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China 1899
She lies, a grave disdain all her defence,
Too imperturbable for scorn. She hears
Only the murmur of the flowing years
That thunder slowly on her shores immense
And ebb away in moaning impotence.
Giants enduring, she and Time are peers—
Her dream-hazed eyes knowing no hopes, no tears,
Her glance a langour-lidded insolence.
And though the rabble of the restless West
In her deserted courts set their rash sway,
She heeds them not; as when the sun, withdrawn
From his untarnished sky, knows it distressed
By storm of weakling stars, that he at dawn
Will wither with one ruthless glance away.
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
China 1899
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Vincent Berquez is a poet and artist, living in London with his wife and son. He was born to French parents and attended the French Lycée and Cannock boarding school.
Berquez studied Fine Art at Goldsmith’s; followed by The Camden Institute, where he was taught by Frank Auerbach.
He worked as an artist for many years prior to studying museology and conservation at London University following which he worked as a curator and conserver at various institutions, including the British Museum, and the Louvre.
Berquez has published in Britain, Europe, America and New Zealand. His work is in many anthologies, collections and magazine worldwide. Vincent Berquez was requested to write a Tribute as part of ‘Poems to the American People’ for the Hastings International Poetry Festival for 9/11, read by the mayor of New York at the podium.
He has also been commissioned to write an eulogy by the son of Chief Albert Nwanzi Okoluko, the Ogimma Obi of Ogwashi-Uku to commemorate the death of his father.
Vincent Berquez has been a judge many times, including for Manifold Magazine and had work read as part of Manifold Voices at Waltham Abbey. He has recited many times, including at The Troubadour and the Pitshanger Poets, in London. In 2006 his name was put forward with the Forward Prize for Literature. Recently he was awarded a prize with Decanto Magazine. Berquez is now a member of London Voices who meet monthly in London, U.K
Berquez has also been collaborating in 07/08 with a Scottish composer and US film maker to produce a song-cycle of seven of his poems for mezzo-soprano and solo piano. These are being recorded at the Royal College of Music under the directorship of the concert pianist, Julian Jacobson. In 2009 he contributed 5 poems for the edition of A Generation Defining Itself, as well as 3 poems for Eleftheria Lialios’s book on wax dolls published in Chicago. He also made poetry films that have been shown at various venues, including a Polish/British festival in London, Jan 07.
As an artist Vincent Berquez has exhibited world wide, winning prizes, such as at the Novum Comum 88’ Competition in Como, Italy. He has also worked with an art’s group, called Eins von Hundert, from Cologne, Germany for over 16 years. Berquez has shown his work at the Institute of Art in Chicago, US, as well as many galleries and institutions worldwide.
Recently he showed his paintings at the Lambs Conduit Festival, he took part in a group show called Gazing on Salvation, reciting his poetry for Lent and exhibiting paintings/collages.
He had a one-man show at Sacred Spaces Gallery with his Christian collages in 2007. In 2008 Vincent Berquez had a solo show of paintings at The Foundlings Museum and in 2011 an exposition with new work in Langham Gallery London.
Vincent Berquez has published regularly in fleursdumal.nl magazine for many years.
His book of poetry, called: The Sound of Blossom Falling, was recently published by CyberWit in London.
“The main point about these poems is deep emotion and concrete theme. We notice very impressive ardour of imagination in these poem.”
The Sound of Blossom falling
He talks of her with the simple love of a father,
describing how they walked the verdant path
and along the softness of the hardy hills
entwined in each other’s presence.
He feeds the dialogue of his love of nature
as he gazes and points out
the crisp colours and myriad greens –
he asks if she sees what he sees,
if she hears what he hears –
and as she looks and thinks
with a bright child’s mind
she says ‘I can hear the sound of blossom falling.’
They both stand still and listen for a moment.
The Sound of Blossom Falling
Author: Vincent Berquez
Poetry
Binding: Paperback
Language: English
86 pages
Publisher: Cyberwit.net
Pub. Date: 2021
ISBN-10: 9390601096
ISBN-13: 978-9390601097
Dimensions: 13.97 x 0.56 x 21.59 cm
£10.89
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Die wilde Rose
Da droben auf einsamer Höhe
Die wilde Rose blüht,
Und wer sie von Ferne gesehen,
In heißer Sehnsucht erglüht.
Zu ihr über Felsen und Klüfte
Ein kühner Jäger klimmt.
Schon ist er in nächster Nähe –
Das Auge in Thränen ihm schwimmt.
Er will sie erfassen und pflücken.
Da strauchelt jäh sein Fuß;
Des Abgrunds finstere Tiefe
Empfängt ihn mit kaltem Kuß.
Da droben auf einsamer Höhe
Die wilde Rose blüht,
Und wer sie von Ferne gesehen.
In heißer Sehnsucht erglüht. –
Louise Aston
(1814-1871)
Die wilde Rose
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Die Tänzerin
Denn tanzen muss sie.
Dem tollen Rad verflochten
Gliedert sie Chaos,
Schwendet Quellen,
Stampft zuckende Krater.
Im Drang
Des großen Taktes
Tanzt sie Gestirne.
Bess Brenck-Kalischer
(Betty Levy, 1878-1933)
Die Tänzerin
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Achter de dijk
Achter de dijk ligt
water. Ik weet het.
Er gaan boten doorheen
en de meeuwen kennen
het getij.
Zo af en toe duikt
er wel eens een
zekerheid op.
Bert Bevers
Achter de dijk
Gedicht
Uit: Het verlangen naar heimwee, Dijkpers, Bath, 1982
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Master Suffering pendulates between yield and command; the bodies of this book are supplicant yet seething—they want nothing more than to survive.
But how does a woman survive?
One’s own healthy body helps, but illness is one of the masters of this book.
Faith can be a salve for the inscrutable ailments of the body, but God is unreliable in these poems.
The female bodies of Master Suffering want power; they want to control and to correct the suffering they witness and withstand.
CM Burroughs is Associate Professor of Poetry at Columbia College Chicago. She is the author of two collections: The Vital System (Tupelo Press, 2012) and Master Suffering (Tupelo Press, 2020.) Burroughs has been awarded fellowships and grants from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Cave Canem Foundation. She has received commissions from the Studio Museum of Harlem and the Warhol Museum to create poetry in response to art installations. Burroughs’ poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies.
Master Suffering
Poems
by CM Burroughs
Format: Paperback
Published: Jan. 2021
Tupelo Press, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-946482-38-9
$18.95
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Grey Eyes
She glanced across the path to me,
Grey eyes!
Her looks were kisses plain to see.
I gave her glances back to her —
Glad eyes!
She saw the lifting of despair.
From memory a face looked out,
Dim eyes!
No years could sour that love to doubt.
My soul would nevermore be lone —
Bride’s eyes!
Hearts still were waiting for my own.
Our souls uncurtained then, perchance —
Deep eyes!
Each built an epoch in a glance.
Out of her fellowship so free
Light eyes!
She gave some gladness unto me.
And I gave? As we turned apart —
Dead eyes!
I saw the shudder in her heart.
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
Grey Eyes
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Deze bundel, vrucht van een verblijf in Death Valley, is een verzameling van veranderlijke landschappen en de wisselende lichamen die zich erin voortbewegen.
De gedichten zelf zijn evenzovele oefeningen in waarneming.
In de ruimten tussen aanblik en uiterlijke verschijning ontstaan beelden, onderhevig aan kleuren, texturen en zintuigen.
En deze beelden rijgen zich aaneen tot wat misschien wel feministische natuurgedichten kunnen worden genoemd over zaken als erotiek, bloei, geweld en kwetsuur:
‘de woestijn woelt en sleept haar laken mee
er ontwaakt
een vrouw zonder beschadigingen, ze kleedt zich
voor een dagtocht, ze zeult geen geesten’.
Charlotte Van den Broeck (1991) maakte op overdonderende wijze haar entree in de Nederlandse literatuur. Haar eerste twee dichtbundels werden overladen met lof en bekroond met de Herman de Coninck Debuutprijs en de Paul Snoeckprijs. Haar prozadebuut Waagstukken, een bestseller met 15.000 verkochte exemplaren, viel eveneens in de prijzen.
Aarduitwrijvingen
Gedichten
Auteur: Charlotte Van den Broeck
Uitgeverij: De Arbeiderspers
Publicatiedatum: 14-09-2021
Paperback
NUR: 306
ISBN: 9789029539722
Prijs: € 19,99
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Covid poem
Working in ITU Dept at a time of Covid 19
You cried for those eyes that felt no warmth,
for the afterthoughts of conversations yet to be finished.
The utter confinement gave little comfort in the dying cold
of pipes and masks, the smacking of latex gloves
trapping hands in sweaty health, the fear of a closing down.
The complete violation of sleep’s healing process,
static and dispassionate, mechanical air forced through.
The healthy milling around big bodies on small beds,
in plastic bubbles, lying on their bellies with loved ones far away.
Vincent Berquez
Vincent Berquez is a London–based artist and poet. He has published in Britain, Europe, America and New Zealand. His work is in many anthologies, collections and magazines worldwide (f.i. fleursdumal.nl).
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Monolietjes
Boven hun tijd zijn ze uitstekend gebleven, die
vele monoliedjes uit de transistorradio. Er was
geen stereo nog maar deze oren hoorden wel al
in een taal die ze verstonden hoe ze zouden blijven
hangen. Fijn afgedaald terug naar blij verlangen,
halsstarrig glanzend als muntjes in een fontein.
Bert Bevers
Monolietjes
Gedicht
Ongepubliceerd
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Just A Woman
You ask me why I love her;
Not a charm can you discover!
Would you see
The heart that a shut rose is,
And whose beauty ne’er uncloses
Save for me?
She is not rich or clever,
But her speeches thrill me ever,
And with bliss
My heart her whisper flutters,
Though the wisest word she utters
Is a kiss.
All evil things have shunned her,
And with a wide-eyed wonder
Is she tasked,
What lavish god has given
In her earth so much of heaven
All unasked?
She has no gifts or graces,
But the gladness in her face is
Sought of kings;
She cannot chant a measure,
But her heart with a grave pleasure
Ever sings.
Her gown is of the whitest
But the hem is soiled the slightest:
Little worth,
She has no wings to fly with,
And she prefers to hie with
Me on earth.
There is no hint of heaven
Or glimpse of deep thought even
In her eyes;
She is warm and she is human,
Just a weak and wilful woman —
Not too wise.
Her thousand beauties singing,
I have not said how clinging
Are her arms;
But, not loved and not the lover
Dare you ever hope discover
Half her charms?
Arthur Adams
(1872-1936)
Just A Woman
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Kaveh Akbar’s exquisite, highly anticipated follow-up to Calling a Wolf a Wolf.
With formal virtuosity and ruthless precision, Kaveh Akbar’s second collection takes its readers on a spiritual journey of disavowal, fiercely attendant to the presence of divinity where artifacts of self and belonging have been shed. How does one recover from addiction without destroying the self-as-addict?
And if living justly in a nation that would see them erased is, too, a kind of self-destruction, what does one do with the body’s question, “what now shall I repair?” Here, Akbar responds with prayer as an act of devotion to dissonance―the infinite void of a loved one’s absence, the indulgence of austerity, making a life as a Muslim in an Islamophobic nation―teasing the sacred out of silence and stillness.
Richly crafted and generous, Pilgrim Bell’s linguistic rigor is tuned to the register of this moment and any moment. As the swinging soul crashes into its limits, against the atrocities of the American empire, and through a profoundly human capacity for cruelty and grace, these brilliant poems dare to exist in the empty space where song lives―resonant, revelatory, and holy.
Kaveh Akbar founded and edits Divedapper, where he interviews major voices in contemporary poetry. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Tin House, APR, PBS NewsHour, and elsewhere. He is the author of the chapbook Portrait of the Alcoholic (Sibling Rivalry Press, January 2017) and full-length collection Calling a Wolf a Wolf (Alice James Books, September 2017). Akbar has received a Pushcart and a Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. In 2016, Akbar was a recipient of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation. He was born in Tehran, Iran, and is currently a professor in the MFA program at Purdue University and in the low-residency program at Randolph College.
(. . .)
Corporeal friends are
spiritual enemies, said
Blake, probably gardening
in the nude. Today I’m trying
to scowl more, mismatch
my lingerie. Nobody
seems bothered enough.
(. . .)
Pilgrim Bell
Poems
by Kaveh Akbar
Publisher: Graywolf Press
August 3, 2021
Language: English
Paperback
80 pages
ISBN-10 : 1644450593
ISBN-13 : 978-1644450598
$13.70
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