Poetry Unites People 

 …..

1. Eva, your poetry combines the richness of Greek tradition with a contemporary style. What inspires you to maintain this balance between the past and the present?

1..E.p.L . Thank you for this question. In Greece everything is music, from our language to the way we feel or leaving.

Poetry and every art is in our DNA. So I feel when i write that i am opening a door to the past and I go in.

I read many poets and I like when I discover a deep meaning and Many doubts about life in their poems.

I don’t know if i write poetry, but I express my feelings, my thoughts trying to keep my dignity, my respect for my past and share my ideas for the future.

I believe that Poetry will always unites people.

A poet wrote

The Angels they understand each other because they speak with poems..

2. Is there a specific moment in your life that shaped your love for poetry?

2..E.p.L. Poetry is in my life since i came to this world.

I started write words and phrases very young.

There is always an occasion to write wishes in gift cards

and give it to family and friends.

Even if i did not believe that I write something extraordinary, friends told me that my poetry had something divine…and philosophical 

3. How would you describe your poetic process? Do you have a particular ritual or technique you practice while writing?

3..Ep.l . I pray when I write.

It’s a connection with what is existing beyond the humanity

I write from my heart and need to have a clean and happy mood, so i can write and express my thoughts.

Words are like energy…

When we put them in the correct order they create miracles.

4. Your poems often explore themes of love, death, and identity. What does love mean to you in the context of poetry?

4..EPL. Love is like poetry.

Death is poetry also

I believe the most important subject in all poems is about love. We get married, we write poems. We fall in love, we write poems.

Sometimes, we can’t share our feelings, we write poems.

We want to have attention from our beloved, we write poetry. Love is energy also.

We have so many words, we can put them all together and create amazing poetry.

In Greece, there is such a beautiful Poem dedicated to love it’s called Erotocritos, and is written in 12 syllables.

He became a song

He became a play theater.

It is really beautiful poem

Love, makes everything existing. We breathe with hope and love.

It’s very important to write about love because we educate also young generations to live with love.

5. To what extent does Greek social and cultural tradition influence your writing? Do you aim to write for a local audience, or does your poetry have a universal tone?

5..EPL. As I mentioned before, Greeks they write. It’s exist in our DNA. We have very important poets from the ancient Greek time, 

Sapho the Greek poetess and after Sikelianos, Seferis and Ritsos. I had the opportunity to study them in school and after I discovered and read more poems, but for me by chance, I go inside the universe and my poems are reading by the people in abroad.

My poems are translated in 20 languages and I have cooperation with Vietnam, China, Mexico.

This is the greatness of Poetry.

6. Your work is marked by deep emotional intensity. How do you find the balance between emotion and artistic form in your poems?

6…EPL. I am a very sensitive person. I like truth, justice, honesty .

I like to show my real personality in my poems.

I like to inspire people

I don’t find the balance.

I stay true in my life and in my Poetry.

A poet is an artist but is a human being so I choose to feel free and put all my love and hope in my poetry.

7. Many of your poems address the theme of death. How does your personal philosophy of death reflect in your written work?

7…EPL. I started to write more poems after the death of my father. My father was my best friend and my inspiration, he was always very proud of me and telling me to follow my dreams no matter what is coming in Life.

When he died from cancer, I tried to heal my pain, writing poems and dedicated to him.

I still write poems for my father and I feel close to him.

I don’t believe that people are dying and disappear.

I believe that the  souls exist in light, in a parallel world and they love and protect us 

I am a Christian and I respect our custom about dead people. We have a Life with meaning but we must have a decent death also.

POETRY can heal  pain and has the power to give us strength and also open our mind to several ideas and thoughts, just by reading a Poem.

8. How do you perceive postmodernism, and do you believe it has an impact on your poetry?

8..EPL. I consider my poems as surrealistic or spiritual poetry 

I read poetry in several languages and I like Rumi, E.E Cummings and Jane Austen. Also, I like Kerouac and Beatnik poetry.  I am inspired from life and the quotidian life, but I have my own rhythm and opinions about life.

I don’t think that we find anything similar to postmodernism.

I like to spread messages of freedom and peace in my Poetry.

9. In the contemporary world, how do you think poets can contribute to social change and be engaged in their communities?

9..EPL. Poets, they must be free from any political party.

We need to have solidarity and respect each other.

Only through respect and love we will contribute to prepare a better future.

It’s sad that in my country, literature and poetry are not inside the schools anymore.

I strongly believe we can create a person with open mind and with dignity only by art and special, poetry.

So, we must engage by ourselves and create circles or forums where we can read and discover more poets. 

I believe in plurality in literature and in justice.

Everyone has something to write and he can share his personal experience and give a solution to a problem.

We need to act with poems.

10. What are your future literary projects, and what can you share about them? Is there a particular theme you’d like to explore in the future?

10..EPL. I have been contacted by a Polish person who has asked me to support his project.

So I became a Global Ambassador of the Rosetta Voice project, we try to translate the Polish Lokomotyawa poem in several languages and i am really excited about this.

I started also my second literary online magazine with Pakistani friends and I continue to support and publish poems from all over the world, with my project POETRY unites people, a project that I have created since 2010 and the goal is to unite people through Poetry.

My project is based in respect to whole culture and publish the poems from several countries so we can discover more thoughts and ideas on how other people see life.

I promote Peace and happiness.

And of course, i will continue to write poems…

Thank you so much for this interesting interview and your support

Wishing you success and happiness

EVA Petropoulou Lianou 

Official candidate for Nobel Peace Prize 2024

International poet

Founder of the project POETRY Unites people

Presidente, Mil Mentes Por Mexico association International

Global federation of leadership and high intelligence

Mexico and Greece

As Travis Chi Wing Lau says, Noelia Cerna writes with care about even the smaller bits of our existences in her new collection Las Piedrecitas (Pebbles). In this collection, it is those “pebbles ”that make up a full life, where a person can not only survive, but thrive.

Music emerges as a motif, from a father’s Spanish guitar to Latino pop tunes in a restaurant kitchen. The pieces have a kind of internal musicality to them, expressed through rhythm, word choice, and the placement of text on the page.

Food and drink serve as expressions of nourishment offered by family and heritage. But they also become a way to poke fun at arrogant tourists who won’t listen to local wisdom “Tourism and Soda” and a commentary on people who enjoy Latino cultural offerings but don’t treat Latino people with respect “Taco Tuesday.”  

Las Piedrecitas celebrates and honors many women with whom Cerna feels a connection. Maria, an immigrant janitor, Karen, an older woman with intense confidence and presence, and her own mother, Alna,in the joint poem “A Kyrie for Dreams.”

Fathers and fatherhood come up several times in Las Piedrecitas. Cerna pays tribute to hardworking and loyal dads “An Ode to Brown Fathers.”

In the title poem, the speaker’s father gently plays with her in a park while staying vigilant against any stranger with ill intentions.

He protects his family from political violence in Nicaragua by immigrating to the United States and later teaches her not only boxing, but internal strength and perseverance. She uses that strength to navigate life as an immigrant and an abuse survivor, but also, poignantly, to separate from him and find her own way in the world, as in “Moving Away” and “Estrangement in Three Steps.” As pointed out in the last few lines of the title poem, the statues in the park see a larger world beyond his current imagination.  

Learning to love oneself and live on one’s own terms is a major theme in Las Piedrecitas. That can mean vowing not to run from love because of religiously based homophobia “Theaters in the Fall” or accepting one’s righteous anger at explicit and implicit racist and anti-immigrant sentiment “When my white colleague calls me angry” or reclaiming the narrative around past sexual abuse “Sugar.”

Yet, charting their own destiny does not leave the narrator rootless. Las Piedrecitas contains many images of sturdy objects planted in the soil: stone statues in Nicaragua, to which she returns as an adult, and trees with solid trunks and roots deep in the dirt.

Religion is another aspect of the narrator’s roots and heritage. Cerna draws on the language of faith to assert the dignity and value of her body, her loved ones, and her homeland, as we see in “Volcano,” “Holy” and “Cathedral.” Yet, she also subverts the language of faith to tell her own story of personal growth, as in “Most Holy,” where she reaches the point of spiritual maturity where she can reject judgement and abuse from those who misuse religion to hold onto power.

Religion can be beautiful and can ground you in something deep and beyond yourself, but it can also be a source of trauma and danger. By using religious metaphors for romantic love, Cerna extends that dual nature to romance. We see intimate partner abuse in a few pieces: “Estrangement in Three Steps” and Advice To My College Self” and men’s sexist treatment of women in “Rust” and the cowardly abandonment of a partner in “Ghoster.”

Cerna’s narrator has survived much. Like the tree by the overpass in one of her later poems, she asserts through her writing that she is more than a “survivor” but a person living a full and complete life.

Noelia Cerna’s Las Piedrecitas can be ordered here from Black Lawrence Press.

Noelia Cerna is a Latina poet based in Springdale, AR. She was born in Costa Rica and immigrated to the United States at the age of seven where she received a Bachelor’s degree in English from Westminster College in Missouri. Her poems have been published in audio form in Terse. Journal and in print in the The Revolution [Relaunch], the Girl Gang blog, the Plants and Poetry Journal and The North Meridian Review. Noelia is a book editor for the North Meridian Review and an award winning writing mentor for Pen America’s Prison Writing Mentorship program.

For the last year or so, poet/tech sorceress Sanya Khurana and I (Annie Finch) have been developing the meter app Poetcraft. Poetcraft will include the first AI in the world able to scan and teach a range of different English meters. I am deeply excited about this project, which aims to move the English language back towards the core human magic of metrical diversity and, to my mind, nudge the world onto a more sustainable, joyful path.

Poetcraft will be trained on 4000 scanned lines of poetry, 1000 in each of four different meters. We have now finished collecting these lines, and we are seeking people who love meter and have experience with scanning to help bring the app to the next step as volunteer Scanners. All scansions will use the classic system of scansion introduced in my workbook How to Scan a Poem and in my classes and online videos. They will use the following symbols: wands, cups, edges, and–as needed—half-wands, ghost cups, and rests.

I am excited about this project and hope you might want to be part of it as a volunteer Scanner.

Q AND A

How will the process work?

Scanners will choose a poem from the project’s Google Drive and scan it on a computer using standard keyboard techniques (forward slash and backslash for wands and half-wands, lower case u for a cup, hashtag for a rest). After saving the scanned version on the Drive, you will mark the poem as scanned on an Excel sheet. That’s it!

How many poems will each scanner need to scan?

As many as you like. We expect each scanner to scan, on average,100-500 lines.

Will I have any support?

Each scanner will be given access to a “cheat sheet” created by me that summarizes the method of scanning used in the project and the use of each of the 6 symbols, and also suggests simple hacks to help you scan faster and more efficiently—and will also soon have access to a brief video going over the same material.

How good will I need to be at scansion to participate?

You should be an experienced scanner, but you don’t need to be a complete expert.

As you go, you will find that the experience of scanning many poems will raise your skills to another level.

What if I get stuck and can’t figure out how to scan a line or passage?

If you get stuck, leave the line unscanned and type a note next to it saying COULDN’T SCAN. All scansions will be doublechecked by an expert scanner, and finally triple-checked by me personally, so we will catch it.  

What is the timeframe?

You can start anytime. We hope to finish most of the scansions during the spring and to wind up no later than July 1.

Is there any compensation?

As a gesture of gratitude, all scanners will be offered six months free use of the Poetcraft app (value of projected cost is $99/month).  We will also be proud to list the names of all Scanners on the Poetcraft website (if you prefer not to be listed, just let us know).

I’m in! What’s the next step?

Please email us at scansions@poetcraft.org stating your interest, and we will get you started!

glasses

you forgot your glasses today.

i had mine to offer, fully knowing 

that they wouldn’t work for you.

i wanted to feel a spark with you,

yearning for a singular interaction

that connects our minds together.

you reached for my glasses, and

your hand slightly brushes mine,

sending a whirlpool down my stomach

that makes me slightly dizzy. 

i want to run my fingers through

the curls of your hair, letting the tips

of my fingers attract to your mind.

i can hear your voice loud and clear

behind me, and as your baritone timbre

cuts through everyone else’s, ringing

the bones inside my ears, i listen.

i analyze, i process, and i love.

my soul will always love the way

your eyes move when you speak,

darting to every person listening to you,

and when they latch onto mine,

i hope you can see my love for you.

Memories of Spring in the North

Spring in the north is slow and difficult,

like slow motion, every detail is exceptionally clear,

every sprout of grass brings joy,

branches become soft, less prone to breaking.

After a strong wind, we wander in the countryside,

the colours of the fields deepen, gleaming in the light,

bare hillsides, snow turned into shadows,

the wind penetrates our clothes, as we lie on the hillside for a while,

the earth gently trembles, vibrating through our ribs,

lifting a clod of soil reveals

rows of white roots as fine as hair,

those were the innocent days, like birch trees, free and melancholic,

you thought you would stay in this city forever,

in old Slavic yellow houses,

with vinyl records, brass candlesticks, green lattice windows,

the hazy, enigmatic gaze of old photographs,

drinking until late at night, sometimes we wouldn’t say anything,

just listening to the darkness outside,

as if expecting something to happen,

yet nothing ever did.

You walk home alone slowly,

on the quiet, deserted street corner, a lilac tree

emits a faint but persistent fragrance,

like those friends who have long departed this world.

Silence at Nightfall

It’s already too late, to pursue the study of life,

but studying death is nothing more than listening

to a vague whisper through the bushes,

as if something is about to happen,

like a small glass jar of a streetlamp

rises on water, delicately

wavering with small fishes of flickering flame.

Words on the doormat in front of the door,

How do they resist the winter floods?

Talk about rainy days, heatwaves, or distant battlefields

can also bring about dangerous moments, truth

swings between a dependence on things and a dependence on people.

“You are to bring Harbin to Nanjing

instead of bringing Nanjing back to Harbin.”

Deceased loved ones guide me in my dreams,

faith is a matter of geography.

Immersed in the unpredictable,

what you want to do is what others want you to do.

And if you act according to opinions, you will find yourself

in the terror and silence of a Pascalian universe,

where all opinions are nothing more than

your encounters with some people when walking alone at night,

exchanging unclear words with each other

before quickly disappearing into the darkness they came from.                          

Is it knowledgeable ignorance, or blissful ignorance?

Prometheus warned Sathiel to be careful of fire,

Plato said all writing is a public act,

while you say, writing is rhetoric, which turns people into citizens

and then turns citizens into mobs,

using games to gather thugs in the caves of Rome.

A Cat Looks at Me

A cat halts at the foot of the building,

gazing at me as if looking elsewhere.

Its ears float above the low bushes.

It maintains a walking posture, never sits down

It looks at me as if at an unnamed body,

as if I have no name, no clothes, no identity to be labeled.

My past deeds disappear in the waves at the end of the dam

and the future is just a gaze. I halt my steps

after all, this is a real cat, not a ghost,

A stray, not mine, nor anyone else’s,

It belongs to itself, not a word.

The air between us seems to thicken and grow stale

When its existence on the brink of stepping out of fur

all changes halt along with subtle regrets.

It no longer converts to my standpoint,

but it feels more like a silent blessing and salvation.

It’s just this ordinary and specific cat

quietly stepping out of the vast and blurry array.

It’s not from the childhood libraries and corridors,

the fables of cats chased or followed by people.

In an instant, my existence is laid bare,

my memories and loves turn into shame.

I become ignorant of good and evil, history and labor

with a gentle flick of its ears, I disappear.

After all, this is a genuine cat looking at me

It turns me from an individual into humanity.

My hollow existence like a frozen posture,

one of us must first depart this place,

leaving the other in unnamed death.

A New Poem to Ease the Melancholy

On a spring morning, melancholy lingers,

Surely from dreaming of nameless things again last night.

The revelations it brings are hazy

the grand halls left dim as gods depart,

The stubborn black sheep emerges wrapped in mist everywhere.

Perhaps late loved ones once wore darkened faces,

Sitting by my bedside, gazing at me in deep slumber,

Only to leave disappointed, without a word spoken.

The old house I couldn’t preserve grows shorter and shorter

And cherries the size of thumb tips illuminate the eaves.

Perhaps there were giants treading mountains,

Stacking peaks against the void in a fiery revolution,

And you didn’t know which side to stand on,

You were preoccupied with thoughts,

like a harvest god adorned with flowers,

Forgetting to count pods, grains of salt, seeds, and years.

Perhaps there was a enchanted fairy island,

Lost in treacherous seas,

Taking with it knights crossing the night sea,

And the maiden gazing from the cliffside window.

Or perhaps it’s you, solemn muse of my poetic gaze,

As I toy with words like a brave tin soldier,

Unknowing of good, not calculating human evil.

You lift the veil, pass over my shoulders,

Gaze down upon my harmless play.

I dare not look back.

Your breath brushes against my ears.

Perhaps there’s no evidence of a beach,

Where clear water slowly fills my footprints.

No tangled thickets, nor “cave of ideas”,

Only heat echoing the receding tide’s sound.

A day that begins with poetry may find salvation,

But it’s hard to say how it  will engage this day’s daze.

Ma Yongbo was born in 1964, Ph.D, representative of Chinese avant-garde poetry, and a leading scholar in Anglo-American poetry. He has published over eighty original works and translations since 1986 included seven poetry collections. He focused on translating and teaching Anglo-American poetry and prose including the work of Dickinson, Whitman, Stevens, Pound, Williams and Ashbery. He recently published a complete translation of Moby Dick, which has sold over half a million copies. He teaches at Nanjing University of Science and Technology. The Collected Poems of Ma Yongbo (four volumes, Eastern Publishing Centre, 2024) comprising 1178 poems, celebrate 40 years of writing poetry.

…

———————————————————————–

hitting harder tonight

four hundred emails

at two in the morning

tracy chapman is

singing about shooting

me down

perhaps the alcohol

is hitting harder tonight

maybe this is the liver

saying goodbye

i have avoided a mirror

for five days in a row

now

i’m shooting for

a personal record

ten degrees below zero

and i’m outside in shorts

wondering where the mail

is

we should have new

neighbors by the spring

back at the farm

i would paint away

my frustrations on

nights like these

especially when

i lived alone

now, i scribble in a

notebook and then

struggle a few hours

later to read what the

fuck i wrote

apparently, i was

supposed to be

a doctor

———————————————————————–

another wide open three

they want a war

and i just want

to watch the game

they are worried

the country is

going to hell

i’m bummed that

this fucker just

missed another

wide open three

life is a series

of disappointments

living is how you

react to them

do they kill you

or are they simply

bumps in the road

that kind of positive

bullshit left my life

years ago

i know i am simply

moving the deck

chairs on the titanic

eventually though

the iceberg will

come

and that sweet

release will be

my final moment

of joy

the only way

out is death

no point in being

afraid of the only

exit in the room

——————————————————————-

from twenty feet

right cross at recess

on the basketball court

thankfully, i saw it coming

he yelled a white boy

isn’t supposed to be able

to play basketball like that

that made me laugh

i drained another shot

in his face from twenty

feet and told him to fuck off

he swung again, missed again

apparently, a teacher saw it all

and told us to go to the office

i got a warning for language

it wouldn’t be my last

he got expelled for trying

to punch me

apparently, he wasn’t satisfied

with just trying

upon getting the news, he

sprinted to the class i was in,

saw me at my desk and clocked

me in the head

the teacher got him before he

could land another one

later told me i should have

seen it coming

i told her i’m a lover, not a fighter

of course, she was a lesbian

———————————————————————-

a cold winter day

hardened eyes squinting

in the soft sunshine of

a cold winter day

once in love with a world

of fresh tomorrows

passion has lost its way

we are nothing but a

series of moments

up, down, lost, forgotten

prescribed to death

there is no point to

any of it anymore

find your hole

stock your bunker

brace for impact

this is what they wanted

so let them have it

let them discover the bliss

that comes with ignorance

most of us have already

seen this movie

know the ending

know the pain, the suffering

being robbed of any joy

that is left to embrace

——————————————————————-

one night in boston

may all of our deaths

be as instant as an

overtime loss in

hockey

sudden

over with before you

can even think about

what just happened

i think i would prefer

that to this long, drawn

out slow drip

as death is like

watching paint

dry

Between seconds

Funny how we count time.
We try to contain it in seconds, hours, days, years.
But we wouldn’t know time passes if memories didn’t fall like petals,
Unpacking moments we once cherished.

That once smooth skin
Is scarred with lessons and cuts from our first fall.
We learn time takes everything,
And nothing stays the same,
Reminding us to enjoy life before it ends.

But when time actually passes,
We shed tears and laugh
At the experiences life managed to carry us through.
And here we are,
Wondering where it all went.