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VALLUM NEWS!

December 2014

Read what's new with Vallum this holiday season in our monthly newsletter!

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'TIS THE SEASON FOR VALLUM'S SAVINGS!

Treat someone you love (or yourself ) to Vallum! Print & digital magazine subscriptions! Chapbooks! Back issues!

Billie Holiday knows, there's no better way to stay warm!

To see our fabulous holiday savings, visit our website at
www.vallummag.com/tistheseason.html

FEATURED POET: Paul-Georges Leroux

Paul-Georges Leroux is an exceptional Montreal/Quebec poet. His poetry resonates with incomparable depth; and his writing is amongst the best French-language poetry being written today. /ez



SEUILS
(c) Paul-Georges Leroux, 2014.


1. Kinderszenen

Le contour des premières choses, les premières géographies
La peur de ne plus rien voir
L'espoir qui se révolte, l'amour qui se perd
Mouvantes circonférences d'un blanc soleil
La crête des vagues et les cimes de neige

Le vent, le courant, le temps emportent nos confins
inlassables cartographes d'une réalité
dont les frontières fugaces laissent passer nos rêves

Oubli, Insu
mots étranges, syllabes furtives
d'une hermétique mathématique d'ombres
d'un regard aveugle à lui-même

Seuils d'un continent englouti
au fond des pages d'un cahier d'écolier

....

3. Mélanome

S'endormir inerte sous un solstice d'hiver

Se réveiller en pleine nuit
Poser les yeux sur une constellation
un peu plus brillante que les autres

Sommeiller

Se réveiller de nouveau de ressentir
confusément
quelque chose
quelque part
se déplacer pour l'éternité

Se rendormir une fois plus

Rêver d'un aigle ravisseur
se posant sur une branche enneigée

sans que la branche ni la neige ne bougent




-----------------------------------------
Published in, Vallum 11:1, Thresholds, 2014.

The Vallum Award for Poetry 2014 WINNERS!

1st PRIZE: $750
​
ALEXEI PERRY
“The Long Study”
(Canada)

2nd PRIZE: $250 

CARLA BARKMAN
“Last evening I stumbled”
(Canada) 

HONOURABLE MENTIONS:

SUSAN HUGHSON
“Apple to Apple”
(Canada)

DOMENICO CAPILONGO
“pass this note”
(Canada)


Thank you to everyone who entered this year's contest.
Winning poems will appear in issue 12:1 "Surrender."


To view poems of previous winners, please visit our website HERE! 
 

Eleni Zisimatos reviews Mark Morgenstern's film, "Before I Go" (EWOLA Cinema).

“BEFORE I GO,” Mark Morgenstern, Ewola Cinema, 2014.

Reviewed by Eleni Zisimatos, Vallum Magazine, 2014.

Mark Morgenstern’s film, “Before I Go,” in competition at the Festival du nouveau cinema, and which premiered at Cinema du Parc in Montreal October 12^th, is about the movements of a house. It is not a ‘home,’ there are no puppies or kittens or soft fluffy images. The cinematography is bleak. There is focus on parts of the house requiring repair. But it would seem that the most central part of this strange, haunting, is the house’s need for attention. Although it is dismembered and dismantled, there are figures who appear as fragments, figures who would seem to belong there, but who have no identity, as they are portrayed in the film. There is a disconnect between the physicality of the house and the physicality of the human forms. It is almost as if the two are caught in some kind of disparagement of time—and they cannot communicate. The ‘house’ is often considered to be symbolically associated with the psyche. Bachelard has written on the importance of the home and how it is central to one’s conception of identity. Morgenstern shows us the house and he shows us some human forms, but there is no relationship between the two. The house is not a home, in Bachelard’s interpretation of home. So, what is this house we observe, so closely, so fearfully?

Morgenstern’s technical brilliance and associative cinematography are so impressive that one is left breathless. The house is trying to speak—is it a haunted house? It very well could be. The most chilling part of this film is towards the end, with a woman sitting on a bed, with her back towards us. She could easily be construed to be some kind of ghost or figure of madness. We seem to drift with this woman’s presence, and this is a key point in the film where I felt a truly dangerous ‘presence.’ The house needs attention. The psyche would seem to be unraveling.

The magnificence of this short film is that it creates the aura of exteriority. We are not inside it, even though we view inside the physical house. And this is what many family houses are like in today’s soulless and mindless societies. Morgenstern’s, “Before I Go,” is a cutting-edge portrayal of the breakdown of the family unit, of the suffering of individuals who try to create community and communion within their houses, but fail. And the true horror is that families today--no longer within a caring and nurturing environment or a home—are transformed into objects in an essentially mad series of unconnected pieces and parts. This is the stunning force behind this film.

Poem by L. Wayne Russell

TRANSGRESSIONS

(C) L.W. Russell 2014

The world’s soul has gone incognito

as the devil incarnate.

Angels lay stagnant at the bottom

of my shot glass.

In between inaudible words are

spoken, air bubbles surface; frantic.

The cries of angels begin to fade.

One by one a begging ghost can be

seen cutting through the lukewarm

surface of my straight bourbon.

And now I know, what was pure in

my life has become no more.

The angels lie in the bottom of their

liquid coffin, wings motionless,

voices silent.

Father forgive me, for I have sinned...

again and again and again....

I cannot seem to stop this madness!

help me...

the angels have but all disappeared from

my life...

One by one by one they go, sinking into

the depths of a past that they can never

come back from.

* for all those I have lost to alcohol, may you rest in eternal peace*

Vallum Award for Poetry 2014: Shortlist Announced!

RHONDA COLLIS
“Life Cycle in C Major”
(Canada)

SUSAN HUGHSON
“Apple to Apple”
(Canada)

DIANE TUCKER
“The Unseen Desert” 
(Canada)

JAMES F. OLWELL
“Dream Upon, Jimmy Alexis, Stillborn” 
(Canada)

CARLA BARKMAN
“Last evening I stumbled”
(Canada) 

DOMENICO CAPILONGO
“pass this note” 
(Canada)

MELANIE SWETZ
“My Mother’s Magazines” 
(Turkey)

ALEXEI PERRY
“The Long Study”
(Canada)

STEPHEN CALDWELL WRIGHT
“Lessons From A Younger Brother” 
(USA)


Thank you to everyone who entered this year's contest.
The winners and honorable mentions will be announced mid-October. 
Winning poems will appear in issue 12:1 "Surrender."

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS!

Vallum's next issue's theme is SURRENDER:

What does it mean to bend, to yield? Surrender manifests in different ways: joy, despair, a willingness to give up one’s “totality” for someone or something other than him or her self. We surrender to vices, to glory, to the divine, or to the void. How do you “surrender?” Send us your best poems!

DEADLINE:  November 1, 2014

For more information and guidelines, please visit us online:

www.vallummag.com/submission.html

Vallum Newsletter September 2014

Hear about the latest from Vallum! 

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JUST RELEASED: "A REMARKABLE GREY HORSE" poems by Thurston Moore + John Kinsella !

NOW AVAILABLE!!!  A Remarkable Grey Horse -- a collaborative poetry chapbook by THURSTON MOORE (musician and founder of experimental rock group SONIC YOUTH) and JOHN KINSELLA (author of over 30 books of poetry, fiction, and criticism)!

"Celebrating in the unnatural, reveling in the rebellious, A Remarkable Grey Horse is a collision of skateboards, Doris Day, punk rock, lighthouses, spume, skuzz, and Rimbaud. Here, bleak cityscapes, squalid apartments, and polluted waters urge the reader to 'explore disgust' and seek freedom."

ORDER YOURS NOW!
http://vallummag.com/ccorder.htm

Announcing the winner of Vallum's Cryptographic Adventure!

A huge thanks to everyone who tuned in to Vallum's Cryptographic Adventure, 

and an extra special thanks to those of you who hazarded a guess! 

WEEK 12: Vallum's Cryptographic Adventure!

This is WEEK 12 (and the LAST WEEK) of Vallum’s Cryptographic Adventure!

Originally we were offering a free entry into our annual poetry contest, the Vallum Award for Poetry, to the first person who solved the cryptogram correctly. CONGRATULATIONS to Jacqueline Hanna who solved the puzzle within the first couple of weeks!

Now, for anyone else who has solved or will solve the cryptogram correctly, Vallum is offering other FANTASTIC PRIZES! So keep deciphering!

This week’s poetic cipher:

MEGHG BK UCG KMUHP MEG UCG KMUHP UCWP

And our hint of the week:

"The beginning of eternity
The end of time and space
The beginning of every end,
And the end of every place."

MEG WGMMGH G

Final Hint: HUFGHM LHXOGK

www.vallummag.com/cryptogram.html

CONTEST DEADLINE: MIDNIGHT TODAY!

www.vallummag.com/contestrules.html

Only one more day to enter !

www.vallummag.com/contestrules.html

Don't miss your chance to enter the Vallum Award for Poetry 2014 !

www.vallummag.com/contestrules.html

WEEK 11: Vallum's Cryptographic Adventure!

For all you spies and double agents, here’s the cipher and hint for Week 11 of Vallum’s Cryptographic Adventure! This is the second-last week to guess the mystery poet correctly to win a snazzy Vallum prize! Good luck!

This week’s poetic cipher: PUTHK BK MEG LHGXM SEGGW UA MEG KTC

And our hint of the week:

"I never was, am always to be,
No one ever saw me, nor ever will
And yet I am the confidence of all
To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball."

MUQUHHUS

To view previous clues, please visit our website at:

www.vallummag.com/cryptogram.html

WEEK 10: Vallum’s Cryptographic Adventure!

This week’s poetic cipher:

SEP ZBZ KEG MSBMMGH BC KTIE X LEUKMWP SXP ?

And our hint of the week:

At night they come without being fetched,

And by day they are lost without being stolen.

KMXHK

To view previous clues, please visit our website at www.vallummag.com/cryptogram.html

WEEK 9: Vallum’s Cryptographic Adventure!

This week’s poetic cipher: SG ETKEGZ MEG KEGGDFGWWK XNZ MEG WUTZ IBIXZX

And our hint of the week:

This thing all things devours;
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats mountain down.

MBQG



To view previous clues, please visit our website at 
www.vallummag.com/cryptogram.html

WEEK 8: Vallum's Cryptographic Adventure!

This week's poetic cipher: MEGHG XHG CU QXBWK BC MEG IBMP UA MEG ZGXZ

And our hint of the week:

First think of the person who lives in disguise,
Who deals in secrets and tells naught but lies,
Next tell me what's always the last thing to mend,
The middle of middle and end of the end?
And finally give me the sound often heard,
During the search for a hard-to-find word.
Now string them together, and answer me this,
Which creature would you be unwilling to kiss?  

X KDBZGH


To view previous clues, please visit our website at www.vallummag.com/cryptogram.html