Poetry

Word Play

March 21, 2019 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

Many of us have felt that urge to write ‘something’ at some point in our lives. Some follow through on the idea, while others never quite get started or start but never finish because creative writing is a challenging endeavor requiring passion and perseverance.

“Creative writing” is described as the process of creating a literary work of any type, including memoir, essay, short story, novel, poetry, and screenplay. While some aspire to write a best seller, the joy for many writers is in the writing process, its practice and development, or they have something to say and hope to have an impact on the lives of others.

The poem “Where We Dwell” was written by Arian Foster, professional athlete and poet. Video from Todd Martin

If you’re feeling it, explore and learn more from these online resources:

⇒ Modern Poetry – FREE to Download This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring 2007. It covers the body of modern poetry, its characteristic techniques, concerns, and major practitioners. The authors discussed range from Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, to Stevens, Moore, Bishop, and Frost with additional lectures on the poetry of WWI, and the Harlem Renaissance.

⇒ FREE online creative writing courses are offered by Open University: Start Writing Fiction & Writing What You Know

⇒ Wesleyan University offers via online classes that focus on elements of three creative writing genres, short story, narrative essay, and memoir. [Access to some video lectures and assignments are free so that you can evaluate a course offering prior to purchase. If the course fee is beyond your budget, financial aid may be available.]

⇒ Find More FREE Creative Writing Classes – a list of online creative writing courses offered free by top universities and educational websites (provided by learningpath.org)

⇒ 9 Simple Activities to Inspire Your Writing, by Emma Johnson, Writer’s Edit (online literary magazine created for writers and book lovers)

You’ll find creative inspiration from Robert Fullerton’s story of life in the shipyards, how he learned to write, and his creative process, A Thousand Sparks

Take a look at the On2In2™ article Contemporary Poetry. You’ll find both live and recorded readings featuring unique and inspiring literary voices of today.

We’d love to hear from you! If you’d like to comment on this article, join the conversation, or share your inspiration, and you have not yet registered as an On2In2™ playmaker, please sign up via the ‘Engage page’. Don’t worry, it’s pretty quick and easy (unless you’re a robot).

Feature photo courtesy of Taner Argali/Unsplash CC0

A Thousand Sparks

March 15, 2019 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

“If you watch a thousand sparks cascading,
They’re all wee thoughts,
or possibilities,
or ideas;
And, if you could think like that……….”

Robert Fullerton

At 13 years old, his formal education ended, and at 17, he started working at a shipyard in Govan, Scotland. An early start to a life of grueling labor, but Robert Fullerton looked through the reflecting glass visor of his welding helmet and found inspiration in the spirit of the shipyard.

In the video documentary, “Mining Poems or Odes” from the Scottish Documentary Institute (produced by Jack Cocker, directed by Jack Cocker), Robert Fullerton reveals how he learned to write, his creative process, and ‘tools of the trade’.

Robert Fullerton’s story reminds us that sparks of inspiration are everywhere, and the real magic is in a book. His passion for books and writing began when his workmate and mentor, Archie, gave him a copy of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists* by Robert Tressell**, the pen name of author Robert Noonan (1870-1911), an Irish-born house painter.

The novel is set in the fictional town of Mugsborough, and based on Noonan’s personal experiences of poverty and exploitation and his views on the relationship between working-class people and their employers, the gross injustice and inequalities of society, and workers’ acceptance of the status quo. Out of work and ill, Noonan was in dire straits during the writing, and there are traces of the anger and bitterness he was feeling in the Ragged story, along with compassion and a sense of humor.

Widely regarded a classic of modern British literature and ranked as a ‘best loved’ novel in a 2003 BBC survey, the completed manuscript originally called, The Ragged Arsed Philanthropists, was rejected by three publishing houses before Noonan died in 1911 at age 40. His daughter was able to sell the book rights to a publisher for £25, and an edited version (with most of the socialist ideology cut out) was published in 1914. Forty years later, Robert Noonan’s original manuscript was found, and the unabridged edition was published in 1955.

*Editor’s Note: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is available to read free in ebook form or online, and is also free to download and print, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. The volunteer organization founded in 1971 by American Michael S. Hart (1947-2011), inventor of the ebook, has created a digital library offering over 53,000 ebooks of literary works in the public domain that can be accessed, read, downloaded and printed—all free of charge.

Information/Resources:
Wikipedia: Robert Tressell, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Govan, Project Gutenberg, Michael S. Hart
“Welder Turned Poet….”, The Daily Record (February 14, 2016)

The historical works created during times of social unrest and cultural change continue to inspire today Activist Arts

There’s more inspiration here→ Watch: Creative Perspectives,
an On2In2™ collection of short videos

Feature photo of welder is courtesy of Pixabay/Pexels, CC0

**Zeester Media LLC may receive a small commission for a book purchase you make via the link to this Robert Noonan biography “One of the Damned: The Life & Times of Robert Tressell” by F.C. Ball. This in no way affects the price you pay for the purchase.

Love Conquers All

February 1, 2019 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

Love conquers all things; yield we too to love!Virgil, Eclogue X, line 69

Resolved am I
In the woods, rather, with wild beasts to couch,
And bear my doom, and character my love
Upon the tender tree-trunks: they will grow,
And you, my love, grow with them. (excerpt, Eclogue X, Gallus)

Considered one of Rome’s greatest poets, Publius Vergilius Maro (aka ‘Virgil’) (70 -19BC) wrote three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: Eclogues (also called ‘Bucolics’), Georgics, and the Aeneid.

The first, Eclogues (a Greek word for “selections”), is a group of ten poems featuring a mix of visionary politics and eroticism that made Virgil a celebrity and legend in his own lifetime.

In Eclogue X (Gallus), Virgil creates a myth using the impassioned voice of his friend, the poet Gallus, imagined dying of love in Arcadia, celebrated in Roman times as an unspoiled, harmonious wilderness and the home of Pan, Greek god of nature, the wild, shepherds, flocks, of mountain wilds.

♥ Go to Project Gutenberg for English translation of Virgil’s Eclogues (Free to Read)

Take a look at the On2In2™ article Contemporary Poetry. You’ll find both live and recorded readings featuring unique and inspiring literary voices of today.

We’d love to hear from you! If you’d like to comment on this post, join the conversation, or share your inspiration, and you have not yet registered as an On2In2™ playmaker, please sign up via the ‘Engage page’. Don’t worry, it’s pretty quick and easy.

Feature photo is courtesy of Pixabay/Pexels CC0

Spring Flowers

April 6, 2018 By Zola Zeester 2 Comments

And the Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast
Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley*

The Flowers video by Jamie Scott captures Spring in bloom using time-lapse photography.

*Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822) lived his short life on the wild side, and the political and social views expressed in his poetry were considered radical in the early 19th century. It all resulted in expulsion from Oxford, alienation of his father, financial and marital difficulties, and limited appeal of his creative work. However, his popularity grew following his death, and Shelley is now regarded as one of the finest lyric poets in the English language and one of the most influential to generations of poets. In 1838, Shelly’s poetry was first published as a collection edited by his widow. The 1914 edited collection by Thomas Hutchinson attempts to restore the poetry to its original text, and is available here to read free-of-charge in digital format (courtesy of The Internet Archive).

Information/Resources:
Wikipedia: Percy Bysshe Shelley and poets.org
Blooms and Buds, National Park Foundation blog article (March 10, 2017) – Where to find spring flowers in US National Parks

In Texas, you know it’s Spring when you spot the first bluebonnet, and taking a long drive “to see the bluebonnets” is a long-standing tradition

The Chrysanthemum, Royal Queen of Fall,
is a flower with history and purpose

Feature photo of close-up tulip is courtesy of Pixabay/Pexels CC0

Contemporary Poetry

March 31, 2018 By Zola Zeester Leave a Comment

Poetry is a distinct pleasure, and unlike any other art form. It requires no special knowledge to enjoy it, just the patience to tune to its unique way of doing things; and once you’ve dialed into its wavelength, I can promise you’ll never want to go without it again – and nor will the world ever look quite the same. Don Paterson, Picador publisher

WATCH LIVE & FREE On2In2™

Mihaela Moscaliuc is the author of ‘Father Dirt’ and Immigrant Model’ where she explores the feelings of living in different worlds. Michael Waters is a 2017 Guggenheim Fellow, and his new collection of poetry delves into the sensual and spiritual with characteristic intensity. If you missed the live stream broadcast of Poetry: Mihaela Moscaliuc and Michael Waters on Thursday night, April 19, there’s still time to watch a video recording. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the media player below ↓

Named by Essence Magazine as one of its ’40 Favorite Poets’, Tara Betts is the author of Break the Habit and Arc and Hue as well as co-editor of The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century, and has appeared on radio and television, including HBO’s Def Poetry Jam. If you missed Tara’s reading and talk at Hofstra University on April 11, there’s still time watch a video recording. Just click/tap the ‘Watch Again’ button on the media player below ↓

US poet laureate, Tracy K. Smith, is the author of three books of poetry, including Pulitzer Prize winning ‘Life on Mars’*, ‘Duende’, winner of the James Laughlin Award, and ‘The Body’s Question’, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize, as well as a memoir, ‘Ordinary Light’, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent publication, ‘Wade in the Water’* is a collection of poems ‘tying the truths of America’s present to its fraught founding history’. [*If you make a book purchase via a link to Amazon within this paragraph, Zeester Media LLC may receive a small commission. This in no way affects the price you pay for the purchase.]

If you missed the live stream broadcast of Tracy K. Smith Ι Wade in the Water: Poems, there’s still time to watch a vide recording of the event. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the media player below ↓

Ange Mlinko’s poems are about urban life, language and its failings, and the things we see and do not see, and all with a “unique sense of humor and mystery” (New Yorker). She is the author of five books of poetry: Distant Mandate, Marvelous Things Overheard, Shoulder Season, Starred Wire, and Matinees.

If you missed the live stream broadcast of Poetry: Ange Mlinko , there’s still time to watch a vide recording of the event. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button on the media player below ↓

MacArthur winner Alicia Elsbeth (‘A.E.’) Stallings is an American poet and translator, born and raised in Decatur, Georgia and currently residing in Athens, Greece. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, Poetry magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, and the New Yorker, and she has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and United States Artists. If you missed her live talk, there’s still time to watch a video recording. Just click/tap the “Watch Again” button or the post on the video player below ↓

Picador is a publisher of international authors, providing a platform for new fiction, narrative non-fiction and contemporary poetry to an English language readership. It celebrated 20 years of publishing at a special poetry reading at the 2017 Brighton Festival, featuring poets Glyn Maxwell (On Poetry), Lorraine Mariner (There Will Be No More Nonsense), Hollie McNish (Papers, Cherry Pie, Nobody Told Me), Richard Osmond (Useful Verses), and Kate Tempest (Hold Your Own, Brand New Ancients and Let Them Eat Chaos).

If you missed the live broadcast of An Evening with Picador Poetry, there’s still time to watch a video recording. Click/Tap the “Watch Again” button on the video player below ↓

Added Inspiration! Explore more On2In2™ about creative writing here → Word Play A Thousand Sparks

Historical works of art created during times of social unrest and cultural change continue to inspire Activist Arts

We’d love to hear from you! If you’d like to comment on the fun you find here, join the conversation, or share your inspiration, and you have not yet registered as an On2In2™ playmaker, please sign up via the ‘Engage page’. Don’t worry, it’s pretty quick and easy (unless you’re a robot).

Feature photo is courtesy of Alejandro Alvarez/Unsplash CC0

Poetry

Word Play

A Thousand Sparks

Love Conquers All

Spring Flowers

Contemporary Poetry

MUCH 2 SEE

THINGS 2 DO

PLACES 2 GO

PEOPLE 2 MEET

FOOD & DRINKS

JUST LAUGHS

Poetry

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MUCH 2 SEE

THINGS 2 DO

PLACES 2 GO

PEOPLE 2 MEET

FOOD & DRINKS

JUST LAUGHS