ROBIN OUZMAN HISLOP: Born UK. Childhood in Lyme Regis & Poole Dorset. Lived Scotland & Scandinavia, The East & Spain. A great deal of my life has been spent out of England, my mother's side is Scottish & I take the name Hislop, as writer's name from her family name.

Bachelor in Arts (Hns). Philosophy & Religion. Manchester University. Resident at Pakistan, Lahore. Studies at Punjab University, New Campus, Lahore: Sufism (Tasawuf), Jalal-U-Din Rumi & Ibn Arabi. Sheffield University: Spanish & Latin American Cultural Studies. Resident in Spain from 1985 until December 1998 (Madrid and Salamanca): Resident at Salamanca, 1996-98: English Language teacher and translator for “El Ateneo”. Organisation of bilingual poetry readings at Casa do Brasil, Madrid Complutense University, Escuela Oficial de Idiomas, (Madrid Official School of Languages), Cafés Manuela and Magerit, O’Connors Pub, Madrid, El Ateneo and El Corrillo in Salamanca.

Translations of poetry include 1927 Spanish Generation Poets: selections of F.G. Lorca, Luis Cernuda, Rafael Alberti, M. Altolaguirre, Miguel Hernandez and Vicente Aleixandre’s poems; and the Chilean poet Andres Fisher, Las Diosas Blancas an Anthology edited Ramon Buenaventura, an anthology of poetry Alchemy by Tessa Duncan from Spanish and James Stephens Fairy Stories into Spanish have been more recent activities. I hope to feature these, as well as introducing new translations with originals on my web page soon to be opened IBIS. I am interested in revivalist movements in modern poetry.

Appeared in Dawn Millenium Anthology published by Kedco Studios & this year appeared in their Crystal Dawn Anthology. Frequently featured in the E zines Poetry Life and Times, Autumn Leaves, Sonnetto Poesia, Canadian Zen Haiku, appeared on Artvilla, Poetry Repairs, the Celtic Pagan Poetry Pages Journal, as featured poet in the Beltane edition & Ancient Dawn E zines amongst others. This year will publish own anthology Blue Corn which will incorporate performance, on web cam and voice recital with Kedco Studios. My present book After the Cave the Comet was published this month by Mystic East.

Became a Resident Poet of Poetry Life & Times in January 2005.

More of Robin's work can be found here:

Amparo Arróspide's Gift of Tongues:
www.giftoftongues.co.uk
(Co-editors Robin Ouzman Hislop and Amparo Arróspide)

EXCLUSIVE NEWS UPDATE: Some of Robin's poems are due to appear in an anthology "Blue Corn", to be published by Kedco in 2005.

Also Robin's exciting epic "After the Cave, the Comet" is now available for purchase either as a CD or Ebook at www.giftoftongues.co.uk

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Richard Vallance Felinis Divinitas! O listen! Listen to her Rondeau Quatrains by her rhythms in Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony no. 6 in F Major Allegro ma non troppo 1: Erwachen heiterer Gefühle bei der Ankunft auf dem Lande 1: Awakening of happy feelings on arriving in the country 1: Éveil d'impressions joyeuses en arrivant à la campagne Gloria in Excelsis, Felinis Divinitas! 1 All Glory Be, deliciously deserved of Isis and Osiris, mascot, she has deserts tamed and blessed oases curved around the Nile in Time's illusive Sea. 2 For she, their signal Star, Star of Nile's nights, becomes the beacon of Ra's suns, her eyes reflections silvered to his stellar lights where Pyramids triangulate hieroglyphic skies. 3 As fervently trilled as Apollo's lyre, her purrs lull Persians asleep for such gall: her eyes peak triremes as they set afire Xerses' fleet, crumbling in Athena's thrall! 4 As Israelis, divining Yahweh, fled before the gilded Pharaoh's routed troops, she, Crescent cat, somersaulted the Red Sea's parted bed in caterwauling loops. 5 When she, Sheba, claimed Jerusalem, Priests denied her sanctum for idolatry — a wild affront to G_d! Still, all the beasts of fields and village knew Who'd set her free. 6 When Christ was born in Bethlehem, you, Cat came unto Him, the Father's Child who cried; you curled around his manger, imagine that! As Jesus slept, Mary kissed you once. You sighed. 7 O feline Star of Bethlehem, see Christ? Thou hast Mary's blessings brushed on thy brow; thy purring sacrifice is love's sufficed as well as your trilled angelic meow. 8 When the Crusades flared, why were the Moors shamed, poor Moors who'd loved you as their Prophet had? — What? Christians, Inquisitors, cast you blamed into Exile, and Europe, plagued, went mad. 9 As soon as the Sun King, Roi Soleil, rose to lustre France before a Sun stunned world, Richelieu, singing Mass, let you repose in his ruffled sleeve, warm in ermine furled. 10 Still Beethoven, oh so alert, now hearing you, now listening to you purr, pours his best champagne for all you cats who'll somersault his Royal Blue freshets, ô chats chasseurs agiles à la campagne ! 11 So shall I always pray, mes clever chats, may you reign over, bless our simple souls, over us forever, though we're bourgeois, your prophets your feline Being consoles. 12 As you master us, what Iscariot dare betray you before us? Dare ask? No. None! Should dogs of War allow God's foes to flare, Felinis Divinitas, your Grace, your Peace is won. © by Richard Vallance, January 2006 __________________________________ Sleepy Hollow.... Legend? Hmmm.... [revised] Tetrameter Mitrailleuse * GO! Headless horseman, moonbit, hound Maine's odd hamlets, hard by ye sea! Listen! Your stallion's cleft hooves pound soil where you slay, killing with glee! Kill if you will, murder be damned! Innocents gape, mourning for dead relatives' bodies (headless) crammed in graves while "Pax vobiscum's" said. "Eureka", he wails, which witch's familiar? Let's roast her alive! Pray he'll vanish then, his bitches with him, lest their, his evil, thrive. Wake up! Sleepy Hollow, who's next? You! Fear for your lives, Satan's vexed. © by Richard Vallance, January 20 &22 2006 * Mitrailleuse is French for "machine gun"... NOTE: I was inspired to write this sonnet while watching Alfred Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" (Ray Milland, Grace Kelly) 1954 this very evening.... The New Plieades CD ROM e-book - to be published in January 2006! Click the CD cover picture above for more information, also see Vallance Review No. 52. RICHARD VALLANCE was Born in Guelph, Ontario, Canada, March 11th., 1945.  He holds an Honours B.A. and Master of Library Science, and is fluently bilingual in English and French. He also reads Spanish and Italian, ancient Greek and Latin well.  He wrote his first major poem at the age of 18, in 1963.  Richard has also distinguished himself in the field of library and information science.  In 1983, he won the $1,000 Data Courier Award for Excellence in Online Published Papers. Richard has composed over 2,500 poems.  He is the Chairperson of the Ottawa Chapter of The Canadian Poetry Association, website = Canadian Poetry Association: Affiliation Ottawa Chapter.  He is also a member of The Canadian Federation of Poets, where he is the Canadian Federation of Poets/ Featured Poet (January 2005).  Richard judges and pre-selects all rhymed verse poetry for CFP's official journal, POETRY CANADA. Richard's world class poetry page is Poesie’s laissez-faire Faire Foire, which showcases over 40 poets worldwide.  PLFFF features sonnets, haiku, contemporary and historical poetry.  PLFFF is a member of Phenomenal Men of The Web: Arts & Humanities. Richard is the Editor of 2 Canadian poetry E-Zines, Canadian Zen Haiku canadien ISSN 1705-4508 and Poetry in Emotion = La Poésie à s'émouvoir ISSN 1705-4516, and is the editor of the sonnet journal in print, SONNETTO POESIA ISSN 1705-4508, to be listed in 2006 Poet's Market and distributed online by OpenMic.com. Creativity Pays (USA). Richard's poetry and sonnets frequently appear in such in print poetry journals as POETRY CANADA, POEMATA (Canadian Poetry Association), The Neovictorian/Cochlea (Madison, Wisc., USA) and The Nisqually Delta Review (USA). His CD-ROM book, Canadian Spirit Voices, Kedco Studios, Las Vegas, NV © 2003, ISBN 1-878431-44-7, some 500 pp. long, contains over 130 of his poems, almost 300 haiku, 32 translations of poetry in ancient Greek, Latin, Italian, German and French into English poems by the author, a novella, DENIZEN, and the 100 + pp. essay, "The Historical Evolution of the Sonnet". He is the Editor-in-Chief of the all-new multilingual international poetry anthology, The New Pleiades Anthology of Poetry = le Florilège de la nouvelle Pléiade, Kedco Studios, ISBN ISBN 1-878431-52-8 to be published in the summer of 2005. Finally, Richard is co-editor with Sondra Ball of the USA, of the North American poetry anthology, The Human Face = le Visage humain, Kedco Studios, ISBN ISBN 1-878431-52-X, to be published in 2006. Richard Vallance moderates 2 major poetry discussion groups, The New Pleiades Mirror and Canadian Zen Haiku canadien. CONTACT:  Richard Vallance Back to top

Jan Sand PERCEPTIONS The eye and mind combine To seize on lines and areas Devise and choose with surfaces and hues Which implications offer cues To establish fact and how thereon to act. Each eye, each mind Cannot be confined To absolutes. One perhaps, salutes A certain shade of green With slight yellow sheen That celebrates delights of summer luxuriance. Whereas, another eye, another mind Could not find that same green without grace. It could recall the pallor of a face full of anxiety, A total lack of valor to deny sobriety. This multifacet world proffers sensations That might stimulate depressions or elations, Tropistic twists to sculpt conceptions Of how the universe exists. An accidental coffee stain upon concrete Much buffered by use of daily feet, By the hord of pedestrians Can suddenly be found in accord With an image of The Lord, and hence Commence (though odd) Be worshipped as the face of God. SHORN At birth we are capacities untried. Nature prunes off potentialities. Our culture directs where effort is applied To create subsets of realities. But deep within us lies machineries To plug into the strange pariah world Where people sprout, like plants, with greeneries And ideas snap like silver flags unfurled. Here do dragons prowl through golden caverns And starships sail through orange colored skies While knights and elves sport in smokey taverns And all dark corners harbor wild surprise. Society constrains to mundane ends, Confers a job, a family and friends. SWITCHEROO Were we, to see in spangled air Notes produced in symphony, Could sense mutate from blare to glare - Know tunes as chromic macaroni? Would Bach trace strong formal design Along the lines of Mondrian - Calm verticals contrasting to flat line? Or would the pattern more be on Wild graphics, strange and hectic; Shapes, sharp cornered, disorganized, eclectic, Thursts of forms that ricochet in skews? Or then again, suppose we switched other senses. Instead of sight, suppose we funneled sound to taste. What food could delineate the consequences? Maybe blast out ballads with tomato paste. Perhaps a salad - olives and peppers To simulate the immensities of death, The sadness of a colony of lepers. Could garlic add poignancy - or just bad breath? Scientists, these days, listen to the stars. I wonder if the data could be transferred by cigars. © Jan Sand, 2000 JAN SAND is a poet and illustrator from New York (now residing in Helsinki), is a regular contributor to Poetry Life & Times and the newsgroup alt.arts.poetry.comments. A great deal of his work is about animals, or science fiction. Recently Jan was published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press, on their latest CD ROM e-book, "A Way With Words (Poetry Real and Surreal), which also includes complete books by Dale Houstman, Sara L. Russell and Keith Gabriel Hendricks. Jan's illustrated book on the CD is called "Wild Figments And Odd Conjectures", which is also sold separately, in a limited-edition "single" CD. To see an illustrated article about Jan's poems, visit the November '98 issue of Poetry Life & Times, and scroll down past the Editor's Letter. He also has his own poetry pages on Charlotte's Web at Artvilla. Back to top

Sara L. Russell (Editor) The Goddess of Spring The Goddess of Spring c. Sara L. Russell, 5th March 2003 When next the moon, in soft pearlescent mist, Ascends over these Sussex hills of green, In dreaming skies of smoky amethyst, The goddess of the Spring will soon be seen. She waves her staff and emeralds appear As rolled buds on each dewy sapling bough; Frost mellows as she warms the atmosphere, As warm as winter's vestiges allow. Magical mandrakes shiver in the soil Blooms open in the middle of the night, Stardust revives what cold air did despoil Wherever Springtime's dainty feet alight. Apollo's chariot will cross the sky, All earth rejoice; the Goddess Spring is nigh. © Sara L. Russell, 5th March 2003 Not For You This is not for you. This is The Sacred Place, where the Beautiful hold dominion. Here we will dance and kiss and love, where you may only watch and wish. Hurry home now, the ten o' clock news beckons, the dishes will not clean themselves, nor time move backward. This is not for you. This drinking place is ours, where The Groovy Ones hold dominion. Here we will groove and move and sway and you may have no business here. Hurry back now, the counterpane craves your warm imprint, your old cat misses munchies now, your plants need water. This is not for you. This is The Trendy Place, that has beautified your "local". Here we can drink till 2am, where you may only pass on by. Hurry home now, the off-license is closing, the sherry is half-finished now, just like your lifespan. © Sara L. Russell, 19th June 2002, revised 1st July, 2002. Sales Warriors Maureen and Mavis and Doris and I Caught a coach at the bus station And headed for Knightsbridge, where posh pigeons fly With much banter and anticipation. Our Mavis, who's like a man got up in drag Had one need of the January sales: Any item that comes in a Green Harrods bag With all the prestige that entails. Well we were a bit squashed on the red London bus Sitting right between two great big arabs, But their wives were quite friendly and chatted to us Until we alighted at Harrods. We stood at the doors till a minute past nine Till they unlocked and let us all enter Then it's "elbows out girls" "If I grab it, it's mine" We were a maelstrom's epicentre. They were punching and grabbing and running ahead But we were much stronger and quicker, And if something tore they must settle instead for only a half of a knicker. We were awfully tired but had done well, I thought, Maureen had a nice pair of slippers I saved a pound on the jumper I bought And Doris bought toys for the nippers Our Mavis was weak for a docker in drag; An egg timer was all she would carry. But the egg timer came in a Green Harrods Bag, So she was as happy as Larry. © Sara L. Russell 8th January 2003 SARA RUSSELL Poet, cartoonist and short story writer. Editor of Poetry Life & Times. Newsgroup signature was originally 'Pinky Andrexa, Last Of The Cyber Vixen Poets From Outer Space'. Won Internet Arts Award from Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press. Runner-up in Capricorn International Love Poetry competition 1998. Her website Poetry Life & Times recently won the Alpha Poets' Poetic Eyes web award. Won Poet of the Week in the Poetry For Thought group (The Globe groups) for the week April 28-May 4th, 2001, with the poem "If You Were Mine". Inducted into The Poets' Hall of Fame, 2001, and included in its anthology for that year. Recently broke several bones after falling from a train; now fully recovered after almost a year, and walking without a limp following a recent successful hip operation. Published Works: 5 illustrated e-books published by Kedco Studios Artist Profile Press (most recent first): Worlds Inside The Head, Quickies, Spiders And Gliders, A Way With Words (in collaboration with four other poets) and Pinky's Little Book of Shadows. Also published in several Kedco e-book anthologies and Forward Press bound book anthologies. Back to top