About Poety Matters

Poetry Matters is a home-grown print poetry journal that began in Spring 2006.

Censorship can take many forms. The inability to find a place of publication can be social censorship.


Poetry is freedom. Anyone can write poetry.


Nevertheless, it takes a lot of work to create the poetry that reaches the places only poetry knows.


Whoever you are, wherever you are,
Poetry Matters welcomes you as readers and writers.

Contact me about submissions and subscriptions: poetry.clh@gmail.com

02 February 2013

from 'Riding the Trains in Japan'

    "Stranger than her clothes was that, like the Mosuo girl I had met back in the old town in Lijiang, Numa Lamu sang constantly. She would sing under her breath, then launch into song at the top of her voice without a shred of embarrassment ...
The most consistent difference I have found between peole who remain attached to pre-modern traditions and we moderns is our neglect of song. For us, art is a thing that professionals make according to the tastes and disposable income of an educated middle class; for them it is common and vital, like breathing.
     Numa Lamu began a song that rose up and down a scale erratically and then settled into soft breaking notes. She ladled another cup of milk butter tea. 
     What a people for our world, I thought. Pray God it never finds them."

Patrick Holland 2011
Riding The Trains In Japan: Travels In The Sacred And Supermodern East
Transit Lounge, Yarraville, Australia
p. 143

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