SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS (OCTOBER 2010)

SENTINEL LITERARY QUARTERLY POETRY & SHORT STORY COMPETITIONS (OCTOBER 2010)
Entries are invited for previously unpublished poems and short stories in English Language on any subject or style. Maximum length of 40 lines (poems) and 1,500 words (stories).
Prizes: £150, £60, £40 in each category + First Publication in Sentinel Champions print magazine.
Fees: 1/£3, 5/£12 (Poems), 1/£5, 2/£9, 3/£12 (Stories)
Geoff Stevens is the judge for poetry and Ivor Hartmann will judge the short stories.
Cheques/Postal Orders payable to SENTINEL POETRY MOVEMENT in GB£ only to: Unit 136, 113-115 George Lane, London, E18 1AB
Deadline: 30th September 2010
Details and online entries at www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/slq/competitions

My E-Conversation with Roman Graf

Sentinel Poetry (Online) Magazine Monthly...Since December 2002 ISSN 1479-425X JUNE 2003, ISSUE #7 Nnorom Azuonye "I condemn hierarchies in religion or philosophy. I am convinced that everyone is responsible for his actions and has to find his own philosophy, meaning, ethics and morality." Nnorom Azuonye (NA): Hello Roman. Thank you for making the time to talk to me. Let's begin this conversation by quickly going over your background. May I ask when and where you were born, and where you received your education? Roman Graf (RG): I was born on the 14th of April 1978 in Winterthur, a former worker's town in the vincinity of Zurich. I went to school in Neftenbach a village near Winterthur. NA: And where do you currently reside? RG: I live in Zurich, Switzerland. NA: Do you currently work as a full-time writer or are you involved in another occupation? RG: Sometimes I work part-time and write, at other times I work full-time like I am doing at the moment as a member-recruitment officer for Greenpeace. This will make it possible for me to take time off, travel for a while and concentrate on writing. NA: Would you kindly say what other work you did before that? RG: I started with an apprenticeship as a lumberjack, then I cared for disabled people and later worked as an editor for a weekly newspaper Das Stadtblatt Now I have left journalism for literary writing, however, sometimes I also still write for the magazine Der Tages-Anzeiger on a freelance basis. NA: What inspired you to start writing poetry? RG: Life is inspiring. It is all about coming to terms with what happens and to voice these thoughts. NA: You have said that life inspires you. Would you say that you are naturally philosophical or are your attitudes to life and what happens guided by a religion, or any other organised school of thought? RG: Of course I have been influenced - by the culture I grew up in. But other than that I am an atheist and I do not adhere to any specific school of thought. I condemn hierarchies in religion or philosophy. I am convinced that everyone is responsible for his actions and has to find his own philosophy, meaning, ethics and morality. Everyone has to bear this burden. This is what I do. NA: Are there any poets that have influenced or continue to influence your poetry? RG: The Swiss writer Max Frisch, the Austrian writers Ingeborg Bachmann, Thomas Bernhard and Bettina Balàka and also Paul Auster. "I can only speak for myself and for me writing is to demolish walls. The readers begin to see the world differently, they are plunged into a different world an alternative world." NA: If you were faced with a challenge to define poetry to somebody who has never heard of it, how would you define it? RG: Poetry is to turn words into a flower. NA: Do you have a favourite form of poetic expression? RG: The newly-invented. NA: When is it fine for a poet to experiment with form? Are you an experimental poet and if so, what do you wish to achieve with your poetry? RG: I was always more interested in innovations in form that of content, but every writer must know this for himself. I can only speak for myself and for me writing is to demolish walls. The readers begin to see the world differently, they are plunged into a different world, an alternative world. It is only natural that I experiment with form; I see no reason to restrict and reduce myself to one kind of expression. But despite the fact that I see myself as an experimental poet I do not want to achieve anything with my poems. That remains the readers concern: everyone can see what they like in the text. NA: How regularly do you read your poems to a live audience? How important is it to you that poems are read or performed and what devices do you apply in order to achieve unforgettable performance poetry? RG: I give readings regularly. Generally though I believe that all my texts, poetry and prose, should be read and not read aloud. I read poems slowly and for prose scenic reading is often a good idea. I don't give much for performances: performances, poetry slam and the like represent a different kind of literature that bears little resemblance to mine. For me language is all important. It has to be powerful without the need for performance. NA: Do I understand that once you have written a poem it is like electricity which some people may use to save lives and others may use to kill? RG: No, it is not like electricity, which some people may use to save lives and others may use to kill. That is all about power, but this is not what I am after. A poem is a poem and it is just there like a tree on a meadow. Everyone can come to the tree and find in it what he wants to find. "I think that it is wrong that we have been trying to psychologise everything recently... When everything that we do is motivated by deficiency and we know this then our self-perception will soon be that of inferiority. Man is reduced to nothing…" NA: Surely there must be a purpose or motive to your writing. I recall George Orwell once listed four main reasons he believed drove writers to write, namely, sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm, historical impulse and political purpose. Which of these, if at all, comes closest to your strongest motive when you pick up a pen? RG: I don't think Orwell is right to set up such types. For most authors all these points are playing a part and probably many other reasons as well. Serious art is always also a form of self-discovery. Such a division into four points is too simplistic - someone, whose writing is politically motivated, would also write because he is personally involved, for example because he lived in Germany during World War 2 or the post-war years. Thus he is automatically also writing for egoistical reasons. One cannot write about something that is alien to oneself. I could not write about somebody in a third world country because that would be arrogant and not credible. Everybody writes about himself and that is good too as everyone can only speak for himself. But your question about the purpose to my writing asks for an explanation: how is the writer's motive relevant for literature? I do not know my reasons and I think that it is wrong that we have been trying to psychologise everything recently. The psychologist Alfred Adler once said that the more ambitious one is in a certain field the larger his inferiority complex will be in that same area. This statement may be correct, but what use is it? When everything that we do is motivated by deficiency and we know this then our self-perception will soon be that of inferiority. Man is reduced to nothing and can only define himself in his actions and achievements. And we are getting better and better at this: we have great careers, fast cars and build huge cities and funfairs. Man himself is becoming less important - if it continues like this, he will soon have disappeared. But to return to your question about these four types: the answer lies in literature. The reader of literary works does not need to ask why it has been written. NA: That is your view, of course. Let's move on. You work with words. Have there been times you failed to find a word either in German (the language in which you write) or any other language to precisely convey an idea or describe a feeling in a poem? If so how have you managed an approximation, and does this make it hard to look that poem in the eye? RG: I have never asked myself this question because I do not express feelings with words but with situations. Of course it happens sometimes that I do not know how the story should continue or that I lack a metaphor or a line of a poem. This problem can only be solved by giving the text some time. I sleep it over, go for a walk ... and suddenly I find the answer. "...the responsibility for cultural development is slowly returned to the authors themselves. Society retreats and the circle of authors is self-centred and has to provide for itself." NA: When you have a subject to write about, what makes you decide that poetry and not prose will be a better vehicle for it to gain life? RG: I never pick a topic and then decide whether I want to write prose of poetry. For me it the form that determines the content. When I want to write a poem, I sit myself down or I walk along the Zürichsee and then the ideas come up too. Of course it also happens that I come up with a sentence - but in most cases I know immediately whether this is a sentence for a short story or a poem. I just follow my intuition. NA: How long do you carry a poem inside you before you write it? RG: I don't really know this. I write when I feel like it but I cannot say how long my unconscious has carried it. Like I said it sometimes happens that I don't know how to continue a text. In that case I just give it time, sometimes it just takes an hour, sometimes a night or a week that is always different. NA: How long after you have written a poem do you leave it alone, or even forget it, before you begin revising it? RG: Normally I finish a poem in a day and revise it the following days. Sometimes I also revise texts that are a few months old, but that is rare. NA: Poetry in translation breaks down the barrier of language. When you see your work in a language you can't read, does it make you uncomfortable, even if you trust that your words and the contexts in which you use them survive in tact? RG: Translations are always problematic, especially with poems. So far I never had had any problems with translations, this is because they are new texts by different authors. I do not really identify with these texts but I find it interesting to see what the translator has made of it and how the poem is changed, what it has gained and what it has lost. NA: What is your attitude to pay-to-enter poetry competitions? RG: Competitions are there to promote literature that is still unknown or new. This is important because these competitions are often the only way that young authors can draw attention to themselves and critics to their texts. Most of these young authors take part in many competitions because with the masses of entries it is very difficult to win any, not least because good literature is always in the position of the outsider and controversial. Then there is the fact that young and unknown authors normally don't have much money - and because it is not often possible to make a living from the sale of books, prizes and grants are an important source of income. Where there are too many pay-to-enter competitions it is no longer affordable for the author and also a loss-making business: many have to reckon with the fact that they will spend more on entry fees than they might receive if they win a competition. But there is a more important aspect to this question: Today most of the competitions in Switzerland, Germany or Austria are funded by the governments or by foundations and sponsors. In doing so they take on responsibility for the cultural development of a country. Recently pay-to-enter competitions have also come up in the German-speaking area. Therefore the responsibility for cultural development is slowly returned to the authors themselves. Society retreats and the circle of authors is self-centred and has to provide for itself. That is of course critical, not only financially: the cultural and intellectual significance of literature would no longer be appreciated by the state, foundations and the economy and may even be forgotten. If pay-to-enter competitions became the norm in the German-speaking literary scene then this would be a step backwards. These entry fees eventually lead to a two-class literary scene: only those who have enough money can establish themselves in literary business. To give a quick summary: pay-to-enter competitions only promote the self-exploitation of authors and therefore I would not say that they promote literature at all but destroy it. NA: Roman, it has been a nice chat. As I get to read more of your work in English and follow your writing career, I hope that not too long from now, we will talk again. Thank you very much for this conversation.

Poetry in a Season of Anomie by Olu Oguibe

Sentinel Poetry Magazine January 2003 | Letter

Olu Oguibe

Poetry In A Season Of Anomie

Nnorom,

Congratulations on your project, and on the very profound interview with Obi Nwakanma.

Irrespective of Obi's very apt response to the question on the nature of poetry and its relationship to performance, it is nevertheless clear that his poetry is written with an ear for sound, which is the sine qua non of all poetry, or at least what used to be known as poetry.

My only and favorite recollection of Obi Nwakanma is that he once made me go back to London and spend days reading one of my own poems aloud, trying with all admiration to see if I could read it like Obi Nwakanma read it at the Okigbo Prize reading party organized by Toyin Akinosho and others in Lagos in 1992. But the poem in question could only be read so well because it was written with an ear for sound, for though we have come to conceive of poetry as a written form, it is however an oral form first, unlike the novel which began and survives as a written form. I read and listen as I write, often aloud, sometimes into a microphone; In the end, I am not a great reader of my own poetry, but I *hear* what it ought to sound like in the voice of a good reader, and I make that my bench mark. It does not matter if the poem is not for declamation; even in its quietest form, poetry must work as a tracery of sounds.

In a radio interview with Lewis Nkosi (I believe in 1962, I'd have to check the dates), Okigbo stated: "What has influenced me most are not poets but musical composers... The composer is working with abstract sounds while the poet is working with words." He also revealed that he was "under the spell of the impressionist composers; Debussy and others" while writing *Heavensgate*, and that he began writing poetry seriously in 1957 only after he quit composing music. An excellent pianist and flutist, Okigbo had often accompanied Soyinka on the piano while the later performed in bars in Ibadan (many do not remember today that Soyinka, a fine guitar player, spent a brief period trying to make a living playing bars in Paris before he finally decided that his future lay in theatre.) So that the success of Okigbo's poetry, as everyone from Obiechina and Udechukwu to Obi Nwakanma in this interview have pointed out, lies not merely in its mystical depth but first in its irresistible sonorousness. Hence the truth in that most quoted saying that for all good poetry, the aim was song.

Nnorom, in your interview with your previous guest, Nathan Lewis, whose poetry by the way is quite typical of much contemporary poetry including those of the most acclaimed on both sides of the Ocean such as Rita Dove; plain, Lewis takes issue with rap and speaks of the "purity" of poetry, which leads one to think that he believes poetry to be an elevated literary form distinct from the insurgencies of the oral. Now, one has a lot to take issue with regarding so-called spoken word or performance poetry as practised today, which often languishes at the very other extreme of complete vacuity and inanity (if you can strut about on stage, wave your hands and howl, then you are a poet or "spoken word artist": Bollocks!), yet the truth remains that the finest poetry in existence today is to be found in rap; in the words of Nas (aka Nasiru, who is reputed to be the son of the famous drummer, Olu Dara) singing "One mic", or JayZ, or the incomparable Biggie Smalls, or that unassailable wordsmith, Tupac Shakur, or Guru, perhaps the finest lyricist of them all. Or indeed those elemental pioneers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five at the height of their genius. I have theorized that the most successful translation of African traditions in poetry into the contemporary is through rap and Jamaican dancehall. The rest of us are mere impostors, unworthy heirs, failed sons. Okonkwo begat Nwoye. It happens.

I trace the tragedy of all contemporary poetry to one inanity; the mistake of confusing *verse* with poetry because classical European poetry came down to us in written form as verse. But verse is not necessarily poetry, which is to say that an arrangement of four lines on a page, or four sections of four lines with an additional couplet at the end, does not become poetry in and of itself; it is only a notation, like the written signs or *scores* with which a composer encodes his music. Now, if the scores are mere signs on paper without music, then that becomes a drawing, not a musical composition, just as verse without poetic content remains mere words and not poetry. I would take my example from Mr. Lewis's own "poetry". In his "Brenda Poem #8", from his apparently much acclaimed *Brenda Poems*, there is a narrative about an encounter with a woman in her kitchen, who instructs the protagonist in the folly of sexist assumptions. The narrative is chopped up and arranged in 50 lines of verse, but where is the poetry? Where are the poetic devices that distinguish poetry from mere narrative?

Mr. Lewis's admirers praise him as a "lyrical poet", which is ironic because the term, lyrical is after all from the word, lyric, which is a musical form that in turn derives its register from the word, lyre, a stringed, musical instrument for solo. Which means that a lyrical poet writes introspective poetry that in ancient times would be performed solo with the accompaniment of a lyre. A lyrical poet writes lyrics. Now, compare Mr. Lewis's poetry, or what I have read of it, with those of another poet who writes the same genre that Mr. Lewis seems to write, Chicago poet Sanda Cisneros, and you find that the difference is clear. You can almost hear a trio on a Mexican street corner performing Cisneros's poems just like they once did the poetry of Lorca, who was a true lyrical poet.

The other great tragedy of contemporary poetry is the license of free verse. Before Walt Whitman most poets took the trouble to instill at least the barest poetic pretenses into their work through the end rhyme. A quatrain was forced to rhyme in a pattern; abba, abab, aabb, etc. Even those who would not bother with syllabic meters, at least used rhyme to bring a musical or sonic coherence to their poetry. But then Whitman changed all that with his declamatory poetry that did away with the end rhyme. What most contemporary so-called poets forget is that he retained and in fact magnified a whole range of rhetorical devices from occasional internal rhyme and alliterative syncopation to modal resonance, all of
which made his poetry not a departure but in fact a continuation in the great traditions of orature. None of which the majority of impostors out there today know anything about. And so, they take only the free verse, but freedom can be a curse sometimes because freedom provides no restraint from incompetence and decadence, both of which now parade in the name of poetry.

I have a word of admonition for those who still practice this ancient art; speak your words till they sound beautiful, no matter your subject, speak your words to yourself, in front of a mirror, to the emptiness of your own home or the raucous company of admirers, vocalize your words till they sound right and beautiful, and no one who hears or reads them will forget them.

Oguibe

Champion Poems #2 published

We are pleased to announce the publication of CHAMPION POEMS #2 [ISSN 2042-5228] - Selected Poems from the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition (October 2009) Edited by Bobby Parker.

Contents:

Foreword by Nnorom Azuonye

Akinlabi Peter
- Moving
Katie Metcalfe
- Pumpkin Seeds
Mandy Pannett
- Through Dust
Will Daunt
- Murder Road
- Good Deeds
- Sunday is a Day of...Shopping
- Bugged
Ginna Wilkerson
- Mental Digestion
- Whitewashing
Abolaji Lawal
- To Catch the Harmattan
- Your Lebanon
Gil Brophy
- The Homecoming
- A Testing Conflict
Tim McLeod
- Speech
Graham Burchell
- Metallic
Ailsa McDermid
- Eclogue IV
Warren Paul Glover
- The Mountain
Noel Williams
- Found Objects
- Unspoken
- A Civilised Woman
Roger Elkin
- Finding Stones
Laura Solomon
- Sunday Evening, Driving West
Lewis R. Humphries
- The Fading Light of Summer
Nikki Foreman
- Youth Would Help.

You may buy a copy (or two or three, including Champion Poems #1) at http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/slq/bookstore

An Act of Faith by Chika O. Okeke

From Sentinel Poetry Magazine January 2003


Chika O. Okeke

An Act of Faith

He sat there and waited
For the Christmas star
But Harmattan winds
Hurled anger into watery eyes
Unblinking and hurting
Untiring, expecting

He stood there and waited
For the alleluia cries
Of singing angels
Or the bleating of
Rams tethered
In the lamb's pen

He lies here listening
To the breaking bones
Of his mind searching
Soul ravines and skies
Awaiting the ascent
Of a twinkless star.

---------------------------------------------------
Don't leave without a feedback on "An Act of Faith"

Invitation to Sentinel Literary Quarterly Vol.3. No.2

I am pleased to invite you to the January – March 2010 issue of Sentinel Literary Quarterly, the online magazine of world literature published by Sentinel Poetry Movement.

This issue is dedicated to the memory of the great poet and activist Dennis Brutus who went into transition on Boxing Day, 2009.

What’s inside?

- Fiction -

“Unmusical Bumps” by Andrew Campbell-Kearsey

(First Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition, January 2010)

“Demons” by Claire Godden-Rowland

(Second Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition, January 2010)

“Diluted Cappuccino” by Andrew Campbell-Kearsey

(Third Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition, January 2010)

“Bumping” by W Jack Savage

“Night in a Drum” by Emmanuel Sigauke

“Big Man” by N Quentin Woolf.

- Poetry –

“Afternoon Song and Other Poems” by Dominic James

“Three Poems” by Sharma Taylor

“Instamatic” by Noel Williams

(First Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition, January 2010)

“Moon-Search” by Mandy Pannett

(Second Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition, January 2010)

“South and West” by Paul Jeffcutt

(Third Prize winner, Sentinel Literary Quarterly Poetry Competition, January 2010)

- Drama –

“Dream in Two Scenes” by Susanna Roxman

“Dialogue in Edinburgh” by Susanna Roxman

- Essay –

“Meeting Dennis Brutus” by Olu Oguibe

- Interview –

“Dike Okoro in conversation with Benjamin Kwakye”

- Competitions –

“Judge’s Report on the Sentinel Literary Quarterly Short Story Competition January 2010” by Unoma Azuah

Go to http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk