Month: May 2019

Happiness is like . . .

(c) June Perkins

“Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed.” Rajneesh

“Sadness for each blossom lost/ happiness for each one celebrated/ Beauty will return.” -June Perkins, poem

Above is my contribution to Nineteen Months for Azamat, Grandeur.

For more inspirations head to Nineteen Months.

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Ink of Light Team: Thank you!

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June Perkins, Naysan Naraqi, Ian Hallmond
The Ink of Light Baha’i Writers’ Festival was ‘soul stirring’, ‘uplifting’ ‘surprising’, and immensely attractive to readers and people who do not write and creatives from music, and art, as well as being full of participants of all ages. So brilliant to see a contingent of youth from the Gold Coast there.
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Volunteers and task force preparing for the festival
Thanks from the team to all those participants who traveled from, Moreton Bay Shire, Gold Coast, Toowomba, Macau, Gladstone, Sunshine Coast, Redland Shire, New Zealand and Solomon Islands,  as well as from around Brisbane, you made this event truly memorable with your warm response to our presenters.
Grant Hindin Miller performed throughout the Festival and ran a workshop.  Also opened the festival with a devotional
June says, ‘I was so thrilled, with the outcomes and process of the Powers of Poetry workshop. To have people say they once wrote poetry, and now want to again, or that they never had but now will and to witness group poetry compositions that unfolded in just ten minutes (after a 45 time travel presentation on poetry) was profound.  It was  an especially brilliant highlight to have Grant Hindin Miller sing his song on Tahirih, a wonderful poet and heroine of the Baha’i Faith.’
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June Perkins presenting – courtesy Renee Hills.
‘I will think about how to run more workshops of this nature, and felt a deep sense of joy in seeing people connect to the long history across time and space that humans have with the words spoken from heart and soul, and discovered in processes of reflection and consultation and connection to others. Thanks so much to my Write Links and SCBWI friend Renee Hills for being there.’
The following photographs are a small selection of photographs from participants including myself, and do not represent the festival in its entirety.
Fereshteh Hooshmand – Speaking on her book on her mother Manijeh
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Michael Day, sharing many brilliant tips for research, structure and more!
Linda Shallcross – Walking the Spiritual Path with Practical Feet
Linda Shallcross – Workshop
Sunday Panel – Michael Cohen, Melanie Lotfali and Naysan Naraqi
Tom Francis – Musician and Song Writer
Fereshteh with one of our volunteers Farid
Jeff Leech, wonderful volunteer!

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A special thank you to the LSA for the use of the BBCL (Brisbane, Baha’i Centre of Learning), sharing the event in the Biweekly several times, and assisting us to sell books just for the festival, as well as, to our many volunteers who contributed so, so, much to the spirit of the event.

You can find out more about Ink of Light
and subscribe for updates to next years Festival on our website.
Selected highlights, talks and videos will be forthcoming.
Photographic Credits: June Perkins, Farid Shahidinejad, Ava Houghton, Fereshteh Hooshmand, Gordon Kerr.

 

Ink of Light Presenter: June Perkins

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This year I will be presenting a workshop on the Powers of Poetry on Sunday May 19th at the Ink of Light, Baha’i Writer’s Festival. I have been assisting Naysan Naraqi and Ian Hallmond with organising the festival and its so exciting for all of us to be about to see it happen. I am especially looking forward to the panels.

Favourite Books

My favourite books are many and varied, and I enjoyed during this interview series discovering that I shared some with the presenters who will be attending the festival. A special favourite is The Secret Garden though and I love books by Jackie French and Morris Gleitzman.

Heroes

My poetry heroes are eclectic and I especially love Tahirih, Mahvash Sabet, Robert Hayden, Maya Angelou and Roger White as well as numerous song writers such as Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, Wendy Matthews, Troy Cassar Dayley, and…

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A Cry of Art

Image Credit: Milada Vigerova

Whose Broken Window is a Cry of Art

Whose name do I speak when thinking of the
Broken, but the brother I lost
Window to his childhood
Is a photograph
A portal for mother and father who
Cry for this young man
Of bravery and beauty – crushed, then separated from the
Art of his life

**

Wondering whose
broken
brother is at the window
She is
a
grieving cry
of
life becoming art.

By June Perkins inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks.

 

Acrostic combined with Golden Shovel poem. 

This one inspired by Boy Breaking Glass

For more on a Golden Shovel Poem

See also Inventing a Form to Honour Gwendolyn Brooks

 

The Postage Stamp

How could you have known that one day
you’d be immortalized on a stamp
that proclaims you
forever poet
always remembered.

Bounced between homes
living in spaces
with people breaking
wings snapping
realities clashing
and disintegration of
insight surrounding.

Outwardly low physical vision
thick spectacles to assist
but sports will always be difficult
yet inwardly sharp global vision
emerging and blossoming
from the heart of poems.

Peeling back their layers
they are explorations and journeys
much more than African American
yet firmly giving voice to this voiceless.

You speak to me across forever
and I have much to learn of
this same art and faith
we both hold dear.

(c) June Perkins