'Folk Ku Issue 2' has just been published, with two of my ku. 😃 Thank you so much, Jodie Hawthorne @kingriverpress , for curating another beautiful magazine!
You can download the PDF of the magazine for free via this link:👇🏽
Today in Labor History December 2, 1859: The authorities hanged abolitionist John Brown in Charleston, Virginia for his leadership of a plot to incite a slave rebellion. Victor Hugo, who was living in exile on Guernsey, tried to obtain a pardon for him. His open letter was published by the press on both sides of the Atlantic. His plea failed, of course. On the day of his execution, John Brown rode in a furniture wagon, on top of his own coffin, through a crowd of 2,000 soldiers, to the gallows. The soldiers included future Confederate general Stonewall Jackson and John Wilkes Booth. Walt Whitman described the execution in his poem “Year of Meteors.”
@MikeDunnAuthor@bookstadon There is an obvious way to prevent executions of our activists and warriors: pay them back in their own coin. When John Brown has hanged, ten pro-slavery officials should have gotten the same.
You put yourself together. Bit by bit. Part Sometimes you do it with clarity and precision. As if by a manual. As if provided with a step-by-step guide. At other times, in total darkness. In the midnight hour. Grappling with esoteric secrets. With hieroglyphics. An impenetrable mystery. Like Ikea instructions for building anything...
It was winter, near freezing,
I'd walked through a forest of firs
when I saw issue out of the waterfall
a solitary bird.
It lit on a damp rock,
and, as water swept stupidly on,
wrung from its own throat
supple, undammable song.
It isn't mine to give.
I can't coax this bird to my hand
that knows the depth of the river
yet sings of it on land.
-- The Dipper by Kathleen Jamie from 'Selected Poems'
On the packaging.Hidden in the terms and conditions. Who knew it’d be so foretelling, so prescient? “Some assembly required.” Like a chant. Like a mantra. Like the Rosary. A testament to how you’d spend your time and your days. A lifetime with tiny pieces. Trying to fit them in. Trying to figure out where they go...
One of those 'WOW!' moments. One of my haiku has just been published in the Autumn 2023 edition of 'The Wales Haiku Journal'. (cf p 53). The whole magazine can be read and downloaded for free via this link: 👇🏽
New!
POEMS BY A LADY
by Helen Craik
Ed. by Rachel Mann & Patrick Scott
The #poetry of Helen Craik (1751–1825), #Gothic novelist & friend of #RobertBurns, was long thought lost. The rediscovery of her 1790 #manuscript “Poems by a Lady”, transcribed here for the first time, invites a fresh evaluation of her life & work, & adds to the critical reassessment of poetry by #Scottish women in the #Romantic era
“My interest was sparked by the circumstances – the discovery of a manuscript that had long been thought lost. Add to that the very questionable rumours surrounding Craik’s abrupt departure from Arbigland, and you’ve got yourself a plot that seems to jump out of the pages of academic fiction.”
—Rachel Mann & Patrick Scott discuss their co-edited edition of Helen Craik’s POEMS BY A LADY
The haikuNetra Journal is a new online haiku magazine founded and edited by haikuist Daipayan Nair from India. The level of the poems in issues 1 and 2 is really impressive. Welcomes submissions ongoing.