Sign up for our FREE Artellagram!
~
golden nuggets of words, art & spirit
~
Your Email:

Your First Name (optional):

Then

Don't worry -- your e-mail address is totally secure.
We promise to use it only to send you ARTELLAGRAM.


You can search the Artella Web site or the Shoppes of Artella RIGHT HERE!




Welcome to Estate 704 in
ARTELLA'S POETRY GARDENS OF FAME!


Click the links below to read the winning poems for the contest ending in July, 2004.

You'll also see photos of the top three winners, and read their biographical sketches.

Poetry Gardens of Fame Index

First Place
Second Place
Third Place
Honorable Mentions





FIRST PLACE WINNER


Eugenia Toledo-Keyser

Eugenia was born in Temuco, Chile. She began to write poetry when she was in her late teens, when writing was a necessary means for personal growth, inner freedom, observation and peace. She belonged to a group of poets in her hometown, and even directed a small group of poetry once. But she stopped writing, because "life" took her away from it. The Nobel Prize winners Gabriela Mistral and Pablo Neruda motivated her to find her own voice, along with other Chilean women who write poetry.

About three years ago, she tried to compose short stories. That became the source of her poems that she call "narrative poetry" or "pinturas habladas". Since then, she writes regularly, and reads the production of other poets around the world.

Books have been her passion all her life, since she is a Spanish teacher; which is complemented with her new incursions into the field of collages, art books, etc. She writes a lot about Nature and the elements, because she has lived in the south of Chile, and the Pacific Northwest.

Her favorite definition of art comes from a friend: “Art is a way of looking at things, and we need to have a creative soul and mind to do what we do. The process of creating is very intriguing.”


POEMA DE AGUA

Deep in our souls,
there is a long coast
of the darkest green ocean I have ever seen
with its promontories and abysses,
inmense waves
and strange crests.
Yes,
a long and narrow strand.

Sometimes it's a pacific sea,
and its milky-yellow foam
cradles the commercial vessels
           that reap its fish;
and mark the path
           of the mariners seeking
           its hidden secrets.
Seabirds, pewter and snow,
           savor the gift of peace.

But...yesterday,
the sea was efervescent fire:
Spitting bromo, salt, and iodine,
staggering kelp,
delving deep into the rock's heart,
and bronzing many shores I remember.

Yes,
here is where you can find us,
near this brocade of silver metals,
under the blue-gray clouds
of the terra firma,
where most of our days unfold.

As first place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Eugenia won a prize package that includes a $150.00 cash prize; an e-Chapook of her poetry (up to 20 poems), attractively created and published for her personal or commercial use; public status as Artella's Poetic Idol in Residence; a feature interview in an issue of e-Artella; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; free enrollment in her choice of Artella e-courses, the Artella eBook, "Behind the Veil", her choice of any e-Artella issue, and one month FREE Artella membership. Click here for contest details.

Back to Index



SECOND PLACE WINNER



terri st. cloud

terri st. cloud combines words and watercolor to create what she calls "bone sighs", which truly are sighs from her very depths. Her work can be seen in The Shoppes of Artella at
www.ArtellaWordsAndArt.com/TerriUrban.html, as well as at www.bonesigharts.com. "I believe so much that we are all connected and we all share so many of the same things inside and that we all need each other. I believe that when you truly listen to your insides and follow what you hear, magic happens."

silver linings

i walked thru hell and burned my soul.
ashes falling from my hands.
part of me lost forever.
grieving,
i found the others,
burnt and charred like me.
holding on to each other,
i knew -
even hell had a silver lining.

As the second place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, terri won a prize package that includes a $50.00 cash prize; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; free enrollment in her choice of Artella e-courses, the Artella eBook, "Behind the Veil", her choice of any e-Artella issue, and one month FREE Artella membership. Click here for contest details.

Back to Index



THIRD PLACE WINNER



Lyse Y. Stormont

Lyse Stormont spends her days following the whispers of her creative Muses and living out the magic of her life. She is happiest when riding on the musical notes of her everyday and experiencing the moment when the creative electricity of the Divine transforms and manifests through her. Lyse lives on 20 acres in Ontario, Canada. She is married and a stay-at-home mother of six children. She surrounds herself with words and her writing. She is an avid reader, keeps track of her ever-growing library, enjoys her many on-line book clubs and loves to listen to music. She moderates a few email groups dedicated to writing and goal achievement and is learning how to use the computer for her artwork. Lyse's other love is her six Tibetan Mastiffs. She has been a hobby breeder for the last five years and many of her dogs have made their way to the United States and Europe. She can be reached at
storm@ntl.sympatico.ca.

The Ice Angels Cried

On earth's snowy bed
I lay me down to sleep.

I dreamed I caught
a glimpse
of angels' wings.

I dreamed I saw
Ice Angels weeping;
diamond tears
on crystal branches.
Brittle glaze on
skeletal boughs
bound still.

The words I whispered;
"Where is home?
Take me with you."
My plea frozen
on cold pallid lips.

Downy feathers,
dove white,
lifted
on Heaven's wintry
breath of blue.
I am a vagabond
snow sculpture.
My grave 'neath
the ice
in the melancholy sun.


As the third place winner in the Poetic Idol Competition, Lyse won a prize package that includes a $25.00 cash prize; guaranteed publication in an e-Artella issue; the Artella eBook, "Behind the Veil", her choice of any e-Artella issue, and one month FREE Artella membership. Click here for contest details.

Back to Index



Honorable Mention

Ann McGovern

AFTER THE AFTERWARDS

We read awhile, legs overlapping.
He falls asleep, glasses on, breathing calm, book fallen to the floor.
I do what I do-remove the glasses, kiss him, turn out the light.
Leg upon leg, we fall asleep.

No trumpets please.
A small given, in a full day of givens and givings.
Two glasses of orange juice poured in the morning, planning the day over breakfast,
laughing at birds on the feeder.
Two glasses of wine poured at evening.

No drum roll please.
From the balcony, we watch the pond darken, cedars merge with the night.
We talk shorthand, plan a trip, touch hands and knees.

Then one day it happened.
Wailing and moaning please.
No weight of warm leg.
The light burns all night; the book unread.

In the morning I see a spider web, each sticky strand connected.
In sunlight, I turn out the light.
The birds go unfed.

Back to Index

Honorable Mention

Kathleen Ivanoff

Mermaid for M

1. You stole my breath like water. Beneath the day red and cold stinging salt buried water.
We kissed and there was my breath again. A luxury crisis. Lets look the wild looks of a criminal:
The hard eye that matches your own eye, is like seeing the god which kills, unliving yourself, in a poison trance, thrilled to death, seduced by one note, monody of a polar deep, a single shade of the creeps, call it the color of our eyes; the grey green gloom of seeing yourself blind dead devil wrong.
But it feels so right.

2. There is a hole in my stomach where once there was a tiger. This animal stalks me, pacing in the dark, waiting. I fear it will tear me to pieces, I stiffen. It waits in the distance, proud, like the protector of a palace. Its gaze, its breathing, is a poem that I knew a long time ago, some design that fits in an inkling. The way it waits!

3. Here is your weeping, I am stooped with water, sunk like a marble Venus.
You stand at the edge, a dry stalk, snickering the wind at the unbelievable lap of water. But I see you as a whole new world, the place to be born again, if you would only reach for me, I would live, breathe, turn this water to milk, for you.

4. What can you do, stuck under water? Left to dissolve, your sparkle mixes with the bottom, and becomes unknown. The rest evaporates into a fog, haunting the surface, glanced over by a runt sun, you return again and again and again to the wait of water.

5. Notice the moon; it breathes the water like the pulse of a cradle. If you follow, it will deliver you to the shore, draped in pearls. Finally, the mermaid explodes. Her salt heart finds its shoes.

Back to Index

Honorable Mention

Kirsten Arneberg

Out of Time

I live out of time
The myriad of undistinguishable seconds
flow by, go by, pass by
Without my slightest notion
I have all my life
to denounce the damnable duration of time
I distort the quasi-apparently normal life I live
I have thrown away my timepiece
and I am a scrutineer of time-minded people

Formerly I was swayed into being a machine
Locked into the grasps of the watch-needles
Claustrophobikally turning the hourglass
before all of the sand had fallen down
Now my unconscious impulses are my only obscurantisms
The only remains of time's unbearable cage walls
is the distiction between night and day

The insolence of my watch-addicted friends
is intolerable
They criticize my method of solving my problems
Their naivety is colossal
They say I'm crazy
So what if they are right?
At least I control the passing of...
Of what? I hate the word time...
Of my existence
I live my life slowly
Langorously sucking every sensation out of it

The moon is going down
I don't know if it is night or day
I don't remember the difference
Maybe the sun shines in the night-time
Maybe in the day-time
But the moon and the sun
have chosen to live out of time, just like me
It is the earth and the people who
desired to live alternating the day and night
      Not me
           Never...

Back to Index

Honorable Mention

Michael Koenig

Charlotte Bus Depot, 4:45am, North Carolina

Virgin Mary embroidered
bas-relief upon his hat. Russet
skinned, with a thin black moustache

hanging onto his lip, he stands
waiting with that very
stache growing ever so much

slower than it was
one second ago. Flowerpot
smiley face sack sits

upon straps which saddle
the soft brown back of a tiny
princess ? hair braided ? hair beaded ?

beautiful brown-eyed gemstone
child. Four thirty turn around
/turn over: burger grease

restaurante business picks up
a lick like a clockwork quilt with
the same two gals running things as when

I once dined inside two-hour-old
memory. Lines long, seats
scarce, loudspeaker rampant

vacant meaningless nothings; people
stand, pace, walk, wait, rest, and converse
amongst each other while a blue balloon

hangs from the ceiling draping
a string, tickling the nose
of the man asleep in the TV chair


Back to Index

Honorable Mention

Jessica Barrett-Koenigsberg

My Dogs and Me

Me and Buddy,
and Tilly, too
walking down Ridge Avenue.
We walk along the street,
skipping over our feet.
Tilly sings a song,
Buddy whistles along.
Mrs. Bryant waves Hi Hi.
My shoe is untied.
But a loose shoe string doesn't bother me,
No sir-ee!
So we just keep skipping along the street,
Skipping over our feet.
Buddy, Tilly, and me,
whistling along
and singing our song.
Just we three,
as happy as can be.


Back to Index

Honorable Mention

Carole Trickett

Summer Mandala

My spirit draws in
the deepening summer.
Craving fulfilled by cinnamon
yellow goldenrod illumining
the dark of cattails and binding
Fra Angelico blue chicory to earth.
The horizon holds heaven's call
in the cricket's evensong.
Alpha and Omega here now
in the bounty of the afternoon sun
as it warms the harvest
of corn, cherry red tomatoes
and herbs of the field.


Back to Index