Helen
Bar-Lev, IL
Riding
the Elephant
Hello everyone! This month
I am in the happy position of having so much to report
that I don't know where to start. I guess the most
important piece of news is that I have resigned as
Editor-in-Chief of the Voices Israel Anthology.
These past three years have been wonderful and interesting
and I've met many lovely people and learned much. But I
need to devote more time to my artwork, as so it is.
Taking my place as co-editors are Sheryl Abbey and Michael
Dickel, both from Jerusalem. The submission rules remain
as last year, up to four poems, maximum 40 lines per poem,
full contact info on each poem, though the poems will be
judged anonymously.
Voices_Israel_2010@me.com this is the new email
address for submitting poems to the 2010 Voices
Israel Anthology—the
well-known, many-prize-winning Canadian poet, John B. Lee
will be the judge. Please address queries to this email
only.
You may read all of the prize-winning Reuben Rose poems on
the Voices Israel web site:
http://www.poetry-voices.8m.com/
The next activity with
Voices will be the June annual workshop in
Haifa which I organize. There will be five speakers,
Adrian Boas, Michael Dickel, Johnmichael Simon, Sara
Avital and Mike Scheidemann—I'll
give you details next time.
Perhaps you remember that
Johnmichael and I were about to embark on a six week trip
to Bangkok, Melbourne and New Zealand. It was most
definitely the "trip of a lifetime". Johnmichael has close
family in Melbourne. We were with them the day of 47oC
heat and were there when the devastating fires raged. We
had to cancel a planned 4-day trip to an area where the
fires were out of control. While in Melbourne we met the
distinguished poets Alex Skovron and Doris Brett and the
writer Goldie Alexander. We had an evening of poetry
reading which was electric. In addition we were
interviewed and read our poems on Radio Port Philip, the
interviewer being Del Nightingale. This was arranged
through the kindness of Peter Pike of Sydney, who is
editor of FreeXpresSion, a monthly magazine
that has been published monthly since 1993.
The highlight of our trip
was New Zealand—a
country of exquisite landscape and few inhabitants
(4,500,000 people, compared with Israel's 7.5 million in a
country more than 10 the size). The roads, even though
summer, were nearly empty. We attended a poetry reading at
the Cromwell Poetry Society, South Island. Our internet
poet-friend, David George, took us to see old gold mining
areas and brought us to the meeting.
When we returned, from
almost-Autumn to almost-Spring, I opened the exhibition of
my landscape paintings in Haifa which John and Karina were
so kind as to tell you about 2 months ago when we were
traveling and I was unable to file a report. We found a
spring magnificent! In our yard were blooming over 100
wild anemones, white, blue, purple, red, lilac, pink, dark
pink. The whole country, even now, is yellow—gorse,
acacia, daisies, buttercups and other flowers whose names
I do not know, every where you go there is yellow,
interspersed with red poppies. Quite stunning.
We also put up our Spring
2009 Cyclamens and Swords website. Please take a look:
www.cyclamensandswords.com
Do you remember I mentioned
this strange telepathy of subject between members of
writers/poets groups? Well, this past week we met with our
twice-monthly writers group. Two people mentioned the
mandrake plant in their poems, while one person wrote a
short story entitled "The White Subaru" and another is
writing a short story entitled "The Green Datsun". They
both began writing the stories at the same time.
Below three poems from each
country we visited (and yes, riding that elephant was
another highlight!):
Sunday in
Bangkok
The seven o'clock bird
bellows good morning
to a still sleeping
Sunday Bangkok
humid as a sauna,
to a six-storey Buddha
whose gold lights up
the rising sun,
to the woman
on the rooftop garden,
whose love-words encourage
the plants to grow,
to two old tourists,
intent on riding elephants,
too exhausted
to seek out bargains,
to notice the dirt of this city,
sprawling into infinity
Valentine's Day in Australia
Dawn
clouds
crimson
turn to gold
Between gold
and day
the moon removes itself
from a bluing sky
A cockatoo yawns
a kangaroo
on the lawn
looks up
towards the window's
whispers,
bounds away
at the camera's click
A Valentine's gift
from Australia
Eden in
New Zealand
In New Zealand
another sun rises
in a red sky
to begin the world's day
A bird-filled, snakeless,
Garden of Eden,
a kiwi yawns,
a bored Eve munches an apple,
complains about the cost of lemons,
the state of the roads
I am tempted to stay,
to taste this delicious boredom
a bit more,
but board the plane,
return to my snake-filled home
