A Hiding Darkness

The monsters
in our cupboards
and our minds
are always there
in the darkness
like mold
beneath the floorboards
and behind the wallpaper
and there is so much darkness
an inexhaustible supply
of darkness.

The universe is
amply supplied
with night.




From Trigger Warning by Neil Gaiman (William Morrow, 2015). Submitted by Anabella Maria Galang.

Phonica: Two

Phonica is a Dublin-based poetry and music venture with an emphasis on multiformity and the experimental. Conceived, curated and hosted by Christodoulos Makris and Olesya Zdorovetska, it aims to provide an outlet for the exploration and presentation of new ideas, a space where practitioners from different artforms can converse, and an environment conducive to collaborative enterprise and improvisation.

Media:
Phonica: One compilation video | Phonica feature in the current issue of Totally Dublin (April 2016)


For Phonica: Two, the curators will be joined by Fergus Kelly, James King, Paul Roe and Catherine Walsh to explore spaces between sound poetry, performance, new music, experimental poetics, invented instruments and collaboration.

Wednesday 13 April, 8pm
Jack Nealons, 165 Capel Street, Dublin 1
Admission Free

Fergus Kelly is a sound artist from Dublin working with field recording, soundscape composition, invented instruments and improvisation. He has shown nationally and internationally and received many Arts Council awards. In 2005 he established a CDR label and website, Room Temperature, as an outlet for his solo and collaborative work, producing the CDs Unmoor (2005), Material Evidence (2006), Bevel (2006) (with David Lacey), A Host Of Particulars (2007), Strange Weather (2007), Leaching The Pith (2008), Swarf (2009), Fugitive Pitch (2009), Long Range (2010), Unnatural Actuality (2014) and Quiet Forage (2015) (with David Lacey). Albums on other labels: A Congregation Of Vapours, (Farpoint Recordings 2012), Neural

James King grew up in Larne, Co. Antrim and has lived in Derry for twenty-five years. Since retiring from his post as Course Director for Community Drama at the University of Ulster in 2004, he has developed his career as performance artist and sound poet while maintaining his interest in creative activities with vulnerable groups in the community. His publications include Moving Pitches (yes Publications, 2008) and Furrowed Lives (self-published, 2012).

Paul Roe (Clarinets) creatively combines three of his most passionate interests-performance, teaching & presence-based coaching, in a richly rewarding artistic life. As a collaborative artist he particularly is engaged by the intellectual and conceptual discourse of interdisciplinary practice.

Catherine Walsh is from Dublin and currently lives in Limerick. She is the author of nine books, and her work is featured in a number of anthologies, including the Anthology of Twentieth-Century British & Irish Poetry (Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2001) and Centrifugal: Contemporary Poetry of Guadalajara and Dublin (EBL-Cielo Abierto / Conaculta, Mexico City, 2014). She co-edits the �resting� Journal and hardPressed Poetry with Billy Mills, and she was Holloway Lecturer on the Practice of Poetry at University of California, Berkeley for 2012/13.

Christodoulos Makris' latest book The Architecture of Chance (Wurm Press, 2015) was chosen as a poetry book of the year by RT� Arena and 3:AM Magazine. He is featured in Poetry Ireland Review's special issue 'The Rising Generation' (April 2016).

Olesya Zdorovetska is a Dublin-based performer and composer originally from Kyiv, Ukraine. Her solo projects include �Subconscious Songs from Ukraine�, exploring traditional music, �Before Speech� songs without words in search of a musical proto-language, �Undefined Pleasure�, �Poesias Espanolas�, an investigation of Spanish poetry, �The Docks� a sonic response to social and political life and �Sounds of Telling�, based on Ukrainian contemporary poetry. Throughout a wide range of other collaborations she frequently performs contemporary classical, jazz, salsa and improvised music. Her current artistic practice also includes scores and sound design for film, theatre and contemporary dance.

Prompt: In your next letter,

A Lady Writing by Johannes Vermeer, 1665

The Latin �epistula,� for �letter," led to epistolary poems, which are poems that read as letters.

They can be to an internal or external audience, to a named or an unnamed recipient or to the world at large, intimate or not, to abstract concepts or real people. The epistles can use any form or free verse. It's a type of poem with much freedom.

Elizabeth Bishop�s �Letter to N.Y.," uses rhyming quatrains and begins:

In your next letter I wish you�d say
where you are going and what you are doing;
how are the plays, and after the plays
what other pleasures you�re pursuing:

Bishop's poem came back to me when I read "In your next letter," from Cause for Concern (Able Muse Press, 2015) by Carrie Shipers when it was featured recently on The Writer's Almanac.

Shipers poem uses Bishop's opening for its title and then goes on to say:

                                             please describe
the weather in great detail. If possible,
enclose a fist of snow or mud,

everything you know about the soil,
how tomato leaves rub green against
your skin and make you itch, how slow

the corn is growing on the hill.
Thank you for the photographs
of where the chicken coop once stood,

clouds that did not become tornadoes.

This month we'll be writing epistles, which date back to verse letters of the Roman Empire, and was refined and popularized by Horace and Ovid.

You may want to use the conventions of a letter, as Langston Hughes does in his �Letter," which begins:

Dear Mama
Time I pay rent and get my food
and laundry I don�t have much left
but here is five dollars for you.

You can certainly be creative in your use or abuse of letter writing forms and conventions.

Submissions to this prompt are due: Sunday, May 1, 2016

More on Carrie Shipers at www.carrieshipers.com

Mosaic Mosaic

Don�t kill people.
Don�t marry two people.
Don�t act like a snake.
(Don�t be sneaky).



A child's list of how to do the right thing from The Most Hated Family in America, a Louis Theroux documentary about the Westboro Baptist Church, BBC 2007. Submitted by Daniel Galef.

We ain't buyin' what's on sale

We ain't goin' to concede 'em
They think we'll stop at bail
We ain't stoppin' till freedom

Against

his dark skin

I find myself
capable of sin.

April Is

In "The Waste Land," T.S. Eliot wrote:

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

But I think you should think of April as National Humor Month as well as being National Poetry Month.

Why not save get your dull roots out of the spring pain and rain and save time by combining both of those celebrations by reading (or listening) to some humorous poetry. You might want to start with some  Billy Collins.