quickSilver Book Launch

Today was our Christmas break-up party, combined with the launch of quickSilver: poems & images by c brandt. That's Carol, whose poem 'Braided' appears in an earlier post.


Cover art © Carol Brandt 2007
Published by Mad Jock Publishers of Liverpool, England, the book is beautifully produced and contains not only a good selection of Carol's poems but also her lovely graphics, including the cover art. It's available from the publishers through their website. The website price is £9.99 ($AU25 including postage) OR people in Australia can get it from the author for $AU15 including postage by emailing carolb@froggy.com.au

Here's one of my personal favourites from the book:

THE NOT HEARD










Maybe those beyond this sphere
Perhaps with supersonic ear can
Hear a moment on the fly
Sigh of lashes fringing eye
Single drop of falling rain
Never marking window pane
Bud that breaks
Unfurling flower
Sliding of the silken hour
Cloud eclipsing deep night star
Light-wave streaming from afar
Saturn's silver swirling ring
No-one hears the salmon sing
Deaf to season of a heart that
Cracks and tears itself apart
Cracks and breaks with quiet art

Silent season of the heart

Text and image © Carol Brandt 2007

Microcosm/Macrocosm

By Rosemary Nissen-Wade










An exercise for Writer's Resource Centre during the 30 Poems in 30 Days project; composed during a WordsFlow session.
Assignment: use the words 'casual' and 'formal' in the same session.


I take this plate before me on the table.
It's round, it's white, the rim is slightly raised.
The tiny, feathery flowers around the edge
look like waratahs or fleur de lys.

The china shine reflects the ceiling shadows.
On one side, near the bevel of the rim,
lies a casual dollop of Tadziki dip.
It could be cream – white, unidentified.

Light from the window forms a triangle
reflecting on the section opposite me.
All these white on white divergent shades
of grayer or brighter white, opaque or gloss!

The green around the edge is dull, shaded,
formal patterns of light and dark in sequence:
the dark leaves fanning out symmetrically,
the lighter sometimes fanning, sometimes flat,
and sometimes shaping fractal curlicues.

Dotted among them, minute flowers form stars.

© Rosemary Nissen-Wade 2007

The Old Felt Hat

By Lillian Toby

The old felt hat
lay discarded.
Spiders had spun their webs
stretching gossamer fine
from brim to crown,
a worthy decoration.

with a brightly coloured feather.
It had sat jauntily
They had grown old
together.

© Lillian Toby 2007

Writers are Huggers!

Writers love readers! And we like to read other writers too. So we've just applied to get hooked up with the new networking service for bloggers, rssHugger.com, to expand our readership in both directions. And only a few hours later, we're in their list!

For posting an honest review of the site here, we get free registration – and so can you at this present time. If you don't want to review the service, you can still get it for the one-time fee of only $20 – a bargain whichever way you look at it.

The site itself is attractive, clear, and easy to navigate. And the writing is impeccable! Colin LaHay, the man behind it, describes himself as 'an experienced entrepreneur, search engine optimizer, and internet marketer'. He is also perfectly at ease in using the English language. Don't laugh – it's rarer than you might think. I love writing that delivers the message so clearly and smoothly that you don't even notice its excellence unless you stop to look.

This is a new service to which we've just signed up, so we can't honestly tell you yet that it's working wonderfully, though there's every sign that it will. What we can point out is that it has been nominated for a $10,000 grant from IdeaBlob for being one of the best business ideas in November. (Yes, that's how new it is!) That tells you something. And this grant would enable rssHugger to sponsor prizes and contests, as well as further marketing the website, so let's hope it wins!

Meanwhile, we look forward to meeting other writers, and plenty of them, for virtual hugs and mutual pleasure!

- Rosemary (Facilitator)