New York Pitch Conference Reviews, Algonkian Writer Conferences, and Poetry Forums

Voice your recommendation(s) here, and

Please let us know ASAP if you are not going to be available to represent the Writer's Block -

then we will know not to consider your poems further for this month's IBPC.

I/we will be looking for consensus - in keeping with a communal workshop environment

Which 1-3 would we like to see represent the Writer's Block in the finals?

After the 3 are selected, then will each author post - in this thread - the poem as the poet would like it forwarded,

and ALL the needed info/statements

Ideally, the only poems that really need to appear here are the final 3, when announced, hopefully by the 1st of the month, if not sooner

^^ the intent is organizational - if poems appear here before the selection of the final 3, then there is a congestion -

Until the final 3 are announced, please maintain poems & workshopping to the Workshop Forum. Thanks.



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any newcomers or returnees this month, Welcome!

and here is a home link to the IBPC rules: http://ibpc.webdelsol.com/rules


In this thread, from the poems posted in the workshop forum during the course of the month, recommend/nominate by title & author.

Nominated poets, please acknowledge the nomination here in this thread.
Please reply by accepting or declining the nomination - in this thread.

Please note & observe: This is not a workshopping thread.

In this thread, poems that are ultimately selected to represent the Block are then posted here
as the author would like for the poem to be forwarded
along with all IBPC required info.

When the 1-3 poems are decided upon, and permission granted by each author of the selected poems,

along with all the info needed by each author:



1/Your name

2/e-mail address

3/statement that the poem is your original

4/and unpublished work

5/and that you don't have a poem committed to represent another board in the current IBPC. One poet one poem one board
for each monthly,

6/and the poem as you would like it forwarded to the finals.

^^ All of the above is the usual needed info as part of the process.


I will then forward the 1-3 to the IBPC finals.


Thanks

Michael (MV)

I nominate Billy's "so it is he tells himself".

I nom Book Burning and Psalms of the River.

so it is he tells himself

humming under his breath
a song his mother sang
when she was unusually happy

he remembers it from that night
she spent hours bathing dressing
fixing make-up dancing around the room

all the while singing her song
as she never had before and never
would again by the end of the night

sitting on the bed in a lump
bawling and sniffling and heaving
for breath then bawling some more

i sat in the corner not knowing what to do
or why someone could be so sad
i became sad that night sixty-two years ago

have been wedded to sadness ever since
and still don't understand why
that song my sad song now


This is my original work, I'm not representing any other site, it's never been published.
Billy Howell-Sinnard
bhowellsinnard@gmail.com

They shut me up in Prose –
As when a little Girl
They put me in the Closet –

--from "They shut me up in Prose" by Emily Dickinson


Book Burning


One sale bin is filled with poets
fallen on hard times,
Francis Thompson, Ernest Dowson among them.

Books not bought within the half hour
will burn like martyrs.
"We need the space," one librarian insists.

Soon the Brownings are riding
in one deep pocket, the Shelleys
huddled in another. I dawdle in the company

of Verlaine and Rimbaud,
Isherwood and Auden. I smuggle
Villon under my jacket.

A gruff staff member grumbles
I have to leave, the furnace ready to go.
Outside, settling like dandruff

onto my teenage shoulders,
flakes of ash rain down.
Sadly I walk off, clutching

Emily Dickinson,
who I hold closer to my heart
than I can ever imagine
holding either prose

or lover.


Thanks, Billy.
Bob Bradshaw
bobbybradshw@yahoo.com
This poem is unpublished and is not representing another forum.

I’m in a quandary, I also like Acetylene of Heaven by Ken

Psalms For Rivers

I am a river drunk and stumbling
toward the Ionian Sea. I cut divots
in the earth at Thermopylae
where they tell Xerxes, "molon labe,"
and he does.

I am the bank of a river in Varanasi
old as time. They burn the dead
in my arms, float votives and lotus
petals to please the gods. I am
coming to the point I can no
longer hold back all the holiness.


I am a boat on a river searching
for the drowned. They load me up
with whiskey and grappling hooks,
prod the bottom with great poles
until a face like mine appears,
and they drag it out by the hair.

Original unpublished work. Not representing else where
ashworthken@yahoo.com

I 2nd these 3 poems:

Psalms For Rivers

Book Burning

so it is he tells himself

^^ Furthermore, as I read it, these are the 3 to forward to the April finals.

Thanks Ken, Bob, and Billy
for accepting to represent the Writer's Block, and for providing all the needed info.

Tomorrow evening, I will forward your poem as you would like it to be forwarded to the finals.

A safe & productive week
to us all every one



Michael (MV)