ARTEMISpoetry, a review
by
Jamie Dedes (The Poet by Day, a journey in poem)
No matter what happens on any given day, when the latest issue of a literary magazine crosses the threshold of my home, it’s a good day. Recently I received the November issue of ARTEMISpoetry for review. That was a very good day indeed. The writing and art is by women.The reading is for everyone. I venture to say that this publication of the Second Light Network, while not well-known, is making a mark and growing an audience.
Between the covers of ARTEMISpoetry, I found a rich selection of poems, features, reviews and interviews, biography, and art.
The journal opens with an interview of the Argentinian, Ana Becciú.
“I continue writing because I need to know and to understand … the voices within us, understand the surface of the words we use every day, voices that pronounce suffering, loss, the voices of all of us lost in this present society.”
There follows an exploration on the pleasures of reading and an essay by Myra Schneider on the “mystery of the creative moment.” I enjoyed the detail in Clare Best‘s engaging feature on her project and process for Self-portrait without Breasts. The project evolved from her decision to have a prophylactic double-mastectomy and to go flat chested and not have reconstructive surgery or use prosthesis.
“Cast me and I will become what I must.”
I think the feature I most enjoyed was Judith Cair’s piece on her experience translating passages from Homer’s Odyssey.
“The act of translating is beginning to influence my own writing. Even in writing poems far removed from Ancient Greece, I realize that there is an undertow of lines from the Odyssey, which may or may not be consciously acknowledged. And sometimes I am left with such a strong impression of a particular episode that I must re-imagine it for myself.”
The main course in this delightful menu addressing the interests of poets is the poetry itself. Among the many poems enjoyed is Anne Cluysenaar’s Hearing Your Words, offered here with the permission of the publisher and poet.
HEARING YOUR WORDS
For Ruth Bidgood, reading in Aberystwyth
by Anne Cluysenaar, © 2013, All rights reserved
I used, as a child, to imagine my death, or rather
beyond it. A ship setting out, in flames, at dusk,
counteracting the planet’s roll, on the sunrise path
to a waveless far horizon lit from beneath.
This came to mind, just now, clicking on close-up
through the café window – sea meeting that sky,
distantly smooth, arching high, up above
a jumble of chimneys and roofs backlit at sundown.
I found myself catching my breath, gravity’s curve
seen through such a small frame, from here where we sit
with our cups of tea. Vastness out there, our past.
But on planets elsewhere, other seas, other lives beginning.
Later, among the books, hearing your words,
it was waves I thought of – from land we may never see
reaching across the bulge of this little earth
to break, not one the same, on familiar shores.
taken from a poem diary From Seen to Unseen and Back by Anne Cluysenaar, forthcoming from Cinnamon Press, 2014.
ARTEMISpoetry is published twice-a-year in November and May. Members receive their copy as part of their membership. Issues are available to nonmembers. For information, link HERE. The next submission deadline is August 31, 2013. For membership and submission information, link HERE.
© 2013, review, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
© 2012, journal cover and art, Second Light Network, All rights reserved – Many thanks to Anne Stewart for forwarding the cover and to Myra Schneider, Dilys Wood, and Anne Cluysenaar for the poem
JAMIE DEDES ~ My worldly tags are poet and writer. For the past five years on medical retirement due to a chronic, potentially life-threatening illness, I’ve blogged at The Poet by Day, formerly titled Musing by Moonlight. The gift of illness is the time for poetry. Through the gift of poetry (mine and that of others), I enter sacred space.
Thank you for sharing the beauty and inspiration:
Sometime I Just sit and think about random things and events in history, sometimes I am brought to tears over the cruelty humanity has committed against each other. Other times I cry tears of joy over the amazing and wondrous things humanity has done together and for the common good. How a species so capable of such grand things such as love, compassion and fellowship could also do such horrible things as well. Even as individuals we do both amazing and horrible things within our life.
The BeZine 