-Amy Shelton. She has a collaboration with poet John Burnside called Melissographia as well as a new body of work in progress with him too – Bee Myths. There is a recording of John Burnside reading Melissographia here. http://amyshelton.co.uk/melissographia/
There are a few signed limited edition hand made Melissographia books available on her website.

– `ees by Neal Zetter

I’m A Bee by Neal Zetter

The Day I Became a Royalist.

The memory of that day’s still sweet,
the way the sun filtered through hedges
beginning to explode
with blooms of hawthorn and chestnut;
the coconut trace that floated up
from yellow bubbled whin;
the excited buzz from her fans,
humming as I set to work.
Deaf as beetles they were,
yet they danced their tales
while their friends watched
and felt the vibrations.
I longed to dance too,
but my rebel feet refused.
I looked the part.
In fact, I was smoking,
with all the right gear to meet a Queen.
No high fashion, fascinators,
stilettos or frocks,
demure — in loose white,
a veil over my face,
and gloves.
The roar arose from the crowd.
Herself was close.
Royal guards drew lances,
made charges as if to say, ‘Your kind’s not welcome here’.
I worked on — ignored the line,
like my Father before,
when I was a child.
When her Highness appeared in my frame of view,
maybe it was the alien look of her dress,
poured out in layers like dark chocolate,
or maybe it was her long legs,
that could do with a rub of the razor,
that made her look huge.
She walked that confident walk
of a girl at the top.
Her retinue fussed, had respect.
While her signature scent was strong,
they remained happy, loyal
content.
My senses captured it all
in a way no camera could;
that joy as I watched them dance and hum,
the chinook noise from drones,
the scent of our land collected, condensed,
mind-stamped into my memory cells,
that brought me home to childhood days
when my brother and I dug sections of gold
on our Fathers return.
The memory’s still sweet of that day
when I turned,
on meeting the Queen
of Apis Mellifera Mellifera
my black honey bees.

-©Trish Bennett ( Highly Commended, The Bailieborough Poetry Competition, 2018.
Previously Published
The Leitrim Guardian, 2019, Editor: Bláithín Gallagher.
Poethead 2019, Editor: Chris Murray)

God Bless the Bees

The Mother,
cocooned in Leitrim,
takes out her frustration
on wandering roses
and other wayward strays,
who assume
they can travel freely
in the empire of her garden.
She’s terrified of bees
or she’d have
the secateurs gripped
in her arthritic hand
while she hoists
her cobalt knee
onto a wobbly stool
to stand and butcher
the bumbled
Berberis Darwinii.

-©Trish Bennett(Previously Published
pendemic.ie, Online Pandemic Journal, 2020, Editors: Joy Redmund, Ruth McKee, Niall McArdle,
and Liz Quirke.)

Sing me a bumblebee

brass-banded and bilious,
euphonium-voiced
pollen-plucked and tucked
in his little tucker bags.
Lend me a feather
from a bold herring gull
shanty-mouthed wave-skimmer
to paint me a dream
as sea-green and incorruptible
as the jolly fish-boned sky.

-Jane Dougherty

Waiting for Bees

Crocus fingers snow-tatters.
Sun coaxes purple, orange.
Cups brim, succulent saffron
offered to the sky.

Earth rotates.
Shadows wake.
Winter’s breath reminisces
with evening.
Flowers pack their cups,
pollen tucked.
Heads bow.
Darkness spits
snow.
Day after night after
day they set their table, cloth ragged, main course
glistens gold,
seven days.
They wait for bees

who never come.
Wilt, heartbreak-fists’ curl
and starvation,

swallowed by Earth’s dry
empty mouth.
————————

As Summer Falls Away

Rains fell in sheets, water rose
ankle high. Long slow gray day, a day
for curling with cat and book in bed.

Then, the wind.

White skies’ blue
brightness blinds, wind pushes
powder-heavy banks; ragweed, goldenrod,
sedge grasses, heads nod, bow, capes swing
back, a flourish. Last bees not warmed
enough to harvest.

Hurry, autumn.

Iron-weed lace, a paradox,
echoes deeper purple. Asters open
royal lashes, gaze a final time
at September.

Next, the leaves.

-Rachael Ikins

Bee Safe

Cut eyeholes in an old bucket.
Stuck an old welder’s visor
on the eyeholes. Stuffed and taped
an ancient towel under the rim.
Got my mate to tape welder’s gloves
to my thick jacket and my wellingtons
to jogging bottoms. Put bucket on my head.
Mate stuck it to my jacket. I struggled
through the small hole. Cost a packet for radiation
suited cocker to remove hive from out of our roof.
I’m sure all bees are gone. Couldn’t hear them.
Couldn’t bloody breathe, my visor misted up.

-Paul Brookes

Silence

The thing I fear is the silence:
when the buzzing stops
because there are no more bees –
the belly hum buzz
that dances from nectar to nectar
the silence that falls
when the sun goes down
and the birds quieten
a reminder that there could be
a world without a blackbird
calling tumbling notes
from a sleek throat,
without rook
gently reminding rook
that they are friends,
without skylark promising
joy effortless
and the silence of sea water
grown sluggish
half plastic
holding death afloat
silver belly turned
towards a yellow sky
and the silence of a forest
where every tree
is just a dream.

– Sarah Connor

Being requires exploration. By flowering, we heal.

She’d clattered up the stairs, along the corridor, and into his lab, clutching a black linen bag to her chest. She’d begged him for help. He still wasn’t sure.
“You realise it’s a particle/wave ionisation device? It will move you in time, or space, but it’s not perfected yet. You could end up anywhere. Any-when”.
They could both hear the footsteps in the distance, coming closer.
“There’s no other way. Please -” she begged him – “Do it”.
And he flicked the switch.
When the guards arrived, he was alone, tapping away quietly on his keyboard. They ripped the lab apart, but there was nothing to find.
Twenty-seven years later, he still thought about her from time to time – wondered if he’d done the right thing, why she was so desperate, where she’d ended up. Somehow it wasn’t surprising that, as he tidied up his desk, just after 6pm on Friday 17th June, she appeared in corner of the lab. She looked dazed, walked over to him and touched his cheek gently.
“You got old” she whispered. He nodded, silent.
She opened the bag, then, and showed him something he had thought he’d never see again. Bees. A roiling, buzzing mass of them. He turned to look out of the window, at the grove of almond trees, that had blossomed but not fruited for the last seven years.
When he turned back, she saw that he was crying.

-Sarah Connor

-Dr Butler by Terry Chipp

-Celebrity by Marcel Herms

Celebrity Dr. Butler

1979: sleazy outcasts
hidden by red shift
microphone poised
suited and booted
making history
fading, obscurity

-Sarah Reeson

..day 7..
:: day of the dead ::

so it was yet no one did anything

here

drew on experience
kept quiet
for no one
hears

they are dead
as deaf as a dodo

***

deaf as the man upstairs
dead as the designer now

the virus got them

they came with moustaches
all curly waxed
but it still got them

the day of the dead

..sbm..

Decline of a celebrity president

The unscalable wall should have been a clue
that you felt your celebrity slipping
like the makeup staining your collar orange
or your hair with its dendritic reveal of scalp,
pale as a baby’s cheek.

Barricaded in the mansion you once described
as a dump, you hunker down with letters
from Vlad, reminiscing about better days
when you rolled a tank onto the White
House lawn and lit the sky with war planes,

show of strength from the American strong
man. Far cry from the Covid king who wheezed
up stairs to the balcony to tear off his mask
in defiance of weakness and precarious
masculinity.

Mar a Lago is a distant dream in your self-made
prison. Chants from protesting masses no
longer inspire the desire to clear streets
with military might for a theocratic photo op
Honestly, nothing is fun like it used to be,

the mirrors now draped so you don’t see
your skull emerging from its chrysalis
or the faces of the hundreds of thousands
now dead — ‘Not my fault!’ — you shout
to no one but the Secret Service. ‘Chai-nah’.

Days of power coming to an end,
you console yourself with a call to Erdogan
but he’s busy plundering Syria’s oil.
Perhaps you should have foiled that ugly
business with Khashoggi, but MBS had you

and Jared by the short hairs. Outcast.
Maybe if you’d gotten a dog, suburban women
would love you more.
You reach across your bed to fondle the worn
Copy of Der Führer’s speeches — not that you

read — but it comforts you. Being anointed
by God yourself, you can relate. Make America
great! Fake news! Enemy of the people! Lock
her up! It was a good run. Would have lasted
longer, but OBAMA! Your crowd size was bigger.

A little snort of Adderall; maybe call Ivanka,
soothe yourself with Dr. Butler’s Hatstand
Medicine Band. If Sleepy Joe wins
you can always flog hydroxychloroquine. Yo
Semite, that peace prize should have been yours.

-Gayle J Greenlea

Dr Butler

He preens in preparation
For the next adoring patient
That will book and scrape
At his little polished feet
His moustache waxed in exact points
Pudgy flesh over stubby joints
He sees it a necessity
Definitely not a vanity
To have the latest silken cravat
Hiding from the public his newfangled
Words set to confuse the people of the day
As he sticks out his chin indignantly
And waits for you to pay

-AilsaCawleyPoetry2020

On Death

Morning stirs to the heat of melancholy sunrise
and a night spent in jeans,
the buzz of perdition rose through the static
on a dying TV.
Ghosts just out of view
remind us that
death is a cruel finality
or a sweet sympathy –
without choice
we choose the latter
and fit into a fated end.

-Liam Stainsby

Your hands

Yes, well, I never liked your hands,
too soft, too plump,
fingers knotting and unknotting
always moving

like some pale creature
down in the deep water
half-seen in the half-light,
glimmering, restless, hungering.

-Sarah Connor

 

MY DOCTOR

Celebrity doctor-dapper,
shy spring flower
behind his giant
mahogany desk.
The little forked
tongue flickers,
tastes the air.
Pebble glassed eyes
brown infinity pools.
It appears that this time
all is well. Until the
next testing, adieu.
But I have to win
every time.
You only the once.

-© Dai Fry 6th November 2020

Dalí’s Hands

Mirror mirror in my hand,
said Dalí, pudgy paint-stained hands
unaccustomed to four-in-hand.
But how did he look in his hand
mirror unclothed by skin, out of hand
as he aged with trembling hand?
Persistence of memory, talk to the hand.

-Holly York

Celebrities

When the only thing that gives you pleasure
is to see yourself reflected in adoring eyes
then day and night the ticking of the seconds
are nothing but the punctuated syncopated
over-inflated dance steps of your cat walk life.

You admit of no bones beneath this flesh
no blood to stain and when you hear
the whining of the bombs you smile
and dip inside the portal of your parallel world
and pour yourself another drink.

There are people in this world and there is plastic
and some with glitter in their teeth that blend the two
inextricably mixed, never shaken, never stirred.

-Jane Dougherty

(Dr Butler)

“Dr Butler’s Day”

It’s a long day being an expert host conductor surgeon scientist researcher butler actor maestro lawyer defendant life saver deceiver guest performer judge server father groom tattoo owner spectre time traveller waxwork hologram

He considers his mirror image, alone, for a moment

He’s the best, he’s the best, he’s the best

No pressure

He straightens his tie

With military precision

(Extra)ordinary man

(Celebrity Culture)

“Flo/1910”

I was the first official celebrity in US history
You stay here and look what they did to me

I wanted to work I wanted to act
So they killed me in a car crash
So they brought me back to life
So they could make a fortune
So they surely made more than me

I took my own life at fifty-two
Not sure if it all had to do with my job
Maybe I would’ve done it regardless
So someone could make a fortune
From my personal things my very me

You stay here and look. What can you see?

-Lydia Wist

THE DOCTOR

The doctor dismissed all she said.
Ignored the scales crusted on her skin,
the magnetic pull of her blood
and the saltwater that drip,
drip, dripped from her fingertips.

It pooled under her chair
while he talked of medication,
post-traumatic stress and counselling.
His voice became the sea’s fading echo;
the shell in his throat the calm.

-Susan Darlington

Dr Butler

Nothing so elegant
as coarse bread, toasted
slathered in butter and guava,
some artifacts reveal themselves
polishing their way out of sediment.

When he was through
a wave and a blown kiss,
a last check in dresser mirror,
mustache and eyebrows snatched
to perfection, one last look and a smile,
shutting the door so gently,
“till next week”
no other bull could sniff flowers
so daintily, three crisp twenties
in the nightstand drawer,
the lingering musk
of his presence.

-Peach Delphine

Celebrity culture

The donation cup of cutting
is full, a heavier weight than word
or the gauze and tape of binding
all that was necessary to conceal
reveals itself as filigree
and tracery of blood,
once the gingerbread
of despair, now the signifier
of survival, after three
stomach pumps in one year
my oral fixation became uncontrollable,
the only thing better
was poppers and the laying on
of hands, like rising
from the river
made new again.

-Peach Delphine

Bios and Links

-Terry Chipp

grew up in Thurnscoe and is now living in Doncaster via Wath Grammar school, Doncaster Art College, Bede College in Durham and 30 years teaching.

He sold his first painting at the Goldthorpe Welfare Hall annual exhibition at the age of 17 and he haven’t stopped painting since.

He escaped the classroom 20 years ago to devote more time to his artwork.  Since then he has set up his own studio in Doncaster, exhibited across the north of England as a member of the Leeds Fine Artists group and had his painting demonstrations featured on the SAA’s Painting and drawing TV channel.  Further afield he has accepted invitations to work with international artists’ groups in Spain, Macedonia, Montenegro and USA where his paintings are held in public and private collections. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition in Warsaw, Poland and a joint exhibition in Germany.

His pictures cover a wide range of styles and subjects from abstract to photo-realism though he frequently returns to his main loves of landscape and people.

Visitors are welcome at his studio in the old Art College on Church View, Doncaster.

e-mail:  terry@terrychipp.co.uk

Facebook:  Terry Chipp Fine Art Painting

Instagram: @chippko.art

-Marcel Herms

is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.

He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Peach Delphine

is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast. Former cook. Has had poems in Cypress Press, Feral Poetry, IceFloe Press, Petrichor. Can be found on Twitter@Peach Delphine

-Dai Fry

is a poet living on the south coast of England. Originally from Swansea. Wales was and still is a huge influence on everything. My pen is my brush. Twitter:  

@thnargg

Web: http://seekingthedarklight.co.uk

-Susan Darlington

Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Dreams Walking, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. Her debut collection, ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’, was published by Penniless Press Publications (2015). Follow her @S_sanDarlington    

-Holly York

lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.

-Gayle J. Greenlea

is an award-winning poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel Zero Gravity at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Astronomy Magazine, Headline Poetry and Press and The Australian Health Review.

-Helen Allison

lives in the North East of Scotland. Her first poetry collection ‘ Tree standing small’ was published in 2018 with Clochoderick Press. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines in print and online and she is working towards a second collection.

-Lydia Wist

Like someone who tries out hats or other samples before making a final decision, experimenting with different ideas and techniques is how Lydia spends some of her time. This allows for other portions of time to speak through the lens of fiction, creative nonfiction and art. You can find her work at Cargo Collective , Lydia Wist Creative and on Twitter @Lydiawist.

Website links:

https://cargocollective.com/lydiawist

https://www.facebook.com/lydiawistcreative/

-Sarah Connor

lives in the wild, wet, south-west of England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. She writes poems to make sense of the world, and would rather weed than wash up.

-sonja benskin mesher

-Liam Stainsby

holds a bachelor in English Literature and Creative Writing and is a secondary school teacher of English and Creative Writing. Liam is currently writing his first, professional collection of poetry entitled Borders that explores poetry from all around the world. Liam also Co-Hosts a movie discussion podcast entitled: The Pick and Mix Podcast. Liam writes under the pseudonym ‘Michael The Poet’ 

Links: WordPress: https://michael-the-poet.com/

Twitter: stainsby_liam

Instagram: Michael The Poet

-Sarah Reeson

is 54, married and a mother of two, who has been writing and telling stories since childhood. Over the last decade she has utilised writing not just as entertainment, but as a means to improve personal communication skills. That process unexpectedly uncovered increasingly difficult and unpleasant feelings, many forgotten for decades. Diagnosed as a historic trauma survivor in May 2019, Mental health issues had previously hindered the entirety of her adult life: the shift into writing as expression and part of a larger journey into self-awareness began to slowly unwind for her from the past, providing inspiration and focus for a late career change as a multidisciplined artist.

Website: http://internetofwords.com

-Gaynor Kane

is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest and Venus in pink marble (2018, 2019 and Summer 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic and due for release 30^th November 2020.  Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com.

 

 

 

-Can I Go Now? by Terry Chipp

-Darkness by Marcel Herms

Can I Go Now, Darkness?

that deceptive smile
illuminated road
their darkened room
last, yellow mile
conversation, joined
destination, shown

-Sarah Reeson

Ice Floe

Darkness beckons
from the swamp that birthed
you. Time to go,
let loose the lightning bolt
that gave you life. Your own
creator sheared you
from the ice floe to drift
in isolation from humanity
How do the days end?
In horror, hunger,
acceptance? The world
will remember the monster,
but not the man.

– Gayle J. Greenlea

CAN I GO NOW

Eternity reaching,
senses fade.
To day dream, maybe stay
a little longer.
But this is the beckoning.
Do what it will.
Feeble anger in
the absence of light,
wishes
without relevance.
A turmoil of time,
not chaos but entropy,
the physics within
a stormed wave.

-© Dai Fry 5th November 2020.

WISH

It falls
over the city,
over the bridge els,
stacked stone
& construction sites,
across tenements
& hovels, past oil drills
moving like slow cobras,
over boulevards
& fields

It is dirt
under fingernails
on a hand holding
the handle
of a shopping cart
in lieu of home

A tent flaps and flaps
in the wind.

A row of tents. They grow every day,
the numbers of the homeless

Think of inhabiting. Then, think of eviction. Evil
dogging us down this gold road.
(Who gets to go home, be home.)
Invoke goldenrod, its incandescent healing.

-Anindita Sengupta

NOMAD

The moment before
the eye opens

is the taste of
pine sap in the mouth

There must be something
in the air that tells us

to bring our hands
to rest /         An emblem

of belonging / a land
perfect as a peach-colored

circle with eyes        Morning
comes and goes like people

moving in a room
round and around

flinging their careful bodies
in exquisite directions

numb to velocity
compelled to keep moving

because if they stop
the earth might too.

-Anindita Sengupta

Darkness beckons

because the dream is never enough,
because the road runs bright and broad,
because she thought the golden city was for her,

but although she picks up trinkets on the way,
the road ends always in a golden ditch,
and all she sees is a field of magpies.

Sometimes she thinks the darkness
that stretches out its empty hands full
of no promises offers more that this.

We forget, if we ever knew, that
caged birds sing to sooth their broken hearts,
not ours.

-Jane Dougherty

Can I go now? Darkness beckons.

You always said you’d leave when it was time.
No hanging on for its own sake when life
became too much, when a martini and
a bestseller at the end of day
and dogs gnawing placidly on fresh bones

weren’t enough to make you want to arise
each dawn, when it was all more pain than gain.
One morning, after a fall when we had spent
the night on the floor trying to get you up
and your back had failed us, you asked me

to bring post-op pain meds you’d socked away.
I brought you one and you rejected it.
Bring me the bottle, you said. I knew what you
had in mind–I would have done the same
but instead I talked you down. Not now,

the night was weird, let’s hug and have some coffee
in the sun. It will get better. But
we knew from science it would not. So
that day at 5 pm when I heard silence not
your Parkinson struggle with ice for cocktails

I ran to the kitchen and you weren’t there.
These things I knew: you would already have left
before I found you slumped in your library chair,
gone, and when I found the bottle of meds,
in the cabinet, it would be empty.

-Holly York

Through Fields by my Childhood

Shadows warn me of a stray.
The rain which splinters on the ground
through fields by my childhood
lead us away –
beyond the vows of time
to where all that was left
was buried in the undergrowth.
To that place
beyond the pine.

In dreams collide –
let morning play as a memory
to our pain;
all of this – love – we set aside –
in meadows where we lay.
Yet through our eyes
we blur the truth
finding refuge from the day.

In the gathering night
a bird on a wire –
singing songs to those who knew;
intent to fight
under streetlamp light
in the glimmer
pale and blue.

He holds her memory in his sights
and swallows guilt the same
though pride of joy – cascades in light
would a voice of thunder make.
Akin to knowing who they’d been
on beaches where they’d laid
a call to yonder – villain – spite
those parts of us betrayed.

By Autumn’s hand she’ll turn away
and near the blackened sky –
all those below you die, my dear
and no one told you why.
Don’t fear all that you’re yet to know
we’re all to find our way
let heartache die in field of gold
and let memories lead astray.

-Liam Stainsby

“Memory/None of Your Business”

“And I sez to ‘er I sez: why don’t you wanna sit with us? And she shrugs, like, y’ know. An’ I’m tryna get to know ‘er. So I sez, you’re young. You’re married. Why don’t you ‘ave kids? She jus’ shrugs agen. So I ask ‘er agen. Why don’t you ‘ave any kids yet? An’ she won’t gimme an answer an’ I’m there tryna understand like. I ask agen. Why don’t you ‘ave kids? Coz they’re brilliant y’know. Wish I ‘ad kids.”

(Darkness Beckons) “Back and Away”

I’m riding backwards away from the city.
Away from

Pretend lights
Garish sights
Discordant sounds

Into a landscape of simpler values.
A subdued colour palette clears the mind.
This journey is an hour inside a sensory deprivation tank, more if we hit traffic

-Lydia Wist

day 6
:: four legged ::

it came four legged
trouncing down the dark

no one was distressed here nor
frightened

one finds more fear in the doings
of men, their counterparts

fear of too much punctuation haunts
us
unlike the four leggeds
***

there are stars
there are no stars
so what is the true meaning
here

running in the dark
sorting in the rain things get wet

puddles form
wordsjointogether

a long dark road
two legged

..sbm..

DARKNESS FADES

The moon floated
to the night’s surface –
above the treetops,
the roosting crows,
the angel’s trumpet –
and under its gaze
pebbles on the lane
luminesced silver.
They lit the way
to the city;
the safety of home.

She gulped in air
and broke anchor.
Ran with brine
and sea-mist
listing in her veins.

-Susan Darlington

Darkness beckons

Night lives within thicket
pine dark, shade concealed
from field and furrow, day’s wick
lingers for a moment
once gone,
the words of shadow
and starlight spill
from our lips.

Light leaks into the world,
day swallows
all our silences, my tongue
has grown too large for my head
it tastes wind, it tastes light
rough bark of pine
smooth wire of grass.

The promise of green
folds upon itself,
the promise of darkness
flowers into cloud,
we taste rain
we taste where the light
went, we taste darkness
our hands filling with dirt
mouthfuls of air
escaping.

-Peach Delphine

Bios and Links

-Terry Chipp

grew up in Thurnscoe and ia now living in Doncaster via Wath Grammar school, Doncaster Art College, Bede College in Durham and 30 years teaching.

He sold his first painting at the Goldthorpe Welfare Hall annual exhibition at the age of 17 and he haven’t stopped painting since.

He escaped the classroom 20 years ago to devote more time to his artwork.  Since then he has set up his own studio in Doncaster, exhibited across the north of England as a member of the Leeds Fine Artists group and had his painting demonstrations featured on the SAA’s Painting and drawing TV channel.  Further afield he has accepted invitations to work with international artists’ groups in Spain, Macedonia, Montenegro and USA where his paintings are held in public and private collections. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition in Warsaw, Poland and a joint exhibition in Germany.

His pictures cover a wide range of styles and subjects from abstract to photo-realism though he frequently returns to his main loves of landscape and people.

Visitors are welcome at his studio in the old Art College on Church View, Doncaster.

e-mail:  terry@terrychipp.co.uk

Facebook:  Terry Chipp Fine Art Painting

Instagram: @chippko.art

-Marcel Herms

is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.

He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Peach Delphine

is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast. Former cook. Has had poems in Cypress Press, Feral Poetry, IceFloe Press, Petrichor. Can be found on Twitter@Peach Delphine

-Dai Fry

is a poet living on the south coast of England. Originally from Swansea. Wales was and still is a huge influence on everything. My pen is my brush. Twitter:  

@thnargg

Web: http://seekingthedarklight.co.uk

-Susan Darlington

Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Dreams Walking, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. Her debut collection, ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’, was published by Penniless Press Publications (2015). Follow her @S_sanDarlington    

-Holly York

lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.

-Gayle J. Greenlea

is an award-winning poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel Zero Gravity at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Astronomy Magazine, Headline Poetry and Press and The Australian Health Review.

-Helen Allison

lives in the North East of Scotland. Her first poetry collection ‘ Tree standing small’ was published in 2018 with Clochoderick Press. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines in print and online and she is working towards a second collection.

-Lydia Wist

Like someone who tries out hats or other samples before making a final decision, experimenting with different ideas and techniques is how Lydia spends some of her time. This allows for other portions of time to speak through the lens of fiction, creative nonfiction and art. You can find her work at Cargo Collective , Lydia Wist Creative and on Twitter @Lydiawist.

Website links:

https://cargocollective.com/lydiawist

https://www.facebook.com/lydiawistcreative/

-Sarah Connor

lives in the wild, wet, south-west of England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. She writes poems to make sense of the world, and would rather weed than wash up.

-sonja benskin mesher

-Liam Stainsby

holds a bachelor in English Literature and Creative Writing and is a secondary school teacher of English and Creative Writing. Liam is currently writing his first, professional collection of poetry entitled Borders that explores poetry from all around the world. Liam also Co-Hosts a movie discussion podcast entitled: The Pick and Mix Podcast. Liam writes under the pseudonym ‘Michael The Poet’ 

Links: WordPress: https://michael-the-poet.com/

Twitter: stainsby_liam

Instagram: Michael The Poet

-Sarah Reeson

is 54, married and a mother of two, who has been writing and telling stories since childhood. Over the last decade she has utilised writing not just as entertainment, but as a means to improve personal communication skills. That process unexpectedly uncovered increasingly difficult and unpleasant feelings, many forgotten for decades. Diagnosed as a historic trauma survivor in May 2019, Mental health issues had previously hindered the entirety of my adult life: the shift into writing as expression and part of a larger journey into self-awareness began to slowly unwind for her from the past, providing inspiration and focus for a late career change as a multidisciplined artist.

Website: http://internetofwords.com

-Gaynor Kane

is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest and Venus in pink marble (2018, 2019 and Summer 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic and due for release 30^th November 2020.  Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com.