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Dear Poets, Welcome to the February 2005 issue of Poetry Life & Times (For those of you reading this on a mirror site and not poetrylifeandtimes.com, click here). This month's interview features Janet Brice Parker, accomplished poet and water colour artist. Featured Poets include: Liam Guilar, Kevin J. McCrum, Joshua W. Miller and Aurora Antonovic. We now have a new Resident Poets section, featuring Robin Ouzman Hislop, Richard Vallance, Jan Sand and Sara L. Russell* (*Editor's work to appear until we find more women poets to be Resident Poets). See below Featured Poets for the link to this new page.

In the Vallance Review for February 2005, Richard's Review No. 42 features the charming "My Cat Jeoffry" by Christopher Smart (1722-1771), along with exerpts from several other examples of poems about cats. Fans of The Perils of Norris cartoon: You can buy Norris merchandise for home and office, including apparel and stationery... Click here to visit the store at CafePress.com. More goodies will be added as soon! Also available: Poetry Life & Times logo merchandise. My own poetry can be found on AuthorsDen, these days. The links in the left-hand column of my pages include books and articles as well as poetry. Some of the articles give advice on making chapbooks, or finding publishers - and there is even an item on ghosts. My latest e-book: Worlds Inside The Head, is now available, featuring animated html poetry pages, short stories, video & audio recitals, plus pages in PDF format. Click here to scroll down to the animated ad at the bottom of the page, and click the link to find out more. The animation shows images from the CD. NEW - Poetry Life & Times Mobile Phone Pages + Free Ringtones & Wallpapers! We have started a series of new mini-sized Poetry Life & Times supplement pages for mobile phones, which include information on the main site, occasional interviews, short poems + free ringtones and wallpapers. If you have a WAP-enabled mobile phone with a colour screen, point your mobile's browser at these pages (on your mobile you can usually omit http//:): www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/pltmobile/index.htm www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/pltmobile/ringtones.htm www.poetrylifeandtimes.com/pltmobile/wallpapers.htm Ringtones are both classical and new original music (my own). Wallpapers are mostly from The Perils of Norris cartoon. 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. I recommend that poets click the submissions link on our main page, for full guidelines, and please, always use a spellchecker. Poets can submit previously-published work here. If another editor likes it, there's a chance we'll like it too. Best Regards,

LIAM GUILAR Born in Coventry, England, Liam Guilar moved to Australia in 1986. He has a Masters Degree in Medieval Literature from the University of Queensland, and currently lives on the Gold Coast, where a version of himself is Head of English at a private girls school, a fact he often finds incomprehensible. In an attempt to appear windswept and interesting he can claim to be the only lute playing, kayaking medievalist to have been "smuggled" across the Kazak border in an apple truck and "arrested and deported" from Samarkand. The story is on the Idaho State University Website. His poems have appeared in both print journals and web sites in Ireland, Britain, the USA, Canada and Australia. Liam Guilar's second collection of poetry "I'll Howl Before You Bury Me", published by Interactive Press, won the 2003 IP Picks Award for Poetry by a Queensland author. He is currently writing a version of the story of the first Spanish descent of the Amazon in poetry. Some samples can be found here Other Links: Comrades, August 2001 Poetry Life & Times, October 2001 You can also download some MP3 recitals of Liam's work from the September 2003 issue of Poetry Life & Times, in his section of Featured Poets.

Resurrection © Liam Guilar Between the waxing and the waning of the moon if you wish for resurrection, go to hell. Alone. Someone may wait for you. You'll hear their voice unraveled on the wind, a fading thread to stitch a funeral shroud, not lead you through this labyrinth. Trust no road maps, faiths, prognostication. You'll find the trackless darkness littered with the torn remains of Tarot cards and Yarrow wands. Go down, alone, and face your demons. Dismiss the second hand perspective. The Minotaur may be a lunatic in fancy dress, the White Witch Widow Twanky out of season, but this hell's yours, so find your own way home to where the moon hangs, waxing in the sky Exiles #1 © Liam Guilar 1 We came across the ocean, towards nightfall the sunset at our backs had stripped the colours from the land. No one was waiting on the quay. 2 ...in my case, by coach to Digbeth station. The terminal stench of City after rain: damp cloth, upholstery and diesel fumes, stained our lives and ever after drove us back again doors hissed contempt, or resignation and dumped us down amongst discarded ticket stubs. We struggled through the wash of voices. Outside, the only people there without routines, we could not read the signs. 3 We've turned our backs on home: wind, rain, and sky, the shape of clouds familiar as an accent calling out at evening. We landed, shuffled past the lighted windows, moved inland, towards sunrise. Exiles #2 © Liam Guilar The plover dives, then dips to drink. Here, on the sandbank, bellies full, the cormorants spread their dark angular wings to catch the sun. Fussing at the edge of understanding, like the sandpipers along the water's edge, I cannot read the landscape's cuneiform. I have learnt the winds: this one persists, it strands blue jellyfish along the high tide mark. Behind me, crammed against the shore, the high rise buildings do dumb insolence- dull tributes to technologies I do not understand, yet can't ignore . Unlike the cormorants, the pelicans and I have learnt the benefits of compromise. They stutter down, forever punctual. A tourist spectacle: the Fishman gives them offal from his shop. If you look into their prehistoric eyes you'll see no hint of shame. No judge pronounced the sentence: The caveman's lurch to comfort left me stranded like the wind blown jellyfish. Exiles #3 © Liam Guilar You came to visit me this morning To see if I would still remember you. How could I have forgotten: the gamin charm that elfin face. They haven't changed. You're still the person that I knew Age has not wearied, nor the years condemned Still seventeen, still pale and smiling Naked or well wrapped against the cold You bring the taste of diesel fumes A first long summer evening, or The cherry blossoms falling Like your clothes, drifting to the floor. You're still unscarred by anything I hadn't said shared, thought or done. To be sure, I cared. But now I've changed, and you can't notice. The decades squat upon my shoulders whispering with hindsight what we could have done. I'd pass it off as wisdom, but you'd laugh, wrinkle that freckled nose and then, half angry snort, oh cut the bullshit, do you like me? At the bus stop, by the gallery, beneath the old cathedral's gate. You haven't changed, you're always late and always preying on my fears. I'll kill myself, you told me, more than once: I was always far too scared to say, get on with it. This is a different form of dying: trapped, seventeen, becoming the city's face, voice, gesture, the half remembered streets become the naked child, still awkward in her skin becomes a comet trailing memories troubling the morning. Is any Helen worth a Troy? © Liam Guilar Career in ruins, family lost, surrounded by the wreckage of a life, she shakes her head and says: But he was beautiful. The sight of him had cracked her open. So she wrapped the split pieces of herself around him, trying to staunch the raw wound of her own lust Rending banality with a glance she wrenched the startled stranger from the voyage he had planned driving him, howling with delight, until, shipwrecked and ruined on the moment afterwards, he looks around in disbelief at the disaster he enjoyed.

KEVIN J. MCCRUM Kevin J. McCrum lives an hour outside his native Baltimore, Maryland. His poetry has been published in Skyline Magazine, Poetry in Emotion, his self published book Glimpses of My Soul, and the soon to be released *New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry, which features 14 of his best poetic works.

Blue and Green Memories © Kevin J. McCrum these hills whereupon I ran during my lugubrious childhood once green once blue are green again painted by the many tones of you my lover artist even with the turning seasons they stay green vibrantly so even if only in my memory Joy © Kevin J. McCrum come let you and I open my box of rain empty it out into the dawn’s pinkish sky let us shout across the horizon expose our better joy yet again find comfort in life in beauty in each other Light Me © Kevin J. McCrum upon the liquid night I curse you stars which have seen more than I ever shall hold your secrets for I do not care this spec will disappear before you can blink and yet there is a dawn within me you do not see nor shall you ever know and that is my claim to shout over you useless night of glimmering pin points let down your drapes uncover the fragile sun let me say my goodbyes with each tooth I have light me smoke will carry me high guide me to my dream way up into shades of eternity You Are My Sun © Kevin J. McCrum today the ocean looks like the night sky a million pin-points reflecting brilliantly across the dark water oh what glaring light and you shimmering even brighter smile at me catch your reflection in a single sweet tear as it leaves my eye you are my sun me the ocean or are we the night sky and stars arching pleasantly along the stratosphere over tens-of-thousands of beach-goers who oblivious of our prosperity drift inside their own sphere of perception and hopefully feel the way we do the way many have said they see us completely connected and shining like the sun reflecting off the Atlantic

JOSHUA W. MILLER Josh Miller was born in Randolph, MA just outside of Boston. He attended Boston University where he graduated with honors, receiving his BA and MA in English and American Literature. He currently attends Hunter College where he is working toward an MFA in Theatre. During his studies in Boston he was both compelled and required to read and write poetry. He quickly became addicted. Being fluent in French, Josh fell in love with French poetry, especially the work and life of Arthur Rimbaud. Upon moving to New York, he found poetry to be a valuable asset while adjusting to the “city that never sleeps”.

Commotion of You © Joshua W. Miller Sapphire blue, turning red, Signals a storm, Deep and mysterious, This spate will assail, Like a blood feud, Abiding, ill-timed and ill-favored, Like a twinge on my neck. Timeless Voice © Joshua W. Miller Dance with me a moment, We’ll skip like pebbles, Across the surface of mortality, Look back, but a second, Watch our ripples disappear, like rising smoke, Then we’ll sink, Erode, As we must! But we shall always know; There was a spot, however faint, Where we once stepped, or skipped, or danced, And left our unique and irremovable impression, Upon history! Ashen Clouds © Joshua W. Miller This day shall be a love day, For we’ve nowhere to go, And the great gray oleo, Calls us not! So look into my eyes, You peerless beauty, Sink your scintillating affections, Into my youthfulness, Let us not realize, Gray affectations, Let us follow, Our gayness, here and now, And always! Goodbye, For Now © Joshua W. Miller One day, I shall find you again, Reclining, Amongst the heaps of books and poems, That brought us together, I shall call you, by name, Kiss your cheek, Say it is “good to see you”, We may chat at length, of what, Who can say? Of poetry no doubt, and of life, Are they not the same?