Mike Klonsky's tribute to Franklin Rosemont

SmallTalk: Franklin Rosemont

That Celtic connection...

Franklin and Penelope Rosemont opened the door to the marvellous for so many of us. They propped it open with comix, feathers, poetry and love, and whooshed us all through.

Franklin invented the internet of mad creativity and kept all of us in touch and tuned to the Looney Tunes of life.

Letters decorated with wild imaginings flew out to the country

Franklin Rosemont with Irene Plazewska and Wayne Heimbach at the Heartland Cafe

corner where I lived in Wexford and like the fans of a thousand peacocks shimmered in that quiet place, and ignited my imagination.

Franklin and Penelope kept us connected. They nurtured each other and poetry was ever at their fingertips radiating out, beaming to Australia, Sweden,France, Japan, Italy, Portugal, Cuba, Spain, Ireland and a million other places where surrealists dare to dance in the face of mediocrity.

Franklin will live on on the tips of carrots and tongues, in rabbit burrows and low dives, on the Redlines and green tree frogs, on the wings of bluejays and the smoke of smoky quartz. He is there on the picket lines and the porcupines.

Like Joe Hill,Franklin Rosemont will be there wherever poets of mad love gather or roam and where doodlers of the absurd doodle do.

Irene Plazewska