Let your voice be heard! It is most important to the republik of poets here…

In this online (Zoom) workshop we will look at protest poetry in translation, and discuss poetry of witness in its context as an historical artifact. Writers will then be given a prompt and asked to generate their own poem of protest/witness for work-shopping.

Since it is the job of writers to bear witness to the truth, and the habit of writers to read widely, think deeply and seek their own counsel rather than adopt the propaganda of their leaders and the self-serving rationalizations of their fellow citizens, it should not be surprising that writers often find themselves in mortal opposition to the state apparatus: Naguib Mahfouz, a Nobel prize winning author, was stabbed for his liberal, secular political religious views. Wole Soyinka, Nigerian, had to flee for his life because of his support for democracy. Taslima Nasrin, a Bagladesh essayist who wrote in favor of women’s rights, was forced to flee to Europe under threat of assassination by religious extremists, and El Salvadoran Roque Dalton who was executed for his writing.  In the United States we have a continuous faction trying to ban books in libraries and state apparati silencing voices.

It is again a perilous time to be a poet. Let your voice be heard!

When? April 12th, 2021

Pacific: 9:00 AM (PST)

Email to request Zoom meeting information at poetrepublik (at) gmail (dot) com

This month’s Poet Republik feature is another poem from Jean-Noel Chazelle’s first collection of poetry, Le Sang de L’Étoile / Star-Blood. Poet Republik Ltd. is proud to publish his debut in a bilingual translation. Special thanks to Brooke Petersen for translating. Jean-Noel is already an accomplished artist whose paintings have been exhibited around the globe. Below is a sampling of the outstanding poetry in this collection. You can see the influence of his painterly mind in the lush images in his poetry. Enjoy! Read More >

Are the children opening mouths like hungry saxophones
Clamoring for bread from my bread music? Read More >

another’s dream

Read More >

Gemini’s ginned up as if for war—

all that’s missing is a bullet and a poet:
O America give back Jack Spicer!

She pulls her ponytail higher—
give back the unruptured discs of her back,
give back Jack’s liver, and deliver her

from this tired romanticism!
She’ll fight you all with one fist
and a black wolf. She’ll fight you

all in this melancholia of night.
She’ll correct your grammar. She’ll write
words even she can’t pronounce,

soak black cherries in gin,
feverish arm herself with armfuls
of airplanes and soldiers—again,

O Jack, where are you again
tonight?—she’ll soldier into the bright
October sky.

Jennifer Minniti- Shippey is the Managing Editor of Poetry International literary journal, Director of Poetic Youth programs, and a professor at San Diego State University. She is the author of Done Dating DJs, winner of the 2009 Fool for Poetry Chapbook competition, presented by the Munster Literature Centre; Earth’s Horses & Boys, from Finishing Line Press; and After the Tour, from Calypso Editions. Her writing has appeared in Salamander, Spillway, Cider Press Review, Tar River Poetry, and others. Keep up with her news at jennyminnitishippey.com

A Wall in Philadelphia

Yellow stenciled
digits slashed
red with spray
paint, an asemic
text November
sun comprehends
as the limit of
its reach. Deep
green weeds
glow in the rift
where asphalt
meets wall—
arched leaves
wide as any
tire in the lot
drip light, but
the lines lead
the eye:
white oval
remnant
of a name
beneath
a square
cement patch.
The poem, all
that wants
to be said,
is said—there. Read More >

COMEDY

We were still drifting as the day broke
improvising lines, like we practiced
machines in their tracks, mud
turned to cement, the feet
missed our gardens we
were coming and going
like it will matter, currents
through white sheep completely
alive, this was during the day—

it should be the truth. Naturally
in those lines this is a lie—

Uncertain—it heard us
never asking, how do you talk, even find
the words, from all the words
in your head, such a moment, liquid
of the ears, the blues
of the planet, two spoonfuls
absorb, in each head, a spiked drink, tongue
know the dropper, seem
surprised to drown the point.

Jared Schickling is the author of Needles of Itching Feathers, recently published with The Operating System. He has written several BlazeVOX books, including The Mercury Poem (2017) and Province of Numb Errs (2016), as well as The Paranoid Reader: Essays, 2006-2012 (Furniture Press, 2014); Prospectus for a Stage (LRL Textile Series, 2014); Donald Trump and the Pocket Oracle (Moria Books, 2017); and Donald Trump in North Korea (2017).  He edited A Lyrebird: Selected Poems of Michael Farrell (BlazeVOX, 2017) and he edits Delete Press and The Mute Canary, publishers of poetry. He lives in Lockport, NY.

The Hartnell College Planetarium and the Homestead Review are pleased to announce the 17th annual Poetic Voices Poetry Festival. This event will take place at 7pm in the Hartnell College Planetarium. This year’s featured readers will be a bevy of local poets: Elliot Ruchowitz-Roberts, Jennifer Fellguth, River Tabor, Bob Barminski, and Maria Teutsch.

Poetic Voices Poetry festival celebrates the poetry of college students, and will also feature 10 student poets who will receive the Circo Prize for poetry. Students wrote poems about various celestial bodies and/or planets. Andrew Lindsey, planetarium coordinator, will display celestial images to accompany the poets

The event is sponsored by the Homestead Review literary journal and the Hartnell College Foundation. Student winners: Erica Craddock, Helen Dunston, Jaime Flores, Celia Jimenez, Jennifer Le, Joel Pablo, Monroe Vallejo, Christina Veitenheimer, Jacob Vosti, and Paige Wolfe

The reading will take place at the Hartnell College Planetarium at 7PM, Thursday, April 27th, 2017. The event is free and open to the public.

Poet Republik Ltd. is proud to present the dual launch party for two extraordinary books of poetry:

Invitation to a Rescue by Kate Lutzner and Occassionally, I Remove Your Brain Through Your Nose, by J. Hope Stein with guest readers Jameson O’Hara Laurens winner of Ping-Pong Free Press Poetry Prize, 2016, Maria Garcia Teutsch, Christine Hamm, Karen Hildebrand, Martha Cambridge, Sherry Stuart and musical guest, Orly Bendavid

Saturday, April 22nd at Botanica Bar, 47 E. Houston St., in Soho, NYC from 6-8.

The post-reading party info is to be announced.

Kate Lutzner is also having her “soft book launch” at this reading — there will be preview copies of her new chapbook, Invitation to a Rescue, published by Poet Republik, Ltd. Her poetry and stories have appeared in such journals as Antioch Review, Mississippi Review, The Brooklyn Rail, BlazeVOX, Rattle and Barrow Street. Kate holds a J.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an MFA from City College and has been featured in Verse Daily. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize as well as the Best of the Net Anthology.

Jameson O’Hara Laurens completed her MFA in poetry and translation in 2014, and has collaborated with artists, choreographers, and translators. She is fortunate to call a bilingual secondary literature classroom her professional home, and has recently received research sabbatical and leadership grants for teaching projects. Having grown up in the West, she has an ongoing concern for the natural world, and for all things apiary. She became a feminist writer by necessity. Her work has appeared in Enclave, Alexandria Quarterly, Hawkmoth, and Poet Republik. Medeum is her first collection.

J. Hope Stein is the author of experimental chapbooks Corner Office, [Talking DolI] and [Mary]. She is a Consulting Producer of the film Don’t Think Twice and an Associate Producer of the film Sleepwalk with Me. She is the editor of PoetryCrush.com.

Maria Garcia Teutsch’s chapbook, The Revolution will have its Sky was chosen by Heather McHugh as winner of the Minerva Rising contest in 2015. She still thinks that’s the coolest thing ever. She has published over 25 poetry books in her vast career as Editor in chief of the Homestead Review, Ping-Pong Journal of Art and Literature and the presses, Ping-Pong Free Press and Poet Republik Ltd. In her spare time she teaches at Hartnell College, and serves as President of the Board of Henry Miller Memorial Library.

Christine Hamm has a PhD in American Poetics, and is an editor for Ping Pong Free Press. She is currently an MFA poetry student at Columbia University. Her poetry has been published in Orbis, Nat Brut, BODY, Poetry Midwest, Rattle, Dark Sky, and many others. She has been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize, and she teaches English at Pace. The New Orleans Review published Christine’s chapbook, A is for Afterimage, and nominated her work for a Pushcart in 2014 and in 2017, Ghostbird Press is publishing an excerpt from her ongoing manuscript, Notes on Wolves and Ruin.