Exotic!

-Sparsh Sharma

The milky orb gets

kissed 

by 

the gnarled tree.

Nature's hands 

sculpt

a new artwork

on the trail, off the

river, near the sacred

grove, home to

the migratory birds.

A tired moon takes a 

quick break and sits 

atop the 

slender branches,

its oval visage

unscratched

by the

bare brown 

limbs.

All it takes to reach for 

the moon 

is 

a different view/ 

angle.

Moon suspended

over 

the skeletal figure,

a soothing crystal

that

illuminates the 

contrasting decay

and

regeneration

on a less-frequented path for the bold.

Bio: Toronto-based Sparsh Sharma, an engineer and MBA (Denmark), when not dividing time between digital communications and financial sector, loves to blog, freelance and find sublimity in natural habitats, music, walking and photography.

---

Setu, June 2023

Visual Art: Raja Chakraborty

Raja Chakraborty

Overview: Born in 1966 and brought up in Kolkata with parents having an intense interest in literature, Raja grew up in ambient surroundings. His schooling was from Patha Bhavan, Kolkata which added to the flavour. Having done his Masters in English Literature from Calcutta University, Raja Chakraborty turned out to be a bilingual poet writing in Bengali and English. An ardent fan of Sukumar Roy, Raja’s literary journey began with 'chhora' or rhymes in Bengali. He has so far published five books of such 'nonsense rhymes' in the lines of the famed ‘Abol Tabol’ of Sukumar Roy. Prodded by Kiriti Sengupta of Hawakal Prokashana, Raja dabbled in English poetry as well and till date has five books of English poems all of which has been well-received and critically acclaimed. To add to the kitty he has also published a book of poems in Bengali, bordering on the philosophical. It in fact is a quagmire that the same person has traversed across languages and produced nonsense rhymes and intensely probing philosophical poems with the same elan. A complete read of his works clearly indicates that he is more towards the serious and philosophical in his English and Bengali poems while his flair for humour and satire finds expanse in his Bengali rhymes.

Raja is also a regular contributor to journals and anthologies which includes Setu, The Piker Press, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Litterateur Rw, Duanespoetree, The Writers Club, First Out, Borderless Journal, Dissident Voice, Different Truths and Outlook, to name a few.

Raja also doodles, sketches and paints apart from being a keen sportsman. His passion is word-play and punning…he’s adept in breaking words and giving them new meaning.

Dog Series 1

Dog Series 2

Prayer

Walk on the beach

---

Setu, May 2023

Visual Poetry: Nivedita Roy

One Day She Discovered

Visual poetry, written and recited by Nivedita Roy complemented by snapshots clicked by her in Bahrain, Sattal, Lucknow and Ranikhet

---

Nivedita Roy

Bio: Nivedita Roy is a teacher by profession, bilingual poetess and author. She resides in the Kingdom of Bahrain and belongs to Lucknow. She is the recipient of Independence Day Literary Honours 2021 and 2022, Rabindranath Tagore Memorial Certificate of Literary Appreciation 2022 awards by Motivational Strips and Gujarat Sahitya Academy. She is the recipient of many other prestigious awards from literary forums.

She is the author of two solo poetry books in English and Hindi. She has co-authored 20 national and international anthologies in English and Hindi. She is the Moderator for the Bahrain office of Motivational strips. She is one of the editors for the ezine Brahmand: Voice of the cosmos. He poems and articles are often published in national and international ezines, newspapers and journals.

---

Setu, January 2023

Visual Poetry: Jerome Berglund

haiga (haiku + black and white fine art photographs) by Jerome Berglund

Bio: Jerome Berglund is an author and fine artist who cowrote a television pilot which at a festival for them received numerous accolades including best in show. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California’s Cinema-Television Production program, with emphases in screenwriting and philosophy.  Berglund is author to the novel Havenauts and the story collection Dick Jokes.  His short fiction has been exhibited by the Watershed Review, Paragon Press, and the Stardust Review. His poetry appears in Abstract Magazine, Bangalore Review, Barstow & Grand, and most recently O:JA&L. A drama he penned was published in Iris Literary Journal.  Berglund is furthermore an established, award-winning fine art photographer, whose black and white pictures have been exhibited in galleries across New York, Minneapolis, and Santa Monica.  In another life he worked as a visual effects artist for Lucasfilm and Dreamworks, and assisted on set at Lifetime and Comedy Central.  He has the unique privilege of being able to say he was once Minnie Driver’s driver.  Berglund is a committed activist as well, and has been actively involved in the Occupy, Standing Rock, and Black Lives Matter movements, and supported grassroots efforts promoting the Green Party.
 

---

Setu, June 2022

Poetry: Laszlo Aranyi

Barbatos knows how animals talk (visual poem)

Weird signs (visual poem)

László Aranyi

The Last Letter of Frankenstein

It's clarified to be irrelevant:

The ebbing ocean shapes into a new continent. 

(The figure eight is the mirror of the Circle. 

       And the next is the Cauldron. 

The cooling Sun: spider-like.

Amazed by the dance of limbs broken in the wheel.) 

It goes on,

Beyond bad, beyond good,

shadows merrily playing tag

in the corridors made of bone and ice,

a fateless candle flame wobbles:

into the Unknown.

(Translated by Gabor Gyukics)

***

Sublimation

              He thought he heard some kind of muffled hiss. 

(Like the pop of the slipery-cool carp's swim-bladder

in our clenched grip ) 

He fell nine stories. 

And instantly it was smeared on the asphalt 

              (He didn't say as much as a "holy shit"...)

Passers-by formed an orderly circle, staring at the sight. 

       The ice-cream cone looks like the holy grail 

held by the fingers of a big-assed woman 

                     who greedily lickes with her

       the elongated  tongue heavy with the plaque of decay. 

       At such times the wrecked remains is abandoned 

beyond the limits of our perception. 

The departing cool is pale, light as breath pink that fades to white. 

                    Piss trickles down from under the skirt 

that wraps around a broken thigh bone pierced 

through the skin, 

                    Bicycle wheel and 

              shoe prints: 

                           Strange jewels on a dancing pool of blood.  

(Translated by Gabor Gyukics)

***

***

Szublimáció

              Valamiféle fojtott posszanást vélt hallani. 

(Olyant, mint összezáródó markunk présében 

       a síkos-hűvös ponty-úszóhólyagé.) 

Kilenc emeletnyit zuhant. 

S egyből szétkenődött a flaszteron. 

              (Annyit se szólt: „fapapucs”…)

A járókelők szabályos kört alkotnak, bámulják a látnivalót. 

       Egy nagyseggű nő ujjai között 

                     Grál-kehely a fagylalttölcsér, 

       mohón nyal a  megnyúlt, 

rothadás lepedékétől súlyos nyelv. 

       A roncsolt maradványt ilyenkor elhagyja 

              az érzékelésünk határain kívüli. A távozó hűs, 

fehérbe vesző halvány, leheletkönnyű rózsaszín. 

                    Húgy csordogál a a bőrön átfúródó, 

kettétört combcsont köré tekeredő 

       szoknya alól. 

                    Biciklikerék- és 

              cipőtalpnyom: 

                           különös ékszerek a táncra perdült vértócsán.

***

Frankenstein utolsó levele

Lényegtelenné tisztul:

új kontinenssé formálja az apadó óceán. 

(A nyolcas a Kör tükre. S a következő az Üst. 

A hűlő Nap: pókszerű.

Ámul a kerékbe tört végtagok táncán.) 

Folytatódik,

túl rosszon és jón,

önfeledten kergetőző árnyak

csont- és jégfolyosóin,

sorstalan imbolygó gyertyaláng:

az Ismeretlenben.

***

Bio: Laszlo Aranyi (Frater Azmon) poet, anarchist, occultist from Hungary. Earlier books: (szellem)válaszok, A Nap és Holderők egyensúlya . New: Kiterített rókabőr. English poems published: Quail Bell Magazine, Lumin Journal, Moonchild Magazine, Scum Gentry Magazine, Pussy Magic, The Zen Space, Crêpe & Penn, Briars Lit, Acclamation Point, Truly U, Sage Cigarettes Magazine, Lots of Light Literary Foundation, Honey Mag, Theta Wave, Re-side, Cape Magazine, Neuro Logical, The Daily Drunk Mag, Unpublishable Zine, Melbourne Culture Corner, Beir Bua Journal, Crown & Pen, Dead Fern Press, Coven Poetry Journal, Journal of Erato, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, Spillover Magazine, Punk Noir, Nymphs Literary Journal,  Synchronized Chaos, Impspired Magazine, Fugitives & Futurists, The Dope Fiend Daily, Mausoleum Press, Nine Magazines, Thanks Hun, Downtown Archive, Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal, Our Poetry Archive (OPA), Juniper Literary Magazine, Feral Dove Magazine, Alternate Route, CENTRE FOR EXPERIMENTAL ONTOLOGY, Bullshit Lit Magazine, Misery tourism, Terror House Press, Journal of Expressive Writing, APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL, All Ears (India), Rhodora Magazine (India), Utsanga (Italy), Postscript Magazine (United Arab Emirates), The International Zine Project (France), Swala Tribe Magazine (Rwanda), The QuillS Journal (Nigeria). Known spiritualist mediums, art and explores the relationship between magic.

https://www.facebook.com/laszlo.aranyi.3

https://twitter.com/azmon6

---

Setu, June 2022

Visual Art: Selwyn Rodda

Selwyn Rodda is an Australian based painter, draftsman and digital artist (stills and abstract animation). He has been exhibiting for over two decades and works in a vaguely symbolist and metaphysical vein, with enigmatic 'biomorphic' lifeforms in unpopulated landscapes and human and animal interaction, interrelatedness and hybridization being recurrent themes. His work is found in major private and corporate collections in Australia and will be showcased in the upcoming issue of FULCRUM, an international poetry and aesthetics annual published in Boston, U.S.A.
selwynrodda.com

Statement

I deal in unstable and uncertain symbolic imagery tapped or plundered from my unconscious and imbued with as much individual psychology and consciousness as I can muster. The figures or scenes I draw or paint arise as I work. No one and none of it is conceptually predetermined. If any, the intention is to invest my characters, bi or quadrupedal , with as much mysterious life as possible. Our systems are broken, our ecologies collapsing, grand narratives are magnificent but treacherous ruins and historical symbols and allegorical figures are bereft of stabilizing meaning and communicative heft. Amongst the rubble and the dust that has not settled, what truly inspires me are biomorphic, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or therianthromorphic beings invested with an irreducible inner life, capable of reflection and meditation or at least the striving and presence of the living. In groupings these figures can evoke wisps of intrigue, ghostly rags of sense and story and suggest, rather than embody, meaning and connection, hint at 'truths' elliptical, elusive or oneiric. I create images haunted by meaning, questions rather than answers.

Art is a product of consciousness and, in a sense, imaginatively and sympathetically, it looks back at us. It is a proxy for communication between minds and at its best it transcends difference, time and historical context and touches on the deepest aspects of existence that are shared by all conscious beings. One-liners and propaganda simply scream slogans at us, precluding being-with and being-for, the abiding with others that is the source of what is best in us. There are primal mysteries that science, nor war, nor cultural myopia, nor stupidity, nor voluntary amnesia, can quite dispel, and art that is too preoccupied with being relevant and contemporary neglects to draw from the deeper well that subsumes all recorded time, all thought , all action. The artist's 'trick' is to try and keep one foot, one hand, one eye in the here and now, adding local and individual condiments and spices, and the others in the slipstream of spacetime, in the waters of eternity and oblivion. From the perspective of the workaday, the world of statistics, ledgers, data sets and the banality of reasonableness, art should be news from wilder shores, from cities and forests of indifference, transcendent madness and beauty, alternately icy and fiery dispatches of things that matter more than oiling the machine.

And finally, I want my work to be beguiling and engaging, like a series of strange, unforgettable encounters. So the element of surprise in the creation of them is a large part of what I hope they communicate to a viewer.

All works in black and white are charcoal and chalk. "Ceremony of Unknown purpose" is charcoal, chalk and pastel.

All other colour works are ink, charcoal and graphite.



Table of Contents, December 2016

Visual Art: Selwyn Rodda

Selwyn Rodda is an Australian based painter, draftsman and digital artist (stills and abstract animation). He has been exhibiting for over two decades and works in a vaguely symbolist and metaphysical vein, with enigmatic 'biomorphic' lifeforms in unpopulated landscapes and human and animal interaction, interrelatedness and hybridization being recurrent themes. His work is found in major private and corporate collections in Australia and will be showcased in the upcoming issue of FULCRUM, an international poetry and aesthetics annual published in Boston, U.S.A.
selwynrodda.com

Statement

I deal in unstable and uncertain symbolic imagery tapped or plundered from my unconscious and imbued with as much individual psychology and consciousness as I can muster. The figures or scenes I draw or paint arise as I work. No one and none of it is conceptually predetermined. If any, the intention is to invest my characters, bi or quadrupedal , with as much mysterious life as possible. Our systems are broken, our ecologies collapsing, grand narratives are magnificent but treacherous ruins and historical symbols and allegorical figures are bereft of stabilizing meaning and communicative heft. Amongst the rubble and the dust that has not settled, what truly inspires me are biomorphic, anthropomorphic, zoomorphic or therianthromorphic beings invested with an irreducible inner life, capable of reflection and meditation or at least the striving and presence of the living. In groupings these figures can evoke wisps of intrigue, ghostly rags of sense and story and suggest, rather than embody, meaning and connection, hint at 'truths' elliptical, elusive or oneiric. I create images haunted by meaning, questions rather than answers.

Art is a product of consciousness and, in a sense, imaginatively and sympathetically, it looks back at us. It is a proxy for communication between minds and at its best it transcends difference, time and historical context and touches on the deepest aspects of existence that are shared by all conscious beings. One-liners and propaganda simply scream slogans at us, precluding being-with and being-for, the abiding with others that is the source of what is best in us. There are primal mysteries that science, nor war, nor cultural myopia, nor stupidity, nor voluntary amnesia, can quite dispel, and art that is too preoccupied with being relevant and contemporary neglects to draw from the deeper well that subsumes all recorded time, all thought , all action. The artist's 'trick' is to try and keep one foot, one hand, one eye in the here and now, adding local and individual condiments and spices, and the others in the slipstream of spacetime, in the waters of eternity and oblivion. From the perspective of the workaday, the world of statistics, ledgers, data sets and the banality of reasonableness, art should be news from wilder shores, from cities and forests of indifference, transcendent madness and beauty, alternately icy and fiery dispatches of things that matter more than oiling the machine.

And finally, I want my work to be beguiling and engaging, like a series of strange, unforgettable encounters. So the element of surprise in the creation of them is a large part of what I hope they communicate to a viewer.

All works in black and white are charcoal and chalk. "Ceremony of Unknown purpose" is charcoal, chalk and pastel.

All other colour works are ink, charcoal and graphite.




Table of Contents, November 2016

Authors A-Z