Author: Henry Stanton

A Review of Eye of the Spiral by James Grabill (UnCollected Press, 2022)

            James Grabill’s Eye of The Spiral is clearly part of the “Eco-poetics” movement. What makes it unique can be seen in its title and the spiral (created by Grabill) on the front cover, i.e. the rich ambiguity of how its poems reach out to the environment and simultaneously reach inward to embody the neuro-linguistic pathways of human awareness. Each poem in the book enacts astonishing insights into the limitless interactions between human beings and their environments and at the same time provides perceptual paradigms needed for survival as well as acts of joyful liberation in the discovery of knowledge.

            Perhaps what Grabill is doing in this book, i.e. creating a biological surrealism, can be illustrated by focusing on “In the Glow of the River.” It begins in a speculative mood: “Maybe we’ve seen ourselves overhead/in the night sky streaking unexpectedly.” That is a trigger image that initiates an unfurling and cumulative expansion of the speaker’s felt-thought. The opening of the poem is like the subject or noun of a sentence; the rest of the poem shifts from nominative to its opening predicate, “meteor showers over the insect prairies” to “the plotted Mandelbrot number series” which when seen as an animated sequence becomes “the opening eye of a spiral” like the human mind which is also like the pupil of the human eye which has evolved to allow varying amounts of light to enter. The subtext of this poem is an enactment of a theory that asteroids and comets may have seeded the earth with the chemical elements that undergird the creation of life, yet all this exists in a meditative moment in which the “glow of the river” is the reflective surface (the human mind) upon which this entire drama unfolds.

            The rhythms of Eye of The Spiral are often that of dithyrambic goat-songs which propel the lines with a wonderful energy that wave-like pass through oceans of images that actively present the processes that create the foundations of life and the provenance of sustainability which arises out of loving our planet as we love ourselves. In effect, this book becomes the Gospel of Nature.

K.P. Anderson’s “Mellifluous” is an exquisitely written, elegant, and refined journey into the interior world of the bee. The book is an intimate, fascinating, and revealing artistic conveyance of one of nature’s own profound works of art. Both empirical in its insightful detail and magical in the beauty of its revelations, this book deftly creates a work of art informed by and informing us of nature’s (almost) unparalleled artistry.

Pulitzer Prize winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa’s endorsement of K.P. Anderson’s “Mellifluous” provides a sense of the profound artistry and understanding that makes this book so unique:

“K.P. Anderson’s Mellifluous shapes and experiments with sound, whereby each taut poem grows personal, then universal. Nature (especially the bee) performs in this chapbook; a human compass—existential and spiritual—focus the rituals of being. The title informs the reader not how to feel or say, but how to be, and see into an internal terrain—through a music that queries and cajoles.“

Simon Maddrell was born in Douglas, Isle of Man in 1965 and brought up in Bolton, UK. After twenty years in London, he moved to Brighton & Hove in 2020.

Simon writes through the lens of a queer Manx man, thriving with HIV.

He is published in fourteen anthologies in the UK and USA including The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2019, Black Mountain Press, 2020 and The Best New British & Irish Poets 2019-2021, The Black Spring Press, 2021. His poems appear in various publications including AMBIT, Butcher’s Dog, Stand, The Moth, The New European, Morning Star, Paragon, The Raw Art Review, Prickly Pear and American Poetry. His debut chapbook, Throatbone was published by UnCollected Press (MA, USA) in August 2020. Queerfella was Joint Winner in The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition and published in Dec 2020. Nine Pens Press (UK) published All About Our Mothers with Vasiliki Albedo and Mary Mulholland in Jan. 2022.

Prizes & Competitions:
• Joint Winner, The Rialto Open Pamphlet Competition 2020 –– Queerfella
• Commended, Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2021 –– The Species Forecast
• Longlist, Cinnamon Press Pamphlet Competition 2021 –– Manxisle
• Longlist, Poetry Book Awards 2020 –– Throatbone.

Poem Prizes & Competitions:
• First-runner up, Frogmore Poetry Prize 2020 –– ‘The snow leopard bites its own tail’
• Highly Commended, The Winchester Poetry Prize 2021 –– ‘nature poem’
• Highly Commended, Welsh Poetry Competition 2020 –– ‘A nut roast has arrived’
• Longlist, The Brian Dempsey Memorial Prize 2022 –– ‘One night awaits us all’
• Longlist, The Rialto Nature and Place Competition 2020 –– ‘Half-rotten, half-new’

Purchase Simon’s chapbooks
Throatbone, UnCollected press, MA, USA:
https://therawartreview.com/2020/07/29/book-published-throatbone-by-simon-maddrell/
Queerfella, Rialto Poetry, UK: bit.ly/BuyQueerfella
About Our Mothers, Nine Pens Press, UK: bit.ly/BuyAllAboutOurMothers

Social Media & Internet:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/QueerManxPoet
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/simonmaddrellpoetry
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simonmaddrell/
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/simonmaddrell

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Dean Gessie, UnCollected Press author, has won the COP26 Poetry Contest organized by Autumn Voices to mark the occasion of the UN Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow.

COP26 Competition Winners

UnCollected Press will be publishing a second book by Dean in 2022.

Dean’s Book Anthropocene published by UnCollected Press

” Pieter Lefferts’ “What The Kek Kek Saw” is a fascinating and moving fable from the complex imagined culture and society of the animals populating the Eastern Woodland ecosystems of The Adirondack Mountain Region of New York. This is UnCollected Press’s 2nd foray into fables from the animal kingdom, and we are very excited to be publishing this intricate and intensely relevant tale of a universal quest and journey to discovery. At its core, Pieter’s book is a call to all of us human animals to find a way to better listen to and understand our relationships with the other sentient beings on this planet – and to learn from our often wiser brethren. Pieter’s book is insightful, eloquent and important . We loved this expansive read and are sure you will also.

Dean Gessie, author of the award-winning short story collection, Anthropocene, by Uncollected Press, has won the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, one of England’s most prestigious literary awards. Aesthetica Magazine has a readership of more than 400,000 worldwide and the competition drew more than 3000 submissions. Among other prizes and honors, Dean has been invited to England to read his prize-winning poem. He will also receive a cash prize of approximately 3250.00 U.S. 

https://aestheticamagazine.com/the-2022-creative-writing-award-winners/

Dean will be publishing a book of Poetry with UnCollected Press in 2022.

Dean Gessie is an author and poet who has won or placed in more than 100 international competitions. Dean won the Angelo Natoli Short Story Award in Australia, the Half and One Literary Prize in India, the Eyelands Book Award in Greece, the short story prize at the Eden Mills Writers Festival in Canada and the Wordsmiths Literary Competition in England. Dean also won the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award in England, the Enizagam Poetry Contest in California, the Ageless Authors Poetry Competition in Texas, the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize in Massachusetts, the Editors’ Poetry Prize from the Spoon River Poetry Review in Illinois, the UN-aligned Poetry Competition in Helsinki, Finland, the Allingham Arts Festival Poetry Competition in Ireland and the Creators of Justice Literary Award from the International Human Rights Art Festival in New York. Elsewhere, he was a medal winner for the Nosside Poetry Prize in Italy and, as a result, published in the 35th World Poetry Prize Anthology. He was also selected for inclusion in The Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2018 and The Sixty-Four Best Poets of 2019 by Black Mountain Press in North Carolina and he was invited to participate in the Truths to Live By: Night of Ideas virtual event sponsored by the Brooklyn Library and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in New York. In addition, Dean won the Bacopa Literary Review Short Story Contest in Florida, the Two Sisters Short Story Contest in New Mexico, the New Millennium/Sunshots Flash Fiction Contest in Tennessee and (twice) the After Dinner Conversation Short Story Competition in Arizona. Dean also won second prize (of 2000+ submissions) in the Short Story Project New Beginnings competition in New York and his short story made the shortlist (of 2800+ submissions) for the Alpine Fellowship Prize in Sweden. Dean’s recent collection of short stories – called Anthropocene – won an Eyelands Book Award in Greece and the Uncollected Press Prize for a Short Story Collection.