Featured Poet: Sylva Boyadjian-Haddad, Concord
Sylva Boyadjian-Haddad is a poet, writer, and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire. She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Entelechy International/A Journal of Contemporary Ideas. Her work has been published in several literary journals and an anthology. Her Chapbook Salt (published by Finishing Line Press in 2011) was the recipient of the third Honorable Mention for the New Women’s Voices Prize in 2010. She is a three times nominee for a Pushcart Prize.
"I like poetry to be concise, its language as spare as it possibly can be and still mean something. Perhaps even surprise us. Resonate. Everything has the power to inspire, hence one has to consciously immerse oneself in this world without forgetting the past since the past informs and shapes the present. Above all else, one has to open oneself up and be vulnerable, while allowing oneself ample time to think, contemplate and wait. After a while a poem will form itself. Then the actual work—the crafting—begins, which for me includes a merciless elimination of what I deem superfluous. The poem God’s Schedule, first published in The Henniker Review in 2009 and in Salt in 2011, is a reflection on hypocrisy (Here I must confess that I am a news junkie) and the outcome of the process described above."
God’s Schedule
We keep God occupied with our routines,
rituals of offerings, hymns, incense, intense
prayers, genuflections and such. We build
cathedrals that shiver with centuries
of hypocrisy and ignorance, at times
even hope and repentance and sacrifice
so that we could continue our merry
carnage without interference.
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