DUSTIN PICKERING AT THE INTERNATIONAL COLLOQUIUM OF POETRY & PHILOSOPHY

Illustration Phil Hall

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Dustin Pickering is an autodidact, and a noteworthy figure in contemporary US literature and the arts. He is a poet, visual artist, publisher, interviewer and workshop leader. His poetry explores love, faith and cosmology. He also creates satirical cartoons that gently spoof religion and politics. His writings have appeared in Huffington Post, Los Angeles Review, World Literature Today, Asymptote Journal and many others. He has received the Pushcart Award and Best of the Net nominations, finalist status in Adelaide Literary Journal’s fiction contest, and has the title of Knight of World Peace from Nigeria. He recently received the President Commission Award from the Seneca Awards 2026 for his book Crime of the Extraordinary.

Pickering builds literary and artistic ecosystems. As founder of Transcendent Zero Press, co-founder of World Inkers Printing and Publishing, and editor of the decade-running Harbinger Asylum, he has consistently opened the path to emerging and under-represented voices. Pickering hosts the World Inkers Network interview series on YouTube and has curated special editions and led workshops at the Austin International Poetry Festival. Pickering is a catalyst and a community-builder. Recently he organised the participation of US poets representing Ars Notoria Magazine in the International Colloquium of Poetry and Philosophy (link here) and these poems were his generous contributions to the event.

Ars Notoria

Your God

Your god is naked and delusional
My god is winter flame
With watercolored brows of shame
you can never know His name.

Diamonds crumble in spirit longings
while the Prince establishes peace
In the eyes of forever beating wings
Mercy calls us “things” 

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From Arcanum of the Everyday

An assault against the dignity of fire
Like Oppenheimer as he crafts the atom bomb And we always knew your basement
Was full of empty robes of wandering Night closes in like a hurricane boss Robbing the enigma from the initiates

I seek the pleasure dome where the crucifixion dwells Mind over Matter because light is bright and kills
The geometry of space and the secrets of time Are things we cannot lose and will not in rhyme I am carrier of the baptismal torch
Pressing hope against lazy lips
That won’t pronounce the angel’s name properly

In downcast eyes we see the oblivion of Chance Our horror is unseen by the serpent of dreams In the thoughtlessness of void and facile forces
The enemy combatants do not end their battalions

If night was a recluse my name is smeared on your doorstep The merciless penny is penury of the wolf’s lock step
Open the mouths and feed them! Open the mouths and feed them!

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Rose Sud

“It seems they have not been destroyed for now, although we’ll have to see what real state they’re in, and whether they can be restored properly.”
-Maxine Cumunel

i.

Eternity contained by stained glass.
Stars circle in dizzy lakes.
Saints hiding their tongues,
bitten by the snake of love.

Building the faces are tomorrow.
Harrowing the hells of dreams.
Coming into terms with the flames
impoverishing our greed.

We are not a full humanity.
Half and half—we are mooned
by the promise of beginning again…
yet light is eternal, fire is justice.

What is our begging for mercy,
this universe of guiding lights?

ii.

Yet burning like the pyres of Rome,
forgotten by time.
Pyrrhic victory, quenched by reality’s foe.
We still do not know.

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