Present Poetry

Gargi Sidana is a voracious reader and skilled writer from India.

Her poems were published in Spillword, Hues of Reflection Anthology, Silent Cries, Red Rose Thorns publication, Amar Ujala, Delhi Poetry Slam, Iceblink Literary Journal, and others.

She also received a diploma in 2019.

Her fervent love for words is visible in her writings, and she finds peace and solace in poems.

C.J. ANDERSON-WU (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer who has published two collections about Taiwan's military dictatorship (1949–1987), known as The White Terror: Impossible to Swallow (2017) and The Surveillance (2020). She is currently working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong.

Her short stories have been shortlisted for several international literary awards, including the Art of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival.

She also won the Strands Lit International Flash Fiction Competition, the Invisible City Blurred Genre Literature Competition, and the Wordweavers Literature Contest.

Since her writing is largely historical, here are the notes provided for each poem.

Poem 1: Candle Glow in Ukraine and Hong King

"The publishing industry in Ukraine experienced significant growth after the outbreak of the war, as reading became one of the few activities people could engage in during power outages caused by bombardments. Additionally, the invasion led the Ukrainian public to value their own culture, history, and language more deeply.

On June 4th each year, people in Hong Kong would hold a candle vigil at Victoria Park for those who died during the Tiananmen Square Crackdown in 1989. However, since the implementation of the National Security Law by China in 2020, any event commemorating the slaughter of June 4th has become illegal. Several pro-democracy activists who persisted in continuing the vigil have been arrested and imprisoned without due process of law."

Poem 2: Footprints Left By Your Body Heat

"Footprints Left By Your Body Heat" pays respect to two professors from the Journalism College of Fudan University in Shanghai, who stood between policemen and students during the protests against severe restrictions for zero-Covid policy."

"Denise Ho, a Hong Kong pop music star, actively supported the Umbrella Movement in 2014 and the Anti-extradition protest in 2019. Now she is silenced, as were millions of pro-democracy Hong Kongers, by the draconian National Security Law implemented by China in 2020. Her song “Secrets of A Wounded City” was from a 2006 movie Confession of Pain."

Poem 4: There Is No Illegal Vigil

"Tonyee Chow Hang-Tung, a Hong Kong lawyer and pro-democracy activist, was convicted for inciting an unlawful assembly in 2021 under China’s National Security Law. The so-called unlawful assembly was the vigil held in Hong Kong for victims of the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, while “64” or “June Fourth”  among other keywords of the massacre are filtered out from all media in China, and Chinese people have no knowledge about it. Tonyee Chow Hang-Tung refuses to plead guilty for a lenient sentence, currently, she is incarcerated in Stanley Prison."

Devika Mathur resides in India and is a published poet, content writer, and Editor.

Her works have been published (or are upcoming) in Madras Courier, Modern Literature, Two Drops Of Ink, Dying Dahlia Review, Pif Magazine, Spillwords, Duane's Poetree, Piker Press, Mojave Heart Review, Whisper and the Roar amongst various others. She also has poems in the US-based Indie Blu(e) Publications- The Kali Project and As the World Burns.

She recently published her surreal poetry book, Crimson Skins, which is now available worldwide.

To connect with this author, check out her Blog or her Instagram.

Happy St. Patrick's Week!

Alfred Perceval Graves was born July 22, 1846, in Dublin, Ireland. Alfred was educated both in England, at Windermere College, Westmorland, and in Ireland, at Trinity College Dublin. His first poem appeared in the Dublin University Magazine in 1863, and he graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 1869. 

He is the author of the comedic songFather O'Flynn, as well as many other songs and ballads. He published Songs of Old Ireland (1882) and Irish Songs and Ballads (1893), the airs of which are taken from the Petrie manuscripts. He published a collection of Irish folk songs in 1897, followed by the Songs of Erin in 1901.

Graves also had a keen interest in the Welsh language and the culture of Wales; he was elected as a Welsh bard in 1902.

He published an autobiography, To Return to All That, in 1930, as a response to his son Robert's World War I memoir, Good-Bye to All That.

Alfred Perceval Graves died on December 27, 1931 in Harlech.

Thomas Hardy was born June 2nd, 1840 in Higher Brockhampton, Dorset, England. When he was eight, Hardy began attending Mr. Last's Academy for Young Gentlemen in Dorchester. While there, he demonstrated great academic potential. However, his family didn't have the means for higher education, so he left school at 16 and became apprenticed to a local architect.

In 1898, Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. While some suggest that Hardy gave up writing novels following the harsh criticism of Jude the Obscure in 1896, it was never verified.

Hardy then published Poems of the Past and the Present in 1901, which contains "The Darkling Thrush" (originally titled "The Century's End"), one of his best-known poems about the turn of the century.

Some of Hardy's more famous works are from Poems 1912–13, a collection of poems written following the death of his wife Emma in 1912. They had been estranged for 20 years, and these lyric poems express a deeply felt "regret and remorse".

In 1910, Hardy was appointed a Member of the Order of Merit and was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He was nominated again for the prize 11 years later and received a total of 25 nominations until 1927, but never won.

In 1914, Hardy was one of fifty-three leading British authors—including H. G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—who signed their names to the "Authors' Declaration", justifying Britain's involvement in the First World War.

Hardy became ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died on January 11th, 1928 at 88 years old. His funeral was on January 16th at Westminster Abbey, and it proved a controversial occasion because Hardy had wished for his body to be interred at Stinsford in the same grave as his first wife, Emma. His family and friends concurred; however, his executor, Sir Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, insisted that he be placed in the abbey's famous Poets' Corner. A compromise was reached whereby his heart was buried at Stinsford with Emma, and his ashes in Poets' Corner.

Although his poems were initially not as well received as his novels, Hardy is now recognized as one of the great poets of the 20th century, and his verse had a profound influence on later writers, including Robert Frost, W. H. Auden, Dylan Thomas, and Philip Larkin.

We are reading from Satires of Circumstance, a collection published in 1914.

Erynn Crittenden has written poetry since she could hold a pen. This love prompted her to earn a BA in Creative Writing, where she learned how to experiment with syllables and styles.

Since then, Erynn has self-published three poetry collections through Amazon and continues to write and publish individual poems, articles, and stories on her website.

Erynn is also a poetry staff writer for the Coffee House Writers, as well as the creator and host of the Present Poetry Podcast.

To learn more, visit her website or check out her books on Amazon!

Rupert Chawner Brooke was born August 3, 1887, in Rugby, Warwickshire, England, and was the third child of William Parker Brooke and Ruth Mary Cotterill.

In October of 1906, Rupert went to King's College, Cambridge, to study classics. There, he became a member of the Apostles, was elected president of the university Fabian Society, and helped found the Marlowe Society drama club, where he acted in several productions, including the Cambridge Greek Play.

Brooke enlisted at the outbreak of war in 1914 and served as a Royal Naval volunteer reserve temporary sub-lieutenant assigned to the Royal Naval division.

In 1915, Brooke became an official "war poet" when the Times Literary Supplement published two sonnets- The Dead and The Soldier.

Rupert Brooke died on April 23, 1915, on a French hospital ship moored off the Greek island of Skyros. He was 27.

To learn more, visit the link above or check out his Wikipedia page.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Let us help you set the mood with a special episode of classic love poems from Love's Sweet, Old Song, a compilation published in 1896 by George H. Ellwanger.

Aishwarya Khale has studied English at the University of Oxford. She has worked at UNDP India and SWA India.

She has published her poetry and fiction on platforms across the globe, and her play has been performed at The Golden Goose Theatre in London.

You can find her on Twitter or Instagram to learn more or connect with this author.

Robert Lee Frost was born on March 26, 1874, in San Francisco, California.

In 1894, Frost sold his first poem to The Independent, a weekly magazine published in New York. He published his first poetry collection- A Boy's Will- in 1913. He published his second collection, North of Boston, in 1914.

In 1915, Frost launched a career of teaching, writing, and lecturing- specifically on the myriad sounds and intonations of the spoken English language in writing. He called his colloquial approach to language "the sound of sense."

He won his first of four Pulitzer prizes in 1924 for the book New Hampshire: A Poem with Notes and Grace Notes. He would win additional Pulitzers for Collected Poems in 1931, A Further Range in 1937, and A Witness Tree in 1943.

In 1960, Frost was awarded a United States Congressional Gold Medal "In recognition of his poetry, which has enriched the culture of the United States and the philosophy of the world," which was formally bestowed on him by President Kennedy in March 1962.

Frost died in Boston on January 29, 1963, of complications from prostate surgery. He was buried in the Old Bennington Cemetery in Bennington, Vermont. His epitaph reads: "I had a lover's quarrel with the world.", which is the last line of his poem "The Lesson for Today," published in 1942.

To learn more about this iconic author, check out the link above or visit his Wikipedia Page.

We are reading from Selected Poems, published by Henry Holt and Company in 1923.