Author Archives: Robin Helweg-Larsen

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About Robin Helweg-Larsen

Director, Andromeda Simulations International, Bahamas: a global education company providing online and in-person workshops in business finance. Series Editor, Sampson Low's 'Potcake Chapbooks'. Formal verse about traveling, family, love, etc...

New Poem: “My Eliza”

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The latest issue of The Lyric is out – although I won’t get my copy for weeks or months yet, depending on the Bahamas Post Office’s mood and inclination – and apparently “My Eliza” has been awarded the Leslie Mellichamp Prize (with $100, no less!). Judge Michael Ferris wrote: “A smart and charming love poem with island images (I learned some new words) that finishes on the striking picture of two sea otters drifting hand in hand.” Of course I’m delighted! So here it is:

My Eliza

As through Canada I wandered,
Winters cold and summers cool,
Companionship precipitated
Out a girl wild, beautiful.

Come, she said, share games and reading,
Come and play and let’s share beds;
Let’s move south for warmth and business,
Raise our children, use our heads.

Eliza with the hair like lightning,
Hair like ragged moonlit clouds,
Like a cloud of wild mosquitoes,
Junkanoo’s drunk noisy crowds.

Sexy, vital, dogged, honest,
Game designer, engineer,
Eliza: genius aphantasic,
A no-see-um who sees clear.

Now like two strays by the roadside,
Like two potcakes on the beach,
She and I will scrap and forage,
Take the treasures in our reach,

Clean up beaches, plant some flowers,
Read all books and plan things grand,
Roam through cities and through seascapes,
Drift like otters hand in hand.

Sea_otters_holding_hands

Sea Otters holding hands

Poetry Resources: Light Verse Magazine (with Potcake review)

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Light, the “journal of light verse since 1992”, has just published its Winter/Spring 2019 edition (online), with poems from over 40 light formal verse poets, and insightful book reviews of new books of formal verse (not all of it light verse). It is worth getting on Light’s email list, not only for the semiannual issues, but also for the half dozen poems on current topics that they publish every week – get a quick chuckle from a rhyme-rich twist on the week’s headlines.

This specific issue is of interest because of the book reviews: of the five reviews, two are of books by authors already published in our Potcake Chapbooks (Ed Conti and Alicia Stallings), and a third is a review of the chapbook series itself:

“Potcake Chapbooks, edited by Robin Helweg-Larsen. Sampson Low Ltd.

A new source for pocket-sized light-verse collections just rode into town as well. The Potcake Chapbook series is a collection (three, so far) of pocket-sized anthologies smaller than many cell phones. These books appear to be made specifically for Light readers in that the series “subscribe[s] to the use of form, no matter how formless the times in which we live,” the poems are selected to achieve that lovely balance between wit and sweetness—and sometimes outright belly laughing—that is the hallmark of so much good light verse, and the poets in the first two volumes are nearly all road tested and approved by Light‘s editors. Rogues and Roses covers love and sex in a surprising number of variations for thirteen short pages, and Tourists and Cannibals ranges from local holiday spots (Terese Coe) to escaping the heat others come specifically to find (A. E. Stallings) to learning languages (Robin Helweg-Larsen) to a hat-tip to one’s homebound god when in a temple on the other side of the world (Gail White). Careers and Other Catastrophes just came out. I haven’t seen it yet, but if it matches its sisters, it’s worth getting the whole trio.

The Potcake books include lovely little three-color illustrations, and for less than the cost of a latte (plus postage from England) you can amuse yourself or give a truly unexpected gift. Either way, the mix of poems and the quality of the work will delight and surprise. This series should continue and thrive.”

Light is a non-profit organization, and signing up is free. Personally, I think it should be a mandatory part of English lessons in middle and high schools – we need more people reaching adulthood with the ability to enjoy the strengths of verse in the English language, and its integral part of our culture.

 

Poetry Resources: Bewildering Stories. Poem: “When at the End”

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Bewildering Stories is a weekly magazine of sf and speculative fiction (mostly) and poetry (some), created and managed by Don Webb and half a dozen others. Because it does a Quarterly Review and an Annual Review of the editor’s choice, it produces about 47 issues a year of original material (or predominantly original – it allows previously published material). It is now coming up on issue number 800. I’ll leave it to you to figure out how long it has been in existence… for an online magazine, it is truly venerable.

I often have a poem in Bewildering Stories, and this week is no exception: “When at the End – Wishful Thinking“:

“When at the end of life we who by swords, axes, cleavers
go as heroes to Valhalla, the rest go to Hel.”

“When at the end of life we the true believers
go as saints to Heaven, the rest go to Hell.”

“Our memory is all that we are.
When at the end of life we are remembered,
we still exist for as long as our memory lasts.
Remember us! We are no more than memories of our pasts.”

When, at the end, the helmet of this life is lifted away,
the Virtual Reality of “human” fades to grey,
will you find yourself in a world fresh, rich and deep,
an environment more meaningful, truer, greater?
(And is it somewhere you go even now, in sleep?)
Surely behind the simulation must be a Simulator.

It accepts formal and informal verse, being more concerned with the speculative nature of the ideas than with an aesthetic preference. The poem above is pretty much a sonnet, though the scansion is uneven, the rhyme scheme unorthodox and the rhymes themselves iffy (beginning with rhyming Hel with Hell). So not a very aesthetic product, but full of speculation – which is the priority.

The editorial board is diverse, Don being based in Canada but drawing on others in the UK and US. Submissions of course can come from anywhere. And another nice thing that Don does is to include “Challenge questions” about a number of the pieces in each issue. The answers from readers are not typically shared, but it is a nice way of provoking more thought.

Altogether a worthwhile magazine for poets as well as fiction writers.

 

Formal Launch: Potcake Chapbook 3 – Careers and Other Catastrophes

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The launch of the third Potcake Chapbook brings us a passel of fresh Potcake Poets into the Sampson Low list, a couple of returning friends, and a slew of new art from Alban Low. Good news all round!

Careers! We’ve all had one or several of them, for better or worse. Marcus Bales and Daniel Galef review the frustrations of shopfloor sales and professions, while Annie Drysdale gives an exhilarating view of farmwork. From the newcomers (Gerry Cambridge, Martin Elster, Brian Gavin, Susan McLean, Rob Stuart, Tom Vaughan and Mindy Watson) we have everything from office workers and cafe proprietors to a madame ageing out of her profession and a hangman lamenting his obsolescence.

But really, there are no “newcomers” here. As always, the chapbook features poets who are very well-known as well as extremely skillful and experienced with formal verse.

And whether the writing of verse should be considered a career, or merely another catastrophe… well, that’s for future discussion.

Meanwhile, enjoy this for a couple of quid or have a copy mailed to someone who needs a fresh perspective on life.

Poetry Resources: The Asses of Parnassus. Poem: “Success!”

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The shortest, wittiest, most formal poetry publication that I know of is Brooke Clark’s Tumblr-based Asses of Parnassus. This is the place for pieces as short as a couplet or perhaps a couple of quatrains, whether you are submitting for publication or you simply like reading them.

The irreverence is illustrated with the Tumblr heading: a detail of a Goya etching from his series of caprichos, morbid, satirical and anti-establishment in outlook.

The Asses of Parnassus used to contain a lot of translations (in rhyme) from Greek and Latin authors – lots of rude, snide, scurrilous comments from Martial and Catullus – but is now dominated by more current material. The most recent item as this post is being written is a 24-line screed from Daniel Galef on being denied a Wikipedia entry. The one before is my own couplet, Success:

“Success!” he toasted. Though I wished him dead
I smiled and raised my glass: “Suck cess!” I said.

 

But though rude and snide are allowed, you are unlikely to find any bigotry or hatred. Brooke Clark retains tolerance and even compassion in The Asses of Parnassus. He is Canadian, after all.

Poetry Resources: The Norton Book of Light Verse

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The single best anthology of light verse that I know. Over 500 poems selected by Pulitzer Prize winning commentator Russell Baker (and with an excellent introduction by him). Everything from ‘Summer is y-comen in’ and its modern parodies, to Shakespeare and Marlowe, Noel Coward and Cole Porter, Don Marquis and Phyllis McGinley, Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon.

126147

Light verse lends itself to the use of form, and most of the poems are formal. Rhyme and meter make it easier to remember verse word for word, but there are bits that I remember, have known since my school days, that don’t share those attributes. For example, Cummings’ ‘Nobody loses all the time’

(and down went
my Uncle
Sol

and started a worm farm).

But such pieces are the exception. By the far the majority of light verse is going to rhyme and scan, and that is part of its charm.

As most poets only get one or two poems in this anthology, there are a couple of hundred poets represented. The book is therefore an excellent way to broaden your awareness of English-language poets – though if there are any outside the British-Irish-American area, I’m not aware of it. This limitation, and the fact that the compilation dates from 1986, are the only negative things to say about a superb and memorable collection.

 

Poetry Resources: The Lyric

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As its website says, “Founded in 1921, The Lyric is the oldest magazine in North America in continuous publication devoted to traditional poetry.” It provided one of the only outlets for serious formal verse on the continent throughout the decades in which formal verse seemed otherwise limited to pop songs, advertising jingles and Burma-Shave roadside signs.

The Lyric poetry magazine

The Lyric Foundation, established in the early 1950s, provides financial support for the magazine as well as for the university education of young poets and care for older ones. The magazine is currently edited by the daughters of formalist poet Leslie Mellichamp – he edited it himself until his death in 2000.

The magazine suffers from being somewhat behind the times. It is hard to imagine that it gets the same richness of submissions as other outlets, when it is resolutely old-fashioned in management as well as themes. “Email submissions are only accepted from out of country.”  The tone of the printed work is consequently less varied and dynamic than other formalist and formal-friendly magazines. Even the Foundation that supports it is hard to learn about and, as far as I can tell, has no website.

However The Lyric remains a good resource for new poets, as well as more established ones, to place their work in if it falls within the lyric tradition. And with almost a century of publication behind it, there is hope that it will survive and thrive indefinitely.

Poetry Resources: Snakeskin

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Probably the oldest continuously published poetry zine on the web – possibly the oldest literary zine of any type – is Snakeskin, published monthly by George Simmers since December 1995.

George Simmers

George Simmers, editor of Snakeskin

There are many unique aspects to Snakeskin, including in the archives:

  • the pervasive wit and humour, tolerantly secular, expressed in the zine’s name from the first issue with Wayne Carvosso’s poem “Credo” – “we are the kindred of the snake.”
  • a long interview of George conducted by Helena Nelson, entirely in iambic pentameter (for George is a skilled and fluent poet, though he rarely publishes in Snakeskin these days)
  • projects and experiments, including various hypertexts
  • and a standard feature for the past several years, Bruce Bentzman’s blog-like soliloquies, or essays – a very sensitive and deeply emotional journey.

But what is particularly nice for poets is that George has no interest in names, reputations or bios – he just reads the poems, and chooses what takes his fancy. Very few of the issues are themed in advance, but they may reflect his mood or the time of year or whatever, and end up with a mood of their own.

And, despite what the Credo states —

“Nor shall we sit to lunch with those
Who moralise in semi-prose.
A poem should be rich as cake,
Say the kindred of the snake” —

George takes any form or lack of form, so long as the piece works for him. This may reflect the tolerance of someone who had a career as a teacher; or it may reflect the Yorkshireman’s well-known preference for the practical over mere theory. In either case, it presents a wonderful opportunity for a new poet to break into publication in an internationally recognised magazine.

Read an issue or two – there’s something for everyone!

Formal launch! Potcake Chapbooks 1 & 2

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The first two chapbooks in Sampson Low’s Potcake series are up and running! Not only that, but they have already made it into the Official UK Chapbook Chart, with one of them at No.1 for two weeks in a row. And I was going to try to make it as easy as possible for you to buy a copy… they’re not expensive, about the cost of a fancy greeting card, and easily mailed as they weigh less than an ounce.

Hey Potcake, wanna buy a chapbook...

Hey Potcake! Wanna buy a chapbook?

However, the problem is that they are too inexpensive! It simply isn’t worth this blog paying all the fees to upgrade to business class in order to have a Paypal button, or to pay Amazon’s monthly fees or initiation fees or fulfilment fees or sales commissions or whatever else, in order to make them easily available in North America.

So we will treat this a formal launch… and you’ll just have to go to that Sampson Low website and put your order in there. Don’t worry, it’ll be mailed right away. Just be glad you’re not trying to do things through the Bahamas post office, where domestic mail takes 1-3 months, and international takes up to a year…

And with “Tourists and Cannibals” and “Rogues and Roses” up and running, the next two in the series are now in preparation. Expect “Careers and Other Catastrophes” and “Families and Other Fiascoes” in the beginning of the year, with many of the earlier poets reappearing but supplemented by many others joining us for the first time. And, of course, with Alban Low’s illustrations.

The series is joyful, lighthearted, and already popular!

Using form to convince: Poem: “Conviction”

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Verse has magical powers to engage the minds of its audience and, through that engagement, sway opinions and change attitudes. This is more than the tricks that make it easy to learn verse. It is more than Coleridge’s “Prose: words in their best order; poetry: the best words in the best order.” It is that poets and singers chant, and enchant. The musician chants, the magician chants, if it is well done it creates enchantment. It changes moods, it changes minds. It is used by all religions, all football teams, all angry mobs, and all gentle singers of lullabyes. The fact of the idea being expressed in verse is used as unspoken proof of the idea’s appropriateness.

Chanting

Poetry in motion

In my last post I said that “rhyme can be used to create a sense of inevitability”. Let me explain:

CONVICTION

True verse has a rhythmic twitch
that needs ongoing action.
Rhyme’s an open pattern which
asks for satisfaction.
Give the right words, strong and bright,
and the listener knows “That’s right!”

Conviction carries over, bought
with the words expressed.
The listener believes the thought
because it came well dressed.
Give the right words, strong and bright,
and the listener knows “That’s right!”

In other words, because the words sound right (in meter and in rhyme), our minds are prepared to accept that their meaning is right, their argument is valid. As O’Shaughnessy wrote,

“With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities
(…)
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample a kingdom down.”

And that is why Shelley was able to claim that “poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world”. Poets everywhere agree!