| August 2002 | Café Society's Poetry News Update |
| August 2002 | Café Society's Poetry News Update |
 |
WENDY BECKETT Editor of Thought Café |
| Wendy Beckett (neé Hollington) was born at the Nuffield Maternity Hospital, Oxford, England in March 1969, the first child of John & Rita Hollington. Followed swiftly by two brothers and brought up in the small Oxfordshire town of Didcot in a house full of books, Wendy developed a love of reading at a very early age. She was lucky enough to attend schools where art & literature were encouraged and self-published her first book of poems at the age of 8 as a Christmas present for her primary school teachers. This book was a work of art with the pages stitched together by hand. Unfortunately all copies appear to have been lost and the only poem she can remember is this which was written as a thankyou note to a friend of her parents who won a bottle of tomato sauce and gave it to her. It shows the influence of one of her favourite poets, Spike Milligan. Tomato sauce Throughout her school years she was an enthusiastic member of several orchestras (playing the clarinet), choirs, drama groups and took major parts in the annual school musical production, including the lead role in a production of "The Geisha". Never one to be pigeon-holed, after achieving "o" level exams in such diverse subjects as History, English Literature, Physics, Music and Art, she continued to be non-conformist in her "A" level subjects choosing Maths, Physics and Art. Having achieved the requisite grades she then moved on to Bristol Polytechnic to study for a degree in Accounting & Finance. After college she studied for the professional exams of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and is now a fully qualified Accountant and has for the past few years been working as a contract temp as she can't cope with getting a proper job and working in one company for any period of time. Despite an acute phobia of flying Wendy loves to travel and achieved a life's ambition a few years ago when she visited Egypt. The impetus to make this trip, which she did alone, was found in a book - The Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo. Books have always had a big place in her life and when she met her husband, Jonathan, 2 years ago one of the first things they found in common was a love of reading and writing. When she met Jonathan, a web site designer and software developer, he had been tinkering for some time with a little web-site he'd built called "The Thought Café". It didn't really do a lot, a few people sent bits of writing to Jonathan and he posted them up once a month and that was it really.This was set to change. Together, Wendy and Jonathan decided to take The Thought Café and build a writing community which would be completely free and would definitely have no commercials or advertisements. The new site was written on a holiday to Wales during the Foot & Mouth crisis which prevented them from doing much walking or cycling and the improved Thought Café was launched in July 2001. Since then it has had more than 100,000 visitors and now has over 1,000 members around the world. Wendy has posted her writing on various websites over the years including Ciao, Dooyoo and ABCTales. In Spring 2001 her short story "Mr Right" was selected by ABCTales for inclusion in their printed magazine. As well as poetry and short stories she has also written about her experiences in attempting to find love through personal ads and a series of travelogues about her trips to Egypt and Turkey which have been posted on the web and a collection of her photos from her Egypt trip can be found on the About.com network as "Impressions of Egypt" http://goafrica.about.com/library/gallery/blgallery-wendy.htm Wendy & Jon have been married since September 2001 and live in Marlow, Buckinghamshire with their cat, Simpson, a huge collection of books and several computers. |
| Poetry L & T: | When and why did you first start writing poetry, Wendy? |
| Wendy: | I really can't remember when I first wrote a poem, I know that
I produced a small book of poems when I was at Primary school (age
about 8/9 years). My mum typed them for me and my dad helped me bind them
up into a book that I gave to my teachers as a present. I've been
meaning to look in my parent's attic to see if they still have a copy.
As to why, I think because I was fascinated by words. I learnt to read
at an early age and consumed all the books that came my way. My mum was
once told by someone that "a girl her age shouldn't be reading that"
when I was spotted reading a novel that belonged to my mum and which I'd
picked up off the bookshelf at home. My mum replied that if I was
enjoying it she certainly wasn't going to discourage me from reading (I
think it was a Jean Plaidy historical novel)
I have always had a love of words and reading and writing and I guess,
as a small child, poetry is an easy way of expressing yourself. Most of
the poetry I wrote at that time was what you might call "nonsense"
verse as I was heavily influenced at that time by Spike Milligan, Edward
Lear and Lewis Carroll.
|
| Poetry L & T: | Who are your favourite well-known poets?
|
| Wendy: | My favourites are many and varied and depend on my mood. The books I have on my shelves are by Wendy Cope, e e cummings, Stevie Smith, John Betjeman and W H Auden. I also read a lot of poetry anthologies and love discovering poets I've not heard of before. Some of my favourite poems are "Bloody Men" by Wendy Cope, "Twelve Songs" by W H Auden , "Not to Sleep" by Robert Graves and "When I am old I shall wear purple" by Jenny Joseph. I like to read poetry that makes me smile at life. |
| Poetry L & T: | I love "When I am old I shall wear purple", too! ...Next question... How did the Thought Café first evolve? |
| Wendy: | The first incarnation of Thought Café was a small home page
built by my husband. This was several years ago before I met him and he
wrote it simply to teach himself html (he's a software developer and was
interested in it purely from a technical viewpoint.) He has an interest
in conspiracy theories and the like and so came up with the name
"Thought Café" and set it up for a place for people to share thoughts. In
those days it wasn't automated, contributors had to e-mail their pieces to
Jonathan and he uploaded them onto the site about once a month.
It then evolved from simple essays to poetry and works of fiction but
it stayed very small and had only a few visitors. After Jon and I met we began to talk about the possibilities of doing something with the site, mainly because I was becoming fed up with the other writing sites, such as Themestream, which were available. Jonathan by that time had learnt an awful lot more about web site design and so together, whilst on a holiday in Wales, we redesigned the site into something we would like to visit and use. Our main principles were that it should be a friendly community, it should be free to use and open to everyone and that there would be no advertising. This is something we feel quite strongly about as one of the main gripes we had with other sites was the annoying pop-ups that appear all over the place. The new look TC was launched in July last year and since then it has exploded. The popularity of the site is way beyond anything we could have imagined and is starting to cause us problems in terms of the time, and resources, it takes to run. We both have full time careers and so run the site in our spare time and because TC has no advertising and makes no charges we rely on donations from our members to keep it running. I have to say that our members are fantastic and we really appreciate the support we get from them. |
| Poetry L & T: | On Thought Café, people add their own profile and
poetry. Much of the work posted is good, but do you
sometimes read contributions and think that perhaps
some people should think, or at least spell-check,
before they post?
|
| Wendy: | Absolutely, for their own sake. I have to say that, personally, if I start reading something and the spelling and punctuation is all wrong then I am inclined to simply stop reading which is a shame if the story or poem is good. That's one of the things about TC though, if you do have mis-spellings or poor grammar in a piece then someone is bound to comment on it and tell you so. We have always seen TC as a community and posting your work there as, in effect, asking your friends to proof read for you. Also we are very happy to let anyone post, whatever their ability, so they can get feedback and help. Just recently one of our members has begun running a poetry group for schoolchildren in his town and has encouraged them all to join TC both to get feedback on their own work and also to read work by others. |
| Poetry L & T: | Do you have any favourite poets or fiction writers who
post on Thought Café?
|
| Wendy: | Hmm, not sure that I should answer this...I'll get mobbed on
the discussion boards if I look like I'm playing favourites. I also have
to admit that in the last few months I've not been able to read as much
of the work posted as I'd like due to the sheer volume there. In the
early days I used to read everything posted, as did Jonathan, but it's
not so easy these days, so my "favourites" are probably some of the
stalwarts of TC who've been around for ever, Eddie Summers who recently had
a collection of his stories published, Roy Bateman who's stories always
amuse me and Skayda Lee one of the first poets to post at TC in it's
first incarnation.
|
| Poetry L & T: | I enjoyed reading your two Haiku on winter, which are very different from each other. Do you write a lot of Haiku? |
| Wendy: | Actually, those were my first attempts at Haiku. Last winter they became something of a "fad" at TC the topic kept getting raised on the discussion boards and I wrote a piece on the style, it's history etc for our Newsletter. For a few months it seemed everyone at TC was posting Haiku and, having researched them, I decided to try my hand the result being the two haiku on winter. They were deliberately very different as I was experimenting with the form and they were about winter as one of the rules is a haiku should evoke a particular season and it was winter when I was writing. The first took much more effort than the first as I took a picture that I'd put up as a writing exercise on TC and tried to write about it. The second just came to me out of the blue, not sure what inspired that! I enjoyed writing within a very strict form, it makes you think about the words you're using when you only have a few to express what you want to say. It's a bit like an exercise we ran at TC a month or two ago to write a short story using only words of one syllable. It makes you lose all the extraneous waffle that you sometimes get bogged down in and cut your story down to the bare bones. I'll probably write some more haiku soon, as it's something I do enjoy. |
| Poetry L & T: | What are the emotions or subjects which most inspire you in your work? |
| Wendy: | I think my family and friends and the emotions they provoke in me are my biggest inspiration, probably because they're the most important things in my life. A lot of the pieces I've written have been written specifically for a particular person and so I've drawn on their personality and the feelings I have for them. I tend to be inspired by places and people around me, I'll see a beautiful view or an interesting person and something starts tickling the back of my mind. If it doesn't go away it sort of grows there until eventually I have to get a pen and paper and write it down. I have to say I very rarely redraft things once I've written them down because I will have carried them around in my head redrafting them there for a long time. |
| Poetry L & T: | In your poem "How Fast Things Become Familiar" your words struck me as being like those of a much older person than yourself. Do you feel, as I do, that many poets (and artists) are acutely affected by things such as time, change, and getting older? |
| Wendy: | Yes I think they probably are. Maybe artistic types are more
introspective and so more aware of their own mortality and the way things
change around them. Artists such as Lucian Freud and Rembrandt have
become known for the large number of self-portraits they have produced and
this suggest an obsession with recording the changes in their own face
over time. Art & Literature are static and record a single moment of time and maybe that's our way of capturing it so we don't forget how things were as time moves on. That was certainly my reason for writing that particular poem - I had a sense, almost a fear, that I would forget a time when I'd been very happy and I felt I had to capture a snapshot of it that I could look at in the years to come and recapture how I felt at the time. It was a very personal poem and I didn't show it to anyone or post it anywhere for quite a long time. |
| Poetry L & T: | I see from your bio that you have been to Egypt. Did you write any poems about Egypt, as well as your travel journals? |
| Wendy: | No, I only just realised this recently. I wrote the travelogue
shortly after returning from the notes and pictures I'd made whilst
travelling, again this was to capture the experience so I could remember
it.
Travelling to Egypt was a major event in my life. It was something I'd
wanted to do for a long time and never found the time and my partner
hadn't wanted to go. Then I went through some major personal upheavals,
suddenly found myself single for the first time in my life at age 30 and
took a long hard look at my life. Then a friend gave me a copy of The
Alchemist by Paolo Coehlo at the same time another friend introduced me
to a travel company for single people and that was it - I was in Egypt.
It was a very special experience as I found out a lot about myself as a
person as well as visiting a place I'd dreamed about for years.
Maybe I will write some poems based on my experience but I think it was
so intense that I was unable to write anything but the bare facts of
the trip immediately afterwards.
|
| Poetry L & T: | If you were prime minister, what might you decide to do to prevent poetry self-publishing scams (mentioning no specific "publisher")? |
| Wendy: | Interesting question. I get very annoyed at these self-publishing scams as I appreciate that, whilst I'm worldly-wise enough to recognise them for what they are, there are people who are completely taken in by them. I think there are a lot of practices becoming prevalent on the internet at the moment that need to be looked into - for instance "SPAM" seems to be getting worse every day. I'm not sure what can be done in terms of legislation that can stop any of this without removing some of the freedom that makes the Internet so exciting. If you started introducing regulation and licensing for websites then small, free sites, such as TC, which has no income, would just die and that would be sad. I think the Internet has to be self-policing and it's up to us the "legitimate" users to spread the word about the shady deals so that everybody gets to hear about them. Name and Shame. Maybe that would be a way - have a list of sites somewhere that have been "outed" as doing something a bit dodgy! |
| Poetry L & T: | What would you like to see happen at Thought Café in the future? |
| Wendy: | Well at the moment Jonathan is writing a new document management system to replace the rather creaky database that underpins it at present. When that's done there are few things that have been bubbling away in our minds for a while that we will then be able to offer members. The main thing we would like to do at the moment is to publish a Thought Café Anthology. We don't expect this to make any money we'd just like to give some more exposure to our members and offer them a book of collected TC works. We've been toying with this idea for a long time now and nothing has happened, mainly because neither Jonathan or myself have the time it would take to edit such a book. One of our members has recently offered to help with the editing and publishing so we're hoping to get this up and running in the next few months. We'll probably run it along the lines of a competition with the best entries being published in the book. Ooo - that just sounded scarily like those self-publishing scams - it's not, honest! |
| Poetry L & T: | On Thought Café, you provide a lot of good advice. What would you say to someone who wanted to know how to become a better poet? |
| Wendy: | Write about things that you feel strongly about, stand firm for your own work and just keep writing and writing and writing. I think writing is like lots of other things in life that only improve if you keep practising. For all the things you write that you don't like there will be one, every know and again, that you look at and think, "I'm proud of that". |
| Poetry L & T: | Thank you for the interview, Wendy. |
| Dear Poets, Welcome to the August 2002 issue of Poetry Life & Times (For those of you reading this on a mirror site and not poetrylifeandtimes.com, click here).
This issue features an interview with Wendy Beckett, Editor of the Thought Café website.
Featured Poets this month include Durlabh Singh, Monica E. Smith, Fred Wolven, Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI, Jim Scileppi, Christina Sng, Richard Vallance and Jan Sand.
For the August 2002 Vallance Review, Richard Vallance has reviewed Walter de la Mare’s "Silver".
|
 |
|
Any comments on this issue or back issues can be emailed to me on the link at the bottom of the page. Announcements are always welcome (brief if possible), you can also promote poetry books here.
Poetry submissions should be in plain text in the body of an email, with a small jpeg author picture attached, also a bio, with the URLs of any ezines mentioned, so that they can be shown as links. This increases the chance of inclusion, especially for late submissions. Pictures are best at a maximum of 520 pixels across, otherwise they take ages to arrive by email, especially in bitmap or TIFF format. Further submission guidelines are available on request, or click the submissions link on our main page.
Best Regards,
|
Richard Vallance reviews sonnets, both classic and modern.
Featured Poets this month include Durlabh Singh, Monica E. Smith, Fred Wolven, Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI, Jim Scileppi, Christina Sng, Richard Vallance and Jan Sand. Many thanks to all contributors.
Click title below for this month's Vallance Review feature
I am a poet based in London, England and have been widely
published.
CHROME RED
Note from editor:
Silent silent the turbulent tales
Red red rocks are under the sun
Beyond wounded streets of the city
I hope one day she will remember
Which of course she will always deny
Green and gold
Tongues of insurrections
Tongues to sooth
In the lands of the waking
To get respect from the planets
DURLABH SINGH
My new book of
collected verse
is just out:
by Durlabh Singh
ISBN 1898030464
Durlabh's poems can also be read on
Charlotte's Web at Artvilla
GREEN GREEN
© Durlabh Singh
Green green the colour of the sea
Walking with shadows of the yellow
Corn flowers in the guises of the blue
Keeping pace with waters of the narrow.
Under wayward motioned of twilights
Listening to calmed rippled disruptions
Trading maps in situ woven by the fireflies.
Structures wrought over the serene shores
Breaking up restriction in castered confines
By the blatant blossoms of the chalky Plains.
HOPE
© Durlabh Singh
I hope that one day she will sigh
Holding strands of thousand griefs
Locked in the recesses of universe
Beyond the infinity of the briefs.
Will look into the watery eyes of the sea
And her hand will explore silted memories
And all the secrets hidden in her enclose.
The vagrant nights of glistening rain
And all reflected images will conjure up
Voices of high romance within her breast.
Holding to rituals of flesh as her prime.
TONGUES
© Durlabh Singh
I am the word
That pronounces
The tongues for feel
Or for peonies
In marshy lands
For birds in steel.
The colour of spring
Grey and white
Tones of winter
Forged in partnership
Rattled bones in cinder.
Tongues of tale strange
Tongues in thousand dialects
Tongues of the storm and rage.
Tongues to hide
Tongues to loose
Tongues to guide.
SOULS OF DEAD
© Durlabh Singh
Before waters of the sunset
The souls of the dead hold
A ceremony in saffron precipice
In rumbling dialects of the unbold
Under reflected obscure darkness
Of feasts arranged at broken end.
Mamba the black serpent wails
In sunflowers of decay to dance
Amid ashen dust of the meteorites
It smears its detested dreaded stance.
In ancient lands of feathered birds
Winged in by some beguile buzzards
Shades of direction by monitor lizards.
The Poet's Porch (online) I strive for simplicity in my writing, believing that poetry need not be written for the select few. I believe poetry allows, even in its brevity, for the freedom of expression, and in that, there is freedom in expression. I currently maintain my website, Monica's Expresso Café, and have just released my first book of poetry, "Days of Fine Gray Ash", which has been endorsed by Poet/Author Nikki Giovanni. |
TIME CAPSULE © Monica E. Smith *Time goes, you say? Ah, no!Though many times I've paid no mind And pushed the old trunk aside This day I bravely bowed to fate And beheld what lay inside
With pounding heart I broke the lock
Entombed within, conserved with care
In infant's raiment, small and crisp
I closed my eyes and summoned Time
I closed the lid and asked myself
I remember the rain and you were there, and how we poured ourselves into each other until the thirst had been quenched
love, perfect and new,
still,
Framed Faces Stare out at me From sacred places Well in view "Don't forget We are not yet gone You live in us We exist in you"
"Your pains were ours
Time will come
Alone?
|
 FRED WOLVEN Fred Wolven is a teaching poet, editor of forthcoming Ann Arbor Review, and seeking wider audiences in ezines. He has appeared in Poetry Life & Times several times before.
Fred says, Creating poems is like candlelight perception; such a process enables me to dance both inward and out, and in so doing gain and share some kind of understanding."
|
THE CAT OUTSIDE HIS DOOR, # 1 © a suite of poems by Fred Wolven The cat just sits there looking in. Once I stood in the middle of a treed opening, just peering into a Tennessee forest glen. Then I
was outside turning in. Now, I sit
from dawn till dusk, fills & empties,
into the darkness. Like Roethke's
so, you bagged & tagged it,
He just sits there looking in. Today I look carefully through journal pages, checking for notes from Roethke's lively meditations.
Yes, I notice that my lines are fewer,
Thinking it was you, I stewed, caught
Now, I do not know how to touch you,
Still, I grope, I mourn; I wish, I curse;
Even now he just sits waiting, looking in. The wall is sturdy, no rocks will fall; the ledge is small, the movement slow. A glimpse, a sparkle, a tear or two...
It makes little difference when I'm with you.
filling my head, shoving aside
the feeble efforts, the pills I take
I dismantle this my wall? Unlike Roethke's,
And yet he sits, head raised, looking in. Do you see? Do you know? Do you care? Will you get up & walk down the hall? I'm just around the corner, right here
only two blocks from where they laid
you want? Here, look around the corner,
its petals uncurling one by one.
So, it's nearly nonsense, I know, with little
|
Poetry Life & Times is a nominating site for The Poet's Hall of Fame. Nominations are according to poetic merit and sometimes also for services to poetry in general.
Nomination from the July2002 issue:
Congratulations!
*Richard's highly-unconventional style very much caught my imagination last month
*NEW* Competition from the Poets' Porch:
Click logo for details...
ANOTHER WOMAN WHO LOOKS LIKE ME
published by Black Sparrow Press. 
|
Vous pouvez enfin lire le volume 1, numéro 2, de l'e-zine canadien,
SONNETTO POESIA
- celui de l'été, 2002. Dans ce numéro, l'écrivaine en vedette,
c'est Sara Russell, rédactrice de l'e-zine anglais, Poetry Life and Times
chez le lien suivant :
SONNETTO POESIA
Dans le numéro actuel, on trouve aussi des sonnets par
Brian Whatcott ( des États Unis ), de « la pomme de terre terrible »
( Royaume Uni ) et de Richard Vallance, le rédacteur ( Canada ). Les sonnets
sont classés de façon thématique. On peut lire tranquillement des sonnets
estivaux, des sonnets portant sur le sujet universel de l'Amour, sous la
rubrique, "Love's Labour lost?" ( soit, « À la recherche de l'Amour
perdu? » ), et si vous voulez bien, même des sonnets bizarres de
« Commediadel Arte » ! Alors, c'est bien rigolo, n'est-ce pas? Et bien!
Qu'attendez-vous? - l'apocalypse? Allez-y tout de suite!
|
The Summer, 2002 issue (Vol. 1, no. 2) of:
SONNETTO POESIA
- which features the sonneteer, Sara Russell, the Editor
of the UK E-Zine, Poetry Life and Times, is now on the WEB here: SONNETTO POESIA
Our Summer issue also features sonnets by Brian Whatcott (USA),
the Potato Tarquin of Terror (UK) and Richard Vallance, Editor (Canada).
The current issue arranges sonnets thematically. You may read at your
leisure: Summer's sonnets, "Love's Labour Lost?" sonnets and even Commedia
del Arte ones! Sounds like great fun, and it is! OK, so what are you
waiting for? - the end of the world?
|
 |
Q U I C K I E S - a new e-book of erotic/humorous stories for women |
|
Poetry Life and Times is listed in Poetry Who's Who
|
 |
The Poet's Porch Anthology July 2002
Dreamland 200 pages
Poets of The Poet's Porch, Guest Poets and Resident poets
Order NOW !
Make check or postal money order payable to
Poets Porch - Address below. |
Val Magnuson Galactic Poet Award
OUT NOW MILLENNIUM DAWN anthology, by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press. An exciting collection of award-winning poetry and short stories. Enquiries to Elaine Davis at kedco-ap@juno.com
Also - Contributors Wanted for: CRYSTAL DAWN
... A new forthcoming anthology from Kedco.
Click Here for details.
THE PERILS OF NORRIS cartoon, #25 - we go deeper into Norris's bizarre dream. Reginald Rat has escaped from the cartoon completely! He could be anywhere on this page, doing anything. If you can find him, you win a prize!
The Perils of Norris started in August 2000. To catch up on past episodes, click the links below, then your browser's Back button to return.
Email sararuss.geo@yahoo.com and say where he is and what he is doing. First correct answer wins prizes such as Poetry Life & Times pens and notebooks.
#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 #8 #9 #10 #11 #12 #13 #14
#15 #16 #17 #18 #19 #20 #21 #22 #23 #24
Mail me on: sararuss.geo@yahoo.com
with poems, letters or poetry news,
by 22nd August (latest) for the September issue.
