is still left
There needs to be vastness in front like an ancient morning harmonium : solid, luminous and musical. A hillock, a placid sea, some flower tubs, probably red geranium, or a sun-filled expanse of the ferns. Though my scratched eye glass can look on for nothing in particular when I underline every other paragraph of a book on poetry criticism and solitude
With a blue pencil made of olive wood I would pick out and feel simple antonyms : day/night, black/white, female/ male, life/death while the warm sun snuggles up on my lap like a sleepy feline, home-bound at last
Sekhar Banerjee is a Pushcart Award nominated poet for 2021. The Fern-gatherers’ Association (Red River, 2021) is his latest collection of poems. He has been published in Indian Literature, The Bitter Oleander, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Lake, Muse India, Kitaab, Better Than Starbucks, Bengaluru Review, Cafe Dissensus, Thimble Literary Magazine, The Tiger Moth Review, Outlook ,The Alipore Post, RIC Journal and elsewhere. He has a monograph on an Indo-Nepal border tribe to his credit. He is a former Secretary of Paschimbanga Bangla Akademi under the Government of West Bengal. He has recently co-edited The Brown Critique’s ‘Home’ anthology. He hails from Jalpaiguri — an old tea town in sub-Himalayan West Bengal. He lives in Kolkata.
Don Beukes is a South African, British and EU Poet and writer. He is a Poetry Chapbook Reviewer at The Poetry Café. He has written Ekphrastic Poetry since 2015 collaborating with artists internationally. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’, ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection and ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’ (Concrete Mist Press). He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French, Kreol (Mauritius) and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (eBook) (Libbo Publishers) and his second, ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing Cape Town). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019.
Here are some poems and prose extracts by Don Beukes:
I am Refugee
Another foreign face, Just another alien place – A futile survival rat race Taking place at stellar pitiful pace but do not mind me – I am just in a desperate horrific hurry as you Brand me refugee.
Endless footage document my failing crumbling courage, Desperation fuels my hesitation to abandon my Birthright habitation – Circumstance limit my Human circumference, Insatiable lust for Power my hindrance.
Echoes of loved ones I lived for once maimed – Savagely shamed, Their humanity callously claimed – Misinterpreted culture Ravenously raptured – A nation’s soul violently fractured, Extremist beast disturbingly haunted me – Its feast Devouring my very nature, A godless heinous creature.
Global coverage diarise my demise – Humanitarian Disguise expose your EU lies – Herded and cleverly Channelled you pass me along like a Nationless centurion – My personal story my passport to humanitarian glory – A perilous journey began with family across land and sea devastating heart-wrenching loss of an infant son lost tossed out into a watery grave – Choking humanitarian global cloud.
Political fallout the daily shout – I am what it is all about, Fractured status sudden realisation how much I am hated – Trump prophesizing armageddon in the US what a shameful mess branding me useless – What planet is this?
My religion your chosen confusion your hateful rhetoric no illusion – Merkel shaming the UN her passion humanely driven – Cameron foolishly debating his conscience flaking.
Excuse my perceived intrusion – Your bias not your intention – I was just never mentioned my background whispered in scriptures even historical fractures – Made to sound like leeching maggots – Have you bothered to ask what I’ve got to give?
A talent to share maybe a useful gift, Turn your prejudiced stare – You don’t really care what I can achieve – No thanks, remove your untimely white flag handkerchief and if I seem ungrateful well, that will be my own grief.
My journey now painfully perilous hopelessly penniless what existence is this – What does it mean to be truly free? I ask you this – For I am refugee.
City of Dust
We refuse to admit it
We even avoid whispering
About it but we are all citizens
Of a global city – A writhing organic
Metropolis pulsing with untapped potential
Being moulded carved expanded influenced
Harnessed affected infected yet sadly neglected
By those in authority – Our elected power hungry
Minority boosting their monetary superiority –
Just such a pity we ignore each other’s misery
Knowing many of us are not really that able to shine
Blinding light to end this global cultural fight – Killing
Our spirits each indigo demon alley nightmare night
Hoping to valiantly fight an oppressing corporate might
But we think twice who to trust giving in to material
Lusts scraping away our inherent moral compass
Lowering the peace mast whilst violently
Choking convulsing regurgitating disappearing
Clawing battling barely surviving –
In a man-made city of dust…
The Girl in the Stone
Her face remained hidden for a while within the Porous cavities of the stone I found at the back of the Garden, initially masked by ancient moss and clay deposits Hiding her bronze complexion for thousands of years but Never her obvious tears and startled expression as she Was proudly mounted on a log to watch over Monte Arabi although not yet revealed to me. It happened one orange blossom fiery sunset golden Evening staring at her blindly when for one split second A sunbeam gently kissed her bronze cheek revealing her Ancient forgotten mystique as her eyes locked in stone Stared helplessly at us – Her gaze mesmerising immediately Gripping my senses exploding questions rippling through Me wave after intoxicating wave as her battered right eye Spoke of unimaginable pain and her bruised cheek a badge Of her bravery and untold keen sense of survival – As the Evening light moved over her, I made another startling Discovery as her eternal protector in the form of a wolf Proudly revealed himself above her head.
Who was she when was she why now and how? What Was her young life like? Did she have to start a fire at Night in a deep cave surrounded by dominant males After another long exhausting hunt on the plains of Monte Arabi or did she warm up milk for them gathered From the resident mouflon still roaming this ancient land? Did she gather wild rosemary and thyme to flavour the Evening meal as expected by her male-dominated family? Did she dream of a future nurturing her own family? Did she whisper to the giant pine trees of her secret longings? Did she dream of flying away on eagle wings from her ancient Mountain kingdom longing for her own imagined freedom?
Only recently I was yet again stunned into silence and awe When two more faces in profile revealed themselves just before The golden liquid sun disappeared behind towering pine trees. Both revelations were locked on another side of the stone and Depending on the available light falling on one side, I swear I could see her father and mother alternatively depending On the light and dark shadows falling on their tired faces – It was like looking through a sliver of time allowing me to Peer momentarily into their ancient world.
She still stares at me every day and night – Questioning me Evaluating me, this girl in the stone still searching for a future Home, which makes me wonder if she was the last of her kind Hoping I would be so kind as to utter a welcoming word but Sadly she is unable to respond – Waking up once again In her ancient land with only her lifelong companion To guard over her as she hopefully stares every glowing Sunset to the home she used to know when she was free in Majestic Monte Arabi…
Prose
The Oracle Chronicles
Chapter One
As hordes of dark forces assemble across the parched lands known as Vygieskraal, a lonely mysterious figure slips unseen through the sacred waterfall, high above the hazy ravine splitting the three kingdoms of Belhar, Kraaifontein and Grabouw.
Not even the feared gamdroelas could pick up the scent of this elusive stranger to these forlorn lands, ravished by senseless decades of sporadic wars over the most precious prize of all; the only remaining legendary source of the life-giving water flowing to all the subjects in the three Kingdoms. Whoever controls the source, controls all the citizens. However, since all the water has dried up, a darkness has descended upon all who dwell in these war-torn ancient lands.
The knowledge of the sacred path leading to the source has long been passed on from a line of oracles, born with unknown visions and wisdom; only to be revealed when called upon by a chosen maiden from one of the three kingdoms, seeking the right of passage to secure the source for her nation.
Before she bravely entered the unknown, Eniamrach hesitated for a fleeting moment, just to take in the enormity of her task. She knew that any doubt would unleash a torrent of abuse from her family, who has offered her to the king of Belhar, Sekueb Nodmai. She just could not fail, must not fail if she was to secure the source for the kingdom. All she knew from the map passed on to her by her great-grandfather, the wise Oupa of her village, was that the entrance to the oracle was beyond the blue mist, through the gigantic ancient tree – hollowed out by years of conflict.
Suddenly the curtain of water cascaded right in front of her, as she bravely walked through it; her fear numbed by the fact that only she could ensure victory for her people and bestow honour on her family.
After a tiring journey of strange sights and smells, Eniamrahc noticed the stoic silhouette gazing at her from the top of a grassy hill. ”That must be the oracle”, she whispered to herself, as she kept her eyes fixed on the strange attire; the protective veil, the robe covering her entire body and a stare that looked right through her; knew her.
Unexpectedly the oracle spoke directly to her!
” Before you look at me and seek what only I can see, do you have what I’ve asked for?” Eniamrahc had to steel herself not to steal a split second peek at the revered
enigma talking to her. ”Yes great oracle, I have with me root of bokmakierie, essence of waterblommetjies and residue of knoffel, as you requested.”
Only then did the oracle give Eniamrahc a nod to look at her directly. Her voice sounded like a faint rumble before lightning strikes.
“You have a rare ingredient I have anxiously waited for. Only the root of bokmakierie can cause the gamdroelas to lose their vision, consequently allowing you safe passage to what you are seeking.”
Now you need to convince me why I should show you the way to the source of all life. Time is running out. Well? Don’t just stand there! Do you want this or not? ”
“How can you doubt me oh revered Oracle? I have risked my life to reach this sacred place. My journey here pre-ordained by my people and our wise and brave King Sekueb Nodmai, to whom I am promised to upon delivery of the knowledge of all life. My future and that of the people of Belhar, along with the other two kingdoms depend on my determination to succeed in the enormous task bestowed upon me. I am here to serve and I am prepared to die for it but not before I honour my great-grandfather, who led me here by revealing the source of all life to our king.’
If the Oracle had any doubts, she certainly did not reveal it. She was intrigued however to hear that an elder of an unknown village possessed the location of the secret liquid entrance to where she has lived all her life. This was indeed a revelation that would need her attention imminently but the task at hand surpassed any other concerns. This heroic maiden had a familiar life force radiating from her, a sure sign that what she was about to reveal was destined to be given to Eniamrahc.
“I am convinced brave maiden that your arrival here has been expected. I am yet to discover the identity of the elder who blessed you with this sacred knowledge of how to reach me but that can wait for later. I am convinced that your intentions are genuine and therefore I will ask you now to give me your hand and look beyond my eyes for what
you came to seek. I must warn you though that the path to the liberation of your people
will be filled with unimaginable horror and loss. Your very essence will be tested but this is what the stones have whispered. Never look back as I lead you now to where you were meant to journey to. Do not be startled by what you are about to witness. Only you will know which way to turn, which enemies to avoid and ultimately discover the very source of where we all came from. Something has gained access to the source of all knowledge but it has been blinded to prevent it from owning it. It is now up to you to confront it and destroy it. Trust me…’
As Eniamrach touched the Oracle’s hand, her very being was shaken by the visions confronting her. Not only did she have to face the gamdroelas down below on the plains of Vygieskraal but she had to rescue the cursed Bloekomboom army from the deep grotte below who would accompany her to her final destination, there to initiate a fierce battle for the ultimate knowledge, which would secure their future.
As she walked away, disappearing into the whispering woods of the Hottentotsholland mountains, all she could wonder about was why the oracle reminded her of a familiar face she once saw in her childhood dreams…
Chapter Two
The Prequel
The Beyond – Deep within the revered ancient cavities of the majestic azure Hottentots Holland Mountains, lies a kingdom as old as the rocks out of which it was forged – Its hidden entrances guarded by peculiar majestic beasts, each with unique abilities to protect those in the beyond from invasive familiar hostilities – You see, of the three kingdoms left in the land of Hottentotshuisie, ‘The Beyond’ remains protected by a worthy ruler elected to ensure languishing longevity – For a nation scarred by eons of marauding senseless wars to settle ancient scores, leaving only fermenting emotional sores – It is from this place that a young meisie is being prepared to seek my wise counselling and fulfill her whispered legacy, as others brace themselves for the final gathering – Hoping to discover life eternal from a secret liquid spring – Its passage known only by me, their elected referee.
Eniamrach – Even from the moeras plains of Vygieskraal I sensed her anxious breaths as she raced across the treacherous cursed land of the gamdroelas, devious unforgiving abominations born from the destructive spells of the tokkelos, gnashing in a frenzy for an untouched meisie to feast on as the stones predicted – Only her inherited ancient knowledge of the rare boegoe herb saved her foretold life, as its aroma sent the saliva dripping gamdroelas in a hallucinating coma – At last the trustworthy kwêvoëls shrieked her imminent arrival, my premonition almost complete, for Eniamrach might just be the one to inherit the eternal crown…
Sekueb Nodmai – Her hesitant approach revealed her innocence My veil masking my true identity. “What do you seek from me? Secrets of the boabab tree?”
“Oh mighty oracle I only need your ancient wisdom to save us from a fiery prison – I have for you root of waterblommetjie and extract of bitter knoffel, also essence of wilde dagga as you requested – Will you now grant me what I came to seek?” “You have done your father and your people proud. Now return through the weeping willows and follow the call of the echoing waterfall, then recite the words of the great Sekueb Nodmai – Hurry and flee from here, do not pierce my hazy veil, Quick drink this sour kruietee – Your essence will now float away from here – Remember me when you hear
Each year International Dylan Thomas Day is celebrated on 14 May.
This year I will be featuring a group of selective contemporary poets from various continents who are fans of Dylan Thomas and are willing to pay tribute to the great Welsh poet’s works through their poetry. All poems will be in English and they will be published on my blog at Vatsalarad Writing World on 14 May 2022: vatsalaradwritingworld.home.blog.
This year marks my 30th year of poetry -writing and deep inside , I feel that my mission as a poet has almost been achieved if not in a wholesome way , but at least I sincerely consider the first phase of my poetic mission to be complete. Achievement, as we know, means different things to different people. I do not ask much from the writing world. I believe it’s best to give space, and to share rather than just be on Earth and always be like “I need this award. I need this recognition. ” I am not against any award or anyone who is constantly aiming at it but I do have my own philosophy and I think one should stick to what one believes in.
As from April 2022, I will be offering a new service on this blog. This involves Free writing : Writer /Poet of the Month. Each month I will be inviting a writer who writes in English to be featured on my blog. I will be selecting the authors whose works appeal to me and generally in the writing world. However , if any writer wishes to be featured on my blog or wishes to suggest the name of someone , please feel free to e-mail me at :
If you wish to have your poetry chapbooks, poetry books, children books (prose and poetry) translated from English to French French to English Mauritian Kreol to English English to Mauritian Kreol please feel free to send them to :
vatsfrankness@gmail.com
Translation Fee: $0.06 (Rs 2.58 Mauritian currency) per word
Translation of Individual poems may also be considered . Please send a minimum of 5 poems if you wish to have a small number of your poems translated.
French and Mauritian Kreol (Kreol Morisien) translation by Vatsala Radhakeesoon
A Train to Somewhere
I remember my grandparent’s enclosed porch, their Boston Terriers nipping at my heels as I entered the yard.
I enjoyed the reminiscences, repeated at each visit. I reveled in the laughter that ensued after each anecdote about my childhood was concluded.
The story I remember most today is the one about my lone field trip, at the age of three, to the neighborhood railroad tracks. Little me, found by frantic people and returned home safely.
In later years, my grandmother, Alzheimer ridden, was found wandering those same railroad tracks by equally frantic people.
I’ve wondered since if we were looking for the same thing.
Un train pour aller quelque part
Je me souviens de la terrasse clôturée de mes grands- parents, leur Boston terriers me mordant les talons dès que j’entrais dans la cour.
Je me réjouis de ces souvenirs , qui se reproduisaient à chaque visite . Je m’amusais en me perdant dans le rire qui s’ensuivait après chaque anecdote de mon enfance.
L’incident qui reste gravé dans ma mémoire est celui de ma balade en solitude dans les champs , à l’âge de trois ans, traversant les voies ferrées du quartier. Toute petite, je fus retrouvée par des gens affolés et rentrée chez moi saint et sauf.
Dans les années suivantes, ma grand-mère , souffrant d’Alzheimer , fut retrouvée errant parmi les mêmes chemins de fer par les gens tout à fait affolés .
Depuis, je me demande si on avait le même but.
The Value of Shadows
The rain lay soggy upon the waterlogged branches of limp, bowed trees. Appearing as the hunched and angled, stooped backs of many old men walking here.
I caught a shape in the mist that reminded me of you, or perhaps I was just imagining you and your soldiers returning to the spot you had fought so hard to hold.
As the sun peeked through, I discovered these were only trees, although I remember it was here, sixty years ago, that your battalion won the day.
L’importance des ombres
La pluie laisse détrempé les branches d’arbres fragiles , courbées s’apparaissant comme des bossus et s’inclinant , tout penchant, les dos des vieux hommes qui y marchaient.
J’aperçus une silhouette dans la brume qui me rappela de toi, ou peut être que j’imaginais toi et tes soldats revenant au lieu où vous vous êtes battus de tout votre cœur.
Quand le soleil jeta un coup d’œil, Je constatais que ce n’était que des arbres, même si je me souviens que c’était ici, il y a soixante ans , ta bataille remporta la victoire.
Ensorcelled Within the Moonlit Eyes of P’aqo
Her silly putty face worn, the dowager’s palm was greased as the lightning strikes the beast. Rivulets of blood seep from sacred dogs.
The starry-eyed loon, the wild-eyed child through the streets, stopping the second before those dogs pounce.
Smelling the tears, she in the childhood tent feels the old hocus-pocus, from outside, the hiss and blast of truth.
But the shaman has not lost his grip, much quieter next time, the fight much less painful.
Just tell the truth. Give no hypnotic promises, no serpentine ballet woven between real and false.
She thinks, she feels, he promises, I’ll create the moon tonight he does, he does.
Ensorcelés par les yeux lumineux de P’aqo
Son visage ridicule, mastiqué, épuisé, la paume de la douairière était grasse quand la foudre frappa la bête. Des ruisseaux de sang coulant des chiens sacrés.
La folle aux yeux étoilés, L’enfant aux regards égarés courant dans les rues, s’enfuyant avant que ces chiens ne l’attaquent .
Flairant les larmes dans sa tente d’enfance elle ressent la vieille formule magique, de l’extérieur, le sifflement et le souffle de la vérité.
Mais rien ne s’échappe au shaman , plus calme la prochaine fois, la lutte moins douloureuse.
Dites seulement la vérité. Ne faites pas des promesses hypnotiques , Pas de danse du serpent se mêlant du réel et d’illusion.
Elle pense, elle ressent, Il promet, Je créerai la lune ce soir il le fait , il le fait.
Grave
There’s something wrong with your grave. There’s not the wrong kind of grass covering you, nor an incorrect variety of flowers growing atop. The tombstone looks fine: The symbols etched into the granite are perfectly formed,
The dates are right. Your name is spelled accurately. The shady tree above is grandly leafed, and suits its purpose. Yet, there is something incorrect. This grave is wrong, for the simple reason that you don’t belong here.
Tom
Ena kiksoz de mal avek to tom. Pena move zerb ki kouver twa, Ni bann fler ki fer dezord lao, Tom-la paret bien: Bann sinbol grave an granit zot bien forme,
Bann dat bon. To nom finn bien ekrir. Pie lao ki donn lonbraz li plin ar fey, ek fer so travay bien. Me, malgre sa ena touzour enn kiksoz ki pa bon. Sa tom- la li pa bon, Pou enn sel rezon parski li pa to plas sa.
Liar
Naked now you’ll be, stripped of all truthfulness, as Ananias exposed in elder days was. Protection now most slight. Then, gambling with veracity. Once to fool those who knew no better. Following, the first deception revealed, unraveling subsequent falsehoods. Line them up, parade them, display them as your inventions. They sit apparent, like squatters, long after being ordered out. No cover, no cover, stark they stay, stark you stay. All eyes now focus on your every misdemeanor of word.
Manter
Aster, to pou touni, Pou tir tou to verite, kouma Ananias ti expoze dan so vie zour. Proteksion bien tigit. Apre zwe avek verite. Enn fwa pou anbet bann seki konn plis. Swivan premie desepsyon ki finn admet, devwal ankor lezot mansonz. Met zot dan lake, fer zot mars kouma dan parad, Montre ki to bann linvansion sa. Zot assize remarkab, kouma bann squatters, mem apre ki finn donn zot lord ale. Pa kouver, pa kouver, Zot rest rizid, To res rizid. Tou lizie aster brake lor sak fo pa parol.
I first conducted International Dylan Thomas Day on my old blog , Poetry and Creativity in 2018. However, I closed that blog in 2019 due some health issues and the need to re-organize my writing duties. This year , I’m republishing the poems of International Dylan Thomas Day 2018 that were previously featured on my old blog. I’m publishing what I have saved as word document of 2018. Thank you Everyone! This brings back some good memories. 🙂
Vatsala Radhakeesoon
For my Grandfather, Dylan Thomas
by Hannah Ellis
England
Bloomsday, the annual day to celebrate the poet James Joyce has been alive and kicking for over sixty years and in Scotland, Burn’s night is embraced with much enthusiasm every January. But it was not until 2015 that Dylan Thomas, a fellow Celt, and also my grandfather, had an annual date in the literary calendar set aside to honour him.
It followed a hugely successful year-long festival in 2014 to mark the centenary of his birth, Dylan Thomas 100. It became clear that there was love all around the globe for my grandfather’s magical words. The date chosen was significant because it was the first time his much adored Under Milk Wood was performed with a small cast on May 14th 1953 at the Poetry Center in New York. It was also when he was heard to utter the wonderful line, “Love the words, love the words”.
I am passionate about continuing his message to ‘Love the words’. He was able to use words in a way only a master of his craft can. However ,I think we can all bring words to life and to use language to confidently express ourselves. Words are more than just prints on a piece of paper. You can play with them, change them, make them roll off your tongue, mold them to jump off the page or just simply absorb them as you leap inside a book.
Of course, it is heartbreaking to know that my grandfather left us at just 39 years old, especially if we wonder how many more powerful poems he could have completed but Dylan Thomas has left us with a lasting legacy – his beautiful and memorable writing. That is what I want us all to celebrate on International Dylan Thomas Day.
Let’s Celebrate International Dylan Thomas Day
by Vatsala Radhakeesoon
(Editor and Organizer for Poetry and Creativity blog)
Mauritius
Hello poet friends and literature-lovers! I’m one of the representatives of Immagine and Poesia (Italy-based literary movement) uniting artists and poet’s works. Immagine and Poesia was founded under the patronage of late Aeronwy Thomas, daughter of Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas.
Dylan Thomas was born in Swansea, South Wales on 27 October 1914. He is one of the famous poets in the field of English literature. His popular poems are “Do not go gentle into that good night”, “And Death shall have no dominion”. Dylan Thomas died in 1953 at the age of 39.
May 14th marks the anniversary of the first small cast reading of Under Milk Wood on stage at the 92Y in New York in May 1953 with Dylan Thomas as the narrator. Thus, 14 May has been assigned as International Dylan Thomas Day.
This year, on suggestion of the Editor Lidia Chiarelli of Immagine and Poesia, I have organized Dylan Thomas Day on my blog, Poetry and Creativity . A few months ago I posted a call for submission for contemporary authors/ poets to send their own original articles and poems as a tribute to Dylan Thomas.
I’m really glad to have received submissions from high caliber international poets of our time and I have the greatest pleasure to publish them on this blog today, on this special day.
The selected poems centre on Dylan Thomas’s life, appreciation of his works, his predominating themes and his peculiar poetic styles.
I express my sincere gratitude to all talented poets who have sent their awesome works. Many thanks to Hannah Ellis and Lidia Chiarelli for their support, encouragement and help in organizing this event on Poetry and Creativity blog.
Hope you will enjoy reading the following poems and support Dylan Thomas’s works and Poetry and Creativity blog.
Dylan Thomas reading his poem
Here is the You Tube video of Dylan Thomas reading his famous poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night”:
A Tribute to Dylan Thomas by Contemporary Poets
Derek Davies
Wales
A Legend in Time – Dylan Thomas
He came from South Wales
with a voice so sublime
So much loved by the world over
Such a legend in time
with poems of passion
and he spoke with such grace
so amazing a talent,
such a special Welsh ace.
Now his poems are famous
quite unique so they say
From the town that he came from
down in old Swansea Bay.
Dylan Thomas was special
So proud of this fair city
A real Welsh great
What a loss, such a pity!
Swansea’s First Son
they call him around here
And he loved his Welsh background
and especially the beer
He loved the Welsh language
and he adored the Welsh songs
We loved him around here
It’s where he belonged
Still his memory lives on
with his writings so fine
The great Dylan Thomas,
Forever in time.
Derek Davies is 58 and is from Swansea, Wales. He is self-employed and loves writing poems as a hobby. He believes firmly that Dylan Thomas is a local hero.
John Thieme
England
From Dylan to Dylan
The ragman still draws circles.
He’s been perfecting them for years,
around the pyramids of molehills
that hide his ashen fears.
A hearse is now approaching,
with pallid lowered beams,
on this highway of cracked asphalt,
the broken diamonds of his dreams.
His fires don’t light swiftly
like the beacons of his youth,
but he keeps a dawn flame flickering,
so deaf spirits may hear truth.
Dusk is now descending,
on his caravan of light,
but he snared the sun at noon-time
and he’ll rage against the night.
Author’s note:
‘From Dylan to Dylan’ adapts images from Bob Dylan’s compositions to respond to Dylan Thomas, particularly his most famous poem , ‘Do not go gentle into that good night’.
John Thieme is a Senior Fellow at the University of East Anglia. He previously held Chairs at the University of Hull and London South Bank University and has also taught at the Universities of Guyana and North London. His books include Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon, Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place, studies of Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul and R.K. Narayan, and The Arnold Anthology of Post-Colonial Literaturesin English. He was Editor of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature from 1992 to 2011 and is General Editor of the Manchester University Press Contemporary World Writers Series. His creative writing has been published in Argentina, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Malaysia, the Netherlands, the UK and the USA. A selection of his works is available on his academia.edu page: https://eastanglia.academia.edu/JohnThieme
Jay Anderson
England
His Life in Sonnet
Dylan Thomas, the welsh man who held no mysteries. Never saw without a pint of bitter in his hands, despite other efforts went down his history. The drinks went down swiftly onto the bar like a full drum band. Canes at school, his hands marked and still feeling blistery. When childhood was spent at his aunt, games and shouting “at this tree, He spent more time on a farm no matter that he owned land. A rich boy who felt he belonged with those rebelling against the ministry. His life was a short lived victory. We have left poems, images of the curly haired boy playing on the sand. His profession, a beautiful contradictory “rang the bells of London and painted it like a tart” insisted he, The world is in awe, it’s like poetry followed his free line commands. The underdog of psychohistory, His poetry was a revolution, but distally.
Jay Anderson is an eighteen year old from the North East of England. Mostly writing in slam and free line styles, he allows himself to write in different styles and challenges himself within writing. His poetic influences are R.H. Sin, Neil Hilborn, Denice Frohman, Allen Ginsberg, and the rest of the beat poets. He is very motivated in human rights and political issues and his writing reflects the issues that he is passionate about most of the time. Twitter: @notjaytanderson Word Press : jayandersonpoetry.wordpress.com
Rajnish Mishra
India
It Feels So Good, Revenge
Teeth clenched, lips sealed; silent,
I raise my arm with a blunt short rod.
It feels so good, revenge!
I knock him down like a dry dead tree.
Not one stroke finished, it’s stretched long:
Teeth clenched, lips sealed; silent,
Thrice I strike. I take my time.
Alive he’s kept to feel to the end.
It feels so good, revenge!
With each connection I curse him twice.
With each curse breaks a spell.
Teeth clenched, lips sealed; silent.
My python-eyes hypnotize,
Keep my prey transfixed, silent.
It feels so good, revenge.
There lies the broken spell.
There lies the broken curse:
Teeth clenched, lips sealed; silent.
It feels so good, revenge.
Rajnish Mishra is a poet, writer, translator and blogger born and brought up in Varanasi, India and now in exile from his city. His work originates at the point of intersection between his psyche and his city.
Ken Allan Dronsfield
USA
Death within Eventuality
A stellar race to a darker place,
the almost dead rattle and hum.
Deserving none of the warm sun,
a coolish death within eventuality.
Gnaw on a bone or lapis stone,
color blue hanging from a mirror.
Piety’s ice now sugars and spice,
eat your fill of a blackened crow.
Sequestered blaze of frosty haze,
dance until dawn to an old sonnet.
Try your best, at the calmest behest
of the one pounding the black book.
Bicycles, tricycles and popsicles,
stored in the trunk of the clown car.
A circus of life, in a perpetual strife,
soaring upon a vibrating high wire.
Expectancy of a burning intensity
shall grasp death within eventuality.
Ken Allan Dronsfield is a disabled veteran, poet and fabulist originally from New Hampshire, now residing on the plains of Oklahoma. His work can be found in magazines, journals, reviews and anthologies. He has two poetry books, “The Cellaring” a collection of 80 poems of light horror, paranormal, weird and wonderful work. His newest book, “A Taint of Pity: Life Poems Written with a Cracked Inflection”just released on Amazon.com. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize and twice Best of the Net Nominee for 2016-2017. Ken loves writing, thunderstorms, walking in the woods at night and spending time with his cats Willa and Yumpy.
Robin Wyatt Dunn
USA
go and bake
go and bake put the bun in the oven curl it around your waist cake the melancholy edges of your harbinger life with the shades of day too ordinary to be real glued to your face
Robin Wyatt Dunn lives in Los Angeles but is trying to escape. His short story collection DARK IS A COLOR OF THE DAY was just published by Weasel Press.
Santosh Bakaya
India
To Dylan Thomas
“Do not go gentle into that good night.” You beseeched your dad; so did I. “Burn and rave’, you exhorted, so did I. ‘Rage, rage, you pleaded; your plea went unheeded. The night came.
You reminisced about your Christmas in Wales Yes, you wanted to snowball the cats, wearing socks; Shocked I was when Mrs. what was her name, shouted ‘Fire!’ What a liar, she was, shouting fire when there was none. Mrs Prothero , was she ? And her son, Jim or was it Tim? But it was great fun, your Christmas in Wales. ‘Bring out the tall tales’, you wrote, and I quote. Ah, it was indeed a tall tale; a lovely song. She shouted fire and beat the dinner gong. What was wrong? Was she crazy? Ah, my memory is hazy. Your Welsh Christmas was choc-a bloc with presents, slinking and sidling, spitting and snarling cats, postmen, and uncles playing the fiddle, singing Drake’s Drum, and one aunt merrily lacing her tea with rum!
‘Rage, rage,’ your words were a scream yanked from the depth of an anguish, extreme. But no poem, no plea can save a dad In hindsight, this I understand. The night comes, nonetheless. So does Christmas every year.
I quietly creep into the nostalgia of your childhood Christmas in Wales when my heart bewails the memory of another dad too weak to put up a fight against the dying of the light. The night comes with a painful intensity. And Death’s dominion reigns, you see.
Academician, poet, novelist and essayist, Dr. Santosh Bakaya is the winner of the International Reuel Award for literature for her long poem, Oh Hark! [2014] . She has been critically acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu [2015]. She has been invited to many literary festivals and was one of the delegates at SAARC SUFI FESTIVAL, 2017 [Jaipur], besides having won many laurels for her literary output. In January 2018, she delivered a Tedx Talk on The Myth of Writers’ Block. Her other books which have been widely appreciated are: Where are the lilacs? Flights from my Terrace , and Under the Apple Boughs [ Incidentally , this book gets its name from FERN HILL , a poem by Dylan Thomas]
Manuel Renaud
France
December
Snow on the wood
A rain of cold ashes
December goes away
His sad days are wandering
He’s snowing in silence
Snowflakes of dumb tears
On the cheeks of absence
And December stops
Gazing upon the wood
Then turns his head away
Yes…December goes away
His frozen steps, his festive atmosphere
Snow in the house
In those Sundays of shadows
Cop- sized and then sinks
In the evenings
Without horizon
Snow in my heart
As sorrow decembers*
All the minutes, all the colors
Last embers soon to be ashes
Author’s Note:
December, in this poem has been personified. It refers to a person and his/her sufferings. Here the poet links it to the sorrows faced by Dylan Thomas.
*decembers – to be considered as a verb created by the poet to express the qualities of the month December. It refers to being cold, painful and nostalgic.
Manuel Renaud is a French musician and poet. He writes lyrics and excels in playing various musical instruments such as the guitar, bass, ukulele and mandolin. He also teaches guitar, bass and singing. His passion for poetry originated when he was at school. At the age of 14 he was awarded a prize at school for his outstanding achievement in French language. The prize comprised of Les Oeuvres Complètes d’Arthur Rimbaud (The Complete Works of Arthur Rimbaud). When he was much younger he was much influenced by British pop music. This roused his eagerness to learn and understand English. So, firstly he wrote lyrics in English and French. Then afterwards, he seriously started writing poems and still keeps writing regularly.
Eftichia Kapardeli
Greece
The Route of an Angel
A wet sweet dawn On their wet roofs Of houses Uniformly next to each other Built in series … lonely Route of an Angel, Archangel Lost in the city cool Heart
***
And you never entered In the street houses With the stone walls The heart that does not hold, by There it does not pass
*** Flowers hidden, sprouted Where the sun shyly Some rays send A lone purple flower Over there a heart
I look at it and in lips overflow A prayer that I honor you
***
I have no hands, only wings Where they lift me up in the sky High, do not … From a brother’s hand In the soil I fall in the shadow of Archangel.
Author’s Note:
This poem has been inspired by part of Dylan Thomas’s quote “ I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, down throw and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”
Eftichia Kapardeli was born in Athens and lives in Patras. She studied journalism and has a section at the University of Cyprus in Greek culture. She has a Doctorate from ARTS AND CULTURE WORLD ACADEMY. She is a member of the World Poets Society, IWA (international writers) and POETAS DEL MUNDO. Information about her books can be found at: http://eftichiakapa.blogspot.gr/2013_10_01_archive.html
Gopal Lahiri
India
Dark is Night
(A tribute to Dylan Thomas)
Please be seated, have a quiet talk
On the black wall, scribble in chalk…
(I) Ask’ shall the blind horse sings sweeter?’
The moonlight sees the white winter.
Sip a cup of your hot coffee
Think of those days, pleasure and glee.
Shall I dream a thin sea of flesh?
And a bone coast wrapped in a mesh.
Flawless piece of work to fulfil
Your good, lovely and perfect will.
You’re the salt person, blasted place
Life’s hard, still have that elfin grace.
Just the right kind of evening breeze
When life seems to stink, go for seize.
Brush and paint your face all over
Read your lips, upper and lower.
The wild birds sing the sun in flight
Good men crying for light more light,
Struggle hard with a lot of grind
Now you are what I had in mind.
Gopal Lahiri was born and grew up in Kolkata. He currently lives in Mumbai, India. He is a bilingual poet, writer, editor, critic and translator and widely published in Bengali and English language. He has had five collections of poems in Bengali and seven collections in English. He has jointly edited the anthology of poems: Scaling Heights and is the recipient of the Poet of the year award in Destiny Poets, UK, 2016.
“Gogyoshi is a poem written in five lines. Writing a poem in five lines is its only rule. The content of gogyohshi is free, its themes are chosen by the poet.” Taro Aizu, Japan
Lidia Chiarelli is one of the Charter Members of Immagine & Poesia, the art literary Movement founded in Torino (Italy) in 2007. She is also an installation artist, award winning poet and her works have been multi-lingually translated.
She has become an award-winning poet since 2011 and she was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation from The First International Poetry Festival of Swansea (U.K.) for her broadside of poetry and art contribution. Pushcart Prize Nomination in 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2018.
Her writing has been translated into different languages and published in Poetry Reviews, and on web-sites in Italy, France, Great Britain, U.S.A., Canada, Albania, Romania, South Korea, Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic, India, Israel, Vietnam, China, Mauritius and Japan.
See the thoughts, come closer in the rain: dream, dream to bear pain. Sorrow in bliss is the escaped kiss that once we all held some single rose.
As I know, the Apple-Heart hoists a young child through the empty core. His tiny hands clench gleefully and he giggles like silver clouds. If night touches his eyes—he is reborn into thirty goodbyes.
Let’s know what angel is carrying the Promised fields. My dear joy, the seed from which the gift of light was born. She heaves like a fisherman’s catch on the waifish waters. That abounding soul within me—night, heart, descried sword of Fate.
You love me to be loved.
Dustin Pickering is founder of Transcendent Zero Press, a literary publisher. He is a visual artist, musician, poet, and prose writer. He also edits Harbinger Asylum, a journal for the arts and poetry. His two most recent books, Salt and Sorrow (Chitrangi, 2016) and A Matter of Degrees (Hawakal, 2017), are both small collections that explore multilayered ideas. He placed as a finalist in Adelaide Literary Journal’s short story contest in 2017.
David Ratcliffe
England
Pour me a Vision
Pour me a vision
that I might walk a corridor
of chance conversation;
drift into moments passing,
towards light where no sun shines.
Enter passages unclothed
through the prism of a wanton eye
among bookshelves, disturbing dust
where captured words weep.
To follow the poet
out of black, into yellow
mount platforms
feeding chowder to amoeba.
Yellow to black
then back to the shed
where he’d chisel granite
with a well-worn pen.
Drink me a moment beyond
numberless days of death
that I might count them among
unsurpassed experience.
Though his passing stills the hands
‘gently or otherwise’
their indelible mark remains,
forever at the turning of a page.
David Ratcliffe hails from the north of England though now living in the south. He writes poetry, short stories, song lyrics (Two of his songs have been recorded by Leeds band Backyard Burners) & Stage plays (one of which is with a theatre company in London). He is also a keen painter in both watercolours and oils. His poetry has been published online in Poetry Pacific Magazine, TRR Poetry, Sixteen Magazine, Mad Swirl, Tulip Tree Review (Print Version), Poem Hunter and Creative Talents Unleashed. He has written two Plays to date; The Sally set on a council estate near Rochdale Lancashire in three parts, and Intervention, a two-part play on the subject of world peace.
Then, a day comes when the roaring fire finally commences its slow
but sure dimming and descent
as the bones begin to grow weaker
and the skin wrinkles with the passage
of time. In the blink of an eye
a womb becomes thoughts
of a casket. Upon this occasion
a new word needs to be introduced to
the vocabulary of life and that word
is Rage. When the once glorious flame
has been lulled to the feeble embers
of a quaint flickering, it is imperative to use
that new word and rage against
the dying of the light as memories
of the days when it burned most intensely
allows a smile of sheer triumph
to blossom upon the face.
Heath Brougher is co-poetry editor of Into the Void Magazine. He has received multiple nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His newest book is “To Burn in Torturous”.
Pushmaotee Subrun
Mauritius
For Dylan Thomas (Title as initially saved in word document)
Sadly, the candle of your life Extinguished before the usual span of human life,
Leaving for your eternal abode too early,
And yet, you left behind a great legacy.
Gaining literary immortality.
Your poems reflect a zeal, highly poetic,
From your youth, all enthusiastic.
You gave glimpses of your personal struggles,
But alas! It’s all a muddle
Why you bade an early farewell.
It could have been problems of adolescence,
That give us a hundred and one troubles,
Or love affairs,
Or other worldly snares.
But well, if only we could beware!
Originality pervades your poems,
They have their own richness,
With farfetched imagery, like flowers blooming.
What a great blessing!
To human beings!
You dared to voice out what others did not,
By your artistic and poetic talent,
Whether philosophical,
Or matters political.
Without being sentimental.
Was it an artistic rebellion?
Or was it an expression of your faith?
A strong personal faith?
Resulting in your poetry being filled
With exuberance and a joy fulfilled.
They say those whom the Gods love, die young.
Surely you were among
The choicest of the Lord’s chosen people,
Or else there is no reason for your early departure,
Giving the literary world the greatest displeasure.
Your writings done casually,
Made you popular posthumously.
Certainly, dear poet, if you had lived longer,
The literary world would have benefitted further.
Yet, eternally, ‘the real life of your words’ outstays,
Great poet, you will ‘live in them and with them’ always.
She has written one novel Ella which was published in May 2013, Short Stories and Fables published in August 2015 and one play entitled Who is Your Best Friend, published in June2015. Her poems Why worry, be happy, (July 2017), followed by The Break of Dawn, (September 2017), My Dream (November 2017), were featured in Setu Magazine.
Vatsala Radhakeesoon
Mauritius
Celebrating Immortality
O talented poet! O master of words! Amidst hectic 21st century of internet dominion we are still mesmerized by your sun of direct expression your daring waves of spontaneity
Echoes, echoes “Do not go gentle into that good night” all around the globe, As we swirl, waltz in your world We can’t help to let a tear drop in the poetry realm but soon we comfort ourselves, pacify your soul by celebrating what you’ve left in legacy – the undying fruits of poetic determination your constant stars of immortality.
Vatsala Radhakeesoon was born in Mauritius in 1977. She started writing poems in English at the age of 14. She is currently the author of a few poetry books. She is the representative of Immagine and Poesia for Mauritius.
Music is part of most celebrations. Here is a beautiful Spanish song inspired by Dylan Thomas’s poem ” Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night”. It has been sung by the Spanish singer Rafa Bocero.
Ruben Molina was Born in Barinitas Edo Barinas, on October 23, 1969. He studied at the Conac Merida Art School from 1980 to 1983. He belongs to the CIRCULO DEL DIBUJO of MACCSI. He taught as professor of Printing Systems at the former Neuman INCE Design Institute. He currently lives and works in Merida Venezuela.
He has been represented as artist by The Ajala Project, Art Foundation in Dubai UAE until 2019. He has had his own solo exhibitions and participated in many group art exhibitions worldwide.
Note: Painted especially for the International Dylan Thomas Day 2021. Inspired by the poem ‘And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Gloria Keh, 69, began painting since childhood. Her father, the oil painter Martin Fu was her first art teacher. She has taken part in over 80 art exhibitions both in Singapore as well as internationally, and won 18 international art awards.
In 2008, Gloria founded Circles of Love, a non profit charity outreach program using her art in the service of humanity. Since that year, all proceeds from the sales of her artworks are donated 100% to charity
In addition to painting, Gloria writes poetry and facilitates mandala as well as art journaling workshops.
Name of artist: Juliet Preston
Title: ‘Osiris, come to Isis’
Medium: Digital abstract
Size: 1080 x 1080, 1.2 mega pixel
Year : 2021
Country: USA
Note: Inspired by Dylan Thomas’ ‘Osiris, come to Isis’ ,notebook poems
Juliet Preston is an engineer by profession. She considers herself to be a poet at heart and an artist by passion.
Name of artist: Wendy Wong
Title: ‘the Good Night’
Medium: digital art
Size: 2048 px x 2048 px
Year: April 2021
Country: Singapore
Wendy Wong is from Singapore. Since young, Wendy’s interest in art was sparked by her father who brought her out to parks to paint the scenery.
Although she graduated with a Diploma in Graphic Design, she went on to pursue a career in Retail Real Estate for over more than 2 decades and got so busy in the rat race leaving her little time to pursue her passion in the arts area.
Through the years, her love for art never left her.
It is only in the recent years that she picked up her paint and brushes again. Through drawing, it helped her in being more aware of herself and she also used this media to run art expression workshops to help others find their inner child.
It is during 2020 Covid-19 period that Wendy began to paint more seriously, endeavouring to hone her skills and participated in various open call art exhibitions held online.
One of Wendy’s dream is to have her own solo art exhibition one day. She has participated in 10 International Online exhibitions and will soon be part of another upcoming one.
Name of artist : Lidia Chiarelli
Title : How Time has Ticked a Heaven Round the Stars
Medium: Digital collage ( From an original photo by Nora Summers)
Size:45 x 30 cm (pixels)
Year : 2021
Country : Italy
Lidia Chiarelli is from Torino, Italy. She is an installation artist , collagist, writer and co-founder, with Aeronwy Thomas, of the art-literary Movement Immagine & Poesia (2007). Award -winning poet, six nominations to Pushcart Prize, USA and Literary Arts Medal (NY) 2020. Her poems are often translated multilingually.
Gianpiero Actis is the co-founder with Aeronwy Thomas ( Dylan Thomas’s daughter) of the art-literary movement “Immagine & Poesia”, and he often offers his artworks as “responses” to poems of different writers.
His artworks are in permanent exhibitions / collections in Italy and abroad (Promotrice delle Belle Arti, Torino /Dylan Thomas Centre, Swansea Wales, /Musée de Huy, Belgium).
Innovation and deep cultural backgrounds are the main features of his artworks.
Vatsala Radhakeesoon Poetry, Prose, Translated Works 