New Years Day forum announcement

Dear Poetry Aficionados,

Poetry & Poets in Rags

Happy New Year! I wish you the best this year.


It is a time to look forward, but also back a bit, and assess. Bryan Appleyard in Great Regulars helps us with this, looking at who died and who faded away. In the world of poetry our headliner is, like the rest of the world's, about Benazir Bhutto's death. Only we look at her death through the eyes of her poet-niece Fatima Bhutto. We also hear from Fatima's mother, Ghinwa Bhutto, whose statement is about both Benazir, but also how poet and reporter Fatima may fit into the future of Pakistan.


In IBPC news, E. Ethelbert Miller's winning poems for the month of December have been announced and posted. Congrats to first-place poet Brenda Levy Tate of PenShells for her poem Ruth in Ward 3A Imagines Herself as a Tree. Second place goes to Eric Linden of Mosaic Musings for his poem Northland Solstice. And third place, for her poem Crossing at Night, goes to Maryann Corbett of The Waters. Picking up HMs are Laurie Byro of Desert Moon Review for My Mother's Bones; Christopher T. George also of Desert Moon Review for Mersey Mersey Me; and Linda Balboni also of Mosaic Musings for Time Gone Cold.

Congrats to all the poets, and thanks to E. Ethelbert Miller for another terrific month of judging, and a month of being a responsive friend to online poetry. His valuable commentary for December can be read here: IBPC: Latest Commentary. For you sharp-eyed readers, yes (or "no" rather), November results are not yet in. Ethelbert has just received those poems. For the first time in IBPC history, which dates to 2000, the poems were to be sent back to the forums. This decision has been reversed.

Speaking of Mr. Miller, he is also a Great Regular for Poetry & Poets in Rags, and has three links for us this week. I should also mention his blog E-Notes, which I read daily.


I'll leave the rest to your discovery, only to mention that it is an intriguing week for poetry news, and a good one for John Ashbery fans, who appears both in News at Eleven and twice in our Great Regulars section.

Thank you.

Yours,
Rus

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