Almost all the elements of this much needed socio-economic and cultural re-creation have emerged in the spiritual, new age, natural health, community-creation and green movements since the 1960’s & 70’s: however, poetry and the related Arts (such as Music), liberated by surrealism and rock-n’-roll, from traditional conventions in the 1950’s & 60’s, since those decades of early promise, appear to have been either neglected, ghettoised or to have become ‘stuck’ in the ‘ranting’ or cynical ‘negativity’ of knowing what one detests, but not knowing what one, more positively, values & aspires to.

In our magazine we will not react to this by seeking to ‘escape into a romantic faerie tale’, but will seek to strike a wholesome balance between ‘angry protest’ and the beauty-&-beatitude of our divine creation that many lose sight of amidst crises, poverty & suffering! Now, however, in this dawn of the promise of the New Millenium is re-emerging the inspiration for the New Renaissance movement in poetry, music and literature as currently manifest in The Partners Writing Group (based in Middlesex, England), together with our own, as above, with initial input from Shelley’s Hellas and Blake’s Albion. We, here, reach out, to the rest of the World, for your participation.

Visionary prose writings can be included, at our discretion, as extracts, in our “Reviews” section and we will, also, be able to use visionary paintings etcetera, as visual contributions to our pages via the Computer-scanner, with poetry as our priority. Thus, we welcome poems on such themes as:

Peace, Freedom, Social-&-Political Justice, Social Comment, Spiritual, Psychic & Religious Experiences, Communing With The Creator & Creation, Healing Prayers & Invocations, ‘New romantic’ Interpretations of Classical Myths & Legends (e.g. those of ‘Orpheus’ or the ‘Holy Grail’) or whatever be your own dream!

All styles are welcome. There are no set limits on the length of each poem. What matters is their motivating spirit!

Poets are invited to send in, with their work, a concise profile of themselves, their concerns or their autobiographies and, if they so wish, we can add their addresses to their work, as printed, should they seek to be contacted by sympathetic souls!

We are especially interested in News and Information about Community Projects that involve Education-for-Harmonious Living or shared Artistic Creativity. We, also, welcome free-exchanges of journals or of mutual publicity, by arrangement, with other ‘cultural periodicals’ such as feel that they share the essential  spirit of our initiative. Choice poems in other languages (French or Greek) can be translated if we feel that they are of merit, otherwise poets in other languages (e.g. Russian) will, themselves, have to make their own translations of their work into English to their own satisfaction.

Postal Subscriptions Inc. p & p: UK £14, Europe $25 Euros Beyond £20 ($30) or equivalents, Euro & $ currency notes accepted as payment.

 Cheques & Money Orders payable to “The Universal Alliance”, Postal Orders to David Allen Stringer.

For a single issue only, send us one quarter of the total annual subscription, as above indicated. 

Any profits made will go towards “The Universal Alliance” to help us with our communications and other support for our poorer brothers & sisters in Africa, Asia & elsewhere and other projects. We wish to share our inspirations: but it must remain financially viable!

Contact address:  (International) David Allen Stringer, Editor, “Phoenix New Life Poetry”

Sea-Dragon, 12 Place Road, Fowey PL23 1DR UK Tel: +44 (0) 1726 833334

Tel: (00 44) (0) 1726  833334

Email: universalalliance.org@tinyworld.co.uk      Web: www.universalalliance.org.uk

Anyone who wishes to contribute to our magazine either in the form of news or poetry, should contact David Stringer at the above address, enclosing, with M.S.S., as appropriate, S.A.E./I.R.C.’s. Overseas authors included will receive a FREE copy of the issue in which they appear; but, we do not pay and do not run competitions as our purpose is not to satisfy the artistic egos of individuals, so much as to help draw together those with whom we can work creatively towards our common ideals.

SUMMER 2006 EDITORIAL (Edition No.21)

Welcome to our Summer 2006 Issue. First of all my apologies to those not here included as we have far more material than needed for this issue and so will be carrying some forward to the next Autumn issue. This season is the time for more personally coming together in festive events rather than more remote forms of communication, hence our delay in its production and, also, our constant emphasis that our cultural mission would be all more complete if individual poets as well as getting their work into a magazine, got together with others for live events  wherever they live or travel. A journal, however worthy, is no real substitute for a truly living culture amongst the people as we need to feed off each other’s energies in more direct forms of sharing our mutual inspiration.

As a cooperative of creative individuals, we need, also, to outreach to find greater appreciative audiences beyond us, as our Phoenix is a “cultural tool” rather than just another “Mutual Appreciation Society, as can be the case in some literary circles, often by default, because they are isolated from the rest of the Community, as marginalized by the popular focus on the Mass-Media. So please pass our Phoenix on to all others who might appreciate it as well as enjoying it, individually, yourselves, either by email or photocopies, on the principle of “The Network Tree” of Information we operate in all other aspects of our initiative here (such as our Vision Quester News Agency and the Universal Alliance in general.

Creativity is about both one’s personal spiritual path of self-discovery & collective socio-cultural transformation, a catalyst for the so many changes needed to make our World a better place. There used to be a “more tribal time” when each bard was an integral and essential part of his or her community, a voice for the people, as in the seasonal gatherings in the Thegn Halls and Sacred Places of my own Norslandic, Germanic & Celtic ancestors even as the roots of our literary traditions come down to us from the Saxon Sagas of Beowulf, The Hellenic Epic of The Illiad and the Welsh Tales of the Mabinogion. Without these there would have been no Chaucer’s, Shakespeares or other more individualistic writers. Their styles often remain but bereft of a fuller social context and we dream of the day, our New Renaissance when the generality of the population again see Art and Poetry as an essential & integral part of our daily lives. A thought can become too abstract without the concomitant context of action for creating a better world – to quote William Blake: “Thought without action breeds pestilence” and Percy Bysshe Shelley: “Poets are the unseen legislators of human kind”.

We take our inspiration for what we express from the world around us, be that from Nature or a city-street, so I feel we must give something back to that world so as to further enrich it for contemporary and as yet unborn generations. Interaction always needs to be two ways, and not just any “one person of status” addressing passive audiences for “their entertainment”, which is the corruption of Culture by the “media-style” “Cult of Celebrity”.

Our stimulating experiences are the Karma where we learn our lessons and our own Creative responses are the Dharma, or enlightenment that can free us from the chains we inherit from this Karma.

Many poets have retained this close interaction with our Mother Nature, but have, on the whole lost it in relation to human societies that are often now so alienated from the rest of Nature. This loss of interaction with the human environment need not always be the case. My own poems on Page 3 of this issue were born out of my personal interaction with the ‘Wastelands’ of Industrial Lancashire and Manchester, as much as I feel much more in harmony in our current rural context, here in Cornwall. In this context, I not only refer to such areas as ‘wastelands’ in the strictly environmental sense, like the industrial outskirts of South Yorkshire where I was born, as, also in a “spiritual sense” as expressed in that well-known poem the “Wasteland” by T.S.Elliot

To me, one of the vital socio-cultural functions of poetry is its value as a key element in both sacred & secular Communal gatherings and rituals, celebrating either the Natural Seasons or other events of social significance. Most of religious liturgy (hymns and prayers etc) is a form of theatre composited of poetry in various forms  and theatre, itself, in ancient Greece evolved out of ritual incantations about the tales of the Gods & mortals transforme