Poet Showcase: De Miller

Name: De Miller
Location: Born in Victorville, California. Live in Henderson, a suburb of Las Vegas, Nevada. My soul lives in Lake Tahoe.

Blog: Whimsy Gizmo

How do you know Cara? Poetic Asides

How long have you been writing poetry? At age two, on the way home from Disneyland, I looked wistfully out the back window (the days before carseats) and said, “All done fun.” My mom says there was no looking back after that.

What kind of poetry do you write? Prose poetry. But I love forms, especially the Shadorma and the Fib, and I love to play with internal rhyme.

Please share a poem:

(This has appeared at Poetic Asides, and on my own blog, only.)

FYI

I have held a baby hummingbird
in the palm of my hand.
I have tasted the ocean
and communed with the sand.

I find the smell of paper intoxicating.

I have sold out and messed up
and fallen short and still walked tall.
I’ve pretended to be something I’m not
and pretended to be nothing at all.

I long for lake.

I’ve wasted years waiting to be discovered.
(Deep down, I’m truly lazy at heart.)
I’ve been a pencil with no point.
I’ve pilfered my gifts, and pedaled my art.

I’ve murdered my own muse and resurrected her from the ashes.

I have stolen, cheated, lied, coveted,
and made idols of idle things.
I’ve been selfish, stubborn, stupid,
but my heart, forgiven, sings.

I have been given more than I deserve but less than I want.

I’ve had my heart wrenched from my chest
and handed back as an unrecognizable, oozing, pulpy mess.
And while transplants are successful,
scars are permanent.

I am my own worst enemy.
Now I tell absolute truth
to everyone
but me.

Poet Showcase: Johannes S.H. Bjerg

Name: Johannes S. H. Bjerg
Location: Denmark

Blog: My main blog where I write bilingual haiku is: 2 tongues / 2 tunger, but I keep other blogs for other needs .

How do you know Cara? I know her from NaHaiWriMo and from there I know her blog. I also know her from the Shiki Kukai and have been coming across her name here and there in the “haiku-territory”.

How long have you been writing poetry? I’ve been writing seriously for abt x years (this one’s a secret).

What kind of poetry do you write?    I write mainly haiku and haiku-related things. Sometimes I  excess and write haibun and 5-line poetry (tanka, gogyohka/gogyoshi).

Please share a poem:

a word that takes time defoliation
(Modern Haiku 43:1, 2012)

heatwave
a crayon-swan
in Temps Perdu
(A Hundred Gourds 1:1, Dec. 2011)

beneath her voice a timbre of something crumbling
(Notes from the Gean 3:3, Dec. 2011)

feathers Guest Post

T. S. Eliot may have been correct when he warned that “April is the cruellest month”, but I contend that if you’re a poet, it is also the most social, with all the blog guest posting in honor of National Poetry Month. I am pleased to be featured today on Angie Werren’s feathers blog.

Poet Showcase: Christina Nguyen

Name: Christina Nguyen
Location: I’m from Minnesota and currently live in Hugo, which is part of the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area.

Blog: A wish for the sky…

How do you know Cara? I have read her work in various journals, and then we “met”through mutual Facebook poet friends.

How long have you been writing poetry? I’ve been writing poetry since I was a kid, but I’ve been seriously writing and submitting to journals since 2009.

What kind of poetry do you write? I write haiku, senryu, and tanka.

Please share a poem:

pushing its head
out from the zoo fence
tiger lily

- Presence, #45

monster movie
I decide to turn off
the evening news

- from Aubrie Cox’s Tea With Trolls

Poet Showcase: Angie Werren

Name: Angie Werren
Location: Ohio, USA

Blog: my micropoetry site ‘feathers’

How do you know Cara? I think I may have first *met* her through ReadWritePoem or Big Tent, but more recently through NaHaiWriMo.

How long have you been writing poetry? I wrote a little poetry in college, then began again around 2008.

What kind of poetry do you write? Today I write mostly micropoetry, with the occasional longer poem when time allows.

Please share a poem:

an old poem, from ReadWritePoem days --

a three-legged chair

is an empty womb     weighing
a black hole in the ultrasound

is held in hands     the heft of wood
turned smooth and lacquered

is suppressed in silence     twisted
and splintered

is voiced on tremulous days
obvious     without glue
without
sandpaper

originally published on ‘contemporary american voices’ — april 2010

Poet Showcase: Gillena Cox

Name: Gillena Cox
Location: Trinidad and Tobago

Blog: Lunch Break

How do you know Cara? Our first encounter was at Caribbean Kigo Kukai 

How long have you been writing poetry? I’ve been writing poetry since the ’70′s but in a more serious and discipled way since 2001 when i bought my first computer and started posting online

Please share a poem:

sound of June rain
the window curtain
billows

awakened to light
the fly off shuffle of
pigeons from the roof

round moon
all the bird songs nestled
in tomorrow

(poems now submitted were first shared as comments at friends blogs and at facebook)

Poet Showcase: Alegria Imperial

Name: Alegria ‘Alee’ Imperial
Location: Originally from Manila, Philippines now from Vancouver,Canada

Blog: jornales

How do you know Cara? I met her on NaHaiWriMo

How long have you been writing poetry? Seriously into poetry in 2005

What kind of poetry do you write? Mostly haiku, some tanka, and recently, haibun and also free verse when all three fail

Please share a poem:

To this We Wake

Scraps of purple on winter dawns
slung on arms of mornings
a sun awaiting for us
in between strutting seagulls
pigeons braiding shadows–
we snuggle.

We trace our days in dreams we
birth at dawn
when swatches of light
tickle us out to walk
on grounds of endearments our steps
have marked engraved by winds.

We step on
shredded blooms the seasons
gift us, stealing kisses, time on
halved imperfect whispers, wishes we rip
off the day, their ends we spangle on
skies, our secret into stars.

Yet we wake to another day–
what lies deeper than frost farther
than slumber, closer
to the core where
seasons sleep: to this, to this
we always wake.

Butterfly Away, Magnapoets Anthology Series 3, 2011

Poet Showcase: Margaret Dornaus

Name: Margaret Dornaus
Location: Arkansas

Blog: Haiku-doodle

How do you know Cara? Cara and I met through the online haiku community.  I think I discovered her writing through her blog after I started mine a year-and-a-half ago, and began looking around for kindred spirits.

How long have you been writing poetry?  I’ve been writing poetry in the closet for most of my life, and I have a M.F.A. in poetry translation from the University of Arkansas.  But I only began writing Japanese short form poetry seriously a year-and-a-half ago when, on a whim, I started my blog, Haiku-doodle.

What kind of poetry do you write? I write haiku, tanka, and haibun.  I also dabble a bit with haiga.

Please share a poem:

the winter garden
where false hellebore appears
without fair warning
my sister’s mind a landscape
scored with fault lines . . . and furrows

from “my sister’s world”, a tanka series, Atlas Poetica 8, March 2011

soapsuds—
mother tells me how
she’d like to die

The Heron’s Nest, vol XIII, no. 4, December 2011
carving darkness: The Red Moon Anthology of English Language Haiku 2011

one to grow on
in the center of the cake . . .
an extra candle
to light my path forward
to lead me home again

red lights, vol. 8, no. 1, January 2012

Poet Showcase: Aubrie Cox

Name: Aubrie Cox
Location: Blue Mound, Illinois; currently living in Muncie, Indiana

Blog: Yay Words!

How do you know Cara? I “met” Cara through NaiHaiWriMo first, and then she started showing up on my blog and contributing to my challenges.

How long have you been writing poetry? I wrote a few poems in high school outside English class assignments. Otherwise, I was strictly a prose writer until I got to college. I went to university to write a novel, and came out writing the shortest form of poetry in existence. So to answer properly, about five years.

What kind of poetry do you write? Haiku and related forms (tanka, renku, haiga, etc).

Please share a poem:
harvest moon
rises above the branches
tea’s aftertaste

(bottle rockets 11.2)

blue ghost fireflies
the things
that define me

(Acorn #27)

sparrow shadows
on the porch—
she never just calls

(Modern Haiku 43.1)

Poet Showcase: Curtis Dunlap

Name: Curtis Dunlap
Location: Mayodan, NC

Blog(s): The Frugal Poet

Tobacco Road Poet

Blogging Along Tobacco Road

How do you know Cara? Blog and Facebook

How long have you been writing poetry? Nearly all my life, but heavily for the last decade.

What kind of poetry do you write? free verse with an occasional ‘ku or related genre of poetry

Please share a poem:

love poem

sometimes
I like to imagine
that she’s
googled me;
she’ll read
a few
of my poems
in an online
journal,
remember
the one
I penned for her
decades ago.
she’ll rise from her chair,
retrieve an old shoe box
from a closet,
sit down
at the kitchen table
with a cup of coffee,
tenderly lift
and unfold
a yellowed scrap
of notebook paper,
read that love poem
aloud,
smile,
look wistfully
out the window
into
her rose garden
and say,
“I’m glad
I didn’t marry
that poor bastard.”

The Wild Goose Poetry Review Volume 4, Issue 4 Winter 2009