Please, please, please 🙏 All friends of @blackboughpoems and everyone in the #writingcommunity and beyond - use your social media to post in support of anti-discrimination, anti-racism and equal rights. You can share this or post yourself. #BlackLivesMatter#MartinLutherKing...
You can donate money to support voluntary organisations who support rights, write to elected representatives, march and protest (safely, eg. use PPE and socially distance) and speak to people you know who may have little confidence or knowledge on how to do this themselves. 🙏
Doing nothing, being silent on racism and discrimination, does not help fellow human beings who are going through terrible strife, injustice and brutal treatment.
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We start #TopTweetTuesday this week paying tribute to our host @maisedawg’s Dad, Norman, who tragically passed away when Karen was only 6. He was a captain in the Great Lakes, was in the Army stationed in Japan during the Korean War & was a good man. He lives on in his influence
Karen’s Dad Norman only had an 8th grade education because he had to work on his family's farm, but he was very motivated to learn things independently and this passed on to Karen who is passionate about learning and is into almost everything 📚 🎶 🐶 🐕 💗 @maisedawg
Money was tight when Karen was growing up. It was her, her Mum and older brother. Karen threw herself into reading. Favorite fiction and non-fiction writers include Anne Frank, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Douglas Adams, Shirley Jackson, E.F. Benson, T.H. White, E.M. Forster..
‘Poetry, the creative pursuit where I enjoyed the greatest freedom - I could focus on concept or craft, I could express or experiment, I could finish things or even leave them ambivalently finished/unfinished, and they would always keep a certain glow of mystery, even to me.’....
#TopTweetTuesday host Jesse Miksic @miksimum may need a boost to take him into the early hours after responding to so many poems 🔥
Jesse loves Adidas sneakers (Samba/Samoa/etc, the stripey indoor-soccer kind). He is a little self-conscious about this, knowing it's left over from his punk/skater days - maybe he's supposed to be wearing trainers or loafers? He just can't quit the flat-soled street shoe thing.
‘The mixture of voices create a kind of poetic conversation; diverse, in style and content. This leads to surprising discoveries and juxtapositions as we read through the volume, making this enriching and thought-provoking’
‘Stylistically, the poems range from short, word-rich imagist poems through to concrete poetry; they read as separate explorations, realising different reflections and representations that range from a sense of immersion and materiality to more spiritual reflections’
The accompanying illustrations by Rebecca Wainwright work sensitively with the poetry; this is a gentle, thought-provoking rather than a strident book.
A tight submission window for the summer edition. Please send three poems that are 10 lines or less on Sat 18th July or Sun 19th July. Poems sent before or after this weekend won’t be considered, sorry...
We’ll have more information on the website over the weekend. No info on there yet. We’ll have news on the new editorial team and submission guidelines. Please send poems only in the very brief submission window, not now
The edition is open-themed but the overriding mood we’re aiming for is ‘RAPTURE’. However, we need a little darkness to make the light brighter.