Welcome To The Wombwell Rainbow Ekphrastic Challenge 2026 featuring 16 creatives responding to 3 artworks a day, over 30 days. Artworkers are Phil Hyde, Francis H Powell and Molly Ovenden. Day One of Thirty.

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FHP1

GPH01 Winter’s snow by Cleethorpes Pier

MO1

Lin Hart (MO1)

Lin Hart (FHP1)

Lin Hart (GPH1) Haiku Breakup Story

Peter J King

C Oulens

C Oulens

Sue Finch (MO1)

Snowy Beach

When a devil goes on holiday
they seek the best that earth can be:
cool water, sand between their hooves,
the crisp shiver of snow blowing into heaps;
empty houses, empty roads,
restaurants with no more chefs
chalk menus outside all October running in the rain.
But most of all no-one screaming for ice-cream.

Here in winter Cleethorpes, it is.
An innovative business model—
If we could but shame a devil into paying
Instead of promising then fading to
invisibility as they walk the pier
then takes the air—to leave it colder.

Dave Garbutt (GPH01)

Jen Thorne

The Old Pier
(GPH01, MO1)

I remember our trips
To the Western pier
The one penny cups
that you’d saved all year
So that we could play
The arcades,
and how you’d complain 
When we’d win
That we’d only gone there
To empty your shrapnel tin
And now where
Would you keep
All the extra spare change
That against odds 
We always seemed to bring back

And I remember the stack
Of plastic toy swords
that you kept in the shed,
Our favourite rewards
from the prize counter
hoards of the things
that would shatter
with every clatter
But still, we’d never learn. 
How I long to return,
but the pier has burned
And nothing is left
Of the arcade we knew,
Just the as; of the pier,
And of you.

Luke Meyers

Dave Ashley

Jane Sharp

Steve Silas Hendrikson

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.

Peter J. King

was active on the London poetry scene in the 1970s. Since returning to poetry in 2013 after a long absence he’s published four collections, the latest being Contact Light (2025, Alien Buddha Press).  He also translates, mainly from modern Greek and German, writes short prose, and paints.

https://wisdomsbottompress.wordpress.com/peter-j-king/

Dave Garbutt

Dave has been writing poetry for longer than he can remember, for a long time it was a tool of procrastination but since he retired that has become housework. Dave is a long time birder and writes often about our nature and about nature without us. He has been published in several places including the Wombwell Rainbow, Molecules Unlimited, Iamb, and has been long listed in the Rialto Nature & Place competition twice.

He moved to NW Switzerland for work 30 years ago and has stayed for his family, snow boarding, and the Common Redstarts of his local orchard. He leads regular birding walks and co-founded two poetry writing groups since 1990. 

#NationalPoetryDay October 1st 2020 poetry and artwork challenge. The theme is “Vision”. Ocular or metaphorical welcome, unpublished/published work welcome. Join Rachael Ikins, Gregory Luce, Kit+CY and myself. DM me on Twitter or send a message via my WordPress site. I will feature all work submitted.

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“Invisible Me” A photo series by Rachael Ikins

Gabby

Leonard

Rachael comments “I have always been fascinated with eyes and faces in all media of my artwork.”

Lulled

the giants are here
they mollycoddle me cuddle me feed me a jugful of uncurdled milk
they spoon pureed peaches into my gurgling mouth then sing lullabies to soothe me to sleep
they promise me the world and everything that’s not extinct by the time I’m old enough to know the difference between a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus
then while I dream they go and start a revolution to save the oceans the earth the skies
they leave Argus Panoptes to watch over me
and I am safe
protected
unaware a hundred cataracts haunt his dauntless eyes

-Spangle McQueen

See in the Dark

“When what you write about is what you see,
what do you write about when it’s dark?”
—Charles Wright

Faces of lost loves
and my sons when
they were small,
heat shimmer off
a Texas highway
when I was a boy,
the woman gesturing
to no one on the bus
this morning.
Even with the light off
it’s never completely dark:
I can see the pale green
numbers on a digital clock
and streetlight filtered
by the blinds and
ambient light from
who knows where.

-Gregory Luce

Tantalum Lenses
‘I did nothing wrong’—Dominic Cummings

I crossed the polished marble floor
and found the politician’s optician at home.
His door was always open
for eye tests and fittings.

He looked long and hard into my eyes.
He’d damaged his own eyesight
writing illuminated text
by candle light.

He said there was no need to change my prescription—
exposure to his line of sight
had scratched my tantalum* lenses
with his vision.

*Tantalum is a conflict resource used in mobile phones, DVD players, video game systems and computers.

-Kit + CY

Twenty Twenty Vision
Masked and long division
Nature human fission
The World or us…
Decision?
-Mivvy Tekchandani

. a vision request .

Posted on 

early while driving.                     omen repeating

sometimes the sun comes lower after the crest

one moment

imagine them marching,           slow & white.

will you name them?

in the wake all things come clear.

slow & white.

later below the peaks i tell him. he said it is

the dark crystal.

sbm.

A Vision by sonja

https://sonjabenskinmesher.wordpress.com/2017/11/09/a-vision-request/

. a470 .

Posted on 

sun hit the sea,

i was blinded,

by my own

shortcomings.

sbm.

Shortcomings By sbm

Picasso

Out of blank space
gouge out shapes
of apples and light,
as instrument digs
a blister into palm

He cannot afford mistakes,
steady handed controls
citrus bite of wives
and mistresses.

Strong stink of oxidized linseed oil,
resins, ground cork, wood flour
and pigment all pressed together
and flattened. In later life
after bull sunned atrocities.

If mistakes made
disguise, or begin again.
A head on challenge.
Black eyes carve the shapes,
Print bold red, yellow and green.
A still life, unstilled creation.

-Paul Brookes

Welcome To The Wombwell Rainbow Ekphrastic Challenge 2026 featuring 16 creatives responding to 3 artworks a day, over 30 days. Artworkers are Phil Hyde, Francis H Powell and Molly Ovenden. Day Five of Thirty.

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GPH5

MO5

FHP5
This Fortunate Ride (GPH05, FHP5)


A moment’s pleasure only made me sad,

filled with regret and melancholia,

devastation, a summer so lonely

it was a showboat that never arrived.



Why did I buy it for the price I paid, 

lurching pain, aching possibility,

every part of me lost but for its cause,

spinning atop a moment that craters.



A child might believe, her eyes open wide;

mine are reliquary, deaths now proceeding;

I will no longer keep up a pretense,

live for the moment, excitement, suspense.



Love is a facade in this seaport town,

a fronted, busted, bemused accident,

a pestilent, tragic farce that is spent,

and the broken hearts put on a defence.



Though I am quite dead, I will only smile, 

shed no tears and stare, look out for awhile;

how lovely it is; if I would but blink,

I could move on now, as you always think.



There comes another every-day, but

I get up each morning wasted away;

wheels come around, and then they do decide,

the passenger leaves her appointed time.



The amused man lies and even pretends;

the summer has died, and the fall begins, 

winter is so kind, bottled up inside,

no answer on high, just suffer and die.



Seaside amusement, helter-skelter pride,

formation spiralled, then storm-cloud reside,

plinth and bust portrait, a mask and disguise,

spin me around on this fortunate ride.





Elizabeth Cusack

4 April, 2026



Lin Hart

GPH 05 

Storage


I am the box of the world
I contain all, and hope.

Who could open me?
Not you, small human,

you think of big wheels
and spiral slides

watching blue sky 
and turning

but you must wait, in July
she with the key will return

and you can think 
inside the box again.

Little human, it's what you like!

Dave Garbutt


Jane Sharp (FHP5)

My Father’s Box 
(GPH05 MO5) 

He had a box; 
A shed in fact,  
That sat somewhere 
Halfway between  
This place, and that. 
 
And people came, 
Cause people thought 
The treasure that 
They couldn’t find 
When he was caught 
 
Was hidden there 
Inside his box, 
Inside his shed, 
they’d wander up 
And break the lock 
 
To rifle through 
his bits of junk: 
Old newspapers, 
And bits of wood, 
A broken trunk. 
 
They always thought 
They’d got it then, 
As if that trunk 
Had not been seen 
Yet before them 
 
And then they’d leave 
And never find 
The treasure, just 
A figment of 
Their greedy minds, 
 
There was no Gold, 
Had never been 
The treasure that 
My father left 
Behind was Me. 

Luke Meyers
GPH 5 Storage

Pandora

Look inside, look deep inside, just there
within the locked room, you’ve opened
and in the essence of the dank gloom
there is that box where words are spoken.
Deep inside, yes deep inside, open the lid
gaze down into its darkened depths,
as the noise becomes a cacophony
now exposed the secret that was kept.
All the evils clawing up the walls
to escape their arcane prison home
but there is no hope left, it was consumed
leaving just dust, gore and bone.
The Pandora’s box opened, curses fled
humanity’s end, humanity dead.

Dave Ashley
FHP 5

even on a pedestal
her roots 
remember—

C Oulens


we all know someone
 
Access the money of your view's full take.
See her bloom from a vase far too small for 
her whilst the tree outside spreads roots and great
crown into earth and sky. If you explore
 
and manage to read this backwards it means
who is the most hated no upfront costs 
this and this and this four scary facts scream
about eliminator lives lost
 
a loophole on winter's beachhead, due 
to restrictions on this platform this product 
means you age backwards. Workmen hack new
roots that the outside tree has grown. Deduct,
 
relandscape whilst inside she is placed in
a bigger vase so she can flourish again.
 

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.

Welcome To The Wombwell Rainbow Ekphrastic Challenge 2026 featuring 16 creatives responding to 3 artworks a day, over 30 days. Artworkers are Phil Hyde, Francis H Powell and Molly Ovenden. Day Four of Thirty.

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FHP4

GPH4

MO4

Lin Hart (GPH4)

The Smile Factory 
(GPH04 MO4) 
 
They painted fun on all the windows 
And hung toys around the door  
Then they advertised a service 
“Children watched whilst you ignore!” 
Yes their prices were extortion 
And the coffee cold and weak 
But there was no better option 
For a tired mum to seek 
A rest from all the shouting 
And the chaos of the home 
So they’d send their offspring packing 
Through the doors into the foam- 
Filled paradise  
Of the Smile Factory. 

And they’d sit around a table 
Drink a dozen pots of tea 
Not a thought to what might happen  
Through those doors marked No Entry! 
Yes, they all could hear the screaming 
And the shouting, and the cries 
‘Cause the children were all playing, 
So of course there would be noise 
Then an hour or two later 
When the little ones would race 
back from out behind the curtains 
Grins spread wide across their face 
No one questioned what the tears 
Meant that trickled down their cheeks 
And instead they bought them all  
Right back there every other week 
to the joys 
Of the Smile  Factory. 

And on it went, for many years, 
‘Till one day, suddenly 
The newest Mum decided that 
She simply had to see 
What went on behind the curtain 
Why her children weren’t so wild 
When they came home every forghtnight 
And became so meek and mild, 
So she peeked passed the no entry 
And was  greeted by a scene 
That her children saw bi-weekly 
And she screamed! 
All the others soon came running 
The police turned up to raid 
But a thousand lawyers failed to claim 
The money that they’d paid 
And they’d paid 
And they’d paid 
To the Smile Factory.

Luke Meyers

FHP4

The blue sky, red clouds,

merge into purple

as the ash falls down,

the mountains flowing,

and the seas scattering,

as I look eastward;

 

Fine violet hues are

hugging the coastline,

and the southern sky

emerges yellow

in soft golden hues,

bubbling sunset greens;

 

My eyes wide open,

I am remembering,

floating and waving,

mirages freezing

fallen molten ash

burning the shoreline.

Elizabeth Cusack

3 April, 2026

 

Jane Sharp (FHP4)

Dave Garbutt

GPH04 

The heart has downed its shutters
No eyes on this street
Not sure darling, 
I’ll find
a smile worthwhile 
to bring you home

C.Oulens



FHP 4
Muse 

She floats about the ephemeral clouds
free of all restraints,
where worldly worries cannot reach
or hold dominion.
She is the light who radiates hope
showering scintillating love,
smiling with all her heart beating true
and live for all.
She rails the breeze to blow away
cobwebs of indecision,
bringing inspiration as clear as day
a Muse in every single way. 

Dave Ashley
CROCUS

You rise purple from the green
against dilapidated creosoted fence panels.

She started my love for you;
back when I thought it was an effort 
to bury you in the ground,
when waiting a year seemed so long.

You rise in spring. And I rejoice.

Sue Finch (MO4)

Book Keepers
 
to wake up your friend to see this rough sky
where the smile factory wears a steel frown 
of shutters and its bin clear mouthed and dry
and not overflowing. Not in this town.
 
We're still investigating our own crime
The atrocity. We have destroyed them.
Now transitioning densities in time.
Middle East is drawn by two maproom men.
 
I'd rather be dragged behind a car. An 
animal never reverts back to its 
former state exactly. Adaptation
eye training is close observation, fit
 
demands approval before you can take,
access the money of your view's full take.

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.

Welcome To The Wombwell Rainbow Ekphrastic Challenge 2026 featuring 16 creatives responding to 3 artworks a day, over 30 days. Artworkers are Phil Hyde, Francis H Powell and Molly Ovenden. Day Three of Thirty.

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MO3

FHP3

GPH3 The sun returns

C Oulens

Lin Hart (MO3)

Lin Hart (GPH3)

Gph - 03

Spring Sun

Spring ushers in a reprieve to breathe
revolving a resolution, a candid solution
striven and given, a concept conceived,
a mission of fictions bathed in confusion.

Reprieve, Breathe with breath bated thus
transient patent of portent pleasure posed
consuming the blooming of those who trust
the suns reawakening, clothed in throes.

High in the sky, a radiance reigned,
showers of gold, untold hues scintillating
all manner of warmth, in heat unrestrained
brilliant brilliance, heavenly conflating.

Spring in its earnest summons back the sun
winter waves goodbye, its reign undone

Dave Ashley

Jen Thorne

A Parting of the Clouds

(GPH03 MO3)



A parting of the clouds

Casts a gentle yellow haze

That, Filtered through the canopy

Just sets the woods ablaze.

Birds perform ballets

Between the flickers in the rays

They swoop and dive so carefree

In those early Summer days

To Carpe Diem Whilst it lasts

before the sullen greys

Of storm clouds slowly wander

Back across the stage.



Luke Meyers
Sue Finch (MO3)
Sun Returns

The devil fades from the distant pier 
it’s too bright here to breathe.

The sun conspires with ripples 
of sand to mark a road of light 
divided into four by jetties.

We are four lives away 
from half the love of the lives 
we see here:

wormcasts of solitary nereids
Razorshells, their bubbles,
Cockles raising an edge
against the Oystercatcher

And humans, distant humans, 
walking the glacial mud and searching, 
for love and food always for love and food.

Dave Garbutt (GPH3)

a sun returns

 

This cracked family is ruined desire.

Unclouded sun bedecks incoming wave

galaxies with light. Oh delight aspire.

My head is crowned with mosques and clear roadways.

 

“Death fire and fury ahead the timeline.”

She says. When the song comes on you know

your age. How did he avoid a fall there? Time

divided the entire Middle East. Know

 

nothing explicit would be shown. Sunned tide

glistens in. The beach will have the hammer.

Its not over until the last stone tried

is thrown toward the ruin’s clamour.

 

Hidden walls and how to break free. Try

to wake up your friend to see this rough sky.

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.

Welcome To The Wombwell Rainbow Ekphrastic Challenge 2026 featuring 16 creatives responding to 3 artworks a day, over 30 days. Artworkers are Phil Hyde, Francis H Powell and Molly Ovenden. Day Two of Thirty.

/ The Wombwell Rainbow / Leave a comment
GPH02 Slush

MO2

FHP2

Jen Thorne

Sue Finch (MO2)

Lin Hart (FHP2)

Lin Hart (MO2)

Lin Hart Haiku Breakup GPH2

Dave Ashley

Jane Sharp

C Oulens

Empty Streets
(GPH02 MO2)

Boarded up windows
Reflecting grey skies
The death of the high street
Diverting no eyes
As each passer by
Ignores the stores
Where they used to buy
The joy and wonder
They now find
Online.

Luke Meyers
Scissors 

Scissors—a crocodile—
comes for our world our words
and tears first laws, then jokes,
then history, and next—the future.

All non-crocodilian futures
bitten to flakes, even the books
our feathers, the spines,
the loops positrons make 
in the ink-chamber of sight.

Did we not clean your teeth?

Dave Garbutt (MO2)
Elizabeth Cusack
The Red Flags (All Artworks)
 
See a ruin it might matter one day.
Everything is broken. Not showing
his face. Very faithful words. Waterway
in a war zone. I am purifying
 
said the fragment. They want to kill us we'll 
kill them first my fierce angel we rough
wrap around one another in this healed
grave you're trying to be perfect enough
 
that he stops noticing others. Passive.
Choice is active. He's a seaside shuttered
stall that still notices that effective
war slosh of rain sleet snow ice unfettered.
 
Beyond this wrapped grave the whole world's on fire.
This cracked family is ruined desire.

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.

Wombwell Rainbow Book Interviews: Zoe Brooks On Something In Nothing

/ The Wombwell Rainbow / 2 Comments

The Bio

Zoe Brooks lives in Gloucestershire, England. Her long poem for voices Fool’s Paradise won the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition award for best poetry ebook 2013. Her collection Owl Unbound was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in October 2020 and Fool’s Paradise was published as a print book by Black Eyes Publishing in 2022.

She has been widely published in print and online magazines. My poems have appeared in a number of anthologies, including Wagtail: The Roma Women’s Poetry Anthology (Butcher’s Dog) and Contemporary Surrealist and Magic Realist Poetry (Lamar University Press).

She is a director of the Cheltenham Poetry Festival, leading on the Festival’s year-round online programme. She has given readings at many poetry events, both online and in-person. (Bio kindly used from Amazon)

The Books

To buy her books (pub 2020) click here. https://zoebrookspoetry.bigcartel.com/products Website: https://www.zoebrookspoet.co.uk/

The Free Online Launch 31st March

Zoe would love for you to attend the online launch of this new book:

The link to get free tickets is: https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/cheltenhampoetryfestival/t-oejjzkp

THE INTERVIEW

Q:1. How did you decide on how the poems were ordered?

The collection is a story, made up of the narratives of various fairytale characters, so to some degree that made it easier. There is a beginning, middle and end in the story.  But as you know, stories are not necessarily told in chronological order. You may introduce a character and then tell their backstory, as I do with the older woman character. I needed to ensure that each character’s thread worked with each other’s as the story progresses to the end. I also wanted to weave a number of themes into the collection – for example the theme of gardening, so that when a gardening image appears it echoes in the mind of the reader. In order to manage all this I created a spreadsheet with poems listed down one side and characters and themes along the top. Then I laid all the poems on my floor and started gathering them up, playing with the order until I was happy.

Q:1.1. Why choose poetry instead of prose to tell the story?

One reason for me writing poetry rather than prose is that poetry is designed (mine is certainly) to work both on the page and read out loud. I refer to myself as a writer and performer of poetry. The oral tradition, with the importance of the sound of words, is particularly strong in poetry and very important to me.

A second reason is the use of metaphor in poetry. In a way the whole collection is a metaphor about something very real. The fairytale characters are metaphors and the use of both fairy tales and metaphors help with tackling very difficult subjects.

Of course these are my takes on poetry and prose and other people will have other views.

Q:1.1.1. What makes the oral tradition and the spoken word important to you?

I grew up with it and in it. I belonged to an arts centre for young people in Cheltenham where we wrote and performed poetry. Later I was in Michael Horovitz’s Grandchildren of Albion. I read as part of the Michael’s New Departures/Poetry Olympics. So from the word go I was writing for the voice.

I always read a new poem out loud to check if it works. If I stumble, I know something’s wrong. How I structure my poem on the page is partly a way of indicating how the poem should sound.

That brings me to the heart of my answer. Poetry for me is about communication through sound – like music it has rhythm, pacing and cadences. 

Q:2. How did you choose the title of your book?

One of the first poems I wrote in the collection was “Baba Yaga’s Cottage”, which has the lines:

Something is there in the forest

– something and nothing.

For that is what Baba Yaga has

– something that is nothing.

I pick up the something and nothing phrase and transform it in the poem “Tapestry 1”, which ends with the line:

the hole that is something in nothing.

I like to use a phrase in common use and twist it like this, turning the rather dismissive phrase “something and nothing” into something sinister – the implied threat of “something in nothing.”  It is a good way of making the reader think twice about what they are reading.

The “something in nothing” of the poem is evil and death hiding in plain sight.  

Q:3. As this is the third of your poetry books, that I know of, what kind of development can you see?

I find it difficult to see development because of the way I wrote my three books. I wrote some of the poems in my first collection after I had begun the second and third books. I take many years to write books and move between different projects. Of course I change during the course of writing a collection, developing the approach to fit the aim of the book. All three books have very different approaches and structure. 

Q:3.1. How does your approach and structure to book three differ from books one and two?

Owl Unbound (my first print book) was very much a collection of freestanding poems, as are most collections. Fool’s Paradise (the second book) was a long poem written for several voices. On the page Fool’s Paradise looks like a play and indeed it has been described as a verse play. Although I never visualised it on a stage it would have worked as a radio play perhaps. Something In Nothing is a collection of poems, but it has a narrative that links the poems, so in a way Something In Nothing structurally is a hybrid of the two. Another aspect of Something In Nothing that is different from the other two books is that it has a narrator’s voice, similar to that in fiction. At times it directly addresses the reader.

Q:4. How important is poetic form for the shape of poems in “Something in Nothing”?

The form of the individual poems in Something in Nothing is pretty consistent. It is influenced by a number of factors: the first being that the poems are designed to be read both on the page and out loud and so the line breaks are used as a means of showing where to breathe, where to pause (evenly slightly). This tends to mean that I prefer shorter lines.

A major influence is of course fairy tales and nursery rhymes. The latter is the first poetry form that our generation experienced and therefore there is something primal about it and many people share. Throughout the collection there are poems that reference nursery rhymes – in terms of structure, rhythms and phrases.

The forms I use hopefully make the poems appear accessible to the reader, as I very much want the collection to have a readership that perhaps goes beyond the normal contemporary poetry one. Once the reader has started reading, they will find that there is a complexity which is built up through the collection.

Q:5. Why did you choose the story of Bluebeard to anchor it all?

The fairy tale of Bluebeard is not as well known as many other tales, partly because of its dark nature. The collection uses fairy tales to look at the issue of evil and how we deny its existence. That is after all what we are doing when we tell fairy tales to children: they say don’t take sweets from strangers, don’t trust even people you know, there are danger and evil people in the world. Fairy tales afford a safe place to teach children these lessons.

The reason for my choice of a story about a serial killer of women and his potential victim to anchor Something In Nothing lies in what partly inspired me, if “inspire” is the right word. When I was a teenager I knew a young woman who was murdered by a serial killer. That made me particularly aware, but I think most women have that awareness of danger. 


Q:6. In the Afterword you see fairy tales as metaphorical what place do images have in your poetry?

Fairy tales are not specific – they have various devices to ensure we know this, for example they start “Once upon a time…” and “in a land far away”.  But in Something In Nothing I am placing fairytale characters in a contemporary setting, in the real world. To create that reality I use images: they ground the story in specifics. In the poem “The Woman’s Cottage” – Impressions we see the cottage for the first time through the eyes of The Luminous Girl who is observing a collection of objects. In “Bluebeard’s Garden”we see named dying plants. The town is described in some detail – its parks, its cathedral, the docks, the river estuary. I very much want that tension of fairy tale and reality in the collection. I want the reader to feel that they are not part of Bluebeard’s and Baba Yaga’s world, but they could be. 

Of course images can become metaphors, especially if you layer images over the course of a book. A dead rose bush in Beauty’s garden is both a real plant and a metaphor for decay and loss.

Q:7. After they have read or heard it what do you want the reader or audience to leave with?

That is a difficult question! A poem exists somewhere between the poet and the reader or listener. Sometimes they will find something in my poem that I was not aware of. I find it fascinating the way different readers bring their own experiences to the poems.

Since you first asked me this question I have begun to get readers’ feedback. What has surprised me is that repeatedly readers comment that the collection is compelling, even that they couldn’t put it down. I suppose this because of the narrative nature of the work.

But to answer your question directly I would say that n these difficult times we need to illuminate what is hiding in the dark, not look away. Something In Nothing tries to do that and to encourage readers to look both outwards and into themselves. But I do not want them to just look at the dark, the word “illuminate” is important here. We need light to see the dark. The collection ends with the poem “Into the Light”: that’s important. 

The Wombwell Rainbow Book Interviews: Matt Nicholson

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Matt Nicholson is a poet and performer from East Yorkshire. He published his fifth collection, Side-eye, on Yaffle Press, in the summer of 2025. He often performs with 3 other Hull poets as “The 4 Johns”. His work is sometimes dark and visceral, but also sensitive and heart-wrenchingly honest, and even sometimes funny, leading Helen Mort to describe his poems as “capable of breaking your heart and mending it again”. He has toured all around mainland Britain and loves performing to new audiences. For books and more information please visit http://www.mattpoet.com.

The Interview (Originally begun in 2023, updated by Matt in 2025)

Q1 (2023): I last interviewed you in 2020. Please tell me what you’ve been up to since then?

A1(2023): The big project that filled my writing time in 2020 and 2021 was writing and editing the poems that became my fourth poetry collection, “Untanglement”, and because it was very important to me that the poems stood up on the page as well as out loud, I attended many classes and workshops, including those run by Gill and Mark Connors at Yaffle, and mentoring sessions with Helen Mort. I also upped my reading of other people’s poems, pamphlets and collections by way of further ongoing poetry education. “Untanglement” was published by Yaffle Press in the Spring of 2022 and I took it around as many poetry events as I could. In the second half of 2022 I began working with three other poets from my part of the country – Peter Knaggs, Jim Higo, and Mike Watts – and calling ourselves “the 4 Johns”, we did a number of readings, shows and workshops together, and went on to write a Theatre/Spoken Word show, “All we’ve got time for” which premiered in the summer of 2023 and went on, via several theatre performances, to be part of The Morecambe Poetry Festival in that September.

Q2 (2023): How did you decide on the order of the poems in “Untanglement”?

A2(2025): The simple answer, for Untanglement, is that I had help. I think it’s important where poems sit in terms of an order and in relation to one another. I think poems can speak to one another in a collection but also, if you put the big important pieces too close to one another, they can make things imbalanced. As such one would be foolish not to take advice from those with more experience in such matters, and I sort guidance from the editorial team at Yaffle and from Helen Mort to help me get it right. I would like to add to this answer by saying that this is one of the hardest things to be sure about, and there do not seem to be any hard and fast scientific methods for it.

Q3 (2023/2025): How important is narrative in your poetry?

A3 (2025): Narrative has become more important to me during the writing of the last two collections. I wanted to tell more stories alongside the more lyrical poems that I continue to write. I felt able to be more open and honest with the reader by writing more narrative poems such as “Said big me to little me” and “I met him at a counter-demonstration” in “Untanglement”, and I felt that improved all my writing because of this more open, honest approach, and I hope that trend has and will continue.

Q3.1 (2023): How is opening the poem up, making them more story based important for live performance?

A3.1 (2023): I think you need to engage with an audience during a live performance / reading. It is likely, to me, that the poems you are sharing with an audience will engage them more if there is variety in terms of style and also intensity, and if some pieces are easier to engage with than others.

Q4 (2023): How important is form in your poetry?

A4 (2023): Because of the way an idea develops into one of my poems, starting off with how a line sounds to me out loud, and then getting the subsequent lines to develop from that beginning, and often in relation to that original rhythm, there probably aren’t many of my poems that adhere strictly to any classical forms. I do enjoy reading “form” poetry and have tried to write villanelles, sonnets and other forms in workshops etc. but they haven’t been the ones that I have had published, so as yet, it is not a strength I can claim. I think, because my poems all tend to start life orally, they do have elements of conversational/everyday speech in them and so there are bits of naturally occurring/accidental iambic pentameter, and some bits might resemble other elements of form too. And when the words make it onto the page, I find the shape of poems is becoming more interesting to me, but then I’m not sure that’s exactly what you mean by “form” in your question.

Q4.1 (2023): Why is it important that elements of conversation occur in your poetry? I am thinking particularly of Yorkshire dialect?

A4.1 (2023): I think it’s important for characters in poems (as in any literature) to be authentic and relatable, to use vocabulary and sentence structure that adds dimension to them for the reader. How a person speaks is often an immediate way to steer the reader to understand that character and to flesh out their world.

Q5 (2023): What do you think about the idea that a poem’s meaning should always be elusive?

A5 (2025): Over time, I have come to the conclusion that the problem with this notion is the “always” in the question. There are usually reasons why a poet does things in a poem the way they do and decides how to present their words and meanings. If it makes sense to the writer to keep the meaning of a poem elusive, be it for reasons of subject, sensitivity, to influence how a subject is thought about by a reader, or to create some kind of literary enigma for whatever reason, that is just as valid, assuming it’s done well, as it would be if the writer had been explicit and open about the meaning of a poem, as long as that is also done equally as well.

Q6(2025): How did you decide on the order of the poems in your latest book?

A6(2025): Side-eye was written over three years, from the end of 2022 onwards, and it resulted in approximately 350 poems being written for the final 60 to be chosen from. As a result of so many pieces hanging around and coming and going , they were initially separated into eight groups, to make them more manageable and to group poems into subsets by subject matter. As time went on, and as before, following conversations with Helen Mort and Mark Connors, those eight groups were whittled down to 4 by means of merging and rethinking their definitions, and the 350 poems were gradually reduced to about 120. Then as the title of the collection and the tone and themes began to present themselves from that 120, I was able to, with advice, get the number to 60 and to choose the order of the poems and, very late in proceedings, exactly what order those sections would appear in the book.

Q7(2025): What projects are you working on at the moment?

A7(2025): I am a little nervous to say too much about my current focus in case doing so were to jinx it, but I will tell you that it involves writing lots of poems about different fears and phobias, submitting those poems to relevant people and places, and then potentially creating a workshop format that will be based on the same subject matter. I am also looking out for some poets to mentor, who I can pass on all I’ve learned from so many great people over the last ten years or so as a poet myself.

The Wombwell Rainbow Book Interviews: Peter J Donnelly On His Collection “Bloom And Grow”

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You can buy this collection here:
https://amzn.eu/d/50mr5eR



Peter J Donnelly lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary.  He has a degree in English Literature and a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales Lampeter. He has had poems published in various magazines and anthologies including Dreich,  Southlight,  Fragmented Voices,  High Window,  Lothlorien and Black Nore Review.  He won second prize in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition in 2021 and was a joint runner up in the Buzzwords open poetry competition in 2020. His first full length collection ‘Solving the Puzzle’ was published in 2023 by Alien Buddha Press, as was his chapbook ‘The Second of August’.

The Interview


Q:1. How did you decide on the order of the poems in your book?

The poems are grouped by theme so that one flows on from the last. At some stages there is a complete change of theme but I try to keep a link between each poem and the one that went before it wherever possible.

Q:2. How do you think that your poetry has moved on from your previous collection?

I think I have given up trying to use forms such as rhyme, sonnets etc. though a few rhyming couplets do work their way in occasionally.  Certainly none of the poems in this book were ever written intending to be rhymed or take any other form. Even though this collection is shorter than my last and indeed my first, there are fewer poems that I have felt unsure about, worrying that they were little more than chopped up prose. There are a couple I think that about, at least partly.  There are a lot of the same themes, places and people featured here that appeared in my previous two collections.  In some ways the book has been more inspired by more recent events,  which is I suppose inevitable,  though the distant past remains a feature of my work, which is also inevitable as other memories have come back to me since I wrote my last two books. I am definitely more aware of myself having aged and aging since I began writing, and I think this is reflected in my poems.

Q:2.1. How has aging affected this collection?

It contains a lot of poems about my childhood,  which is something that I am aware of slipping further an further into the past each day, and a lot of poems about death – though not my own, which – without wanting to sound too depressing, is something I am aware of getting closer to each day.  When I wrote the poem ‘Forty’ which is in my last book, I sounded quite optimistic.  I still do, or try to,  but I think I shall be writing quite a different sort of poem when I get to fifty. There are one or two poems about books and authors, and up until a couple of years ago I spent a lot of my reading time re-reading fiction.  I re-read poetry now but every novel I have read this year and I think last year has been one I haven’t read before.  I am aware that time is no longer standing still, and there are things I have to read while I am still able. This leads me on to one of the many physical signs of aging I have gradually begun to notice. I don’t think I will be able to cope without reading glasses for much longer.

Q:2.1.1. How has the awareness of time slipping by ever faster effected the writing of the poems?

It has reminded me that I can’t keep saying I have got lots of time left to write many more poems, though I hope that is the case. For too long I said I wasn’t writing anything at the moment but always meant or hoped to take it up again one day, when I found the  inspiration.  It has made me prioritise writing the next poem.

Q:2.1.1.1. How has this sense of urgency manifested itself in how and what you write?

It hasn’t made me feel that I must write something every day, even if it’s just a draft, or set aside a particular time each day or even each week for writing,  just to make sure I produce something. I do that with reading but not writing.  Though I do say to myself,  just because I wrote a poem yesterday doesn’t mean I can’t write one today as well. I have been known on rare occasions to write more than one on the same say. In terms of what I write, there are some things and people I have felt I can’t write about while those people are still alive, but if I wait for them to no longer be here then the poem may never get written,  not only because they could outlive me but I may forget the idea.  Once I get an idea for a poem in my head I have to at least try and write it then.

Q:3. How did you decide on the title?

As always,  I used the title of one of the poems in the book. I am not sure that ‘Bloom and Grow’ is the best one in the collection, but it is linked to many of the others by theme,  not just the people mentioned in it. There are not really any poems about plants here but there are ones that mention flowers – tulips and dandelions.  There are poems about fruit – wild raspberries in particular,  and one called ‘Growing Fruit’ although it isn’t about growing real fruit at all but makes mention of marzipan fruits and my first memories of them which brings me back to my grandmother who features in a few of the poems.

Q:4 Your poetry is very interrogative, asking questions of the person’s featured. Intentional?

To an extent I think it is intentional.  There are lots of things I have asked in a poem that I would never really ask the person in the poem, whether they are still alive or not. Many of the questions are rhetorical, asking things we can never know.

Q:4.1. How much do you think this reveals about N’s personality?

I presume you mean ‘N’ mentioned in the poem ‘Bloom and Grow’. I suppose that there were many things I didn’t know about him and couldn’t ask as neither of us felt comfortable discussing them. Though he wasn’t a blood relation, I did and do feel a lot like him, though in many ways we couldn’t have been more different.  I would rather not list the characteristics as it may sound like self-praise.

(Sorry, Peter. N is a technical abbreviation for Narrator. Editor)

To an extent I think it is intentional.  There are lots of things I have asked in a poem that I would never really ask the person in the poem, whether they are still alive or not. Many of the questions are rhetorical, asking things we can never know.

Q:5. Why do you think you are moving away from rhyming poetry?

One of the first things I was told about poems as a child was that they do not have to rhyme,  and yet I don’t remember reading one that didn’t rhyme until I was in my late teens. Back then I wasn’t able to distinguish between verse and poetry, couldn’t always see internal rhyme or half-rhymes. I think I came to believe that you could write anything and so long as it looked like a poem on the page you could call it one. But poetry is meant to be spoken and heard as well as read. I now see that chopped up prose is not poetry just as rhyming verse often is not. Sometimes it is a good idea to work to a form and within the constraints required,  but it doesn’t come naturally to me. I believe the use of similes, metaphors and alliteration, if used well and they don’t sound contrived, is more effective than rhyme or iambic pentameter.

Q:6. How far do you think the title “Bloom And Grow” refers to your own development as a poet?


It wasn’t intended to refer to my flourishing as a poet, but I don’t mind if it is interpreted that way. I wouldn’t say that my third book is my best one yet. As with all of them, I think some of the poems in it are better than others.  It is the shortest, perhaps ironically.  I hope it means that my development is an ongoing process, one that obviously will end one day as everything does, but hopefully not for a very long time.

Q:7. Once having read the collection what do you hope the reader will leave with?

I hope they will have a desire to read more of my work, including my first two books if they haven’t already done so. If they have read the others I hope they will see that my writing style has developed in the two years since my first one was published,  and that they will look forward to my next book, whenever that will appear.

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You can buy this collection here:

https://amzn.eu/d/50mr5eR