'The Enchanting Verses Literary Review' will publish now as 'VerseVille'

Submissions are open for Monthly Poet section, Poetry Book Reviews and Essays related to poetry

The Ireland special edition of The Enchanting Verses Literary Review was launched today at the Cork City Library at an event of The Cork International Poetry Festival 2017. Selected contributors read during this launch.

The Enchanting Verses Literary Review would be launching a special issue on contemporary Irish Poetry in December 2016.
The issue will be guest edited by Patrick Cotter and would comprise of Poems (both in Irish and English), articles, book reviews and essays relating to Irish poetry.

The special edition edited by Abhay K includes Poetry by  Anju Makhija, Rizio Yohannan Raj, Arundhathi Subramaniam, A.J. Thomas, Sampurna Chattarji, K.Srilata, E.V.Ramakrishnan, Mani Rao, Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih, Manohar Shetty, Sudeep Sen, Nabina Das, Anand Thakore, RK Biswas, Nitoo Das, Sumana Roy, Sukrita Paul Kumar, Mustansir Dalvi, Gopikrishnan Kottoor, Ranu Uniyal, Michelle Cahill, Rabindra K Swain, Akhil Katyal, Bibhu Padhi,Mamang Dai,  Priya Sarukkai Chabria​, Nandini Sahu, Vinita Agarwal, Smita Agarwal and Kavita A. Jindal.  The issue in addition carries two book reviews of Rosary of Latitudes by Usha Akella(reviewed by Pramila Venkateswaran) & Midnight Diary by Bibhu Padhy(reviewed by Jaydeep Sarangi) and includes a couple of poems by the Indian Editors of the journal Abhay K and Sonnet Mondal.

From the Guest Editor Issue XX

Before writing, poetry was the oral tradition. The poet, historian, held the knowledge of where the people came from. Was second only to the king. The poet makes or breaks one by recounting exploits or failures. Who are William Dawes and Samuel Prescott? They strode alongside Paul Revere on Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous midnight ride yet went unmentioned in the poem. Sixteen-year-old Sybil Ludington rode twice as far that night doing the same, but her name is less illustrious because no one wrote a poem about her. In 1821’s “The Defence of Poetry" Shelley claimed "poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world".

Poetry can be a multi-dimensional language, speaking to all the senses, to intelligence, emotion, imagination, to convey the unsayable. To quote Américo Ferrari, there is "an unspeakable where, perhaps, the nucleus of the living relation between the poem and the world resides."  Responding to the question, How does poetry help people to live their lives, W.S. Merwin answered, “The source that rises unbroken from the unsayable speaks to us of the impulse and mystery that we share with every living creature. The urge is meaningless, like the unknown itself, and in the end remains, by nature, unsayable.” Georges Bataille wrote that "It is possible that the impossibility of poetry is itself the condition of poetry." 

Poetry redeems, heals, changes lives, has the power to bring us together by unifying experience. It is both personal and universal. It enriches and contributes to the fullness of a human life. It invents language to celebrate and honor. Makes us think, wonder, and opens us up to re-engage with the world and to the mystery. 

Poetry opens a window into the subconscious and allows us into another reality in ourselves. It opens and reconnects us to other dimensions within ourselves that remain closed to the conscious mind. It awakens and nourishes the imagination. It is a door to the unknown, mysterious, unexpected, miraculous. It leaves us astonished, in awe, in the presence of the Divine. Poets, literary translators and artists assume the roles of intermediaries, technicians, magicians, shamans and alchemists. Arthur William O’Shaughnessy writes that “We are the music makers,/ And we are the dreamers of dreams,/ Wandering by the lone sea-breakers,/ And sitting by desolate streams:/ World-losers and world-forsakers,/ On whom the pale moon gleams;/ Yet we are the movers and shakers/ of the world forever, it seems.”

For me, poetry is a process of self revelation, an exploration of hidden dimensions in myself, and it is also at the same time a way to become myself, a process of individuation I try to create throughout my life - a profound experience of the fundamental interconnection of all in the universe. Moreover, writing is cathartic as it extends a search for peace, for serenity, rooted in a desire to transcend and reconcile the fundamental duality I see in life. Ultimately, I seek expansion of consciousness.
So with immense gratitude to Sonnet Mondal and The Enchanting Verses I present to our readers these inspired texts, bridging cultural differences, geographic distances, and awakening the imagination, in our attempt to re enchant the world.



 Hélène Cardona (Guest Editor, ISSUE-XX)

The current Issue XX 2014 of “The Enchanting Verses Literary Review” (www.theenchantingverses.org) features a wonderful line up of some of the best international contemporary poets present today.

Read the complete issue at : http://www.theenchantingverses.org/issue-xx-may-2014.html

The poetry section includes poetry by Sidney Wade, Donald Revell, Risto Vasilevski, Bertha Rogers, Charles Harper Webb, Diann Blakely, John FitzGerald, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, Mary Biddinger, Martha Collins, Mariano Zaro, Suzanne Lummis, Linda Ibbotson and Marc Vincenz.

Enchanting Poet: Sidney Wade
Editor’s Choice: Donald Revell

Poetry in Translation:

Poems by Rodica Draghincescu

Translated from the French by Howard Scott

Poems  by Miguel Barnet

Translated from the Spanish by George Henson

Poems by Pedro Serrano

Translated from the Spanish by Katherine Silver

Essays:
Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry

by Linda Ibbotson

Put Your Hands On Me: Poetry's Erotic Art

by Elena Karina Byrne

Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India

by Dr Shamenaz

From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry

by Adam Wyeth

Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting

Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America Michelle Bitting

Book reviews:
Music for the Black Room – poems by Sarah Maclay(University of Tampa Press)

Reviewed by Mariana Dietl

Bare Soul by Kalpna Singh Chitnis Reviewed by Satyapal Anand

No Faith At All by Lahab Assef Al-Jundi(Pecan Grove Press -The Louis J. Blume Library, St. Mary's University) Reviewed by Imene Bennani