World Poetry Movement

Our Award-Winning Poets

Sue Malone Hayes

When I was a little girl, my father would sit me on his lap, in his deep, red leather chair, and read to me every night. He was academic to his fingertips and at that time was teaching and working toward his Ph.D. He read me poetry. When I was young, funny ones, like The Gingham Dog and the Calico Cat, and later serious works by Hopkins and Donne, Yeats and Whitman, and so many others. I loved every minute of it…I was also a classical pianist, giving my first solo concert at six. I guess I was made for a world that had already ceased to exist, but the man I was meant to marry was growing up half a world away in Ireland and he had such a similar upbringing. I wrote my first poetry just about the same time I wrote my first music; nineteen, and already knowing that both "the words" and "the music" were in me, and I must be available to let them find expression. Now in my sixties, badly crippled by an autoimmune disease, I am grateful for faith, for family in my husband and two wonderful adult children, for friends and for music and poetry, which sweeten the journey. One of the questions I could choose to answer was "What will you do with the prize money?" That’s an easy one. We have very needy families in our church who struggle to put food on the table and shoes on their children’s feet. That bothers me a great deal, since I have never had a day in my life where I worried if I were going to eat or have a place to sleep or be able to go to college or put one foot in front of the other. The money will go to our parish fund for “the needy families” and I know that our Father Bill knows where it will do the most good. I have been truly blessed. As Meister Eckhart, a medieval theologian wrote, "If you only said one prayer…thank you…it would be enough."

Voltaire

Seasonal Cycle - Chapter 01 - Summer

"Oh, dear, this utterly sweltering season of the highly rampant sun is drawing nigh, and it will always be good enough to go on taking daytime baths, as the lakes and rivers will still be with plenteous waters, and at the end of the day, nightfall will be pleasant with fascinating moon, and in such nights Love-god can somehow be almost mollified...[who tortured us in the previous vernal season... but now without His sweltering us, we can happily enjoy the nights devouring cool soft drinks and dancing and merrymaking in outfields...]

"Oh, beloved one, somewhere the moon shoved the blackish columns of night aside, somewhere else the palace-chambers with water [showering, sprinkling and splashing] machines are highly exciting, and else where the matrices of gems, [like coolant pearls and moon-stone, etc.,] are there, and even the pure sandalwood is liquefied [besides other coolant scents,] thus this season gets an adoration from all the people...

"The beloved ones will enjoy the summer's clear late nights while they are atop the rooftops of buildings that are delightful and fragranced well, while they savour the passion intensifiers like strong drinks and while the ladylove's face suspires the bouquets of those drinks together with melodious instrumental and vocal music...

"The women are ameliorating the heat of their lovers with their chicly silken coolant fineries gliding onto their rotund fundaments, for they are knotted loosely, and on those silks glissading are their golden cinctures with their dangling tassels that are unfastened on and off, and with their buxom bosoms that are bedaubed with sandal-paste and semi-covered with pearly strings and golden lavalieres, and with their locks of hair that are sliding onto their faces, which locks are fragrant with bath-time emulsions, which are just applied before their oil bath...

Love	Summer
Inspiration	Happiness