Messages in a bottle are passages, quoted from writers who lived in the past, conveying a message that can still be appreciated in the present. Samuel Butler (England 1835 – 1902) in The Notebooks of Samuel Butler (1917) Message in…
The art of Lida Sherafatmand SILVIA PIO (edited by) Lida was born in Iran (the old Persia), and experienced a childhood of war time under the newly formed regime of 1979 revolution. Her birth city, Khorramshahr got wiped out completely…
GIVE ME A SEMI-DROWSINESS OF YOUR HALF-CLOSED EYES Give me a semi-drowsiness of your half-closed eyes, Let me run like a current in your veins To reach your heart, to dissolve within you, To melt like spring snow. I wish…
Throughout 2014 as Creative Partners with Wakefield Council, Sarah Cobham and John Irving Clarke presented creative arts classes to the women of New Hall Prison and Asylum Seekers at the Quaker Meeting House in Wakefield. Using the liberating power of art,…
ODE TO MAMICA MIA , my BELOVED MOTHER by her son Albert Russo Mamica mia being the endearing term that comes from the Italian ‘Mamma mia cara’ (my darling mother), which my two sisters and I always called her ever…
KAMBER ATEŞ, HOW ARE YOU? This poem is written for a Kurdish mother, visiting her son in prison seeing him for the first time after seven years, but she is forbidden to speak her own language, so she uses a…
Seven Demons Perhaps you do not have to slay Seven demons with your bare arms Whilst riding on the back of seven dragons Snorting fire, careering through the seven canons of hell Pursued by the seven deadly sins (though I…
White Light A white light, Wakened in the waters of my soul, Over the wings of a flying bird Just as once before… A mirror of a reborn life in turmoil Just as today… Kidnapped from warm verses in rebellion.…
Under the shade of memory I told you something forgotten The things that you will not remember even tomorrow Forgiveness is always much more ancient When silence is traveling At the oak dried from the sun I am awaiting you…
Sabine Huynh’s poetry SILVIA PIO (edited by) A long list of places, at the world’s opposite ends: Saigon, Lyons, London, Boston, Jerusalem, Ottawa, Tel Aviv , just to name a few. These have been the stops of Sabine Huynh’s journey,…
His Story II: The Last Act We talk at last: the last talk. Spooned, on borrowed bed, casting minds into time like fly fishers we share memories as catch on the line. Decades dissolve, and our bravely-primed hearts make old…
Maria A. Miraglia and poetry SHADOWS We meet people so many more than we can count May be when travelling, in pubs or schools black or white Christian or Muslims fair or nasty ones mean or compassionate Each with their…
(Giuliana Monfredi, edited by) Igor Ursenco (born 9 February 1971) is a Moldovan-born Romanian poet, culturologist, fiction writer, screenwriter, currency trader and polyglot translator. The matrilineal descendant from Northern Bessarabian dynasty of scholar Marcu Văluță, director of the interwar publication Moldovan thought (1932-37). In late October 2012 he…
Two Worlds A blue lake captures my soul in its unmeasured, unimaginable depths where a new world better than lands survive drinking immortality. Howling wolves pierce melancholy and the dropping leaves stuck with fever of spring bows down before the…
Emley Walk Trouser mud splats track our epic walk. Ancient lines scar the landscape, invade our souls. We trudge. Size 5 Wellies and paw prints scatter field mice, voles, birds Into the bleach boned bamboo stalks; ghosts of fertile summers…
