Yoxi [pronounced YOKE-see in this particular instance...] is the pen name of Dharmachari Padmavyuha, for I am he - if you ever search for Yoxi on the internet (though why you should is anybody's guess), you'll meet my relatives...

The pen name is gratuitous and just happened over time (loosely connected with a coyote tattoo) - my name is Padmavyuha^* and I'm an ordained Buddhist (a member of the Western Buddhist Order - Dharmachari is a title meaning “One who fares in the Dharma”, and “Dharma” means several things - The Truth, in the sense of The Way Things Really Are, and as such the Buddhist Goal - and also the Path, the teachings of the Buddha, anything which leads you towards the Truth); I currently live in Cambridge, having lived at Padmaloka Buddhist Retreat Centre (near Norwich in Norfolk, England) for the previous six years; I'm English, and I write poetry sometimes.

So here is some...

This a nascent website - I'm adding more poems over time; if you have any comments about my poems, or want to send me some of yours to read, just email me and we can correspond - sorry if it takes me a while to respond, I'm not living the simple life.

^*Note for the curious or old friends etc. - previous to being Dharmachari Padmavyuha, I have been (in chronological order) Gideon Woolf, Gideon Spoonbill, and Gideon Wolf. It's a long story...

Not that I'm interested in making absolutist statements, but if you asked me what I thought poetry was for, I'd say:

1. it's for telling the truth without getting killed (the prerogative of Bards)
2. good poetry talks about objective truths through the subjective experience of the poet, so that the reader's subjective experience can resonate with it, and can say “Yes, that's true, I know what that's like...”
3. writing poems and then reading them out loud to yourself is a very good way to get aspects of yourself in communication which didn't even know each other existed beforehand
4. the look and sound of words arranged a particular way on the page lends ritual to the telling of stories
5. ...and in response to Robert Frost's “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down”, I reply: “Writing free verse is like playing Bartók with the net down” - depends what you're trying to play; after all, any creative act involves choice, and how you arrange your words on the page is as significant as how you arrange your images in a painting (i.e. it's up to you whether there is a significance or not)
6. and furthermore - rant, rave...
7. oh, and there should be seven of these for the sake of elegance, and to please my friend Amrta...

...and if you're interested in Buddhism, have a look at www.fwbo.org