Bio:

Dr. Patrick Lodge

currently lives in Yorkshire but is an Irish citizen with family roots in Wales. His work has been published, anthologised and translated in several countries and has read, by invitation, at poetry festivals in England, Scotland, Ireland, Kosovo and Italy.
Patrick has been successful in several international poetry competitions and was commended in the 2018 Gregory O’Donoghue International Competition and shortlisted for the 2018 and 2020 Leeds Poetry Peace Prize and the Poetry On The Lake Poetry Competition 2019. He won the Blackwater Poetry Festival Competition in 2018, Red House Poets Poetry Competition in 2019, the Trim Festival Poetry Competition and the Manchester Cathedral Poetry Competition in 2020. In 2021 he won the Poetry On The Lake short story competition. In 2022 he was highly commended for the Francis Ledwidge International Poetry competition. In 2023/24 he was runner-up in the Wirral Open Poetry Competition and the Prole Laureate competition as well as long-listed in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival competition and shortlisted in the Drawn to the Light Press competition, October 2025.
He reviews for several poetry magazines and has judged international poetry competitions.

His collections, An Anniversary of Flight, Shenanigans and Remarkable Occurrences were published by Valley Press. A poem from the final  book was put to music and performed at the 2017 Leeds Lieder Festival. His fourth collection, entitled There You Are, was published by Valley Press on St Brigid’s Day (Feb 1) 2026.

Q:1. When and why did you start writing poetry?

I started writing poetry I was in my teens. My first poem was published when I was 18. I had a number of poems published in the house magazine of the Birmingham Arts Lab – Arts Labs  were part of the alternative scene in the late 60s (I think the first had set up in London in 1967). The magazine was typed (badly) and photocopied (badly) and stapled (badly). I was going to school outside Cardiff then and can’t remember how I knew about the Birmingham Arts Lab. I still have the magazines I was published in and have to say that the poems were awful – I look at them sometimes to remind me how not to write poems. I started writing in the late 60s while I was still in school and I was an ex-mod/almost Hippy. I guess there was an element of writing poetry because it fitted in with the scene I was part of but looking back I think the base motivation was the same as now – it was a way in which I could express things (albeit then, badly) that seemed important to me.

Q:2. Who introduced you to poetry?

I was studying for A levels at the time and English was one of them so I was introduced to poetry as part of the syllabus. It was, however, a rather stuffy syllabus and my major influences then were my peers on the English course. We were all self-appointed rebels and were reading off-syllabus material like the Beat poets, the Mersey poets and listening to Dylan (Bob) and the Acid Rock coming out of California – posing like crazy! The Penguin Modern Poetry series was a godsend as it gave you cheap access to several poets at once. I still have The Mersey Sound edition (#10) and the Ginsberg, Corso and Ferlinghetti edition (#5). I all seemed so subversive and so “zeitgeisty”. Another early influence was Alvarez’s “The New Poetry” which gave access to a huge number of British and US poets. Several of my friends then were into Art and played music and I guess that poetry was a means for me to join in as I didn’t paint or play.

Q:3. How aware are and were you of the dominating presence of older poets traditional and contemporary?

I noted above the Alvarez collection which included Berryman, Fuller, Hughes, Lowell MacCaig, Plath, Sexton, Larkin and RS Thomas, to name some of them. In effect this introduce me to older poets both traditional and somewhat contemporary – and the English syllabus went further back! –  but I was too ignorant really to see them as part of a canon of poetry or of certain ‘movements’ within poetry. The poets I really related to then – Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Greg Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Thom Gunn (though he was, I think, in the Alvarez anthology)  to name some – I saw as rebels against the ‘establishment’ of poetry though I would have been hard put to identify what the establishment of poetry really was (though the striking of poses was very much a part of the teen scene I was part of and none of this was a cogent and informed critique). I did have a ‘eureka’ moment in the A level class where we studied Wordsworth and utterly dismissed him as irrelevant until our English teacher spent a lesson working with us on the Lyrical Ballads and by the end had convinced us of how radical Wordsworth actually was as a poet in the early days.

Q:3.1. What was relatable to you in the poetry of Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, Brian Patten, Greg Corso, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Thom Gunn?

It would have been a combination of where I was at the time and aspects of the poetry itself. When I first became acquainted with these poets it was the mid to late 1960s and I was 16/17/18 years of age – so you had the Swinging 60s (I was a Mod then increasingly, by the time I was in the 6th Form,  Hippy in my tribal tastes) and more importantly for me (I studied American History/Culture at University and then lectured in American History/Culture) you had the whole 60s scene in America with Civil Rights, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, Rock music (especially the West Coast Acid rock bands) and increasingly exciting films which picked up the zeitgeist – and the whole Counterculture scene in general. There was a huge sense of possibility and of things on the cusp of major change, of freedom to be. As a teenager I was more interested in the pose I would guess – ‘thrilling to the Brando-like things that we’d say’ as Joni Mitchell sang –  but in music, art, poetry, film novels I was undoubtedly attracted to expressions of possibility that explored boundaries and then moved beyond them. Wholly conventional in my own life –  studying A levels at a Welsh Grammar School –  I could imaginatively transcend it all through association with rebel poets and rock bands. As Dylan sang, the battle outside was ‘ragin’ and would soon shake your windows and rattle your walls,  For the times they are a ‘changin’’. Looking back at this it seems very naive indeed – a Robert Crumb cartoon of c1971 had two hippies ‘truckin” down the street and one says “what happened to the Revolution, man?”  – the other replies, ‘we lost’. However, at the time it was immensely exciting. Into that you had Ginsberg’s ‘America’ and ‘Howl’ – one of the ‘wiggy prophets come back’ as Ferlinghetti described him. You had Gunn writing about bikers and being ‘on the move’. The same with the Mersey poets whose association with Liverpool was enough to commend them then. These poets seemed subversive to me though I would have had little sense then of how they all came together within the canon of poetry.

In terms of the poetry itself it is difficult to think back honestly to that time but I think what attracted me to them was the subject matter they chose to write about and the way they wrote about it. The Mersey poets, for example, wrote in ordinary English about toasters, bus-conductors, dolly birds and other ordinary things that, through the poetry, they rendered more significant. What they wrote about was immediately relevant and accessible (I was studying Pope’s ‘The Rape of the Lock’ in class!). They made poetry out of anything and stretched its boundaries. Like with Ginsberg and the Beats there was an immediacy about the writing – the writing seemed raw, their emotions raw and honest. They seemed to have no truck with the conventions of writing and used poetry to express intense personal feelings and did it with what seemed to me at the time (I listened to a lot of Jazz at the time) to be free improvisation and a command of the rhythm of the words. Their views on sex, drugs and the life lived on the edge seemed very attractive to a Sixth former looking to escape! Of course I would have had little sense then that other poets before them had done pretty much the same in different ways nor would I have recognised the craft involved in seeming spontaneous and alive. It’s fair to say I don’t really read them much if at all now – though Gary Snyder still has a hold on me.

Q:3.1.1. Why does Gary Snyder still have a hold on you, and not the others?

I came to him much, much later – in my current phase of writing poetry. There is a stillness, a philosophical coherence and a complete integrity to his work across the decades which attracts me very much.

Q:4. How did you decide on the order of the poems in your latest book?

The first thing to say is that it is not, nor ever should be, random and is never arbitrary. I think you need to have several perspectives at work – an overall one of how the collection will flow from beginning to end  – so it looks to have what Lloyd Frankenberg called ‘premeditated spontaneity’ – and, at the same time, how groups of poems will work together. By ‘work together’ I mean in terms of subject matter, emotional load, style and structure  – there may be an argument for keeping any reader entirely on edge as to what comes next and maintaining interest by jarring conjunctions but I’m not convinced.  I do think that surprise is a key element for both writer and reader – as Robert Frost wrote, ‘no surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader’. There is also a search for a unity within a collection – Robert Lowell said that all of one’s poetry is in a sense one poem but any collection has many parts and I would hope that the unity ensures that the reader is aware this is a collection by one poet and not an anthology – this while recognising that one is allowed to experiment and look for ‘surprise’.

In this particular collection – which is quite long – I did try originally to order the poems singly. I used the technique we all use of printing out the poems and laying them out of a (large) table and moving them around. I found this quite difficult if not impossible – nothing spoke to me sufficiently persuasively to say ‘this is the order’. The final part – the Tarot sequence – clearly ordered itself as it is based on a common spread of the Tarot cards. Given that I would have at least one section I thought of organising the poems into several boxes. Thus the first part explores my Celtic background in Ireland and Wales – the whole collection starts with a poem that says ‘I don’t know who  am or where I am from’, a theme of a search for a homeplace which continues throughout. I travel a lot (but don’t write travel poems per se and recall Durrell’s comment that travel is the best form of introspection) and so included the Hebridean poem sequence in this Celtic section. I spend a lot of time in Greece as well so the Greek section fell easily into place. I suppose the third section is more of a miscellany though apart from the Titanic group – commissioned for a Salmon Press anthology – there are linked themes of climate change, fauna and the environment. When I came to organise the collection  – given that the writing had taken place over 4/5 years – I was surprised to see that my preoccupations were fairly consistent; this was less so in subject matter than in a pursuit of identity and a sense of place, where one could be content and call it ‘home’.

Q:5. What is your daily writing routine?

I don’t really have a daily writing regime if you mean sitting at a desk at a regular time for a specified period. I do try though to do poetry ‘stuff’ every day. I review for several magazines so there is a lot of reading, note-taking, research and writing of reviews. Thom Gunn said if you find you can’t write at any time, then review – I think I know what he was getting at, the process of close engagement with another text is a powerful shaper of one’s own craft and desire to write. Linked to that is another daily activity which is to read – I read poetry and poetry-related books for pleasure every day outside of books to review – not alone there, ’tis advice given by many poets. If you mean by ‘writing regime’ what is my creative process then that varies but has common features. To some extent it depends on the impetus for the poem – some poems need more work around them than others but all require a constant iterative process, a coming back to the scribbles to improve – I guess a bit like Brailsford’s ‘marginal gains’ approach to cycling improvement at Ineos – to make the written words on the page as close as you can get to the purity of the original quickening of the original idea, the original possibility.
Auden is often quoted (though it was Paul Valéry I think originally) as saying a poem was never finished only abandoned but you have to work very hard to get to the point where you are happy to abandon it. The worst thing I hear at Open Mics is ‘here is a poem I wrote this afternoon on the bus’. And, of course, there is the issue of constantly looking for the absolutely correct word. I’ve no doubt that there is always the absolutely correct word and one must work hard to try and find it but Eliot wrote to his editor once that ‘after a time one loses the original feeling of the impulse and then it is no longer safe to alter. It is time to close the chapter’. Robert Lowell once wrote that ‘the whole problem of writing poetry is to bring it back to what you really feel and that takes an awful lot of manoeuvring’ – a perfect recognition of the tensions between inspiration and craft, of the idea and the hard work.

In terms of a daily regime I think it fair to say that, if I am working on a poem then it is always at the back of my mind. I swim and cycle daily and, as I’m sure many others would agree, it is often during these activities that solutions to problems in an ongoing poem emerge. So if you are on a roll then the poem is always with you looking for the midwife.


Q:6.What motivates you to write?

I can answer this simply (I think). When I first started writing poetry as a teenager (remembering as I said earlier that much of it was awful) it was because I could not express what I wanted to say in other ways. That still is the major motivation for me but now, as I have had work published, have won competitions and count many poets as my friends, I think also there is the sense that I am a poet and that sense sits well on me – it enables me to express what I want to say with more confidence and self-awareness as a poet and that is a strong motivation for the doing of it. Sylvia Plath wrote in 1962 that she wrote ‘not in compensation (or) out of sorrow but from an overflow, a surplus of joy’. I get that in terms of the joy of actually creating something that you feel has worked, as do, hopefully, others whose opinion you value. I disagree only in the sense that I suspect I do write sometimes in compensation and sometimes out of sorrow. At the very least I write to discover a sense of ‘home’ in which I can be comfortable – a simple statement that, I suspect, embraces a lot of stuff.


Q:7. How important is form across all your collections?

I could say that I don’t have much interest in form – as the artist Wei Wu Wei said, there’s a danger of worshipping the teapot instead of drinking the tea!  – but that would not be entirely true. I have experimented with some set forms in all of my collections but they have mostly been experiments, deliberate attempts to write in a form without much feel for the relationship of form and ‘subject’. The clearest exception is where I wrote sonnets – in all cases I chose the sonnet form because I was dealing with strong emotions and felt the form would prevent the poem going off on its own in a tsunami of what Bukowski called ash-can thumping.
So you could say that I write in free verse and that would be true though it understates completely the craft applied. I am always concerned that the shape of the poem on the page is wholly appropriate for the poem – its tone, subject, emotional heft are all expressed in the poem and are complemented by the form. So this would manifest in stanzas, line lengths, enjambment, rhythm which, I guess, you might see as craft rather than form but I tend to see it as a totality. How the final poem looks and ‘feels’ is very important to me – I don’t think it is finished unless everything about it contributes fully.

Q:8. How do the writers you read when you were young influence your work today?

I’m not sure they do in any meaningful way. Reading poets at any time is, as I’ve intimated, very important for someone writing poetry. It is helpful to see how a poem works, how form in its widest sense is used and, in a wider sense still, how poetry is able to embrace so many ‘topics’. But I don’t think I have ever thought to consciously imitate a particular poet from any time in my writing life; there may be unconscious influence but if so this is often picked up in the rewritings as inauthentic. I think other poets open you up to the possibilities of poetry and stamp down paths in the long grass that you can follow or not.


Q9: What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Born and made! I guess I incline towards Robert Graves’ idea that “to be a poet is a condition, not a profession,”  –  by which I think he meant that poets are born rather than made. This might seem elitist and precious but I think that what Graves meant was that in creating poetry you have to have two elements: firstly, what he called “the unforeseen fusion in (the) mind of apparently contradictory emotional ideas” which reminds me of Heaney’s idea that there is a ‘quickening’ when the broad notion of the possibility of a poem appears; and, secondly, the actual hard work in getting it to a stage when it can be ‘abandoned’. Graves saw the first aspect as akin to rubbing Aladdin’s lamp as the idea appears but then the poet has to present this idea, has to use their learned and developed craft to turn this almost magical, pure idea into a poem that communicates effectively – not just the originating idea but in a manner which allows for the poem to have a life of its own that any reader can extract some meaning from. When I was a teenager and beginning to write I was very taken by the Beats and, particularly, by Kerouac’s views on writing. He was convinced that writers are made but what he called genius writers are born. Again, a bit off putting but I think that the core of what he meant lay in his conception of genius – a word which stems from a Latin word meaning, essentially, to beget, to create something original. I think Kerouac would answer your question with another –  “Do you mean writers of talent or writers of originality?”. There are many writers of talent who have learned and, to some extent, mastered their craft but there are very few geniuses, writers of originality which, in terms of poetry,  expand the whole sense of what poetry can achieve, can speak of, can encompass, of what words might say. We have seen a proliferation of creative writing classes/degrees and these do create, usually, writers of talent and, occasionally, writers of genius but I recall Bukowski’s advice to a young poet: ” stay the hell out of writing classes and find out what’s happening around the corner”.


Q:10. How can you tell when a poem is finished?

The easy answer would be to mention Valéry ‘s dictum that a poem is never finished, only abandoned. There is some truth in this. Even with poems that are published in collections I find myself tweaking and adjusting – maybe because the experience of reading to an audience gives a different perspective though this raises a question about whether poems are written to be read or listened to. I guess most poets are looking for as perfect a poem as they can write which may be a path to madness if an unremitting focus on seeking perfection in one poem prevents a poet moving on to engage with other inspirations. I think I mentioned in an earlier response Eliot’s view that you simply have to stop tinkering at some point. 
Maybe you can compare what is happening where you write to a deadline – a commissioned work or a competition entry – to where you write simply to get the best poem you can. It’s the latter process that most poet’s will be grappling with. I guess there is a point reached – informed by your own experience of writing and, indeed, reading poetry – where you know that you have gone as far as you can go with a poem. You can put it to one side and return to it later, keep teasing it out over time. I’ve found workshopping a poem to be useful too – another perspective helps identify problems with a poem that the poet’s proximity ( and emotional and professional commitment) to it sometimes hides. It’s a kind of blindness I guess.

Q:11. When you produce a new collection what in it do you see as a development from your previous collections?

A difficult question to answer. Insofar as each collection seeks to express where I am/was at the particular time of writing the poems the development is in my own perspectives. What develops across all four of my collections with Valley Press is the sense of me as a poet engaging through poetry with the world I’m in – in its broadest sense. The kind of subject matter remains broadly similar – I travel a lot and many poems reflect this but not as travel poetry, rather (as I think I mentioned elsewhere) in terms of Lawrence Durrell’s epigraph which I used in my first collection that travel is the best form of introspection. The title of the current collection doesn’t stray too much from this idea with its quotation from Confucius to remember that wherever you go, there you are.

Q:12. How do you use history in your poetry collections?

Intriguing. I studied History (American) at University and spent 30+ years lecturing in History (American) so my consciousness is very much shaped by a sense of the relationship between past and present and the essential continuity that exists. As William Faulkner put it, “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past”. I listened to the Poetry Society annual lecture a couple of years ago and the marvellous poet Valzhyna Mort said that “poetry tells us how history feels”.

I cannot travel anywhere without researching some understanding of the place and its histories and this interplay emerges constantly in the poetry. Let me give you some examples two from the current collection and one from the third:
• “Bougainvillea in the Shadows” – I was sitting in a village called Haraki on Rhodes under a huge Bougainvillea bush and got to thinking why it was called that and researching the history of it. It is an amazing story and the original poem out of it was focused on Jeanne Baret but it didn’t work too well but out of it came Bougainvillea in the Shadow – a kind of love poem to Jeanne and my muse
• “Listen” – I read a book called ‘Goodbye To A River” written in the 1950s and about a canoe trip down a Texas river that was to be drowned to make a dam. One footnote mentioned John Davis a settler in 1857 who built the first cabin with a wood floor in the area but lost his wife soon after. It seemed to say so much about American westward expansion, human arrogance and the inevitable comeuppance – universal themes I think.
• ‘Remarkable Occurrences” was my third book and half of it is a sequence about Captain James Cook’s first voyage. I had visited Australia and New Zealand several times and it was coming up to the 250th anniversary of the voyage. The sequence is not linear nor does it focus on Cook (there actually isn’t a poem about him) but looks , I suppose, at the meanings of the voyage, the meta voyage, through people and events of it. Informed by history but going beyond it.



Q:13. What does place does landscape have in your work?

I’m not a landscape poet but have a real affinity for place and landscape. I cycle a lot and love the sense of moving fast(ish) through a landscape that constantly changes each trip. It has more and more inclined me to seeing the fragility of it all but also the robustness of the natural world. I noticed when putting together this collection that several poems might be considered ‘ecological’ in their impetus though this was never consciously aimed at. I like to draw out larger themes in my poetry but root them in the tangible, the specific, the real, and landscape is great for this. It requires close observation but allows for infinite speculation. One of the greatest landscape poets – in a sense in which I recognise it and value it – was Seamus Heaney who used the landscape for much wider perspectives on cultural identity, selfhood and history with passion and commitment.

Q:14. How does language use shape your poetry?

Dylan Thomas said ‘love the words’. Poetry is all about words – there isn’t anything else. I delight in words and the search for precisely the correct word in a given poem. Words don’t shape the poetry as such but poems don’t work without the right word – as Dylan T said “there must be no compromise, there is always only the right word: use it”. I once went to an exhibition of his manuscripts and there were several about “Do not go Gentle…” – what struck me was the list after list of words leading out from one in the poem as Dylan looked for that absolutely right word. A poem that flowed magisterially was the product of bloody hard work. Of course Sylvia Plath was a great fan of thesauruses – her own sold for quite a lot at auction. She wrote that she would “rather live with (it) on a desert isle than a bible”  though she recognised that she might be seen as a fraud in using one so openly. It didn’t matter though because every poet searches for that right word and riffs consciously or unconsciously until it is identified. Of course there are digital means available now – you can look up a synonym instantly and swap into a poem with a simple click. Again the technology is less important than finding that ‘right word’. This transcends issues of whether poets should use simple or complex vocabulary – a non-issue in my view. “The best words in the best order” as some poet wrote!

Q:15. How important is narrative as opposed to imagery in your poems?

I try to avoid narrating poems and prefer to give a feel to a poem and its meanings through use of imagery. It makes for much more interesting poems. Sometimes the early drafts of a poem might incline to narrative but this is quickly moved on from – I see it more as an ordering than a narrative.

Q:16. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment. 

My fourth collection was published in February and I’m wholly involved with promoting that and organising its launch (June 5 at the Poetry Pharmacy in York). I have one or two poems on the go at the moment and continue to review poetry books for magazines but no set projects. I was working with the Time and Tide Bell project ( https://www.timeandtidebell.org) which involved visiting each bell and writing a poem about it. I’ve stalled this for the moment as mobility issues meant it was difficult to get to the bells. Two poems from the project are included in ‘There You Are’.

Here are the contribution details:

https://open.substack.com/pub/the880/p/contributions?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=33jsyn

Moon kissed, Earth wrought, Vision drunk: https://bottlecap.press/products/wrought

Karen Pierce Gonzalez is an intuitive, award-winning international artist and writer in the San Francisco Bay. Currently she is ‘Sanctuary’ feature artist with two installations, BirdSong and Women of Babylon, at Cloverdale Arts Alliance Gallery alongside international artist James William Moore, and also has artwork included in ExpoMetro: Madrid (June 2026), a digital, international outdoor public art display.

Other credits include recognition as a National Arts Program feature artist (USA), winning collage artist, City Companions (HedgeHog Poetry Press), and invited artist for  ‘Salmon Run’(Truckenbrod Gallery), and the ekphrastic project, International Poetry Month (The Wombwell Rainbow).  

To date, 98+ of her images journals (including seven covers) have been published in international literary journals. Three of her poetry films appear in (Gas: Poetry, Music, and Art) and her 3D artwork has also been shown in select Pacific West Coast galleries and museums.

More: linktr.ee/KPGFolkHeart

GPH30 The Cleethorpes Rock Company

MO30

FHP30

FHP30

The Wolf Within

In the hour before dawn,
When nothing has decided itself yet,
Something shifts under the last of the dark
Not broken,
Not afraid,
Only waiting.

From the tangle of what came before,
The wolf lifts its head.
It has learned the shape of harm
And lived through it.
Its paws find the ground again,
Sure of it.

It moves
Not rushing,
Not held.
The dark loosens from its coat
As it goes.

At the edge of light
It does not hesitate.
It steps forward,
And keeps going.

Jen Thorne

GHP 30
Cleethorpes Rock

It’s far out past the front, past the shore
past waves breaking
past oysters, lobster tails
and deep
where under sea
darkness lives
only to break—as waves.

——


MO 30

Eye-sun slips
Under indigo—between
Plank and slab—stars

Out of April and into May
Clear-eyed, showered, talking.

————
FHP 30
Tree Hair

Tree hair! Welcome us
back home.
              Behind clear (now) eyes
between two ears—
we roamed for a month
the wild meadows the sculpture park
but bring us home
fold arms around us press lips
and may     we begin.

Dave Garbutt

FHP 30, GPH30, MO30





Munificence



I build 

buried on the beach.


I celebrate

knowing that I am gone.


I cry 

thinking of how he tried.


I weep

for my finalé.


I find munificence

follows brutality.




©️ Elizabeth Cusack
for The Wombwell Rainbow
27 April, 2026

REST

Comes in dreamless sleep.
Slides into your solitude.
Full. Black as shadows.

Sue Finch

Childhood Fancies 
(GPH30, MO30) 

I can not for the life of me; now that I am grown, 
Fathom why the child; who I once was long ago, 
Would ever choose to munch on sugar set as hard as stone. 
Yet back when I was younger, I could never comprehend 
The reason why my parents seemed determined to prevent 
This confectionary heaven that a stick of rock could send 
Any child floating up to... Till my teeth had met their end. 
 
Luke Meyers

Jane Sharp

as disinformation
 
means higher prices, rich make more money.
Easter air is full of sweetness even 
shuttered taste the chocolate factory.
Many will die of hunger this season.
 
Digital prison needs fewer inmates.
We need closer attention. Waking up
or breaking apart, a comet creates
an arc across the sky, silence. Times up.
 
Chocolate factory permanently 
closed. An eternal off season. Summer
arrives but the streets echo with empty.
Locked down. Home confined. Maybe forever.
 
The rich sell stolen you back to yourself.
Unconditional surrender your wealth.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

FPH29

GPH29 The Arcades At Night

MO29

GPH29 

Neon Seduction 

When I was a kid, dragged past these places  
by parents eager to protect, all I wanted  
was to succumb to the beckoning allure  
of neon bright, bingo calling, coin clashing  
buildings where esoteric youths stood waiting,  
cigarettes hanging from limp moustachioed lips  
as they fed their addictions without shame.  
Those doorways pulsed like secret invitations,  
promising something louder than childhood,  
something humming just beyond my reach.  

And then I became the youth, and quickly learned  
I preferred to smoke my cigarettes across  
the road, alone except for the sea - 
its dark, indifferent breath beside me,  
its endless patience outlasting every  
machine’s metallic hunger. The lights still called,  
but I had already stepped into the quiet,  
choosing the salt cold honesty of waves  
over the warm deceit of neon seduction.

Jen Thorne

GHP 29
Archway at night

The archway rings of light grey
the red bin  the distant me
moving on past the poetry arcade

In the morning 300 replicas of me
will stand on the sands
gazing to sea to sunset
over oyster beds and ragwort casts
and the sand rippled like tree rings
focuses the attention of waves.

Dave Garbutt

EARTH BALANCED (MO29)

Right now I am earth balanced,
my feet on the ground.

Gravity pulls 
and love holds me tight.

I am centred by the sun
and curious about my shadow.

The phases of the moon
are still magic to me.

Above me I imagine the sky
and I wonder about the space beyond.

I am listening for faith,
catching whispers in drifts.

Sue Finch

If You Go Down the Arcade at Night 
(GPH29, MO29) 

If you go down the arcade at night, 
You better watch where you roam 
If you go down the arcade at night, 
You better not go alone 
For in the space between the machines 
Amidst the dust that never gets cleaned 
You may just find 
The fright of your life 
Is waiting 

Luke Meyers

Jane Sharp

GPH29



Ravenous


The happy trip is continuous,
When you know that you’re alone;
I see that you are ravenous.

I’ve seen you are ambiguous;
Welcome to the Magic Theatre!
The happy trip is continuous.

Please enter if you’re dangerous!
What you are missing is here;
I see that you are ravenous.

The portal is contiguous;
Though you think that you’re alone,
The happy trip is continuous.

Oh, step in, do not be oblivious!
There are pleasures here;
I see that you are ravenous.

I wonder why I ever cared
About the pleasures there;
The happy trip’s continuous;
I see that you are ravenous.



Elizabeth Cusack
for The Wombwell Rainbow
26 April, 2026 

when everything is amplified
 
It's not love, it's a trigger for us all.
There are prizes to be won if you're rich.
We put in boxes things so thoughtful
we thought would matter, would enrich
 
their lives when we were not here. We did not
have courage to say when we were there
until we see burned children smiling a lot
at simplest gift we have given them. Share
 
a survival map. The most unfiltered 
data, a prize giving. The sky breaking,
keeping you awake. Conflict uncontrolled.
Something broke inside me he said, shaking.
 
War is about weakening currency.
means higher prices, rich make more money.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

MO28

FHP28

GPH28 Prizes

FHP28 

PANIC 

Pulse detonates beneath my ribs, a wild drum. 

Air thins, sharp as broken glass, every colour tilting, too bright, too close. 

Nerves ignite like struck matches, sparks racing my limbs, urging flight. 

I am a figure in motion, all spirals and fire, outrunning my own heartbeat. 

Chaos blooms inside my chest, and I ride it, trembling, until the world steadies.


Jen Thorne


FHP 28
Dance

We are here
                  dance!
spirals in and spirals out
                  dance!
green eyes red lips  as we are
                  dance!
red leg, green leg,
bent leg straight leg
                  dance!
watch the band making music
                  dance!

Dave Garbutt

Jane Sharp

Roll up! Roll up! 
(GPH28, MO28) 

Roll up! Roll up! And try your hand 
Come win the trash that no one wants 
The toys we stock are all off-brand 
And break when they’ve been played with once. 
But in you come, cuz three attempts 
To make a tin can tower fall 
Will cost you two pounds fifty pence 
(Five times the top prize on our stall)  

Luke Meyers

THE SHAPE OF YOU (MO28)

is curves
and dancing.

You are midnight blue
and sunrise orange.

You are cool water
and hot chocolate.

You are the song in my heart.
You are wisdom and experience.

Sue Finch

GPH28

Compensense


Crypto demons

with finger-like claws

bear gifts,

dangle temptations.

The coinage rotates,
rolls out,
moves in formation
from a central axis.

From the vendor
she takes the coin,
an uncrowned king 
with endangered fish.

She takes him to be mint,
receives two hundred compensense.


©️ Elizabeth Cusack 
for The Wombwell Rainbow, 25 April, 2026

i was so eager
 
There are two ground invasions to suffer.
Must be moral or strategic purpose.
Shock, sadness and relief is a teacher.
Lights are sign language. Arcade brightness.
 
A map of the ocean floor was created
to attract gamblers and test temptation.
It's an amazing price we have she said.
Home improvement. Someone with a vision.
 
We're going to win because we're lethal.
Efficient. Nothing can and will go wrong.
Echo chamber this world's material.
Insulated from this what's going on.
 
The self sufficient get a wake up call.
It's not love, it's a trigger for us all.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

GPH27 Inside The Arcade

MO27

FHP27

GPH27 

In the Noise, You Anchor Me 

The lights strobe trying  
to outshout my heartbeat,  
all neon teeth and clatter,  
a carousel of colour too fast  
for the me that wants quiet. 

Everything is too much
tinny music looping,  
the plush toys staring 
with stitched-on joy,  
coins skittering over metal  
like they’re trying to escape too. 

And still  
we feed the machine  
our tiny copper offerings.
Tuppences sliding 
into the bright, hungry mouth.
Because that’s what you do,
you play along  
even when your chest feels tight. 

But then your hand finds mine,  
warm, certain,  
a small gravity in the carnival glare,  
and suddenly the world stops tilting. 

I laugh.
Not because the moment is light,  
but because you make it bearable,  
because in the crush 
of noise and colour  
you steady me  
without asking for anything in return. 

And for a breath,  
the arcade softens,  
and I remember  
I’m not trying to escape the world, 
just trying to stay in it  
with you.

Jen Thorne

Start them Young 
(GPH27) 

Come in, and taste a new addiction. 
Each machine will let you win 
Just once, to start your new affliction 
Dopamine will draw you in! 

Luke Meyers

Jane Sharp

WHEN THE PATHS ARE STRAIGHT AND FLAT (MO27)

Our hips and knees do not announce themselves.
And we can walk for miles.

When the water is calm and warm
we are buoyed and bouncy.

Give us enough of these simple days 
to talk and laugh in.

Let us hold all the memories 
of floating and freedom
so lightness can be our balance.

Sue Finch

MO 27

The raging sea

Shadowed by night in deepest indigo blues
sea rages against the rocks, spitting salt spray
cursing the land in spite, ruing the day.

Hatred boiling, battering waves beat a tattoo
syncopated roiling roll, a noise ridden malaise.
Shadowed by night in deepest indigo blues
sea rages against the rocks, spitting salt spray

Against cliffs, the auspices of a lord of misrule
tiding the tide into torrents of terrible play
the siege of the land as the water holds sway.
Shadowed by night in deepest indigo blues
sea rages against the rocks, spitting salt spray
cursing the land in spite, ruing the day.

Dave Ashley

FHP27




What Love Was Like



Like a marionette

she had fallen

for a martinet

who never arrived;

she tried to imagine

what love was like.



©️ Elizabeth Cusack

for The Wombwell Rainbow

24 April, 2026

i take me back to simpler times
 
into the market when life's big change sucked.
Not on our watch. Literally never 
happened. Fake news. Inside the arcade. Lucked
out Carousel one arm bandit clever.
 
Their permission to live and exist tied 
to performing urge to rewatch the film.
Use the change machine to get more tied
into the default the house always wins.
 
Guardrails have been removed. Prepare. Survive
nuclear winter of misinformation.
What spin will win? Whose world shares fall and rise?
He said  Trust their pattern recognition.
 
I knew we could never be together.
There are two ground invasions to suffer.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

FHP26

GPH26

MO26

GPH26 

Where Beauty Goes Quiet 

The sky blushes, but softly,  
as though colour has grown shy.  
Lavender fades into ash,  
rose into a muted sigh. 

The sea moves without sparkle,  
a hush instead of a hymn.  
Waves fold themselves inward,  
their brilliance worn thin. 

The pier stands like a memory  
of something once adored
its lights dim lantern echoes  
of a glow the world ignored. 

Two figures walk the shoreline,  
their shadows long and low,  
searching for the splendour  
the world forgot to show. 

And yet, in all this quiet,  
a gentler truth appears:  
even muted beauty lingers  
for the ones who choose to hear.

Jen Thorne

Could Ever Art

(GPH26, MO26) 
 
Could ever art match that exquisite gleam 
As crimson sun descends beyond the sea? 
Could oil ever paint those shades of dream, 
Or cameras catch those seeds of fantasy? 

Could ever music find that joyful tone 
That songbirds weave between the eaves of trees, 
In chorus, or as soloist alone 
They mock us with their perfect melodies. 

It seems, though man has strived through history 
To match the wonder of creation’s art 
No substitute exists for Earth’s beauty, 
No way to copy what we let depart. 

So if we wait, and watch the world depart, 
With inspiration gone, could ever art? 

Luke Meyers

OUT OF THE FIRE (MO26)

Tiger-orange flames,
tinged with soot,
rise.

The colours of spring
fleck and dance as I watch.

And later, after the heat,
burnt words
on brown-black paper.

Everything you said
charred and flaking.
Just fragile embers and ash now.

Sue Finch


GHP 26 
Evening

Let us walk on sand
Beside the light
What do we have?

The sand, the water unshaken
The rhythm of walking
And in 12 hours the sun in our faces
Now. Long shadows walk before us
Over the sand.

Dave Garbutt

GPH 26 – evening

Evening stroll on the beach

A simple stroll along the silent sands
bathed in the weakened evening light
waves lapping as we’re hand in hand
looking to the horizon for a certain sight.
The setting sun bathing tides in bronze
rippling towards the aching salty shore
drawn into a caress which goes on and on
evening cold abandoned, our warmth implores.
Foam touches feet sending us scurrying
back along the golden beach towards home,
we laugh loud, wet in whimsical hurrying
realising that in our world we are not alone.
Back towards our romantic tryst
Hearts bathed in sweet amorous mists.

Dave Ashley

Jane Sharp

Mick Jenkinson

GPH26





Port of Call



To the west the light
vanishes ablaze,

A purple haze passes
on flattened waves,

The full moon rises,
darkening the stars,

Every boatman signals
his port of call.





©️Elizabeth Cusack

for The Wombwell Rainbow

23 April, 2026

a brilliance alert
 
They think they've found a second Sphinx, scanning.
It is evening in Cleethorpes. You don't have 
to excavate your whole historying.
So he bought the chuch , your own scattergraph
 
as a voice in his inner council. Slap
of the unseen sea on the darkened beach.
Pick the problem that bothers you most. That
fellow is used to doing things in reach.
 
Inhale seaweed fragrance. We were feral.
It was glorious. Balance all of it.
You need to know this if you want to full
lean into delusion. The way to hit
 
was born because of a purpose. Product
into the market when life's big change sucked.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including The Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

MO25

FHP25

GPH25 Speedboat

ON THE PROMENADE WITH YOU (MO25)

Surely everyone can feel how my soul sings
when I am walking by the sea with you.

Us on solid ground 
flanked by the vastness 
and a horizon that promises forever.

Sharp colours,
clean air.
You.

I am completely in love.

Sue Finch

Fhp 25

Cyclops love

You may only have one eye
but that is enough for me
it cuts down on spectacle costs
you only need one lens to see.

And if people bawl and say
“why love a Cyclops, just why?”
I’ll regale your many good points
like how you make a great lamb pie.

Polyphemus, you’re a canny catch
keep me warm in your golden fleece
you are misjudged and quite lovely
and a real man underneath!!

Dave Ashley

MO25 

I Should Have Been a Surfer 

When I was a kid, I saw a show:  
seals juggling beach balls,  
a parrot on a skateboard.  
A small, forgettable memory
or so I thought. 

Lately, I find myself back there,  
sitting on that black chipboard bench,  
wondering if I should have been a surfer. 

It’s a stretch, I know.  
But hear me out. 

A seal and a parrot have no business  
balancing with plastic toys,  
yet there they were 
earning their fish and seed  
in ways that made no sense  
to the wild that shaped them. 

And now I sit  
in a damp tin silo  
dressed up as an Aztec temple,  
thinking about the forty years since,  
and what might have happened  
had I stepped beyond  
my own natural habitat.

Jen Thorne

Mick Jenkinson

FHP25





jazzz



rhythmic harmonies  calls and responses 
 
it gives you freedom  a talisman to hold

an unknown beginning   passing down wisdom

the lyrics of the blues   emotions beliefs blended

together drums of communication  adapted interpreted

lucky charms roots herbs violins and banjos

the age of recorded blues  the music began to spread

speak truth  play anything  a starting point listening to

the blues  storytelling folk tales  expressions of 

dance and culture  beats and tones  devil songs

perform  compose  reflect the change 

 express yourself  whether or not ….

©️Elizabeth Cusack, 22 April, 2026

Jane Sharp

so what can I do here?
 
Check this out if nothing works. War is won.
Cheap drones to stop smart aircraft carriers.
"I need to confess something, that's hamstrung
me for years." she said " Remove barriers"
 
This retreat is not a retreat. No win
abandonment, a posture adjustment, 
strategic relocation, business spin,
precautionary redeployment.
 
It is a speedboat as jet water bike.
It is surrender as clear victory.
It is we are the best in the world hiked
when it is body-bags and wordery.
 
Here's the part that nobody saw coming.
They think they've found a second Sphinx, scanning.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.

GPH24 Donkey Rides

MO24

FHP24

FHP24 

Tranquil 

Ancient races
lie buried in time,
beneath a bucolic calm. 

Docile cattle graze,
soft-mouthed and unknowing,
among the remnants
of bloodied ground
above temples and statues,
standing dark, silent,
their eyes emptied
into chasms
no hand has traced. 

Ghosts keep their vigil,
watching as time
unthreads the world. 

Nature loosens the seams,
reveals what was hidden,
and writes again
what they once made.

Jen Thorne

EVIDENCE OF MY SOLIDITY

The sun stencils my shadow black.

But I am difficult to touch,
featureless, flat.

As the earth moves,
and the days are marked,
the shape of me shifts.

I am squat,
I am alien tall.

On cloudy days 
I fade in and out.

Sue Finch

MO 24


Parting the curtain.


Inside the world is defined

a definition of room
subsumed by darkness
as I lounge on the bed,
unmade. A landscape
of haphazard sheets
and disparaging duvet.

Motes of light invade through
the curtain crack, illuminating
dust particles that swirl
and eddy on the breeze.
Outside the world is undefined
chaos of light and noise,
of people, of cars, of life.

Time to part the curtain,
look beyond the veil,
time to breathe civility again.

Dave Ashley

Jane Sharp

FHP24



Her Time


The plague receded
in those lean fast times.

She became for him
unfashionable,

Her curling fair hair,
her willful quick mind.

Though formidable,
she’d been mannered, kind.

She was culled when
she’d exceeded her time.



©️ Elizabeth Cusack

for The Wombwell Rainbow

21 April, 2026

GPH24



Can’t Forget


In their childhood, they traversed many miles
of dry rock and sand, stopping to assess.

Handled with gentility, time was spent,
no demands were made; they built a close bond.

They learned subtle and focused comforting;
they were chosen and chose to be willing.

They took a small step, needing extra time;
rewarded they were calmed, never beaten.

In my life, I will never recover;
the child inside me still wants, can’t forget.



©️ Elizabeth Cusack

for The Wombwell Rainbow

21 April, 2026

they don't now
 
Sharp gulls flock dust flies at your brusque shushing.
Lifted up to stroke hooved beast's big skull,
bony back, coarse hair, tiny hands grasping
as the donkeys are led by owner's pull
 
down the beach. I wobble atop, steadied 
by dad more bird than reptile truth is sorely
uncomfortable for both camps proceed
shifting my bottom cheek to cheek poorly.
 
The body keeps processing what the brain
refuses to face in this centuries
asymmetrical war. Maximize pain
with minimal cost. Cause more injuries.
 
Sharpen your axe. A blunt one is no fun.
Check this out if nothing works. War is won.

Paul Brookes

Artworker Bios And Artistic Statements

Molly Ovenden (MO)

Artist Statement:

In this April 2026 collection, “New Light, Returning Daily,” I wanted to explore using familiar materials with unfamiliar methods. I combined off-cuts from my “scrapings” paintings, pages from a rescued Bible that had been damaged, and a variety of mixed media materials to make something new with collage in a cohesive collection. When I consider how day-to-day life can feel mundane, the same day-after-day, or simply a repeat of dull life that offers next to no progress, I easily miss the beauty in small, secret, quiet moments. As this series of 30 pieces unfolds, I created it to capture the variety, emotions, beauty, and depth of everyday life on the daily; viewing each piece (or, each day this month) separately may reveal one thing for a viewer, but to experience each piece together may offer a new perspective, a new light, on our everyday mundane upon returning daily.

Bio:

Molly Ovenden is a contemplative poet and painter based in Leeds, England. She writes poems for people on the spot with her vintage typewriter and moments of emotion through expressive abstract paintings. For Molly, inspiration comes from running and wandering through nature, seeking God in everyday small moments, and holding spaces for people to be present with emotions. Molly believes that everyone is made to create: whether they paint or write poetry, or build literal bridges as a civil engineer or relational bridges as a great neighbour, it all takes creativity. The concept “Beauty is an arrow of Hope that points to Peace” drives Molly to capture, create, and share beauty with others–especially through poems and paintings.

Contact for Availability and Purchasing:

To view full collection, visit: https://mollyovenden.com/art/

To contact for availability and Purchasing – UK only shipping – visit: https://mollyovenden.com/contact/Facebook | Instagram – @mollyovendencreativity For Blog About Artwork, visit: 

https://mollyovenden.substack.com/

Phil Hyde

GP Hyde was born on the Wirral and now lives in Grimsby, North East Lincolnshire, UK. He studied fine art and photography at Goldsmith’s College and at the Royal Academy Schools. He worked in theatre, art centres and community arts as a photographer, writer and production manager for 14 years and as a lecturer and senior manager in creative arts for 25 years.

His photography has been featured in Underbelly Press in issues 5 and 6. His influences include Tony Ray Jones, Martin Parr and Tom Wood.

socials: @gphydeauthor

Francis H Powell

Francis H. Powell studied both painting and printmaking at art schools in Britain, obtaining a Master of Arts degree. Since leaving art school, he has participated in exhibitions in both the UK and France, including group exhibitions and solo shows. His work ranges across paintings, drawings, mixed media, sculptures, and installations, sometimes incorporating political themes, such as plastic waste in the sea. His installations also include soundscapes and video. In addition to his visual art, his illustrations have been included in books.  

Below is a list of exhibitions…

Exhibitions 20252024//2023 Salon d’art de Moret-Loing-et-Orvanne

2022 show Studio 58, Brittany 2015 One man show Style Pixie Gallery 2008 one man show gallerie L’Usine Paris 2007 one man show Theatre du Poche. Chartres. 2006 l’église de L’hôpital de la Salpêtrière 2006 Carrousel du Louvre 2005 Group Exhibition IVY Gallery Bastille 2005 Vente Art Contemporain, Paris and Marseille. (for Aides charity) 2001 Live Art Show le Divan du Monde Paris. 1987 Final Post graduate show, Wimbledon School of Art. 1987 Royal Society of Painter, Etchers and Engravers, Bankside Gallery 1986 “In and out of print”, Swiss College Library Exhibition Hall 1985 Studies in composition (the Professor studio) the Royal College of Art 1983 Leicestershire Collection for schools and Colleges Baumanor Hall 1983 Stowells Trophy Royal Academy 1983 Windsor and Newton Finalist Royal Institute of Painters Mall Gallery Studied at 1985-87 Wimbledon School of Art MA printmaking. 1979-80 Eastbourne College of Art 1980-83 Glos College of Art and Technology BA (Hons) painting  

Author Bios:

Jen Thorne

C. Oulens 

is an emerging poet and former academic from India. Winner of the 3rd Annual Poe-It Like Poe 2025 poetry contest, her work has been published or is forthcoming in The Broken Spine, Lothlorien Poetry Journal, The Candyman’s Trumpet, Eunoia Review, Spillwords Press, The Starbeck Orion, Temple in a City, Sixty Odd Poets, SHINE International, The Book Bag, FromOneLine, SciFanSat, Verseve and in haiku journals including Pan Haiku Review, 575 Haiku Journal, Poetry Pea, The Wee Sparrows, Haiku Pause, The Solitary Daisy, Folk Ku, Failed Haiku, and Heterodox Haiku. Explore her works on Bluesky @owlnsquirrels1111.bsky.social.

Jane Sharp

Donna Faulkner

lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. Free spirited and unconventional, she came to the business of writing later in life. She’s published in The Madrid Review , Alchemy Spoon,  The Bayou Review, 300 Days of Sun, Windward Review, Havik, New Myths, and many others. Her poetry book In Silver Majesty was published by the UK based erbacce press in 2024.https://www.erbacce-press.co.uk/donna-faulkner

Instagram: @lady_lilith_poet  X@nee_miller  

Website: https://linktr.ee/donnafaulkner

Lin Hart

Lin describes herself as a poet, satirist, and zinester from West Virginia. A married, mother of two who eats numbers for work and is definitely a neurospicy cryptid in disguise. Find out more on Bluesky.

Luke Meyers

Luke is a Welsh performer and poet who discovered a love of writing during the lockdown. Luke mainly writes on Bluesky @sonnetsmith.bsky.social but has also been published in a couple of publications, including the British Fantasy Journal, Icebrakers Lit. Muse Pie Press, From One Line, and Oatleaf Poetry Journal.

Sue Finch

Sue Finch is the author of Magnifying Glass, Welcome to the Museum of a Life, and Vortex Over Wave. She loves the coast, peculiar things, and the scent of ice-cream freezers. 

Mick Jenkinson

Jenni Thorne

is a writer from the Black Country in the UK, and winner of the New2theScene poetry prize for 2025, and has had her work published in various poetry collections and on-line jornals including Starbeck Orion, Ink, Sweat and Tears, April Showers, Dark Poets, Broken Spine and the Sixty Odd Poets Heresy collection. 

Her work explores the weight of the ordinary, the need for belonging, and the way the lessons of the past and the pressures of modern life shape us.

She shares her writing on Bluesky @jenthorne.bsky.social.