Poet of the Month

January: Rebecca Lowe (Wales).
February: Jim Gronvold (USA). 
March: Carolyn Mary Kleefeld (USA).
April: Tozan Alkan (Turkey).
May: Byron Beynon (Wales).
June: Michelle Chung (USA). 
July: Jim Gwyn (USA).
August: Jonathan Taylor (England).
September: Beata Poźniak (USA).
October: Maria Taylor (England).
November: Stanley H. Barkan (USA).
December: John Dotson (USA).

January: Maria Mastrioti (Greece).

February: Gayl Teller (USA).
March: Mike Jenkins (Wales).
April: Cassian Maria Spiridon (Romania).
May: Simon Fletcher (England)
June: Sultan Catto (USA)
July: Vojislav Deric (Australia)
August: K. S. Moore (Ireland)
September: Kristine Doll (USA)
October: Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan (USA)
November: Christopher Norris (Wales)
December: Maria Mazziotti Gillan (USA)

2023: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 

January: Samuel Ezra (Wales)
February: Tôpher Mills (Wales)
March: Rob Cullen (Wales)
April: Mandira Ghosh (India)
May: John Greening (England)
June: Rosy Wood-Bevan (Wales)
July: David Hughes (Wales)

2025: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 
January: Annest Gwilym (Wales)
February: Sam Smith (Wales)
March: Dave Lewis (Wales)
April: Scott Elder (France)
May: Angela Kosta (Italy)
June: Abeer Ameer (Wales)
July: Jenny Mitchell (England)
August: Sydney Lea (USA)
September: Richard Collins (USA)
October: Mark Lewis (Wales)
November: Robert Nisbet (Wales)
Clare E. Potter (Wales)

2026: Poets featured as Poet of the Month 
Rhoda Thomas (Wales)
Mike Everley (Wales)

 

 MARCH POET OF THE MONTH:
REGINA RESTA (ITALY)

                                                 Regina Resta (c) 2026 Regina Resta

Regina Resta is an Italian poet, writer, and cultural organizer, born on June 20, 1955, in Castellammare di Stabia (Naples). After earning her classical high school diploma, she studied Biological Sciences with a biomedical focus at the “Federico II” University of Naples. She later moved to Galatone (Lecce), where she worked and collaborated with the Diocesan Caritas for 35 years, while also nurturing her passion for poetry and writing.

She collaborated with the web TV myboxtv through the art and culture column Verbumlandia, which she conceived and hosted. Regina is active as a freelance blogger, cultural and art event organizer, and presenter of various renowned authors such as Catena Fiorello, Giuseppe Magno, Goffredo Palmerini, Marcello Simoni, Mario Giordano, Simone Venturini, Vito Bruschini, Fabio Zavattaro, Pierfranco Bruni, Sabine Witt, Sergio Camellini, Borisav Blaoievic, Ester Cecere, and Gino Leineweber.

Throughout her career, she has published poems in various national and international cultural magazines and has participated in numerous anthologies. She has received several awards in both national and international literary competitions, including the Merit Award “Mario Luzi”, the Culture Award at the Juan Montalvo Prize, and the International Poetry Prize for Universal Peace Frate Ilaro del Corvo, with the appointment by the Centro Lunigianese di Studi Danteschi as Ambassador of Peace of Frate Ilaro. In 2020, she was awarded an Honorary Degree in Literature from the University of Belgrade. In 2024, she received the International Award Women for Culture and for Peace, recognizing her among the 50 most committed women in the world.

She is the author of numerous poetry collections, some translated into English, Serbian, Albanian, and Spanish. She also writes reviews, essays, and literary critiques in both Italian and English. Her most significant creation is the VerbumlandiArt.Aps International Association, founded in 2012, of which she is president. She is also the editorial director of VerbumPress (https://www.verbumpress.it/), a bimonthly cultural magazine, with Roberto Sciarrone—historian, teacher, and journalist—as editor-in-chief.

She leads the International Excellence Award “Città del Galateo-Antonio De Ferrariis”, now in its twelfth edition, and the DivinaMente Donna project against gender-based violence, which includes two editions of the award held in the Zuccari Hall of the Italian Senate.

Let's Stop the Wars.    

Let's stop the wars.
Every shot fired is a growing shadow,
a voice fading,
a house turning to dust.

There are no winners in war,
only mothers waiting,
faces erased by time and fire,
children learning too soon not to cry.

There is a silence, after the explosion,
that weighs more than the noise.
It’s the silence of burned books,
empty schools,
fields without harvest.

Let's stop the wars
not with weapons,
but with difficult words:
listening, respect, forgiveness.

We’ve already seen enough fire.
Now we need water.
We’ve already counted enough dead.
Now we need hands that build,
and eyes that look beyond the enemy.

Let’s stop the wars.
Let’s start from here.

(c) 2026 Regina Resta

I Am a Poet

I am a poet.
My poetry is born
of fragile paper and honeyed words,
with which I stroke the souls of others
while losing my own
offering it away
in dreams and borrowed passions.

With ink still wet as it falls,
I write of love.
I paint bodies I have never touched,
desires suspended in midair
and yet I fear
the very love I describe.

I live on the eyes
of those who read me,
hungry for praise,
hoping for tenderness.

I deceive with promises,
I cling to illusions,
giving nothing back
but silence.

I am a poet.
I weep for my own hell,
inventing loves I never lived,
loves that were never mine,
turning blood into language
to make a sea
deep enough
to drown in.

(c) 2026 Regina Resta


Again

I will call
my silence
to whisper with the stream,
and the rain will be the only voice
among drops and storm-wind.
I will not choose thoughts,
only silvery syllables
in the tinkling of time…

And I will call
the night to watch over my steps,
as shadow merges
with the rustle of bending trees.

Among stones wet with waiting,
ancient reflections will be born,
and my bare hands
will seek fragments of sky
in trembling puddles.

I will have no questions—
only gentle disorientation,
and a silent dialogue
with the breath of the earth.


(c) 2026 Regina Resta


The Land of Liars

In the land of liars, words are leaves
they fall lightly, never touching the ground.
Eyes are shuttered windows
reflecting only what you want to see.

Friends walk beside you,
but their steps leave no footprints.
Hands reach out,
yet they grasp only emptiness.
Every promise is a breath of wind,
every embrace a shadow on the wall.
They speak to you of love, of trust,
but their voices dissolve into an echo.

In the land of liars, you survive by smiling,
playing a role in a theatre with no audience.
Those who seek the truth get lost in the alleys,
those who believe in people end up disappearing,
those who do their duty receive stabs in the back.

(c) 2026 Regina Resta


The truth is…

The truth is shattered glass,
it reflects a thousand lights, yet cannot be grasped.
You see it from one corner, I from another
and neither of us is wrong
but neither of us is fully right.

It is a thread stretched between words
it breaks when there is no listening
it weaves itself only through dialogue.

It is not born from useless silences,
nor from those who shout just to have the last word.

I do not believe in a truth that screams from a single altar
in a verdict without conversation
in a certainty that is not afraid of doubt.

I believe in the doubt that builds,
in the fragility that unites,
in the courage to say: “Maybe I haven’t seen everything.”

Because each of us walks
on only one side of the mountain,
but the world, to be understood,
must be looked at from every path,
together.

(c) 2026 Regina Resta

The Weapon of Peace

It bears no edge, the sword I carry,
no point, no blood, no pride —
it is silence that defeats the scream,
the choice that burns away the lie.

It is surrender that challenges pride,
the staying when fleeing is near,
it is forgiveness that digs through the rocky
depth of the wound we fear.

The weapon of peace is a scar
that asks for no shield or revenge,
a mirror reflecting the enemy
with a face I’ve long estranged.

It is not calm that fears the storm,
but conscience walking through pain,
a trembling hand that dares to stop
the blow that love would stain.

It is the weapon that breaks all war
without breaking the earth,
that speaks in the dreams of the wise,
that sleeps in the hearts of the hurt.

It doesn’t impose, nor shout, nor swear.
It is the voice most human, most bare:
"I do not destroy,
but I keep alive
what in every soul
still cries
for justice."

(c) 2026 Regina Resta


The Hand of God

In the heart of the sky, 'midst light and mystery,
a hand descends, slow, from eternity.
Not made of flesh, nor stone, nor sound,
but of pure breath, of fire unbound.

It brushes the waves where man may drown,
in guilt he bears, in dreams cast down.
It lifts the weak, breaks every thorn,
gives voice to silence, to hunger, corn.

It touched the fields of war and hush,
it wrote in winds a boundless hush.
It struck like lightning, soothed like snow,
without a question, a word, a woe.

And when we believe that all is lost,
that darkness reigns, no matter the cost,
there it is—within a different deed,
in the saving hug, in a blooming creed.

The Hand of God asks no acclaim,
weighs not gold, seeks not fame.
But finds its home in the loving soul,
in the tearful gaze, in the sun’s console.

And we, small shadows beneath its grace,
stand in awe, in this fragile place,
as we brush, though just for a while,
that unseen touch—divine and mild.

(c) 2026 Regina Resta