-------- NEOPOET MONTHLY: JUNE 201
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 Contents: 
1) Meet The AEC 
2) Workshops 
3) Guide program relaunch
4) Chat News 
5) Members Forum: Newsletter Ideas 
6) Poetry Corner: Free Verse Analysis 
Iconic Poet 
Featured Poet 
7) World Of Poetry: News 
New Books 
Reviews 
8) Fun Corner: Jokes N’ Quotes 
Contest 
 
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1) Meet The AEC 
The AEC – Advocate Election Committee – is a group of five Neopoet
members who are elected every 90 days by the Neopoet membership at large. Any
Neopoet member can be nominated and run for election to the AEC, with the top
five vote-getters being elected, and the one with the most votes becoming the
Chairperson.
The AEC functions as Neopoet’s elected government, dishing out reprimands
for guideline violations, appointing members into various positions, setting
standards for behaviour and policies for our membership, and generally
representing the interests of all Neopoet members.
Here are your current AEC members:
Race_9togo is the Chairperson, a fifty-ish father of three from Northwest
Indiana in the United States, who is a computer programmer and tech support
specialist by trade .
Seren is an Australian mother of four who lives in New South Wales, where she
is a singer, a teacher and a soon-to-be student.
Pugilist is a self-published Pennsylvanian poet and author who lives in the
city of Philadelphia in the United States, where he studies martial arts,
writes poetry, and works in the corporate world.
Scribbler hails from South Carolina in the USA, where he runs his own
construction business and writes some really good rhyming verse.
Crypticbard is also from Australia, a new father and teacher from the city of
Brisbane in the state of Queensland, who holds degrees in English Literature
and has been writing for over 20 years. 
 
Any AEC member can be contacted via PM.
 
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2) Workshops
 
I have been asked to write a brief summary of the workshop project that was
launched 16 May 2011. As I am writing, the workshops will be finishing at
midnight tonight. I am yet to send all the Leaders, Moderators & Participants
a PM for their feedback, so this summary is based on what I have witnessed
throughout the last 14 days.
 
Before the workshops were launched a lot of ‘behind the scenes’ work was
undertaken. I would like to offer my gratitude to Andrew, Rett, Jess &
Pugilist for their invaluable input during the set up stage.
 
The deadlines I had set for launching were met and we kicked off with a bang
(I wasn’t allowed to use fireworks for Health & Safety reasons!!)
 
The Splash Pool syllabus was perfectly weighted for the relevant skill level
it was aimed at. Eddie worked hard to create a syllabus that would cater for
those less experienced members and also detailed enough to move the critique
level to the next level. There was a high level of interaction and some
noticeable improvements in critique by the participants were obvious.
 
The Olympic Pool syllabus was again directed at its specific skill level and
was a clear indication as to what was expected by the participants. Chrys
took command immediately opening with a serious of questions before embarking
on the actual critique skills subject. This workshop ran on rapport, quality
suggestions and practice and humour. 
 
Jess was the first to create his syllabus, showing his excitement and focus
on running the Shark Pool. The syllabus was again well written and explained
to the participants what was expected. The participants worked really hard
and due to their existing skill levels, moved very quickly to obtain new
skills and methods of critique.
 
I dropped into each of the three workshops on a daily basis, to make sure
there were no technical problems and that everybody was involved and enjoying
themselves. Each workshop was highly active throughout the 14 days and the
level of advice, rapport, critique and communication was extremely high. 
 
The Leaders in all the workshops worked hard to monitor the comments and keep
the momentum going throughout. Not a day went by without an update in every
workshop. 
 
The participants were keen to step out of their ‘comfort zones’ and try
alternative methods in critiquing and this was key to making the workshops a
success.
 
I have received numerous PM’s from leaders, moderators and participants all
expressing how much fun the workshops were and how much they had learned.
 
Based on my observations and PM’s, I am pleased to say the workshops were a
major success.
 
I am now going to evaluate the workshops in more detail and ask for comments
from all those involved. Once that is done and I have identified any issues
that need to be addressed and what worked, I will work with the leaders in
order to run the next set of workshops. 
 
Let me take this opportunity to thank everybody involved in the workshops.
Without you, this would never have worked.
 
Any suggestions for workshop themes and topics, please PM me.
 
Regards,
 
Dan (Hooded Stranger)
 
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3) GUIDE PROGRAM RELAUNCH
 
Guides have an extremely important role at Neopoet -- they make the very
first personal connection to new members. Guides act as mentors: they answer
questions and make sure new members become integrated into the fabric of our
community's culture. They also are friends, since they are the first
connection a new member has to our community. Their purpose is to show the
new member that Neopoet is a community of real people -- not a collection of
Internet pseudonymous -- and to help mentor them during their first few weeks
on Neopoet.
 
We are currently accepting applications for the guide program. We will
relaunch shortly: http://new.neopoet.com/community/form/9 
 
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4) CHAT NEWS
 
Watch out Chat is Coming Back!
 
It has been quite a few months since Neopoet began it’s recovery from the
crash, that left members bereft of their favourite poetry site and therefore
the chat room, and its social and informative Chat Nights. But everything is
progressing steadily. 
Neopoet will be using a new backend system for the chat program, and it will
be very exciting to see how it will be received. The new program's appearance
will be updated and it will be easier for members to use. Any and all
suggestions for improvement will be appreciated; please send any suggestions
to mailto:chat@neopoet.com.
 
The chat program launched for testing on June 5 -- over time, we will add a
schedule of events.
 
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5) MEMBERS’ FORUM
 
Newsletter Ideas:
　
Magics02 -  Mona
 
I look forward to reading the newsletter. Would this be too much to ask to
implore maybe an article 
How to treat others with respect to their style of writings
How to avoid confrontational comments
How to agree to disagree and go forward
Just a few things and maybe a possible trivia game on poetry? To test our
knowledge. I think that would be a fun thing to do. Just some wee thoughts.
Discard them if they are of no use today..
 
Eddie Cruz
 
Can't wait to read it.
I don't know, but when new members come in, there should be a welcome section
that list there name and something minor from their profile, I just thought
it would be nice for new comers and for those of us who have been here to
know and welcome them properly. Kind of like a heads up to everyone.
 
Cat 
 
A featured poem for the month? Or maybe two, one from a newbie and one from a
seasoned poet? 
 
 
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6) POETRY CORNER:
 
Free Verse
 
Free verse (also known as Vers Libre in French) is a poetic form that
doesn’t conform to set metrical patterns, and so is one of the forms
attempted by most novice poets, who generally expect it to be easier to
master than other forms.
 
Without the existence set rules, the poet is free to decide where to break
the poem up into stanzas. And has the freedom to arrange the into stanzas of
two or more lines. The form may seem to require less skill than other styles
of poetry, but this is deceptive, as it involves an ability to create a
successful poem that effects the emotions with out the crutch of a set frame
work.
 
The English language form of Free verse has existed since the emergence of
the King James Bible, the earliest versions being the Psalms and the Song of
Solomon. At that point in history, it was only the rich people and the
Priests that could read and write. Peasants were generally illiterate, and so
it is said they were written so that they could be understood by the masses.
 
Victorian poets such as Mathew Arnold who wrote the poem Philomena,
experimented with the form, and yet retained an element of rhyme. Other
examples can be found in the poetry of Walt Whitman, who self published 12
Free verse poems in a volume call ‘Leaves of Grass,‘ in 1847, is
considered to be the first poet to truly write in this style. By the
twentieth century, free verse had become the dominant mode for the English
language.
 
Try reading examples of the style aloud. Take note of the similarities
between the poems. Poets often use line breaks to make a point. Think about
how the punctuation and line breaks affect how the poem is read. Then why not
try writing a version of one of the poem.
 
by Ian.T
 
 
Iconic Poet
 
Jack Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose 
 
Jack Kerouac iconic author of the cult novel ‘On the Road,’ was the
pivotal member of the 1940s/1950s literary movement, the Beat Generation, who
were influenced by down and outs and junkies in New York as well as Be Bop
Jazz. Kerouac was also a highly talented and original poet, who had a
fascination with Buddhism.
 
He created a technique called Spontaneous Prose, which was based on ‘Stream
of Conscious.’ which required a form of improvisation. Kerouac’s
philosophy was ‘First thought best thought, ‘which meant no revision,
although it is said he didn’t always stick to it. He used rolls of paper,
instead of sheets, in his typewriter, so that he didn’t have to interrupt
his train of thought.
 
Conventional punctuation was replaced by dashes, which represented the
breaths taken by jazz musicians, such as Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker
or the improvised scats of Ella Fitzgerald. Buddhist meditation also played a
part, via another breathing technique.
 
Belief & Technique For Modern Prose List of Essentials by Jack Kerouac
 
1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
 
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
 
3. Try never get drunk outside your own house
 
4. Be in love with your life
 
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
 
6. Be crazy dumb saint of the mind
 
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
 
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
 
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
 
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
 
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
 
12. In trance fixation dreaming upon object before you
 
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
 
14. Like Proust be an old tea head of time
 
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
 
16. The jewel centre of interest is the eye within the eye
 
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
 
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
 
19. Accept loss forever
 
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
 
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
 
22. Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
 
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in your morning
 
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language & knowledge
 
25. Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
 
26. Book movie is the movie in words, the visual American form
 
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
 
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the
better
 
29. You're a Genius all the time
 
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angled in Heaven.
 
Jack Kerouac was a dichotomy, on the one hand he was a dedicated writer and
part of that scene, which was debauched, but on the other hand he was a
loving son who lived with his parents. Both sides were reflected in the
creation his work.
 
Jack Kerouac, "Essentials of Spontaneous Prose" in Ann Charters, ed., the
Portable Beat Reader (New York: Viking, 1992).
Jack Kerouac ‘On the Road' was published by Viking Press in 1957. 
 
By Lou
 
 
 
 
Featured Poet
 
Enda Patrick Collins
 
Enda, known on Neopoet as 'Ziggy' is a quiet and sensitive poet who writes by
pulling on his life experience to add depth and character to his work. Ziggy
is not one to shy away from difficult and potentially controversial subjects.
An example of this to pick one from his back catalogue would be 'White
Collared' dealing with abuse within the Catholic church. 
 
Enda has a unique style and recently he has added a new dimension to his work
by adding subtle rhyming to his stanza's. Enda has grown as a poet whilst
being a member of Neopoet and is now more confident to step outside his
comfort zones and write as he feels, not hindered by what comments and
feedback he may receive. Having read all of Enda's work I found it hard to
choose a favourite, but I have decided on this wonderful piece as a showcase
of the work of Ziggy:
 
Darkest Night
 
I see deeper
into this night
sky than I ever
could by day.
 
Familiar surroundings
in long lingering silhouette
Silence broken
by the hum of life.
 
Shadows blend on every side
as I blindly clamber through.
 
Uneasy feelings that I
am being watched by
nocturnal nature having
wandered from what I know.
 
Clouds now shroud our moon
wishing its reflected light would
resume to guide me from the thicket.
 
 
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7) WORLD POETRY
 
News
 
Westchester Poet Pamela Hart Mentors Afghan Women Writers
We've all heard stories about how hard it is for girls and women in
Afghanistan. How hard it is to go to school. How hard it is to make their own
choices and defy their families. How hard it is sometimes to even leave their
houses. But we rarely hear the stories in the women's own voices. For us in
America, they're hidden behind face coverings and house walls, the victims of
an oppressive society and the wars that never seem to end. Now writers from
around the United States are becoming mentors and teachers to Afghan women
writers through a New York-based project that nurtures their efforts and
gives them a platform to speak to the world. The women write in English and
interact with their teachers by computer, sometimes walking hours to get
access and in some cases risking their safety to get their writing out.
 
We May Never See a Month So Full of Poetry
As O, Miami, the month long celebration of poetry, comes to an end, it's time
to reveal the identity of The Miami Herald's very own fictional poet
laureate, Herald Bloom, and the winner of our Haiku Challenge. Poems were
literally everywhere in Miami during the month of April. They were thrown out
of helicopters. Pinned to clothes at thrift stores. Blasted on a bullhorn
from a Ferrari. Even printed in the newspaper, which broke a Golden Rule of
not publishing them. It was all part of O, Miami, a guerrilla mission to
bring a poem to every resident of Miami-Dade County. It all ends this
weekend, with an Oscar-nominated actor reading his works. 
 
Uncovering Tenderness and Wit of Poetry
Cilla McQueen, New Zealand's Poet Laureate, has produced a terrific new
collection that, like any good radio, offers a range of options for the
reader. The Radio Room favours nostalgia, wit, playfulness, observation and
bite, and includes some standout poems. The delightfully funny Soapy water
makes a miniature portrait of the consumer world we live in by substituting
the word "poetry" in catch phrases. Favourite lines include: "World poetry is
running low." "Turn poetry off at the wall to avoid leakage." "Are you sure
you are using dry poetry?" In an earlier landmark poem, McQueen imagined the
woolliness of our lives if New Zealanders were sheep. In her sequel Reprise
she takes a different approach to living here. A political sting replaces her
delicious humour as she examines what we have done to the land we inhabit.
 
As Violent Syrian Crackdown Continues, Poet Arrested for Reading Poem
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that poet Ali Dirbak, 76, was
detained in the coastal city of Banias for reading a poem during one of the
recent anti-regime protests there. reports the Associated Press. Hundreds of
Syrians fled to neighbouring Lebanon on Saturday to escape a violent
crackdown against an anti-government uprising that has claimed the lives of
more than 800 civilians, Lebanese security officials and a leading human
rights group said.
 
 
 
New Books
 
Again the Far Morning: New and Selected Poems by N. Scott Momaday 
[Hardcover] University of New Mexico Press,152 pp., $29.95 
To read Momaday's poems from the last forty years is to understand that his
focus on Kiowa traditions and other American Indian myths is further evidence
of his spectacular formal accomplishments. His early syllabic verse, his
sonnets, and his mastery of iambic pentameter are echoed in more recent work,
and prose poetry has been part of his oeuvre from the beginning. The new work
includes the elegies and meditations on mortality that we expect from a
writer whose career has been as long as Momaday's, but it also includes light
verse and sprightly translations of Kiowa songs.
 
A Few of Her Secrets by George Bradley 
[Paperback] Waywiser Press, 70 pp., $16.95 
A Few of Her Secrets is George Bradley's first collection of poems in ten
years, and Bradley's many admirers will be sure to think that it was well
worth the wait. The collection's high-spirited and adroit poems aim to
entertain in the best sense of the word, and they range widely in subject and
tone. The book includes amused and occasionally caustic observations
regarding America's "culture wars"; enthusiastic and witty renderings of
Italian food recipes; and heartfelt yet unsentimental meditations occasioned
by the deaths of relatives. As poet and critic Eric Ormsby puts it, "Each of
this poet's previous collections has been an event. A Few of Her Secrets may
be his finest achievement yet."
 
Reviews
 
The Subtle Scotsman
On the Selected Poems of Mick Imlah
by Adam Kirsch
One of the first and simplest ways a reader gets his bearings when exploring
the unfamiliar territory of a poet's work is by learning to recognize the
poet's favorite subjects. Eventually, you move on to the subtler signatures
of rhythm, imagery, and metaphor; but it's only after you know, roughly
speaking, what the poet writes about that you become confident enough to
start examining how he writes about it. To say that Robert Frost is a poet of
New England country life, or Elizabeth Bishop a poet of travel, is not to say
very much about them, but it's enough to start making their acquaintance-much
as a person at a party might be introduced with "Mary is a lawyer" or "John
is from Chicago." It follows that one of the most disconcerting things a poet
can do is to appear to have no favorite subjects, no recurrent themes. Such a
poet appears unplaceable; like someone who conceals his native accent, or
stays deliberately vague about what he does for a living, he is a little
disconcerting. What kind of a person refuses to resemble himself, after all,
except a con-man or a sociopath? Such poets put us on guard, making us work
unusually hard to figure them out, and it's no coincidence that the modern
poets who have a reputation for difficulty-from Robert Browning to Ezra Pound
to Paul Muldoon-are all masters of the persona and the dramatic monologue.
 
 
 
Les Murray's Taller When Prone 
by Elizabeth Campbell
Taller When Prone is the second collection of poems from Les Murray since the
publication of his Collected Poems by Black Inc in 2002 in Australia, and
Carcanet in 2003 in the UK. As in the last book, The Biplane Houses, the
quality of sprawl seems to have receded somewhat from Murray's lines - both
lines and poems themselves are frequently short, with a fragmentary flavour.
Murray loves facts, detail, stuff about the world, and in that way he has
always been a poet of witness, who offers things up to the reader's
astonishment. Through the clear intention of the dedication to all his books
'for the glory of God,' Murray glorifies God through recording and loving
Creation. In a sort of title poem, he investigates love of fact or obsession
with fact, by gently sending it up, bringing out the odd arbitrariness of
fact out of context.
 
On Radial Symmetry, poems by Katherine Larson 
by Ron Slate
Katherine Larson's first book of poems, Radial Symmetry, is an experiment in
tracking down experience. It purports to sort out components in order to
indicate their relations - but its strange, discomfiting pleasures arise from
the frustrating limitations of language either to describe a totality or its
pulsing parts. However, Larson's language also extends antennae (as far as it
is possible) into the immeasurable spaces between related objects. The
reaching - for speaker and reader - develops as a necessary, stimulating,
gorgeous, provisional gesture. But there is nothing tentative about the
fearful symmetry and impact of Larson's book.
 
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8) FUN CORNER:
 
Jokes N’ Quotes 
 
Have some fun and leave your favourite jokes and quotes, on the newsletter
blog. We will start you off with a few things that we have found:
 
How do poets say hello
Haven't we metaphor?
 
Why did the man poet chat with the lady poet
He wanted to meter
 
A poets sneeze:
Haiku!
 
 
 
 
Contest
 
A little something to provoke the competitor in you. Each month we will
supply you with a line, and in return we want you to create a poem, that
includes it. You can use it as a sentence, or as separate words , but you
must include every one. The most inventive poem will appear in the next
month’s issue. You must not post the poem on stream until the contest has
been judged. The winning poem should only appear in the newsletter.
 
Here is this months line: Pounding heart ripped and shredded.
 
Email your poem to Lou [contest now closed]