A Writer's Moment: 'Captured, like in a photograph'

A Writer's Moment: 'Captured, like in a photograph':   “I like the idea that you can jar a moment, capture it like a photograph . . .  If we all just scribbled down a poem whilst on the bus, th...

'Captured, like in a photograph'

 

“I like the idea that you can jar a moment, capture it like a photograph . . .  If we all just scribbled down a poem whilst on the bus, the world would be a better place.” – Liam Wilkinson

 

Born in England in December of 1981, Wilkinson is a poet, songwriter and singer noted for his "spontaneous" writing, especially the poems he creates.  For Saturday’s Poem, here is Wilkinson’s,

 

                                                            Sunday 

I.                    

Sunday is made of crisp paper
and coffee
so I’m happy to be here
out in the world
carrying the news
home
and savoring
the Americano on my tongue.

II.
The shop assistant
had no idea
how much I loved her today.
Or how much
I loved the gorgeous line
of fresh orange juice
in the fridge
and the low low price
of economy cat litter.

III.
The stillness of the seventh day
is only beautiful in things
as it happens.
sad
to think Monday
will soon be here
in the tears
of tomorrow’s frozen vegetables. 

A Writer's Moment: 'First and foremost, create silence'

A Writer's Moment: 'First and foremost, create silence':   “The biggest achievement is to create silence. I think every real writer who has a passion to do justice to the world thinks this way.”  –...

'First and foremost, create silence'

 

“The biggest achievement is to create silence. I think every real writer who has a passion to do justice to the world thinks this way.” – Peter Handke

 

Born in Austria in December of 1942, Handke is the 2019 Nobel Prize-winner in literature, recognized for the breadth of his work as a novelist, playwright, translator, poet, film director, and screenwriter.

He first broke onto the international writing scene with his 1960s award-winning play Offending the Audience and novel The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick.   His play Wings of Desire and his semi-autobiographical novel A Sorrow Beyond Dreams also have earned rave reviews.  

 

 “An artist,” he said, “is only an exemplary person if you can see in his works how life goes.”

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the living memory of nations'

A Writer's Moment: 'It's the living memory of nations':   “Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living me...

'It's the living memory of nations'

 

“Literature transmits incontrovertible condensed experience … from generation to generation.  In this way literature becomes the living memory of a nation.” – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 

Solzhenitsyn, born in Russia on this date in 1918, wrote some of the great pieces of world literature in his historic novels The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch.  The books are both Classics and classes in great writing that unfold in the conversations and images around the horrors facing ordinary people who dared to confront the evils of totalitarianism. 

Solzhenitsyn spent nearly half his life in prison, work camps, or exile for his willingness to stand for those ordinary people in the works he created.   After being exiled from the Soviet Union in 1974, he lived for a number of years in the U.S. where he continued to turn out amazing literature until  he returned to Russia in 1994, where he lived out his days. He died in Moscow in 2008. 

Awarded the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the ethical force with which he has pursued the indispensable traditions of Russian literature” Solzhenitsyn had this advice for writers willing to stand for social justice:  

“Own only what you can always carry with you; (and) know languages, know countries, know people.  Let your memory be your travel bag.”

A Writer's Moment: 'A magical moment when words begin to pour'

A Writer's Moment: 'A magical moment when words begin to pour':   “The values transmitted through oral history are many - courage, selflessness, the ability to endure, and to do so with humor and grace. I...