Guest Blog: No Boundaries – A Collection of Poetry by Karen R. Sanderson

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Book launch, Books, Guest blog, Karen Sanderson, No Boundaries, Poetry, Poetry Collection

One of my great pleasures here at the Nest – right up there with Month of the Dragon – is helping to spread the word about books my wonderfully talented friends have written.

Today, by way of a guest blog, I am delighted to share Karen R. Sanderson’s debut volume of poetry, No Boundaries.

No Boundaries is a long-arced portrait limned with warmth and humor. In blank verse and rhyme, limerick and haiku, she skips across the emotional touchstones of family, friends, memory, nature, and the writer’s craft itself. This is a delightfully accessible collection, full of wry observations and little gems, including the following.

Enjoy. And be sure to order your copy in time for the holidays.

My ancestral home

I am wondering about my ancestors,
About the music they might have listened to.

 
I wonder what they felt when the harps
plucked at their hearts
while coal miners picked and
shoveled the coal.

 
I wonder about their choral voices raised in lament,
for the brothers and fathers they left behind
under the mountain.

 
I wonder why the mothers
did not sing for their sons,
but cried instead
among the southern valleys, among the coal.

 
I wonder what mountains could be moved.
I wonder.

 

 

Shawn’s Limerick

There’s this gal I like to call Kenzie

Her writing shows us dragons a-frenzy

Lives with cats and chinchillas

Feeds friendly woodsy fellas

I’m grateful we’re editors friendly.

 

***

Karen R. Sanderson was raised by a mother who wanted to be an English teacher and who worked for Merriam-Webster as a proofreader and an aunt who could complete the Sunday New York Times crossword in a day. Their favorite expression was, “Look it up!”

Karen is an editor and proofreader, blogger, poet, writer, and a fabulous grandma. She completed writing coursework through UCLA and the University of New Mexico. Her short stories have been featured in The Rose & Thorn Journal, Every Child is Entitled to Innocence anthology, Valley Living Magazine, BewilderingStories.com, and WritingRaw.com.

Karen is currently pursuing a degree at Minot State University and Lake Region State College in Interpreting and Sign Language Studies.

You can connect with Karen on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ and on her blog at www.karenrsanderson.wordpress.com.

Contact karenrsanderson@midco.net.

 

 

 

I’m published!

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Book launch, Books, Karen Sanderson, Poetry, Poets

Always love sharing when friends get into print! Congrats, Karen.

Karen R. Sanderson's Blog

Here’s a holiday selection

From my collection

(changed slightly to accommodate Thanksgiving)

**** 

Holiday Dinner

Chicken runs round the farm yard,

Wishes he was the duck.

Duck runs round the barn yard,

Wishes he was the pig.

Pig runs round the pig sty,

Wishes he was the horse.

Horse smiles, relaxes in stall.

Thanksgiving Eve, he’ll mourn them all.

****

My collection includes Family and Friends, God Bless Our Military, Limericks, Beautiful Earth, Art, Imagination, & Miscellany, Haiku, and My Funny Bone.

To order, go to “No Boundaries” at Amazon.

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A to Z Challenge #3: After the end…

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A to Z, Poetry, Secret Keeper, Writing Challenge

I preface my offering for this week’s A – Z Challenge by saying that I am a rare and often indifferent poet. Why I thought to try verse is a puzzlement even to myself. Caveats done. No apologies, no excuses. (And no titles.)

Memory opener…

After the end of sorrow comes remembering
Before the first joy comes forgetting.
Caught between lightning and fireflies
Dancing across the skin
Every moment trembles.

Flashes of sweet damask rose
Greet then abandon like campaign
Handshakes at the country fair,
Insouciant visitors from a past when
Jacks clattered across the floor.
Kaddish sung in childhood games.

Language is lost, then found,
Manifestations of days and
Nights tumbling
One into another.

Pick up a
Quill dripping with Lethe’s ink,
Reclaiming before each papered stroke
Senses: tickled smell and taste,
Touch, sight, and sound;
Ubiquitous memories all, before they
Vanish and the
World is stripped clean to the bone.

Xebecs set their sails across forgotten
Yellow-dusted seas.

Zechariah’s temple does not grow.

A to Z Challenge #3

The brilliant Wendell Berry

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Poetry, Poets, Wendell Berry

“Letters to a Young Poet” [Part VIII of XXIX]

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Abbyss, Dragons, Inspiration, Letters to a Young Poet, Poetry, Rilke, Secret Keeper, Words, work, Writing

Dragons and Rilke! What could be better?

the secret keeper

“Letters to a Young Poet”

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Part VIII of XXIX

Post by Jennifer Kiley

Post Sunday 8th February 2015

(8th week)

“We have no reason
to mistrust our world,
for it is not
against us.
Has it terrors,
they are our terrors;
has it abysses,
those abysses belong to us;
are dangers at hand,
we must try
to love them…
How should we
be able to forget
those ancient myths
about dragons
that at the least moment
turn into princesses;
perhaps all the dragons
of our lives
are princesses
who are only waiting
to see us
once beautiful
and brave.”

 

One of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Homes

Dvorak, New World Symphony – 2nd Mvt Part 2,

Dublin Philharmonic, Conductor Derek Gleeson

* * * * * * *

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Plum Tree Pick Of The Week

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Alan Patrick Traynor, Anna Fonte, Erik the Great, Girl in the Hat, Kids, Michael Lai, On the Plum Tree, Photography, Poetry, Prose

Expanding our horizons…

Dr Niamh On The Plum Tree

Featuring: Erik The Great, Alan Patrick Traynor, Michael Lai, The Girl In The Hat (aka Anna Fonté).

As so many wonderful things are posted on the internet and a plethora of talent often goes unrecognised/undiscovered, I thought I would do a Pick-Of-The-Week feature on the plum tree. I asked Shawn MacKenzie and Jennifer Kiley to join me in this, and so they are adding their brilliant perceptions and discoveries. We hope to bring new voices to your attention from a wide field of talent through little snippets that whet your appetite.

For my first pick, I would like to bring you a book featured on This Kid Reviews Books. Erik is eleven years old, hugely talented himself, and a new, young, authorial voice in his own right. Erik also writes book reviews. Here is one of the books he has brought to our attention. I love the idea of a…

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The Wednesday Poetry Corner with Imen Benyoub

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Imen Benyoub, Nathalie Handal, Plum Tree, Poetry, Power of Words

Imen Benyoub on Nathalie Handal and the international power of words. Something we can all take to heart in these precarious times. Brava!

Dr Niamh On The Plum Tree

Algerian, Imen Benyoub is a poet I have long admired. She writes with such feeling and movement. There is something veiled about her poems that entices you to want to dive into an underlying mystery. Thank you, Imen for visiting the us on the plum tree and sharing your passion for poetry with us.

A heart without borders…
My story with Nathalie Handal

By Imen Benyoub

When I write, I surrender

Surrender my senses to a delicious chaos – my soul to reach a deeper abyss and my heart to travel outside its borders.

It is the freedom that comes with writing  that made me live through my pen and left me endlessly caught between worlds and words.

It is the freedom that sent Nathalie Handal on a journey from New York to  Andalucia – full of colours, textures, and fragrant with history, to recreate the journey of her favourite…

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A Tribute To Seamus Heaney By Niamh Clune

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Ireland, Nobel Laureate, Poetry, Poets, Seamus Heaney

A generous soul and monumental poetic force. Thank you, Niamh Clune, for your sharing memories of Seamus Heaney with us.

Dr Niamh On The Plum Tree

I think of Poet Laureate, Seamus Heaney, as a family friend. I was blessed to have known him just a little and to have visited his home in Dublin.

He was a gentle giant of a man, one of those rare people that you loved instantly. I suppose when you are in the presence of greatness, you feel it. You are not threatened by it, nor diminished by it; rather it is captivating, inclusive, gives recognition to the spark of what is great in everyone else within orbit. That kind of greatness is intrinsically imbued with love. Seamus Heaney was a soul-infused being, someone in whom the  the soul had taken possession, flooding and lighting his every gentle, yet challenging thought. Challenging, Yes! Always challenging, but in a way that allowed space for others to grow in thought, word and heart. 

In his home,  I felt welcomed as if…

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In The Sandbox With Dr. Koshy

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Beckett, English, Heaney, Irish, Joyce, Language, Poetry

Dr Niamh On The Plum Tree

In this week’s, In The Sandbox, Ampat Koshy discusses a subject very close to my own heart ~ whether or not poetry is particularly national or not. I would like to add a slightly different note to the one made so well by Dr. Koshy, but one which adds another dimension to the discussion. Poet Laureate, Seamus Heaney, is a family friend, and I was lucky enough to attend a conference chaired by him on whether English is the language of colonialism.

We heard from poets and dissident writers from all over the world, some of whom had been imprisoned for speaking out against colonialistic or treacherous regimes. At the end of this wonderful event, Seamus Heaney summed up by saying he didn’t think English was a language of colonialism ~ oppression was not why, for example, the Irish learned to speak it so well and so uniquely. Soup kitchens…

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Alan Patrick Traynor’s Book: Seven Days Of Ashes, is launched!

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Alan Patrick Traynor, Book launch, Books, Holocaust, Niamh Clune, Plum Tree Books, Poetry, Shivah

Alan Patrick Traynor has created an extraordinary volume that demands to be read and remembered.