The Poetry Bus Magazine funding REJECTED by Artslinks (Arselinks)yes I am bitter and twisted and hypocritical as I would have been singing their praises had filthy lucre been winging it's way Castlewards.
In all honesty I take a peverse delight in rejection and get further steel in my determination to publish this excellent publication come hell or 20 pints of Guinness.If I can do it without any kind of funding at all I would be all the happier. Fuck the lot of them!
In short I'm gonna pay for it myself. I would have done this ages ago but severe negative finances make it very tricky.I know however I will get my (borrowed ) money back, hopefully before someone breaks my legs.
So if YOU yes YOU have any interest in buying The Poetry Bus Magazine (details to follow) please express your interest in the comments box. Let me know how many copies you would like, please order as many as you can to sell to friends etc.If I know roughly how many I can initially sell ,I'll know how many to order.Simples! I'm hoping to keep the price to a rock bottom bargainsville €5/$6.25/£4.29 plus P+P because I want to get it out there.
This weeks ethernetBUS is being most brilloish drively by the world famous poet and soprano Barbaro Smith. See HERE
She gave us the first line of.."I got down on my knees and smelled the new linoleum...
I changed it slightly but a nods as good as a wink to a man with his head in a Hawthorn bush My effort is not a WIP (work in progress) but best described as a RIP (a rant in progress) Drink and loud music to blame.
Pilgrims progress
I got down on my knees to pray and smelled the new linoleum.
Twas better than waking up to smell the coffee
And I needed to get away from the fumes of the paraffin stove
The nearest thing we had to a loaded shotgun
Eco friendly under floor heating windmills in the skyline
Solid fuel solidarity parity of pay of opportunity
On our knees ice on the floor cancer in our hearts
Corrugated iron kept the winds at bay
Bay windows double-glazed south facing Agapanthian blooms of love
Life money in the pocket where dreams once rubbed with bare knuckles
Lies so deep, life so cheap, the brand new ML 350 Jeep on the gravel extended driveway
Stairways rendered to heaven help us Jacob's ladder broken
God turning in his grave not in my name black-hearted priest
St Francis of
Money in the plate for golden crowns Pontiff Pilots ,Mammon we love you
Your altars surround us, poets clamouring to pat each other, Mwah!, Mwah!
Snake like conceits of kisses daggers held in abeyance for the summit supper
My back backstabbed/ backscratched like yours, like mine, keep the plate clean pass the buck, the honey, the bees knees aren’t we, la plus ca change.
Pass it on amongst us keep it to ourselves the goal is our goal the gold is our goal
Alchemists we plunder dissect reject renew gametes divide and rule
Forgetting we were stuck travellers once on the road the Mohican boreen
Grass bled green from our teeth
Fear now holds tight now drowning in the waters of our greed
Rattling raw towards the hollow empty grave a finish line unseen
Conversely this has nothing to do with linoleum, sometimes I just get tired of fighting.
Summer breeze
I remember when dreams were dreams, not memories
And we wore platform shoes
And train tracks led to somewhere
Not the hell out
I remember when the sun shone and reddened our necks
When we pumped water from the well
And the coldness of it’s clarity took us by surprise
Our turf cut hands healed quicker than
Our broken hearts
But nothing was forever
That was for the old
Something we would never be
Fortunes told by a pack of cards glances given on the dancefloor
Like your life depended on it
Heightened summer love
A different girl each year, like the seasons
Things bloomed then fell
By the canal we walked, in Gleeson’s bar we talked
The river was too wide the Winters were too wild
So we sat in buttercup meadows and made love
While we could.
26 comments:
Enjoyed reading this. Had to look up boreen. You learn something every day. We've got a lot of boreens round here. Wales is full of them, too. We once saw this boreen on the map near Cader Idris and drove up it because it looked interesting. Tarmac quickly gave way to compressed earth. It became alarmingly rough and narrow and to make matters worse it had high sides only inches from the doors. Too late I realised that reversing would be a too serious undertaking. There was nowhere to turn round. It went up over a hill on the flanks of Cader Idris itself. All of a sudden it was, well, just a field, but so rough and boggy you daren't deviate from the two faint lines of crushed grass which was all that was left to tell you where to go. In the end (phew!)it turned back in to a boreen, but still with nowhere to turn. It was alarmingly rocky and barred by a series of rusty gates - none of which, thankfully, were locked. It did come out on a tarmac road in the end. The view over Barmouth from the top was amazing.
Re a Poetry Bus book, there's always lulu.com - you can publish there, no money up front. Whatever you do, we'll certainly have a couple.
Isn't Cader Idris a lovely name? A boreen is always a trip worth taking.I'm glad your yielded beautiful views and Iam delighted that you are our first (potential) customer. Two copies is a great start, I mean that. Thank you Bill!
Lulu is good but would (i think ) make it expensive. I want to keep the cost down so everyone can afford it.
Love the Rant, TFE!
Put me down for ten copies.
And your "Summer Breeze" makes me feel fine...! ; )
What's an ML 350 Jeep? My first Jeep was a CJ-7 Renegade, which I named 'Guinevere.' Is it anything like that?
blowin through the jasmine in my mind? 10 copies!? Whoop whoop! You am the best Prof!
This bus is goin turbo!
Ps ML 350? 'Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedese Benz.'
Both of them are good (of course), but the second one has me close to tears, Peadar. You've (now admittedly I've had a glass of merlot, so I'm a little more sensitive than usual), but I'm feeling like I've missed out on so much. The Irish blood is in me, but I'll never know the turf cut hands and the water from the well. Sad.
Now that I've heard you read on a podcast, I know that your "rants" are usually very soft-spoken and understated Or was that just a one-off?
"My back back-stabbed/back-scratched" — that was fantastic! And the rest, was just marginally less so.
Kat
I'll send my Can dollars your way for the mag. Kevin has iTunes and I have my poetry budget.
Kat
Well thank you Kat, as consolation regret is often better than reality.And there is a country mile of poetic license in that pome.
I used to confront the world, three sheets to the wind, now I am a wet blanket.Scared of my own shadow.
But, Canadian dollars for the kitty, Kat? Why thanks ye!
These lines are living gems:
"Life money in the pocket where dreams once rubbed with bare knuckles
Lies so deep, life so cheap, the brand new ML 350 Jeep on the gravel extended driveway"
I like the rant in (Pilgrm's) progress, and the more melancholy Summer Breeze. Both seem to me to be the product of a disillusioned romantic. How could the poet be anything else, now wiser to the world?
However, I like to believe that filthy lucre isn't the defining characteristic of our age. And I don't mean our Age, this time in society, I mean our age, this time in our lives. Like you I haven't got much but I got all I need to write poetry. We're obviously not doing what we do for filthy lucre. It wouldn't come amiss, a nice little check for a collection of my poems. But I'm writing anyway.
How much is five pounds in American dollars? Tell me that (I guess I could google it) and I'll give you an idea of how many copies I'd buy. Perhaps 10?
and I thought it'd be a rant on the grants system. Good oh. I'll buy a copy.
Seems ridiculous when you look at the projects that get funding against the ones that don't.
You can put me down for ten copies too. It might be worthwhile approaching the local bookshop and seeing if they'd take a few copies - the one in Dingle is great at supporting small press poetry publications.
Also, at the Revival readings at the Locke Bar, Limerick, they have a table where they sell Revival publications, but I think they mentioned they'd display other publications that people are trying to sell?
Your pomes are so WILD! I wish I could cut the tether of my own overly domesticated imagination and just let it run free like that. The poignancy of the second one was pitched just right for me the shortness of time in 'while we could' summed it all up beautifully.
Put me down for 5 copies of da mag initally (I may be back for more).
Business first, as a horse trader would say. Put me down for ten. I am spitting on my hand now.
To the poems. I feel like I've walked into a feast of images and thoughts and sounds and yes, vitriol. The rant in progress better not go RIP as I really, really liked it and got kind of sucked into the psychedelic kaleidescopeness of it all. And then after the madness the beautiful, tight poignancy of Summer Breeze.
Good hand, well played, sir! We'll shake on it.
Hi TFE
Is the poetry bus mag ready for print? I think the poem I gave you has been published elsewhere - eek. Do you want a new one or is it too late?
Mea culpa.
N x
On the first one - fabulous darling mwah mwah! Like the grass bleeding green line alot.
The second one is gorgeous... such a contrast with the first. It's a joyous, wistful celebration. Gorgeous
Mwah!
Love your Summer Breeze - very evocative. Put me down for 2 copies of the Poetry Bus Book please. I wish it could be more but I don't 'move in literary circles' - more like ever decreasing ones!
Maybe it's our Canadian sensibility, but like Kat I, too, find your second poem heartbreaking -- right from "I remember when dreams were dreams..." You can put me down for at least one copy of the book.
Truly remarkable, oh versatile one. Going from what is practically an anarchistic religious stream of consciousness to a well-conceived sensitive elegy on the one page. In awe.
"And train tracks led to somewhere
Not the hell out"
What a line! Love it.
On the topic of the mag:
Depending on how much work you want to do on it, there are several companies that allow you to publish your work at almost no up front cost. This works for books really well. For a regular publication... well, I s'pose that depends on how often you want to put it out.
I just published my first book through CreateSpace and was quite pleased with the product. And since they print on demand and handle all the shipping and other grunt work for you, it's a pretty good deal all the way 'round. If you want to know more, shoot an email my way and I'll be happy to fill you in on what I know.
I've been on a boreen or two & didn't even know what it was. I just knew that I was going to KILL my husband if we got stuck & had to walk out...
I'm feeling, not nostalgic exactly, but like I need to grab hold of the way my father does things in the garden. Maybe that will be important for me to know - & I'd feel safer knowing it. I'm not sure why.
I don't know anything about the magazine, but I'm interested. I can probably only afford one though...
I had thought I'd left a comment saying i'd take 5 copies too by the way - it seems to have dissappeared, anyway - I'll take 5 copies.
Thanks
Back again, this time on the Poetry Bus.
I liked Pilgrims Progress a lot - defiant and angry and bold and shouty, which is sometimes what you need to be, but I have to say I think the second one is brilliant. Just brilliant.
I always love the fact your poems are an actual challenge to read. full of metaphor and images and anger and ..stuff! I feel like I've gone a few rounds with ali after reading them.. and then there's the second one.. full to the brim with melancholy.. I tell you! You're an emotional roller coaster poet :-D
and.. weirdly, our poems had some slightly in common things in ( and I didn't steal, I make a point of not reading othere people's stuff till I'm done!)
oh.. and put us down for four copies of the mag. Fecking dog wankers! (the art people that is)
Pilgrims Progress is a glorious rant & Summer Breeze a lovely bit of memory. Of course I'll buy a couple of copies--arts funding is a total crapshoot.
Summer Breeze is beautiful, Eej.
You should check out lulu, if you're interested in self publishing. Like Bill said, their's no money up front.
Arselinks is right.
Hi TFE,
Poems = dynamite-ic, full of whizz and going places.
I'll have a Poetry Bus magazine for myself and 4 others as not much opportunity to flog mags here and if more than 5 of books or mags or anything...basically...arrives in post here, it gets stopped in docks and a whopping tax bill comes my way (that's what happened when I tried to get more than 5 of 'Miracle' out here...)
Looking forward to it...and a heap of hoorays for going-solo, with it, so to speak....cheers, TFE
(Back to head in books...zzzzzzzzzz)!
Five copies here too TFE.
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