Phoenix New Life Poetry, Summer 2015, No 57

PHOENIX NEW LIFE POETRY
AUTUMN 2015 No 58

Phoenix New Life Poetry is the voice of Phoenix Poets, an international co-operative friendship network of artists and writers worldwide, rather than a commercial literary journal and is open to all contributors.

Co-founding poets: David Allen Stringer & Dr. Emmanuel Petrakis, Members of the “Planetary Council” of “The Universal Alliance” (“Phoenix New Life Poetry” is a project of “The Universal Alliance”)

OUR VISION

“Culture” is, anthropologically and strictly speaking, a definition of the whole of the Way of Life of a Society, not only of a marginalized or sanitised and unchallenging corner called “The Arts”. Since my childhood, in the 1950’s, the “community integrity” of especially Western society, of the “extended family” and the creative, self-reliant village/ neighbourhood has progressively disintegrated with our many competing and isolated egoisms. “The New Renaissance” is about much more than a literary-artistic movement but for the overall healing and reconstruction of our societies and their planetary environment as an interactive whole.

Almost all the elements of this much needed socio-economic and cultural re-creation have emerged in the spiritual, new age, natural health, community-creation and green movements since the 1960’s & 70’s: however, poetry and the related Arts (such as Music), liberated by surrealism and rock-n’-roll, from traditional conventions in the 1950’s & 60’s, since those decades of early promise, appear to have been either neglected, ghettoised or to have become ‘stuck’ in the ‘ranting’ or cynical ‘negativity’ of knowing what one detests, but not knowing what one, more positively, values & aspires to.

In our magazine we will not react to this by seeking to ‘escape into a romantic faerie tale’, but will seek to strike a wholesome balance between ‘angry protest’ and the beauty-&-beatitude of our divine creation that many lose sight of amidst crises, poverty & suffering! Now, however, in this dawn of the promise of the New Millenium is re-emerging the inspiration for the New Renaissance movement in poetry, music and literature as currently manifest in The Partners Writing Group (based in Middlesex, England), together with our own, as above, with initial input from Shelley’s Hellas and Blake’s Albion. We, here, reach out, to the rest of the World, for your participation.

Visionary prose writings can be included, at our discretion, as extracts, in our “Reviews” section and we will, also, be able to use visionary paintings etcetera, as visual contributions to our pages via the Computer-scanner, with poetry as our priority. Thus, we welcome poems on such themes as:

Peace, Freedom, Social-&-Political Justice, Social Comment, Spiritual, Psychic & Religious Experiences, Communing With The Creator & Creation, Healing Prayers & Invocations, ‘New romantic’ Interpretations of Classical Myths & Legends (e.g. those of ‘Orpheus’ or the ‘Holy Grail’) or whatever be your own dream!

All styles are welcome. There are no set limits on the length of each poem. What matters is their motivating spirit!

Poets are invited to send in, with their work, a concise profile of themselves, their concerns or their autobiographies and, if they so wish, we can add their addresses to their work, as printed, should they seek to be contacted by sympathetic souls!

We are especially interested in News and Information about Community Projects that involve Education-for-Harmonious Living or shared Artistic Creativity. We, also, welcome free-exchanges of journals or of mutual publicity, by arrangement, with other ‘cultural periodicals’ such as feel that they share the essential spirit of our initiative. Choice poems in other languages (French or Greek) can be translated if we feel that they are of merit, otherwise poets in other languages (e.g. Russian) will, themselves, have to make their own translations of their work into English to their own satisfaction.

Postal Subscriptions Inc. p & p: U.K £14, Europe 35 Euros Beyond £30 ($50 U.S.) or equivalents*. Cheques & Money Orders payable to “The Universal Alliance”, Postal Orders to David Allen Stringer. The US $ rate has been increased to make up for changes in the $-£ exchange rate. For a single issue only, send us one quarter of the total annual subscription, as above indicated. Euros & dollars can be best paid by sending currency notes, registered mail to prevent costly bank Charges.*Due to recent increases overseas postage rates, with the abolition of “printed paper rates” by the British Post-Office!

Any profits made will go towards “The Universal Alliance” to help us with our communications and other support for our poorer brothers & sisters in Africa, Asia & elsewhere and other projects. Free copies can only be made available, otherwise, to those who undertake to copy the magazine to pass on to others, with the prior agreement of we, the editors. We wish to share our inspirations: but it must remain financially viable! Such Profits have been rare and have usually gone towards covering the cost of following issues, together with any donations that help offset the cost of FREE COPIES overseas.

Contact address: (International) David Allen Stringer, Editor, “Phoenix New Life Poetry”

Flat 5, Cobbs Well House, Place Rd. Fowey, Cornwall PL23 1DR U.K. Tel: (00 44) (0) 1726 833334 Email: uni.alli@btinternet.com

Web: www.universalalliance.org.uk

Please enclose, with M.S.S. by post, as appropriate, S.A.E./I.R.C.’s or send them by email. We do not pay and do not run competitions as our purpose is not to satisfy the artistic egos of individuals, so much as to help draw together those with whom we can work creatively towards our common, cooperative ideals.

AUTUMN 2015 Editorial

Our culture is whatever we have created for ourselves, so to be meaningful to our minds and souls. It is not a whatever to be blend voyeuristically but otherwise remote and lifeless. Let us sing our own songs! Indeed one can observe other ‘cultures’ and learn from them ideas of how to create oneself, albeit, initially, by imitation – make it your own, as true to yourself! It is the creative process that matters as much as the final creation. We are aware, in our modern and communicative world of so many diverse creations. This is no substitute for what you made out of your own imagination. My doing it yourself, you appreciate more of the depths you discover when it is by yourself created. This age of all-pervading mass-media encourages voyeurism to the detriment of creation. We love the song of birds and so would best sing like a bird: but, unless you sing yourself, how can that be your song rather than that which another bird sings, out of its own heart? How can you think of any song of love till you have loved yourself?

Why is poetry marginalised in the arts where so many activities are now, by groups, rather than just individuals in their own right? Why are rhymers and troubadours left out of conventional culture? Once the bard was central to our older, root, ancestral traditions, Celtic, Saxon, Norslandic (and Hellenic) into the Middle Ages and survived the demise of the Christian Church’s former repressive domination till in post-Elizabethan times poetry came to reflect the self-indulgence of the upper-classes and lost touch with these folk-roots. In the 18th and 19th centuries, along with much of earlier folk traditions, it was discouraged by the dislocation, sufferings and poverty of the industrial revolution, yet, in spite of this several working class urban poets (usually political radicals) shine out through the darkness of the ‘Satanic Mills & foundries’ their writings being popular amongst the ‘self & mutual education grassroots circles’ of the urban workers, though this stream flowed on separately from that of the ‘cultured salons’ of the wealthier upper classes who disdained it, even if poorer workers could appreciate such better off poets as Wordsworth and Shelley!

In the 20th into 21st centuries, all the diverse streams of the Bardic art, became progressively marginalised by the mass media that should instead have been an extra vehicle to popularise, as it still could be, the last of the better-known poets being those of World War 1, whose expressions were of a trauma that had been shared by whole nations of all classes and creeds.

Yet, there have been and remain many troubadours, at grassroots amongst us, even if mainly on the fringes, as refuges of the truly individualistic of subversive. Yes, a few ‘celebrity poets’ have, indeed, shone through, but mostly as superficial entertainers, at the expense of many others. The number of live poetry/music readings has diminished rapidly since the media & internet seem to have replaced live events, in so many communities. Many performers may ‘come from the people’ but have ceased to be ‘a part of the people’, taking them beyond with them to explore hitherto unexplored dimensions! How are we, as here, in Phoenix, to overcome this isolation? The general state of poetry in the community seems to be healthier in other cultures, as in India and in @‘islands’ in the USA, like in Austin Texas.

Like seed of wild plants in earth left bare, the seeds of poetry lie dormant in the psyche and given the chance, stimulus and space, germinate, grow and flower. The seeds and springs of poetry are as common as the seeds of plants spread everywhere across the Earth and are universal, in every land and culture, springing back eternally, in random individuals,, no matter what social accretions, political or religious, have overlain them, more freely than with any cultured crop, so long as we experience emotions, the most common of which amongst us is love. The first poem I felt moved to pen, at the age of eight, was a love-ode to my friend, a retired pit-pony who grazed in the fields near our house. The muse that moved me in my teens was my feelings of affection for girl-friends. Follow the path of the TAO in Mother Nature left unbound and all will come whenever it feels inspired, from within! Of course, one can always intellectually ‘construct a poem’ or turn prose into verse, following the right rules, but all such creations, however sophisticated, always feel ‘synthetic’, like clever robots.

This inspired urge to creativity is a manifestation, in the poetic imagination, of universal Earth-Cosmic energies that come strongest in special places, unblocked by the destructive vibrations of so much of urban lifestyles, most often when one escapes the aggressive Yang of survival & its many distractions/ pre-occupations, and lets oneself fall into the Yin of intuitive reflection and sensitivity, accepting that we are but small parts of a vast, greater natural creation, some locations being more conducive to this intellectual-intuitive, balanced Yin-Yang interplay, even as Wordsworth felt most moved amongst the crags and lakes of the Lake District. These are the very same Earth-Energies that gave us all mental and physical birth. I regard much “social poetry” as reactions to material phenomena, as transient as the situations that provoked them, lacking ‘depth’. So what is this ‘depth’ in creativity, but the impulse of these Earth-Cosmic energies in our consciousness?

If so, why do not more of us feel its inspiration?

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