Mark Ulyseas – Poetry is…therefore I am

Ulyseas profile LE P&W Jan 2021

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing January 2021

Mark Ulyseas has served time in advertising as copywriter and creative director selling people things they didn’t need, a ghost writer for some years, columnist of a newspaper, a freelance journalist and photographer. In 2009 he created Live Encounters Magazine, in Bali, Indonesia. It is a not for profit (adfree) free online magazine featuring leading academics, writers, poets, activists of all hues etc. from around the world. March 2016 saw the launch of its sister publication Live Encounters Poetry, which was relaunched as Live Encounters Poetry & Writing in March 2017. In February 2019 the third publication was launched, LE Children Poetry & Writing (now renamed Live Encounters Young Poets & Writers). In August 2020 the fourth publication, Live Encounters Books, was launched. He has edited, designed and produced all of Live Encounters’ 203 publications (till January 2021). Mark’s philosophy is that knowledge must be free and shared freely to empower all towards enlightenment. He is the author of three books: RAINY – My friend & PhilosopherSeductive Avatars of Maya – Anthology of Dystopian Lives and In Gethsemane: Transcripts of a Journey.  www.amazon.com/markulyseas


Mark Ulyseas

These past eleven years have been a kaleidoscopic journey, with twisted verbs gyrating to the metre of soul…the soul of poetry beautifully sketched on sign boards carefully erected in a city of emotions run riot. The poets from Albania, Australia, Canada, China, Croatia, Cuba, France, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Lebanon, Nepal, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, UK, USA, Vietnam etc., have continued the relay of chants, chants of angst and joy and remembrance and forgetfulness under an ever-changing sky.

So much has happened and yet nothing has changed. And yet change is constant.

Poets toil through the stanzas, gasping for the breath of life when confronted with myriad aberrations of humanity. Yet through the quagmire of emotive locomotion of thought, meaning emerges from the depths to lay bare the stunning beauty of life in the living: The first breath of a new born, the touch of a loved one and the embrace of a mother.

Poets dwell among us in a parenthesis, a madness bordering on sanity that forces them to peel away the many layers of rudimentary life to reveal its luscious core… of which we really are… beings from divinity marooned in an existential world of love, hope and abandonment.

Where do these poets get their thoughts?

How does thought become word?

And when do notes turn into a symphony of running words?

I have seen many a poet’s work emerge from the ether, presenting itself as a living being to be accepted or censored, or to be put aside as if it didn’t exist, like it never existed.

How does one stand in judgement on such work? Like a butcher in an abattoir? Or a self-serving flea on a dog’s back? Or one who has just been offered a chance of a life time to share with the world filigreed utterances that could perhaps enrage or enlighten the reader?

One has often been placed in a position of sheer contentedness with submissions from poets who want to be part of Live Encounters journey. Sometimes the trickle has suddenly turned into a flash flood bringing with it debris from beautiful lands, of beautiful lands, that feature in the realms of heart stopping fantasy.

To sift through the work is like walking carefully through a forest so as not to tread on a precious life, a life that could be resting under a fallen leaf waiting for providence to set the forest ablaze.

Poets are emissaries of fate.

They do not have the luxury of waiting for a suitable time to begin drawing images and emotions.

Their time is the present, incarcerated forever in the now.


© Mark Ulyseas