Poetry Reading: FIVE by Tammi Croteau

Poetry performed by Amaka Umeh

POETRY 7 questions:

What is the theme of your poem?

The theme is growing up and letting go – a father’s desire for his son to become a strong man (even when he’s not quite willing to let go of his little boy yet). There’s also a hint of co-parenting between mother ocean and the father on the shore, building trust as the little boy sails off on his own to become the man they’ve raised him to be.

What motivated you to write this poem?

A former soldier had contacted me to thank me for believing in him when I was his commander. He’d had a rough time and made a lot of mistakes, but his son was his reason for turning his life around and I was very proud of him for that.

How long have you been writing poetry?

Since I was in high school (though I was much cheesier way back then!)

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

Jimmy Buffett – he’s my calypso poet role model in songwriting.

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

I think in movie scenes. Poetry helps to bring words and images to life in the minds of the readers, so a professional reading would add a whole new dimension.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I’ve self-published two collections of poems and short stories as well as a children’s book and song lyrics. I’ve also completed one full-length feature script.

What is your passion in life?

Connections – learning how people, places, things, and events are intertwined.

Poetry Reading: THE ALMOST HOLY QUATERNITY by Gloria D Gonsalves

Performed by Amaka Umeh

POETRY 7 questions:

What is the theme of your poem?

Family, Memories

What motivated you to write this poem?

This poem was written in 2016 during NaPoWriMo/GloPoWriMo. The prompt was to write a poem that takes the form of a family portrait. Your call for a family poem fitted the piece and hence my submission.

How long have you been writing poetry?

About 10 years and I’m still learning every day.

If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

Maya Angelou and Shaaban bin Robert.

What influenced you to submit to have your poetry performed by a professional actor?

I dislike public performance. So your platform is perfect for me to co-share the skill of writing and performing with someone else.

Do you write other works? scripts? Short Stories? Etc..?

I have published books on fantasy/adventure/educational tales with moral lessons. In the published portfolio is also a novella and anthology of thoughts. For anyone interested to know more, I am giving free books to visitors on my website.

What is your passion in life?

Reading, writing and discovering new places.

Poem: Diaper Bag, by Kimmy Alan

Genre: Life, Family

Diaper malfunction 
Unexpected burp-up 
Your dress shirt becomes 
An emergency handkerchief 
 
Face it bud! 
You’re a milk sponge 
A human highchair tray 
An absorbent nap mattress 
 
How many more reasons are required before you realize diaper bag essentials include an extra shirt? 
 
Inspired by the all too common event. 
 
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Deadline: FREE POETRY Festival – Get your poem made into a MOVIE and seen by 1000s. Three options to submit:
http://www.wildsound.ca/poetrycontest.html

Watch Poetry performance readings:

Watch Poetry made into Movies:

Poem: In the Stars, by Marcus G. Taylor

 Genre: Love, Inspirational

 We talked through the night with our hot cocoa on the coffee table
She said, can I tell you about this crazy dream I had, if I’m able
I said, by all means, share with me your awesome tale
She said, you may think I’m crazy but you’re here now so oh well
She continues, so last night I had a dream that I burst into a billion stars
My light washed over the universe, and I was healed from my scars
I felt this latitude of freedom that we always wish
But that felt natural: like air to a bird, water to a fish
Don’t you think that would be cool if it actually happened
And I said, when they commission for the phenomena’s point of origin, I will be the ship’s captain

 

 

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Deadline: FREE POETRY Festival – Get your poem made into a MOVIE and seen by 1000s. Three options to submit:
http://www.wildsound.ca/poetrycontest.html

Watch Poetry performance readings:

Watch Poetry made into Movies:

Poetry: Where Roses Grow by Zainab F. Raza

 Genre: Relationship, Love, Hope

 
The buzzing fluorescents flick on, and my door is locked.
I do feel less vulnerable, and it’s mostly because I’m alone,
I’m not with ones that are on the other side of this door,
mostly because I need to see something, and
bathroom’s are best for doing so. If that makes any sense.
Not sure how to feel about myself anymore,
but if time is capacious just for me, I’ll find that nudging
epiphany of emotional remark somewhere amongst the
convolutedly, personal judgments streaked on mirrors.
My heart is arid like a transient desert, but often when
the concreted dirt cracks, it cracks with light peering
out as liquid to fecundate these thoughts. And these thoughts
are like little children of divorce, and kids of infidelity, and abuse,
but they’re in nature so pure. Quite possibly innocent too.
They’re a reflection. I’m looking at myself in the bathroom,
my feet cold on linoleum, my blotchy skin becoming more obvious.
This is reality. This is what it’s like to be me, pimple scars
weighing heavy on the left and crows feet enhanced as
though they’re welcome to stay. Disproportionate lips,
and a ball of for a nose. I’ve got facial hair that I’m too
scared to remove, and lashes that are short of aesthetic
standards. This is me, this is what it’s like to live in the
real world as me. It’s not so much painful as it is painstaking,
while I try to get to know what it is that I’m here for.
What I want to be here for. It’s like there are two sides of me,
and they can’t stand each other anymore.
Right now, I’m here to take a shit. But if phosphoric streams
were to ever raise this camaraderie of pieced words,
then maybe my heart would be a forest. I’d have trees in evergreen,
I’d have trees in yellow, and orange, and all of autumn.
I’d have all four seasons to imitate each state of emotion
behind closed doors. But to grow life, it’ll take as long
as it should, and that will be a long time, because as of now,
I’m still bearing not sunlight, but sun-heat. It’ll take a lot of
rainy days for rainbows, where each drop pushes itself
through gray matter; where those judgements exist.
Convoluted. Where lately I’ve been understanding myself
more than what the night has to indoctrinate and day has to teach.
I’m still in the bathroom, not ready for others, because
everyday is like a comparison and I see no beauty.
Nothing there for me, but these empty, shallow lies I keep
insulting myself with. “You are pretty; you are unique.”
I mean, unique is good, and this certainly isn’t about fitting in,
or dismissing differences; it’s about lies. It’s firstly a knowing
to feel about myself. And nobody is that original, nobody.
So why the fuck am I still in the bathroom, not ready for others?
Everyday shouldn’t be a comparison, yet I see none of that beauty,
and yet I see me cheating on myself. Falling for anything other
than who I am told to be. These “groundbreaking” epiphanies
should be saving me, so where is the fucking enlightenment?
See, it’s a bad place to linger before that time we carry like bags
on our shoulders, that weight in our chests, that pressure
in the head, demises. That time we greatly speak of, stretches
to when we’re popped out like drops, and locked in like
treasure in a box, it’s one fluid move actually.
But gray is a dangerous number to dance to, gray isn’t
supposed to tell you much, gray is just supposed be a
catalyst of consistency. And darkness is to the moon and
day is to the one essence of lucidity that many, many sets
of today’s lingo claim relevancy to, all trying to teach
something as we get older. I’m not sure how I feel yet, but there’s
an emotion retorting to all of this at the pit of my belly; poking me.
Telling me I’m not as dead as I anticipated, and telling me
I’m as alive as I want to be, with veins as rivers, telling me my
heart is a pool of red. Where roses grow.
And I thought that maybe it would snow here, and each
snowflake would lay light on tired shoulders to whisper
wholesome news in my ears like music. Maybe float onto
my head like dander, or sneak for warmth in my cleavage.
I thought it would get cold like linoleum in the late a.m.
I thought I could move to the words, and sway to twirl.
I thought this place could be a tundra or a jungle or the
capacious space. I thought it could be everything,
everything, it could be the universe. But I didn’t think I’d
be mother to a garden, pregnant with an emblem
of this beauty I tried to dismiss. This is my daughter. This is real.
I look in the mirror, and I balance two of these
rare-coming thoughts or epiphanies or feelings,
emotions, ideas; it’s good to accept, and it’s also
great to bring a change to accept. It happens when you’re
in the darkest of days, somehow I may not be completely
original, but it is ok. Because I am one with the
others that are waiting in line to take a shit. But I’m still here.
Looking closer at the streaks, because they’re little handprints,
little fingerprints comprised of intricately dedicated patterns.
Lines. I see lines. I wasn’t seeing lies. They’re not black,
and definitely not white, but if I look at them carefully,
it’s like I’m seeing myself better. I’m not supposed to
be here that long, someone’s going to knock eventually,
because time will end here, and time will end soon.
My petals are like unique and pretty little kids, and
they’re innocently, purely fragrant, sitting on my shoulders,
in my head, on my chest. I can feel me again.
The way I was, the way I want to be. You may not understand,
but youth is merely a reflection of ourselves, and all of this is me,
and I am impregnably both the day and the night,
the adult and the angel, the mother and her child,
the bathroom and beyond the bathroom, everything
and a garden too, I am everyone and I am myself.
I am two, hatred and love; we’re a couple constantly
divorcing one another, cheating on one another, abusing each other.
My heart had become arid like the trascient desert,
but discomfort calls upon change like seasons,
and it’s been raining so hard, and my heart is
cracking in light of flowers. Red like my blood.
I look in the mirror, and nothing has changed.
My acne is still here along with my circles.
My bottom lip heavier than the top,
and my nose is still as doughy as it was,
but that doesn’t matter.
This is where roses grow.
 

 

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Deadline: FREE POETRY Festival – Get your poem made into a MOVIE and seen by 1000s. Three options to submit:
http://www.wildsound.ca/poetrycontest.html

Watch Poetry performance readings:

Watch Poetry made into Movies:

National Poetry Month: New Recordings Uploaded to Recorded Poetry and Literature Archive (Library of Congress)

ResearchBuzz's avatarResearchBuzz: Firehose

Library of Congress: National Poetry Month: New Recordings Uploaded to Recorded Poetry and Literature Archive. “In honor of National Poetry Month, the center has digitized and uploaded 50 new recordings to its online Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. Among the additions are recordings by poets laureate Daniel Hoffman, Philip Levine, Rita Dove, Maxine Kumin, Josephine Jacobsen, William Stafford, Anthony Hecht, Robert Pinsky and Gwendolyn Brooks.”

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THE DARK STRANGER – Poetry Movie, Written by Billie Myers

Watch the DARK POETRY Contest winner for 2017.

From the Poet:

Basically the poem speaks for itself. Yet, it is a narrator describing himself in a very grim situation, ie: lying paralyzed on a war-tortured beach, He is also describing the ANSWER.

Forever No, and in turn describes the moment of his death. But, deeper it goes. When writing this poem I was extremely ill with pneumonia, etc. and contemplating my own death through verse.

Narration by Frances Townend

Editor & Visual Design by Carey Daiter

Produced by Matthew Toffolo