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.

Who is poetry for?

Article that asks whether or not poets should be accountable, whether or not poetry should be more mainstream...comments??

http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/02/is-jeremy-paxman-right-new-poetry-inaccessibilty

NATIONAL MAGAZINE AWARD WINNER!!

Congratulations to Patrick Lane for winning a SILVER medal in this year's National Magazine Awards!!

His poems "Arroyo" and "Soft and Moist, Hard and Dry" were published in Vallum last year! 

If you'd like to find out who other magazine award-winners are, check out the pdfs on the link below:

http://www.magazine-awards.com/

Mood, and Robert Creeley's, "Some"

The manic weather this year has taken its toll on people. More than one is whispering "apocalypse." Hopefully our cryptographs will provide you with some respite, and distract you from a world of turmoil. Thanks to Vallum intern, Devon Gallant, for his brilliance with brain challenges.
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Here is a poem by Robert Creeley that filled the void I was in today, the only thing that settled. And even though the poem ends with separation, its words form an alliance between poet and reader that is based on mutual self-understanding. And that is what makes one feel better. That is what poetry does for those who can hear it.      /ez 


Some
(c) Robert Creeley

You have not simply
insisted on yourself
nor argued
the irrelevance

of any one else. You
have always wanted 
to be friends, to be
one of many.

Persuaded
life even
in its largeness
might be brought

to care, you
tried to make it
care, humble, illiterate,
awkward gestured.

So you thought,
as inevitable age approached,
some loved you, 
some.

You waited for
some wind
to lift, some 
thing to happen,

proving it finally,
making sense more
than the literal,
still separate.


________________________________
Published in 2006 by University of California Press. The Collected Works of Robert Creeley 1975-2005. 

PULITZER PRIZE-WINNER: Vijay Seshadri

India-born poet Vijay Seshadri wins 2014 Pulitzer Prize

Marc Chagall As Poet

I have always been a great fan of the Russian-French artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985). His use of colour, dream-scape and imagination is engaging. He was instrumental as a pioneer of modernism--synthesizing Cubism, Symbolism and Fauvism (the latter to give rise to Surrealism).  I am always interested in the overlap of the literary with the artistic. Chagall would seem to have been greatly interested in poetry and literature. His self-identification as a poet in one of his works, The Poet Reclining, suggests an interest in the literary that complemented his visual art. But there is a kind of broken immobility in the figure in the painting which may suggest an internal conflict within Chagall about writing and art. He had strong friendships in Paris with Guillaume Apollinaire, Blaise Cendrars and other poets.     /ez
The Poet Reclining (Le Poète allongé, 1915)

FEATURED POET: Medbh McGuckian

SIBYL WITH GUITAR
(c) Medbh McGuckian

When I look back I don't know
If there have been any nights,
Even any difference in light. I don't
Hear the city the way I used to,

When there was something in me
That could catch fire, like long ago
Waiting for a kiss. The moon hides
In the throat of the tone of the yellow

Bell, I am willing that the seasons
Wear me out. Dead-eyed angel,
Lying on her side, white in the daring
Dark, her death is the smallest sadness

She was able to cause. A folding
Of hands, as if every place knows
About all the others: the patience
Of a summer in the rebellion 

Of her skin; a milky rush
In the curves of a riverbank.



_____________________________
 Published in Vallum 7:1, "Futures," 2009.

Charles Simic via The Paris Review

The Paris Review

“Poetry in my view is a defense of the individual against all the forces arrayed against him. ” —Charles Simic

Read our 2005 interview with the Serbian-American poet here: http://tpr.ly/h2eM3e.

Charles Simic was published in Vallum a few years ago. His words in the above quote point to the meaning of the word "Vallum" as we use it in our explorations. Follow the above link to the Paris Review's interview.                /ez

FEATURED POET: Kevin Higgins

BETRAYALS
(c) Kevin Higgins, 2007 (in Vallum 4:2/5:1)

        When the bombers refused to turn
into butterflies, and the Workers
         went down the road chanting,
"They say fight-back!
          We say cut-back!"

she put on her
            stop-doing-that-now face
and counterattacked with evening
            after evening of pure thoughts
and proper posture; accompanied

           her gluten-free muesli
to the verandah and watched the seagulls
           flying towards her;
as she took out and weighed
            all our betrayals.