In memory of a friend, poet, publisher, and activist.
coralled gates the trees no more
Reuben Woolley
for the Great Barrier Reef, officially declared dead after 25 million years
coloured birds don’t fly here not even & a dry time we have white a forest moves no longer no birds no song
birds don’t fly here
rust & old machines
Reuben Woolley
here we fall
the same
the stories
of
strange.their shining
faces broken
now / feel
the opening
the silent doors
on doors unfold
it’s time
to haul out
our lost pieces
our histories
of shattered shell.come
to it then
& in our dreaming
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. The poems here appeared with this artwork on Meta/ Phor(e) /Play in 2017.
The BeZine 