Tag: Niagara Falls

To the Niagara Frontier: Poems New and Selected by Jon Glover

glover
Cover of Glover’s To the Niagara Frontier

A  fourth collection of poems by the well-known northern English poet Jon Glover, including several of the poems which appeared in the author’s other work, “Our Photographs”. “Our Photographs” follows a man leaving 19th-century Scotland for life in the United States, evoking his reactions and those of the people he encounters. The new poems go further, probing the loss and rediscovery of identity, the way place and history relate and the instability of language in trying to record our experiences with precision and authenticity. America, especially the upstate New York invoked in the title, represents a refuge, but also a place of violence. Glover experiments with his language, incorporating prose and verse. – From Amazon.co.uk

Visit Leeds University Library Blog Past, Present and Poetry: A Celebration of Jon Glover

Visit Jon Glover’s website

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Niagara Falls Poetry Map

NFPPmap
Screenshot of the Niagara Falls Poetry Map

I’m creating a Niagara Falls Poetry Map which so far has about 50 pins on it. Each pin represents a spot where there is at least one poem written about it. Each pin has one poem written out, and if there are others associated with that spot links to those poems on the website will be at the bottom of the pin.

The poetry map can be accessed anywhere on the site by clicking “Niagara Falls Poetry Map” on the menu bar. The whole of the Niagara Falls Poetry Project site, including the NFPPmap is searchable using freely available search engines also.

Check out the Niagara Falls Poetry Project Twitter feed

The Herd of Unicorn by Evelyn M. Watson

unicorn
Postcard showing the American Falls, Luna Island, and Luna Falls (also known as the Bridal Veil Falls). Image courtesy of Niagara Falls Public Library


(Luna Island — 1904)

In drifty spray like unicorn,
She saw one splendid golden horn
Where windy crests were silky bright
And fulvent in the summer light:
Nor did she err in mind or sight:

Eltrich creatures, snowy maned
Had sought the Island unrestrained:
She did not know the beat and pound
Of her young heart within the sound
Nor that The Mystical was found. . . .

Luna Falls, and Luna Island
Seemed a faery vision, highland —
Whence to see through lucent space
A Higher realm, a different race,
Born from Youth’s Immoral Grace. . . .

She felt, she lived, the poetry,
Enmeshed in Nature’s mystery,
But when she said “They are not paired”
Her unawakened friends but stared!
They little knew, much less they cared.

Source: Evelyn M. Watson. Poems of the Niagara Frontier.  New York: Dean & Company, 1929

Author’s note: The unicorn is a fabled creature said not to mate — symbol of the Quickened Mind of the church too — the manes of these (or of “horses”) may be observed in foam if one has the imagination of youth.

See other poems by Evelyn M. Watson

COVID – Niagara Falls: A (Very) Short Poem by Andrew Porteus

covid
Very Few Visitors to Niagara Falls During the COVID-19 Lockdown. Photo by Alison Langley, Niagara Falls Review


(Newspaper Headline: People Gathered at Table Rock issued $880 fines for violating COVID-19 Rules)

Niagara:
Fine to view
Fined for viewing

Source: The author, January 2021

Submitted to the League of Canadian Poets’ Very Small Verse Contest. Not a winner. 

Read the article on the Niagara Falls Review website, January 17, 2021

Robert Frost by atlantic

trees

The neighbourhood where I live
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡is surrounded
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡by
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Trees.

So everywhere you look
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡There is a thin green canopy

A living, breathing enclosure
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡away from the bustle of
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡the city
‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡and nearby highways.

I don’t know
‡‡‡‡‡‡about fences
‡‡‡but trees?

‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡‡Trees make good neighbours.

Source: The author, 2019

atlantic was born and raised in Niagara Falls, where he still resides. A selection of his work is available on Instagram

Also by atlantic:
•    Baby Steps IV
•    burgoyne bridge
•    carnival tunes
•    water child