In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.
sewing the bright spaces
Reuben Woolley
stitching up the holes like black windows where the light leaks out see the craters the fat drops of rain in dry dust spaces looking for me to hollow out this white skull tat tat tat
"spaces looking for me" Michael Dickel Digital landscape from photos ©2017
these liquid hills
Reuben Woolley
drowning in my solid earth & how these mountains grow listen to grave rumour they talk to me now & in my dying deep in all their roots pull me down / they're waiting patient like stones always do
Amalfi Coast Overlay
Michael Dickel
Digital landscape from photos
©2017
a fully moon after all these years
Reuben Woolley
holding myself / still / i am dust floating in torch light.i am tree cutting a sky & rain falls newly just ask for no answer & here’s a lost song.unplay me now i never listen this hat wearing a man.oh my dear i want a new line / bold & brightly hiding like the wolf behind a dark hedge
Michael Dickel
Digital landscape from photos
©2017
In Memoriam
Reuben Woolley died earlier this month 2019. His poetry, publishing, and support will be missed by readers and fellow poets around the world, and here in The BeZine community. Reuben was an activist-poet, and published other activists on his online magazine, I am not a silent poet. He worked in an experimental and expressive poetics, using typography and visual aesthetics as tools of his poetic craft. He crafted language into poetry, with white space containing silences, space, and questions, among other things. His work will live after him, and continue to be with us to read.
His collection, the king is dead was published in 2014 with Oneiros Books and a chapbook, dying notes, in 2015 with Erbacce Press. Runner-up: Overton Poetry Pamphlet competition and the Erbacce Prize in 2015. A collection on the refugee crisis, skins, was published by Hesterglock Press, 2016. His collection, broken stories, came out in 2017 from 20/20 Vision Publishing, and some time we are heroes was published in 2018 from corrupt press. He published and, as he wrote in 2017, “pretended to be busy” with the online magazines: I am not a silent poet and The Curly Mind.
The BeZine published many of his poems over the years. These poems appeared with this artwork on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play in 2017.
The BeZine 