We’d love to see you all on our new site

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art, blogging, cats, creative writing, fiction, life, literature, poem, poems, poetry, publishers, publishing, romance, science fiction, uk poetry, uk poets, us poetry, US poets, world poetry, writers, writing

Just a little check in here again, WordPress. If you’ve been wondering where we went to, don’t worry – we haven’t gone away. In fact, things are going from strength to strength with us – it’s just that we’re now inhabiting a slightly different corner of the Internet – www.dagdapublishing.co.uk – and we’d love to see you over there. We’ve got more new poetry to inspire you from some of the best new writers around, 3 new anthologies you can be a part of, and a few new books on our shop that you can get your hands on. All in all, we’ve been pretty busy. The only thing we’re missing is you.

Come join us, and sign up on our new site to be informed of new posts and goings on.

We miss you. Let’s catch up, okay?

– R.J. Davey, Editor in Chief

New website up now.

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blog, blogging, dagda publishing, internet, literature, online, poems, poetry, publishers, publishing, sites, wordpress, writers, writing

Well, here it is. The seachange in our online presence. A new website – www.dagdapublishing.co.uk

We’ve been working on it for a few weeks now, and we think it’s a pretty good representation of who we are. We still have the blog on there, where we shall be featuring new poetry on a regular basis (under “Blog”), and we have jazzed up the shop a little bit, and added in some stuff about our current calls for anthologies and collections. News has been separated out into it’s own section too, and we have a redesigned home page. Overall, we think it looks pretty good, and hope you feel the same way.

If you want to follow the blog, you can do so by liking an article and following, and you’ll still receive new poetry in your inbox from our writers.

You can email us at our new email address, so if you want us to see your poetry/fiction and consider it for publication, send us an email at info@dagdapublishing.co.uk

This site will remain, but all new content will be over at www.dagdapublishing.co.uk – this site will sit here as an alternative “archive” and this post will remain at the top to point people toward our new site.

Thank you for your shares/comments/likes over the last year and a half, and we hope to see you over at the new site. Here’s to the next chapter.

– The Dagda Publishing Team

Weekend Poetry Readings: Seamus Heaney (1939-2013)

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ireland, poetry, poetry reading, seamus heaney, writing

As you may know, this week we lost one of the greatest wordsmiths of our time, Seamus Heaney. Therefore, we decided that this week the only poet we should really go with for our Weekend poetry reading would be him.

There’s something about Heaney’s poetry which can speak to people of many different creeds, nations or backgrounds. Coming from Ireland, that land divided and torn apart on so many occasions by the Troubles. which Heaney lived through and wrote about, Heaney saw the best, and the worst of humanity. His poetry often harked back to his own rural childhood (he was the son of a farmer as well as an intellectual) the religious influences upon himself, his family and surroundings, and so much more. He could be said to be the greatest Irish poet since Yeats, and to us personally he is one of the greatest ever.

We’ve selected a documentary on Heaney for you below, and invite you to take an hour out of your day to discover a bit more about the late, great Seamus Heaney.

– R.J. Davey.

Upon Reading T.S. Eliot on a Bus in Hyde Park, Chicago, Winter 1995.

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city, creative writing, life, poems, poetry, writing

A question, propelled by laughter
I’m not understanding:
–Wacha reading?–
The exiting boy’s glance warns
my answer could mean
my life.
But the question doesn’t seek “what,” but “why”.

Because of bald heads and trousers rolled.
Because of games of ivory and coloured glass.
Because of yellow tongues lapping at window-panes.

Briefly, I believe,
they might be ennobled
by the myths of our past,
freed by what the thunder said.

But black rubber rolls down these streets,
concrete is all they know
of immortality.

Because these buildings are made of future sand,
Because black snow is our only witness to God…

I read my eulogy, and it is yours.

© Dylan Otto Krider 2013

*****

In “Upon Reading  T.S. Eliot on a Bus in Hyde Park, Chicago, Winter 1995”, Dylan muses upon the meaning of immortality and the nature of the surrounding world through the recollection of a private moment. Expanding upon a brief thought, Dylan picks apart the situation, and creates a piece which questions our nature, and how the world and life itself is perceived by the masses.

Leave your thoughts below on this piece.

20/20

Tags

new poetry, poems, poetry, society, writers, writing

All the lost girls are on 2% milk cartons
but Kayla’s pic is on a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20
She blames her wardrobe on the heat
She carries a flyswatter to kill Volkswagen bugs
The Go-Go’s were her God-Gods

She fantasizes that she’s Greek
so she can declare bankruptcy and be done with it
A man walks by and asks if she’s seen a little white dog
“I’ll be your little white dog,” Kayla says

© Mitchell Krochmalnik Grabois

*****

A short but metaphorically complex piece, “20/20” invites us into the world of a lost soul, which in itself acts as a metaphor for the misery and decay of society. A myriad of themes work their way through the words and meter employed by Mitchell, creating a poem that desires more than one read to make it’s meanings known properly.

New website coming soon

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books, dagda publishing, new website, news, poems, poetry, website

Hey all, just a quick note to say that soon we’ll be moving to our own hosted site, http://www.dagdapublishing.co.uk – It’ll have a few new bells and whistles, and will better represent us as a publishing company. The poetry blog will still be a central part of the site, so keep sending those poems in to be featured.

Sign up to our mailing list for our weekly newsletter, where you’l be able to find out first when this has happened, and much more besides – http://eepurl.com/A1nQb

Weekend Poetry Readings: John Keats’ “Endymion… A Thing Of Beauty”

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endymion, keats, performance, poetry, poetry reading, tom o'bedlam, video, youtube

Time for some more Keats for this weeks reading, we think. Read by the ever capable Tom O’Bedlam, this rendition of “Endymion… A Thing Of Beauty” captures the nuances of Keats extremely well. Simultaneously beautiful and desperately tragic, this is Keats at it’s very best, most romantic, and most achingly human.

Sit back, and soak in the words of one of the greatest wordsmiths to have ever lived.

 

Waiting for a Southbound Bus.

Tags

bus, death, james piatt, life, mortality, old age, poems, poetry

I saw her sitting on a
Wooden bench at a
Bus station, waiting
For a southbound bus,
Her years, like a wave’s
White foam disappearing
Into the yellow shore
Were quickly fading; I saw
A face of youthful
Vitality diminished
Into the vagaries of old age
Never to resurface again:

Life, a miniscule bit of infinity,
Here today then quickly gone,
Nothing more than a haunting
Song withering in the darkness
Of finite time: Life moves back and
Forth like an ocean’s tide eventually
Slowing to a sudden stillness:

I could see that the old woman’s
Life was fading, her will to
Live vanishing. Then to my
Dismay, I saw her collapse to the ground.
I rushed to help, but death had
Reached her before I,
I thought about life that day, and
About death as I sat on a
Wooden bench at a bus station,
Waiting for a southbound bus…

© James Piatt 2013

*****

In “Waiting for a Southbound Bus”, James Piatt muses upon mortality and how death can come cruelly, randomly, and suddenly amongst the everyday, taking both friend and stranger alike. A sad, reflective and achingly human piece of observational and personal poetry, James puts into words the despair of death and the inevitability of life.

Leave your thoughts below on this piece by James Piatt.

Small Eye For A Lie

Tags

deceit, emily boldt, lies, poems, poetry, writing

He heard.
She saw.
What you did.
What did you do?
You took a small lie –
– And then created a bigger lie!
A lie lying about many things…
What were the lies in your lie?
What truths did you overstep?
What did you keep hidden?
Was it worth it?
To lie about your lies
This is a tangled web you’ve created…
What are the depths to which it reaches?

© Emily Boldt 2013

*****

Todays poem, “Small Eye For A Lie”, lays bare the nature of deceit. A questioning piece, it has a kind of desperation, a need to know the truth hidden in the depths of the lie, if there was any truth there to be found at all. One for anyone that has suffered in the strand of  the all-too-familiar web of another’s mistruths and misdeeds.

Leave your thoughts below on this piece by Emily Boldt. Hit us up on Facebook too, we’d love to see you over there – www.facebook.com/dagdapublishing

Are you a reviewer? We’d like to get in contact with you.

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blogging, blogs, books, fiction, looking for reviewers, news, poems, poetry, review, sci-fi, science fiction, writing

Image credit: Drew Coffman (Flickr)

Hello great world of WordPress. We are always on the lookout for reviewers and review blogs to send our publications to. If you run a blog or site which reviews poetry and fiction, drop us a line at info@dagdapublishing.co.uk, or leave a comment here and we’ll get back to you. We already have a growing list of contacts in the online and traditional genres of media, and we’d love to add you to that list.

If you’re not a reviewer, but think you know someone who may be, can you help us out by reblogging/retweeting and sharing this post around? We are a small publishing company and any help from you will mean the world to us 🙂