Each issue of Essence has its own theme, the first was 2007's "Spirit", the second from 2008 was "Eros", and this year's issue takes on an "Experimental" theme. The theme of the 2010 edition will be "Death" and we will be accepting submissions for this next issue from April 2010. In the meantime here are some extracts from the latest edition "Experimental", the third issue (available to purchase here) which includes work by the American collective Exquisita, and the Bulgarian poet Mina Stoyanova whose contemporary Yassen Vassilev is featured below, amongst others:

The Question Being                          Dina Kafiris                                     or                                     was                                     it                                     God                   Was it you who crucified me                                     placed                                     you                                     in                                     my                                     path SCARABEUS SACER he who gives birth to himself hardly suffers from oedipus complexes hardly knows electra closely he crawls like a snake out of the ground and evil omens thrive around magicians grow in the apple of his eye a boatman tirelessly rowing the sky brooding stars and hatching ark the moon opens its eyelid and the ship sinks into the sun spanish armada in the clouds tristan the mad is doomed geo milev must die the ego disfigured somewhere there marches samuil's one-eyed army somewhere there marches beheaded the last poet and September Septembers the Scarabeus Yassen Vassilev

Missing Pieces, i.e. Priest Grim dipping imbeciles in the River Styx. Midgets in frightwigs singing His imminent tidings. I- sitting childeyed in high pine limbs . . . # "Virgin," Sighs Mistress Night, "I prithee- Lift my inky skirts . . ." # The west wind whistling its swete breth- even the feeding swine will lift their eyes . . . # I spent this winter viewing the evening fields- My Inn is empty. # White mice licking his Highness's filthiest skillets. Silly little mice. Tisk, tisk. Tisk, tisk. Jaydn DeWald

Back Issues

Issue 1 of Essence "Spirit" includes the work of established writers such as Des Dillon, Thomas A. Clark, Kenneth Steven, Kevin MacNeil and Larry Butler. Also featured are Catherine Woodward, Graham Hardie, Dominic Boyle, Andy Manders, Christine French, Hope Jones and Robert Marsland (the editor of Essence).

The work is good as a short selection shows here:

Pears I think of that house in early evening Somewhere at the end of summer All the doors and windows open Filled with the afterglow of sun And the whole house heavy with the scent of pears There in the lawn that ancient tree A hundred summers old, and maybe more, Around it a deep, dark ring of pears. I picked them hour after long hour To thud into baskets in high hills€“ Leaving only the broken ones, All drizzled and wandering with wasps, And it was as if the house became some strange ship I was filling for a long voyage That the rest of our lives might be made of pears. Kenneth Steven Loch in the Sky loch in the sky sky in the loch lark in the sky sky holds the lark song in the air air spreads the song light loosely cleft left could be right when night is day no one is wrong Larry Butler

Dead Finch Flying I found a dead finch down by the river this morning. Looked like she had rolled over, folded her wings; died with her tiny claws in the air like branches of micro trees. I noticed her eyes screwed up like she would do just before hitting a tree full force. I lay her in my palm spreading one wing then the other - a Japanese dancer standing still. I look about and blow air into her beak hoping she'll spring to life chirping at take off - a dead finch flying. I'm Jesus when he brung Lazarus back. God's electromagnetic breath on the infinite but dead cosmos in his hand. Des Dillon The Roebuck Blue poured down on the dirt; It waited for the Roebuck And past the trees the sky was purple, Darkening with the streaks Of a mile tired sun. It said it was only watching the russet strings Dash across the dead, And pull them to a pyre One by one, Where amber blazed And spidered into black. The Roebuck Head down from starry spray Creeping up behind, Thunders slow through Cratered corridor, Crushing the thorns under its tread And it watches Enamored, Begging as bracken to be burned, In the fires of the Roebuck, Haloed by the repentance Of the dead. Catherine Woodward

Here is a selection of the poems featured in Issue 2 "Eros" which is available to purchase now and includes work by writers such as Dee Rimbaud, Lyn Moir and Graham Hardie, and many other writers, a good number of whom are from the USA.

Oyster as I stroked the oyster between her legs she smiled and I sunk the pearl deep into the seas of love A Whisper he licked the feathers of her bow amongst the sheets of silk each tongue a whisper and each tongue a secret from the valleys of the earth The Virgin's Birth she placed her hands around the softness of the erection; a heart of memories, the wood glistening in the sun and the slight trickle of the spring water from the burn; as he ejaculated she began to cry    Graham Hardie

Root Flower Red This flower is fire red, a core of vermilion, petals petulantly open. Within the folds of stamens, filaments and fuzz is a centre of cunt; a descent into primal void, into primitive violent being. The taste of it in the mouth is sour, musty, intoxicating: the taste of blood pulsating to the ululating tide of the moon. What I mean to say though, writing in the dust with bones, is... my dreams are peopled with holes: tunnels, entrances, openings; a crazy paving of windows and doors. I am constantly a victim of movement, squeezing through constrictions, falling or flying through dead, silent air; and in my dreams, always I awake to the ubiquitous wan, grey light of sleepless morning yawning scratching armpits, face, thighs, rubbing never-quite-awake eyes: the petals of yesterday like dust to the rusted clock's restless ride And what is on that other side? An unattainable, unimaginable light!

Through this blood flower, through the angry vibrant red of it, the root of our collective being, the root of our animal soul, we struggle towards the light. It is no accident that this spectrum starts in red. We are all blood: cunt, cock, meat, flesh; intestine, artery, vein. To dive into red is to be swallowed by cunt to relive the clamped agonies of our birth in anticipation of death and the ultimate constriction from which there is no release... death is the place we have truly learned to fear suspecting there is no hallucinated rainbow, no fantastic flight... only unspeakable blackness: a void, the ultimate negation of light.    Dee Rimbaud

© Essence Poetry 2007-2009   |   Last updated 10 September 2009