A CHAT WITH BJORN AND GRACE: PRESENTING THE DVERSE ANTHOLOGY CHIAROSCURO

This week, we are chatting with Bjorn Rudberg and Mary Grace Guevera, of dVerse Poets Pub, about the recent publication of their beautiful anthology, "Chiaroscuro". It truly is a thing of beauty, and we wanted to find out what the process of putting it together was like for them. Let's dive in.

Available here

Sherry: Hi, Bjorn and Grace. First, we must congratulate you on your beautiful anthology, Chiaroscuro. It truly is a thing of beauty! You and your team did a marvelous job.

Take us back to the beginning. When did the idea of an anthology occur to you?

Bjorn: I think the idea was there from the beginning. dVerse has published two anthologies before, but with external publishers. We wanted to have full control this time, but at the same time we were scared of the amount of work. After discussing back and forth we decided to bring in the whole team to help us with the work.

Grace:    Bjorn and I talked in 2016 about doing an Anthology, where the dVerse team would be responsible from beginning until the end.  We didn't have any experience in this, but there are several self-publishing platforms where we can explore and learn on the job. This time around, as main editors, we would have a hand in selecting, editing and publishing an Anthology by the dVerse team.

Björn: It was a joint decision, and we brought in the team and discussed how to share the workload. Each prompt was treated as a submission, and we tried to select the best poems each week instead of having a big submission event.

Grace:   This is not work by one person, but a team.   Bjorn and I have not thought of doing this project by ourselves as it can be overwhelming, as we have seen in the past.  We decided to involve the team right from the beginning so the load is lighter, so to speak.

Leaf with Dewdrops by Michelle Beauchamp

Sherry: Considering each prompt a submission sounds like a good idea. Did either of you have any idea of the amount of work involved?

Grace: We knew it will take a lot of work but we didn't realize it would take longer. It was our first time to do the editing and finally putting it altogether in a printable form.  The editing part took longer as we got in touch with the poets and they had to agree to the changes we recommended.

Björn: I agree, the amount of work involved in editing and contacting all the poets took a lot more time than we thought.

Grace:  Also we took the self-publishing route, which proved to be a learning curve for Bjorn and I.   Bjorn took a lot of time learning the CreateSpace of Amazon and it did prove to be a good platform to meet our needs.  We had poets from all over the world, and we wanted to ensure that the printed copy would be accessbile whether you are in Asia or Austrailia.    We were happy with Amazon's reach and delivery part of our printed copy.

Bjorn: I actually enjoyed learning the tricks and trade of self-publishing and as for myself I will probably use it again when I finally write my own book.

Sherry: I am blown away by the access to markets self-publishing has these days. Especially the access to Amazon. Chioroscuro can be ordered directly from Amazon here.

What was your process in putting it together?

Bjorn: Ha... we actually announced that from now on each submission will be treated as a submission for the Anthology, but still many were surprised when they were contacted. To have many small submissions instead of one giant one was a good one. We also wanted to reward the poets who are active in the community.

Leaves by Kim Russell

Grace: We decided that we didn't want a call to submissions, one time, and read like 300+ poems from several poets.   We didn't have the time to read so many poems on top of our regular weekly hostings. So we planned with the dVerse team, to select and read as we go along, week to week, with various poetry prompts.  

We announced the Anthology project last July 2016 with our 5th anniversary celebration. We stretched the timeline to over 4 to 5 months, as we selected, voted and compiled poems. Bjorn and I decided on the title, theme, and way we would arrange the poems as we started reviewing the compiled poems.  

The initial work was made easy, with the dVerse team helping with the prompts and selecting the poems. But at the end of the process, Bjorn and I made the final decision of being inclusive to those actively participating in our dVerse prompts. At the end, we invited over 100 poets to be part of our Anthology project.

Sherry: It is wonderfully inclusive! 

Grace:   The whole dVerse team helped us with the selection and finally the editing of the material.  It was important to have a different set of eyes, as it was really tiring to see the same material over and over again.  I could not anymore see where and what the changes are and needed to be.

Björn: I also want to extend a big thank to the team for the effort in the selecting and editing of the poems. Even if we wanted to leave them as close as possible to the original, we needed to format and correct typos — and confirm with the poets.  The team who helped us are:   Kim M. Russell, Victoria Slotto, Gayle Walters Rose, Lillian Hallberg, Frank Hubeny, Walter Wojtanik, Toni Spencer, De Jackson, Michelle Beauchamp and Paul John Dear.   

Sherry: You had a wonderful team! The artistic photos on the cover and throughout the book are  beautiful. Did people submit these along with their poems?

Sunflower by Michelle Beauchamp

Bjorn / Grace:   We were lucky to have in our dVerse team, not only poets, but amazing photographers as well.  We chose, for the book cover, the stunning photo from the photography collection by Paul John Dear.  The black and white photos are from Michelle Beauchamp, Kim M. Russell and Candace Kubinar.

Sherry: When it came to the selection process, was that difficult?

Bjorn / Grace: Yes, there are some outstanding poets in our group. It was definitely hard to select which poems went into the Anthology.

Some prompts proved easier to select from; sometimes we were awed by all the great entries. Sometimes it was hard.

Sherry: Were there moments when the workload seemed overwhelming and you wondered if you would ever complete the project?

Bjorn: Ha... yes, I have to say that, especially when we were in the middle of it all and we were editing. Also the formatting took a lot of time. I remember when I just had to start all over because Word simply wouldn’t do what I wanted. But I’m so grateful that Grace pushed us all. At the end it proved easy, we wanted it ready for Christmas.

Grace:    Yes, when the editing took forever, I thought it would never be finished.  But putting a deadline on the work pushes you to complete it. I told Bjorn that we need to see this project done by end of 2017, and we worked to finish it.   

Sherry: What did it feel like when you finally held the finished copy in your hands?

Bjorn: I remember when holding the first proof in my hand and seeing what a great book it would be. The color and the matte finish really made this a pleasant book to hold and to flip through, seeing and remembering all the poems and the poets. I imagine we could just get together one day and read our poems to each other.

Grace:  Sweet and very grateful for everyone's efforts in putting it together. We hope we can pull off another one in the near future.

Sherry: Congratulations to you and the team for producing a truly beautiful book! It is outstanding! I would like to commend you on the huge time commitment and effort involved in producing the anthology, as well as keeping a large community like dVerse afloat. On behalf of all of us who enjoy all of the features and prompts, and the wonderful community of dVerse, a very big thank you for a job well done!

There you have it, my friends, the amount of work that goes into putting together an anthology. With a wonderful result, in this case! Do come back and see who we talk to next. Who knows? It might be you!

Thought Provokers

Some Little-Known Short Forms

This time I hope to provoke your thoughts, not by introducing you to controversial ideas, but by presenting some new forms for your consideration. Recent inventions, in fact! 


Gnomes

My old friend Geoff Prince has for some time been sharing, via facebook posts, a pithy verse form of his own devising: four lines, a pivot line on its own, and then another four which take the poem further, usually in a somewhat different direction. They rhyme, but not always in the same way. To me they often have the flavour of epigrams or aphorisms. I find them intriguing.

When I asked if he had given them a name, he said:

'i settled on "gnomes" to describe them. if you read frost's the secret sits you will gather some of their origin. also blake proverbs of heaven & hell.'

Here is the Frost:

We dance round in a ring and suppose,

But the Secret sits in the middle and knows. 

And here are some of Geoff's 'gnomes':

those
who just go
with the drift
of things

inevitably

are exposed
not to the flow
but to the rift
in things

*

only when

you have known
the mystery
will you banish ignorance

but

to struggle to put
this in words
means you've
just missed the dance

*

the psychedelicate
shaman
from the fringes
of the city

summons

compassion to
gather
from the frail

eye of pity

*

The disease of tomorrow
has touched me today;
the rain has fallen –
too little to pay.

Ah,

too little
and too late to stay;
how the ill of tomorrow
has touched me today …

*

it seems only

when my heart
is softer than silence
i can hear it

&

only

when my brain
will not give me rest
i must fear it

*

poetry
won't
be cajoled
into submission

it

resists
all
attempts
at our definition

*

I haven't tried any myself yet – perhaps daunted by Geoff's obvious mastery of his own invention – but they are tempting, aren't they?

Thinner Tanka

Magaly Guerrero, who is known to many of you here, through her participation and her own blog, has been playing with the Japanese form, tanka, for quite some time. Very recently she came up with a variation she calls 'thinner tanka'. 

Unlike some of us who don't worry any more about syllable count for haiku and tanka, but just do patterns of long and short lines, Magaly is one of the many to adhere to the traditional 5-7-5-7-7 syllable count (per line) for tanka. Her thinner tanka have fewer syllables – making, indeed, for a lovely leanness. She has narrowed them down to 3-5-3-5-5.

Like the original tanka form, it's versatile! Being Magaly, who excels in the unexpected, she hasn't yet (as far as I know) written any simple, stand-alone thinner tanka, instead combining them into longer forms. 

The first I've chosen to share with you is a poem of which the first two verses are thinner tanka, the last two are Kelly lunes. (The lune is another interesting short form, details here.) 

The Sun Wants to Die

the night heard
my side of our bed
shivering—
my spring turns wintry
when your heart is gone

in nightmares
my lips say nothing
of our love,
my blood refuses
to ink you and me

the sun wants to die
without you
my self grows hollow

“I’m almost undone,”
you whisper.

And I breathe again.

*

The next is a triple thinner tanka, each verse forming one:

We Aren’t Dead

I saw crows
pecking at soulless
body piles…
dead people afire,
humanity-stripped.

Body piles,
you said? What of teeth
and ravens?
My quill’s in dire need
of something to bleed.

Look deeper,
dear sirs, see us twitch—
we aren’t dead.
True humans will kick
‘til all tongues are freed.

*

And the last is a haibun variation where the verse is a tanka instead of a haiku (sometimes known as tanka prose) – in this case a thinner tanka.

Must Love Freaks

She says that I was born with luck sitting on my hand and charm dancing on the tip of my tongue. “People love you,” she tells me, “they want that… something shining out of you.”

I smile at her, all magic and creepy teeth, wondering if she ever kisses her mirror.

You must love

freakishly wild things
to love me,
caress chaos’ soul
and moan for balance.


Tilus

And now let's go back a little way and remind ourselves of (or perhaps discover for the first time) a form invented by a young Filipino poet, Kelvin S. Mangundayao, whom we got to know blogging as Kelvin S.M. He seems to be having a quiet spell offline at present, as he has done before – at any rate, did not answer my email about this post, and his blog appears to be in hiatus. However, he has already made information about the tilus form publicly available, and has previously given me permission to use his work here, so here is his description, with some of his own examples:

'Tilus [tee-loo-hz] - is a form created by yours truly and falls under the category of micro poetry. The form is divided into two parts: the first part is composed of two lines following a 6-3 syllable count; the second part, a one-syllable word to close and/or complete the subject layered in the first part. The whole piece must, only, contain 10 in overall syllable count. The main focus of Tilus is on the world of nature, and how it can open a new door to a wider understanding of life and beyond. The form aims to be epic in emotions expressed more importantly than to be epic in words.'

(The name is a reverse spelling of his mother's maiden name, which is also his own middle name.)

 Life---let me fall in you
 clean as a

 dew.

*

 Old crow wears red; night has
 settled on

 him.

*

 River blue: I quaff clouds
 on river

 skin.

*

(When I asked Kelvin for the plural of the word, he seemed a bit taken aback but suggested the English-language plural form, 'tiluses'. I find myself – without any authorisation – tending to use the singular form as also the plural.)


Quadrilles

I can get long-winded in free verse, so I love to try short forms now and again to re-learn how to condense – and just because they're fun.

Another good one, which the people at dVerse Poets Pub came up with, is the quadrille. Many of you will already be aware of it from that source, but I think it is not yet generally known. The only rule is that it must be exactly 44 words (excluding title). 

I asked Bjorn Rudberg of the dVerse team (whom we know well here too) if it was one person's invention or a collaborative effort. He replied:

'Actually it was collectively invented... it went back to the fun of doing something right between the 33 words of Trifecta (now gone) and the 55... so 44 felt natural. The original idea of doing a short prompt was Grace's... '

It's an extremely versatile form because of having only that one rule. You can arrange the words however you like as to lines and verses. You can create metre and/or rhyme – or not.

The regular dVerse quadrille prompts always feature a specific word that must be included, a different one every time, but that's just to keep things interesting – it's not an integral part of the form.

I've enjoyed playing with quadrilles, but recently realised that mine have made rather slight poems so far (I mean their content rather than their length). Perhaps that is simply because I find it a playful form. Others obviously find it so too, yet have done amazing things with it. Because it's so open, rather than hunting up examples for you or sharing mine, I invite you to try your own – if you haven't already.

In fact I invite you to try any of these new forms that appeal to you. Or even invent your own! And I hope I have given you things to think about in terms of poetic composition.

Material shared here is presented for study and review. Poems, photos and other writings remain the property of the copyright owners, usually their authors.

I Wish I'd Written This

Mince Meet
By "mood wings"

No one mints me in candy tar, except you—

deceased taint tampers via simple laryngitis.

Dearest Equestrian Bank—undo my stamp;

tamper with fire beneath lava's language play.

The peach stamen of the moon 

dines on a ploy of pi in my carnal jurisdiction.

Orience has put severance in fraud—

recipe for a dead flower.

Polonia codes pee asthenia.

In preamble to pajamas, gallbladders try anything,

calculating our steam for Pheme.

Puce America—clandestine without genes.

Neck-Eden is my guru. Can't you ... for me?

Sigh Nietzsche. Cone-unsag a simulator; curve (eventually)

sinister mice. The paramecium ride is raw— 

nuts, tools, Burroughs, Pietà, Avant-Yule.

No one mints me in candy tar, except you—

deceased taint tampers via simple laryngitis,

dearest. Equestrian, bank-undo Myst amp; 

tamper with fire beneath lava's language play.

Vision and disinterest are my prison doors.

Latency pulls the berries offered 

by Paradise and Caesar. Art puts sea fairies                 

inside Nicodemus's piñata of favored ignorance.


Good heavens, what have I given you this time? Sound poetry? Abstract poetry? Free association? Not quite.

This poem was written in response to a very recent prompt at dVerse Poets Pub.  We were invited to try homophonic translation (which I also know by the term translitics) i.e. turning the sounds of a poem in an unknown language into words in our own language.

Here is a link to the original and its real English translation, on the prompter's own blog.

There were some amazingly clever attempts, most of which managed to make some kind of sense. Some were surprisingly coherent and several were quite beautiful.  A couple were even fairly close in meaning to the original. (I couldn't resist having a go, but was very short of time, so my own efforts remained pretty weird, lol.) You can check them all out here if you're interested.

So why is this the one I wish I'd written? As you may have realised by now, I have a quirky sense of humour. This one tickled my funny-bone with such deliciously serious-sounding meaninglessness as, "Cone-unsag a simulator", "gallbladders try anything", "a ploy of pi in my carnal jurisdiction", and above all, "No one mints me in candy tar, except you". How could anyone not fall in love with that line? (Damn! I want to be minted in candy tar too.) And then, "the peach stamen of the moon" sounds so beautiful, I am seduced into thinking I can visualise it exactly.

The apparent seriousness includes some scholarly references. "Mood wings" adds a note:

A little light reading, if you're at all intrigued:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piet%C3%A0_(Michelangelo)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Burroughs

http://orienceintegration.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puce

http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/asthenia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polonia

The poet was happy to give me permission to use the piece. However she protects her privacy even on her blogs, so I am unable to tell you her name or show you a photo.  This, from her poetry blog, perhaps says it all:

But she generously allowed me to share some quite personal details about her life and her poetics, and she includes the links to her blogs, at one of which you might catch more of her poetry — if you're quick! I am quoting verbatim from her email, as I'm sure I couldn't paraphrase it so engagingly:

Well, you can say I've gone by many names on many blogs that pop up and disappear just as quickly. You can say I'm a busy mother of four who homeschools. (My kids are ages 11, 6, 4, and 6 months; my husband and I have 3 girls and 1 boy ... he's the baby.) 

You can say that I love library books, word play, poetry, philosophy, quotes, art, candles, and music. Some of my "likings" and musings can be found at chalkpetals.blogspot.com. At herthursday.blogspot.com, I offer original poetry (temporarily, at least; I don't keep them live for long ... nor do I ever publish) ... and also prompts. Picture prompts are on Tuesdays, and Word Prompts are on Thursdays.

Also, if you like, you can say that I hate my poetry the day after I write it and can't stand the thought of anyone being able to read it once it's crossed over into the category of "disgustingly terrible poetry." My greatest passion then becomes an embarrassment. That's why I'm always and ever "deleting myself."

I guess we can all relate to that feeling of embarrassment at our "disgustingly terrible poetry". I know I can. As I told her in reply, there are some of mine which, immediately after writing, I recognise as THE most wonderful poem ever written by anyone anywhere ever. But, like the rest, a few days later they become atrocious things I should never have let anyone else see. It takes longer to arrive at an objective assessment. Indeed, can we ever be completely objective about our own work, or is it only others who can see it clearly enough?

I expect you may want to urge her not to discard her writings entirely even though she deletes them from her blog. Don't worry, I have already expressed that opinion to her! But in the end they are her poems, to do with as she will.

What I think is most wonderful is the human impulse to creativity, which makes us continue to write, to craft our work, to give it life in the world for however long or short a time. People who are not poets think poetry is a form of self-expression. It is that, of course; but we know it is, above all, our art.

The Buddhist monks make elaborate sand pictures which they then erase. Natalie Goldberg suggested that poets setting up "spontaneous writing" booths give away the poems they write for other people, keeping no copies  — again, in a Zen spirit of letting go. My friend Phillip put a whole notebook of poems, of which he had no other copies, into his brother's coffin. His sister was horrified to think of the poems being lost. "She didn't understand," he told me.

I don't have that bigness of heart myself, or that non-attachment, to send my poems back into the void — and "mood wings" is not doing so in a Buddhist spirit — but still, it's a valid option.  And although I don't discard every poem I produce, I do discard quite a lot.

Perfectionism is an enemy in most areas of life. It can undermine our self-esteem; at its worst it can paralyse us. Poetry is the one area where I allow myself to be perfectionist. Getting it absolutely as good as I can does matter. I usually keep poems that aren't working for a long time, tinkering and rewriting, but with some I eventually face the fact that nothing's ever going to help, and I get rid of them. Others may be filed away for years and when I finally look at them again, my fresh eyes immediately see what will fix them.

The opposite to the Buddhist monks might be Emily Dickinson, keeping her poems despite rejection and her own uncertainty about them — to have them be found and acclaimed after her death.  But if that happens to any of us, we won't be around to know. Better, surely, to live in the here and now and follow the guidance of our hearts, which of course won't be the same for everyone.

Pardon me waxing all philosophical. They are interesting questions, I think. But the poem's the thing, and I hope you enjoy this one as much as I do.

P.S. Now, after all that hifalutin speculation, I just received another email explaining that she does keep her poems, just not publicly. After a short while she puts the poems back into "draft" on her blog so that she can edit them later when she's more objective.  I admit, I'm glad!

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).

Poets United Midweek Motif ~ In Two or More Languages

“I can choose either to be a victim of the world 

or an adventurer in search of treasure. 

It's all a question of how I view my life.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Midweek Motif ~ In Two or More Languages

Last week's St Patrick's Day gathering at dVerse Poets Pub—Pubtalk– a Cult/ure thing? —made me want to read and write poems that show how we negotiate language and cultures in places we work and live.  

Your challenge: Write a new poem that gives us an experience of language and culture, using English and at least one other language. If you are not bilingual, consider using baby talk or slang, a specialized vocabulary, art or even music. 

For extra enjoyment, consider using rhymed couplets as in Rhina Espaillat's poem "Bilingual/Bilingue" below.  She is an inspiration!  Read about her HERE.

Bilingual/Bilingüe

BY RHINA P. ESPAILLAT  (REE-nah ESS-pie-YAT)

My father liked them separate, one there,

one here (allá y aquí), as if aware

that words might cut in two his daughter’s heart

(el corazón) and lock the alien part

to what he was—his memory, his name

(su nombre)—with a key he could not claim.

“English outside this door, Spanish inside,”

he said, “y basta.” But who can divide

the world, the word (mundo y palabra) from

any child? I knew how to be dumb

and stubborn (testaruda); late, in bed,

I hoarded secret syllables I read

until my tongue (mi lengua) learned to run

where his stumbled. And still the heart was one.

I like to think he knew that, even when,

proud (orgulloso) of his daughter’s pen,

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear

of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

Used by permission of poet Rhina P. Espaillat.  From her book Where Horizons Go: Poems, Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 1998; recipient of the T.S. Eliot Prize, 1998.  

~

Please:  

1.      Post your  bi-lingual poem on your site, and then link it here.

2.      Share only original and new work written for this challenge. 

3.      Leave a comment here.

4.      Honor our community by visiting and commenting on others' poems.

(Next week's Midweek Motif will be April Fools for Poetry.)

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I Wish I'd Written This

A Meeting of Straying Minds  (Valentine) 

By Karin Gustafson

Love is knowing (sort of)

that when I, the vegetarian for many years,
grow even more decrepit, forgetful, blind,

you, who have never truly understood beans,

will not feed me meat.

It’s a pact that I’ve repeatedly extracted—
”you promise,” I say, nearly tearful, and you reply,
blushingly, yes, no, of course not, so I’m pretty clear

that even as you too grow old, you will not

slop me into a chair with your extra chop

at my chin—

But what worries suddenly

is me:

that, after decades of non-carnivorous cravings,

I will slaver, in my senility, for

your sirloin.

At first, you will saw the cuts with resistance,
your elbow blocking my claw, but,
as I whimper, you just might,

in some trumped-up trompe mind’s l’oeil,

excuse the bloody bits as for my good,
a poor woman’s Procrit,

and, careful to whittle away all gristle,
spoon some down my craw.

On the one hand, this a problem in our love—that you give in to me—
and on the other hand, this is a problem in our love—
that you never do as I ask—
and on the third and fourth hands—because thankfully

we have them (clasped), this is also our great wonder—
that you, who try always for the meet and

right, no matter, will be there with me, even

demented,

promoting your sometimes skewed

but always sweetened sense

of my true needs, even if they involve

my grazing from your plate

(something you absolutely hate

in anyone else.)

Though I wonder now whether I shouldn’t get the words

“do not feed meat” tattooed—
only they would have to letter my forehead—(I can’t imagine,

as we recede, you reading below my sleeve)—

and I worry that, with such a phrase emblazoned, people

might feel that they also should keep me from knives—

And there can be so very many lives

in a single life—take the one you lent me when

my old had emptied—

that it is perhaps better to keep vows off

of one’s brow, even those about meeting someone more

than half-way, the way you meet 

me, though that line admittedly shifts sometimes,
while somehow our hearts stay always

in the exact right place.

What a love poem! How wonderfully it conveys long-term, married love.

The formatting didn't come through quite right in the version Karin sent me. It was fine until I tried to reproduce it here; then it went a bit haywire and I had to go through and make sure all the lines ended where she meant them to. In the process I became even more impressed with this poem — with the crafting of it. I couldn't tell by myself where to break the lines, but the minute I did it as Karin intended, the emphasis fell naturally onto the right words and the piece turned into poetry (not chopped-up prose).

Perhaps you've seen it before. I know a number of Poets United participants, like me, are also involved in dVerse Poets Pub, where Karin, who blogs at ManicDDaily, is a frequent presenter. And this poem was included in the recent dVerse anthology, Voices of Contemporary World Poetry (also available as an eBook). Of course, some of you are in it too!

If you have seen the piece before, I trust you don't mind revisiting it. I just fell in love with it straight away and wanted to share it with all those who might not have come across it yet. It deals with the dailiness, the little things, with humour and candour. I find it actually incredibly intimate: a very bravely revealing poem.

Karin, a practising attorney who lives in New York city, is both a writer and an illustrator. She has published a collection of poetry, Going on Somewhere, a children's counting book 1 Mississippi, and most recently Nose Dive, described as 'a light-hearted mystery novel about teenagers, Broadway musicals, love, noses, New York'. You can check out her books at BackStrokeBooks and Amazon. And, if you haven't yet had the pleasure, do follow the link to her blog!

Note: In fact she has recently moved to upstate New York. See details in her comment below.

Poems and photos used in ‘I Wish I’d Written This’ remain the property of the copyright holders (usually their authors).