Editor of this issue:-
Gary Langford
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All
poets I have selected have their own voices: a means to
express, being the voice of the revealer or speaker, not others.
I lectured to many poets, storytellers and song lyricists at a
Sydney university, as well as being a guest at other venues in
both Australia and New Zealand until I recently decided to
return to my own writing, including one of the two most
consistent areas I write in - poetry. The other one is fiction.
Both can tell stories in different forms, as is also evidenced
in much of the poetry I have selected. One of the great asserts
is the variation in form, whereby you can also mix the two
together as I do in a couple books of my poetry, while another
five books of poetry use a cyclical structure like the chapters
of novels where I use poetry such as the start of chapters or
within the novels themselves.
Gary Langford
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Suddenly
It’s all there: the impossible
Sunlight
You glimpse
An impression of
Your daughter
In her strawberry shortcake dress
Blond curls
And bare feet
Laughing
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On opposite sides
of a flooded valley
men looking for a way
to cross the black water
watch each other
in the lightning;
against the bituminous clouds
the silhouette of a man
draped in flax
stands on a rock
he carries a stone
wet from the rain.
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She is singing dirty songs,
Dancing to a sprightly samisen,
Drinking bowls of saki
That takes the skin off your tongue.
She is dancing all by herself,
Smiling the more people disapprove.
She sings for disapproval.
Why do you carry on like this?
I ask my vision.>
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Writing rubbish is easy.
Writing well is not easy.
In most cases, you need to spend hours on your work to make it
work. Do not try to write a great piece of writing the moment
you have a go, giving up when it reads as flat as an uncooked
curry or tandoori. A rarity is a poet who does not change a poem
when it is reprinted from one book to another, or one magazine
to another.
We are all great fiddlers, are we not where our orchestra is all
that is around us?dir="ltr">
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A poet is a writer who expresses imagination in
intense language through imagery and form; who writes for others
to read, understanding the importance of words, form and effect
where they are used to move people, other than going to their
car and driving away; who writes with emotion and intensity of
expression where the fewer the words the greater the power of
language must be to work.
dir="ltr">
Gary Langford
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mud delivers him
her soft bleeding hands
her cross and her sword
by the bed
she sings him tales from
smyrna and missolonghi
byron’s greek war song
as she cuts the umbilicus
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Gioryi returned after completing national service,
he smokes with his mates behind the school,
showing off the hand-grenade he stole. Lambros calls Kosta and Stelios,
“Gioryi’s got a cheromovida, he’s going to throw it!”
Gioryi pulls out the pin, base-balling it into bushes,
nothing! Not even a fizz. “It’s diffused you meatball!
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“How
many meters apart?” Kosta whispers,
“when will I ever see my homeland again?
My hunger still burns for her”. Songs of the
Diasporas play over the ship’s speakers, as
The Patris sounds and pulls out. The tremble
of his grip as tears run free off Kosta’s chin,
Nicholas Grapsias
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The wintry hedge was black,
The green grass was not seen,
The birds did rest on the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.
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Acas terrible in the extreme
the memory of the public is short
the ketch Crest, Captn Ellis master and part-owner
extreme
short
owner
ex-
owner
ketch
Crest
rest
shor
first published in Mate
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there’s something that walks with the wind
it wears a weed in spring
and fades the edge of the net damp black
among the scales of fish
it sends the swell up under the sea
and sings upon the gravel
and when the light falls from our faces
it hides our fears in the darkness
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