This blog article is a special CALL for SUBMISSIONS as well as introducing our iconic Guest Editor for the June Edition G. Jamie Dedes. This edition gives women poets platform to reflect as they share their experiences of the COVID 19 menace and as well visualizing their lives and those of their communities after the COVID19 threats, loss and pain. Sobriety and healing can be brought back by written word, writing, poetic reflections and reading experiences. We continue to value creativity, diversity and exclusivity. We say every positive change begin with writing. Every revolution begin and ended by WORD. And we look forward to read your great writings and reflections. Thumbs up to Poet Laureate and June Edition Guest Editor G JAMIE DEDES. Together We Rise.
“The WOMAWORDS press June Edition is to be edited by our Poet Laureate and USA Associate to the WOMAWORDS Hall of Fame, Jamie Dedes.“The call is open to women poets from May 20 through June 20.“Ten poems and poets will be selected from the submissions, which should include a short third-person bio of thirty-to-sixty words and your photograph.“Submissions to be forwarded to BOTH Mbizo Chirasha womawordpress@gmail.com and cc’d Jamie Dedes at thepoetbyday@gmail.com”.G JAMIE DEDES is a Lebanese-American poet and free-lance writer. She is the founder and curator of The Poet by Day, info hub for poets and writers, and the founder of The Bardo Group, publishers of The BeZine, of which she was the founding editor and currently a co-manager editor with Michael Dickel. Ms. Dedes is the Poet Laureate of WOMAWORDS Press 2020 and U.S associate to that press as well. Her debut collection, "The Damask Garden," is due out fall 2020 from Blue Dolphin Press.
WOMAWORDS LITERARY PRESS, Womawords, an international eZine based in Africa, is the heart child of multi-award winning Zimbabwean poet in exile, Mbizo Chirasha. It was established to support women and girls through the publication of activist poetry by women. Current projects are Womawords companion publication, Liberating Voices Journal, and the newly founded Womawords Hall of Fame.The WOMAWORDS Hall of Fame seeks to amplify women’s voices through literary and other arts and comprises representatives from around the globe: writers, poets, editors, and mentors among others.
INSIDE G JAMIE DEDES POETRY LAB
MY EARS ARE DEAF, MY EYES HEAR A SONG
mountains rise round, Mother’s ever pregnant belly and the aspens dance with paper-barked madrone screeching their yellows and reds, brindle and feral like the snaked hairs of Medusa, they are warning
looming over me as I lay miles away on a mesa the bones of my ancestors, the heart of my child the pelts of the brown minks my father sewed the vultures circle, mesmerized by my demise
I feed on the pinion and ride mountain lions down slopes, into valleys, a wanderer, lost and lost looking eastward, seeking John Chapman he has something to say, or maybe it’s westward
John Muir, my ears are deaf, my eyes hear a song emerging from brown bear, a surfeit of salmon burning sage, clearing America, the wild beasts are defanged and declawed and I am hawk-eyed.
A CENTURY OF POSSIBLE PEACE
after Muriel Rukeyser . I lived in the century of world wars and into the century of “hot spots” and “conflicts,” those isolated regions of hostility and battle, of choreographed shows of military cliché and the violent disaffected eruptions of the marginalized
Every day is an homage to some insanity Media reports are conveyed with facile intensity by hyperkinetic journalists delivering easy and ominous conclusions based on seemingly recondite facts, quickly moving to celebrity gossip and other insipid topics . . .
I have lived in two centuries of wars I know what it is to be exhausted by the vain posturing of the ruling class and the tired protestations of tribal unity and supremacy based on accidents of birth
I know what it is to imagine peace across the circumference of one small blue ball in a Universe of inestimable size and breadth I know that darkness can descend with the speed of light and that love is more than an anchor and that vision keeps our dreams alive
I have lived into the century where the world is grown small, where the peacemakers are tireless and perhaps enough hearts have grown large ... sometimes I think I am living in the century where peace is as possible as war.
THE SIXTH MASS EXTINCTION
the ghosts of our parents search vainly for wildflowers near the beach at Big Sur
they were deaf to the threat in thunder, but we were struck by lightning, heaved in the rain and waves and the overflow from the melting ice
the computers went down their screens black as the wicked water, in whirling chaos they morphed into drums
every fetus turned in the womb, the men went to the mountain tops and the women sheltered in caves
the souls of saints and sinners were run through a cosmic wash cycle after the spin dry, a new wisdom
but the shades of our parents remain, they wait in vain for us at Big Sur, in vain by the Santa Lucia Mountains.
JAMIE DEDES curates The Poet by Day, and am a freelance writer, poet, content editor, and blogger. The Poet by Day [jamiededes.com] is an info hub for writers meant to encourage good but lesser-known poets, women and minority poets, outsider artists, and artists just finding their voices in maturity. The Poet by Day is dedicated to supporting freedom of artistic expression and human rights. Email thepoetbyday@gmail.com for permissions, commissions, or assignments. I am also the founding editor of “The BeZine” and manage all associated activities.
PorCuPineQuill is authored and edited by Mbizo CHIRASHA
the Founder and Author of the Time of the Poet.Freedom of Speech Fellow toPEN- Zentrum Deutschland,Germany.Alumni of the International Human Rights Arts Festival in New-York, USA.Literary Arts Activism Diplomatie. Globaly Certified Arts Mediums Curator and Influencer. Internationally Published Page and Spoken Word Poet. Writer in Residence. Arts for Human Rights Catalyst. Core Team Member of the Bezine Arts and Humanities Project. His illustrious poetry , hybrid writings , political commentary ,short fiction , book reviews and Arts Features are published in more than 400 spaces notably the Monk Arts and Soul in Magazine in United Kingdom. Atunis Poetry.com in Belgium. Demer press poetry series in Netherlands. World Poetry Almanac in Mongolia.Poesia journal inSlovenia. Bezine Arts and Humanities Webzine in USA. The Poet a Day in Brooklyn ,USA. Litnet Writers Journal in South Africa. African Crayons in Nigeria. Poetry Bulawayo in Zimbabwe. Pulp-pit USA.the FictionalCafe international Journal, Texas USA.