As I get older, and with no children to root me and turn me to the future, I look for who I am in the places that I inhabit. I have lived here in north Yorkshire all my life. I have never moved more than twenty miles from the place where I was born. I live in a valley carved by glaciers. I am ringed by the north sea, The Wolds, The North York Moors and endless farmland reaching inland. I read a lot about ritual within landscape while I was researching for the PhD (which is on hold and I have no idea what will happen with scholarship applications next year) and how we interact with the landscape we live in, how it informs our sense of self. When I write for Yorkshire Life magazine I am writing about the sea, and facing…
This is a famous story retold by many poets, especially women poets. A tale of abuse and recovery. Male violence towards women, which I always see as cowardice.
I recall a dark room at English Heritage, a documentary showing
an eight-to-ten-minute introductory guide to big castle, wherever.
This is, perhaps, a simulated experience, curated with panoramic
cinematography – available in the gift shop for nine-ninety-five.
Every time, I find these dark rooms – showing a documentary,
I sit there for eight-to-ten-minutes, thoroughly enjoying the space,
imagining my life as an informative documentary; a screen wipe.
-Alex Mazey
The Walk
Few find the shrifted forest – a wanderer feels
their gait well weighed by trees and rock
to find how great the need for succour-paths.
If your feet, as heavy as they are, will carry you
for another week, a day, an hour
through the loosened sharps of the vale
some trivial thing will call you to your walking-on.
When the wet green hands of sentinels
wing a creature through this breach
its count of given steps was done and done.
And we could do much worse than to stop it here
we beasts who have been treading
so stilted since first we fell. Far worse than to drop
to our knees on this cushion of needles
beneath an unsuspected kindness of stones.
Sometimes you don’t see how much they love you
until their face is watching you leave.
The last walk done, and I’ll go laughing, all thin-
skin shiver in the warm wet breath of the rock
that has turned these bones, has spun us on
and on, every day since we arrived.
She gave us milk from the dirt
of her body. Every day opened the door
to the walk. You mourn your pets like family.
-Ankh Spice
The Spectre
You see me as a hideous invasive enemy oddity
but I see you as an existential anomaly hoping to remain free but it is not meant to be – Your
insatiable sensational lust for self-gratification
revealed your selfish nature neglecting your
intended function to willingly and selflessly
nurture but you have proven time and time again
your expected failure to prove your worth as a
temporary fleeting organism on a planet only meant
to temporarily tolerate your inherited generations –
Your neglect of each other and your dismissal of
of obvious signs and revelations in your darkest
dreams and ruby screams did not deter you from
darkening your absorbent soul as you hunted for
monetary riches, damning those who you deemed
unnecessary in an existence you craved to have
total dominance in unable to foresee you failed legacy.
This is your final hour as your essence will be ended –
You do not deserve to be awarded this precious
Earthly existence so forget your expected inheritance…
-Don Beukes
Release
Looking at the red sky All I see is you
The ground trembles as I try
To hug the earth like glue
Closing my eyes struggling not to cry
Your angelic face fills my view
As I let go, my body wants to fly
and search for you in the heavenly blue
-Carrie Ann Golden
#MF 16
The nightmares and dreams of children
are carved of the same stone;
they are massive. Even the friendliest
glower, because of their weight.
All through their lives, these stones
follow all the children who ever were.
As adults, the stones loom, smaller in size,
but heavier, pressing down on hearts
and minds which don’t believe in dreams
or nightmares, but are certain of death.
#16
American bullet, barreling out, like an asteroid
racing to a pre-mediated hit.
It is red hot. It knows its way.
A finger has shot out before it.
It points. Like a diseased god, it chooses.
-Elizabeth Moura
Draw me to the eye
Center us down together
Stillness in your storm
-st
The heart of a tree
is a crack
in time.
A glimpse across galaxies
linked by wormholes
in xylem.
This giant is fallen:
a window on eternity
exposed,
though the roots still live.
Here – delicate in rotten bark –
sapling.
Time
is the crack
in a tree’s heart.
-Yvonne Marjot
The Lion
I am Hunger and look for a prey.
No animal, big or small,
as far as I can see.
I find a big cave,
There must be some animal here.
If so, come evening it will return
I will hide myself in the cave
and when it returns,
pounce on it and have a good meal.
Sun begins to set,
I hear a voice
“Hello cave,
I am your friend here.”
I do not reply
“Hello cave,
don’t you remember
the arrangement we made?
I have to shout when I arrive
and you will ask me to come in.
Without your green signal
I do not enter the cave.
Since you are silent,
I will go to some other cave.”
Ah, there seems to be an arrangement
between the cave and this animal.
Let me get him into my trap.
I will shout back a welcome
to him and he will walk in happily.”
I roar, “Hi jackal,
come in.
You are welcome.”
Nothing happens.
Nothing happens
My stomach is an empty cave
full of echoes.
-Paul Brookes
Cento 2
You do not deserve to be awarded this precious
earthly existence so forget your expected inheritance…
Stillness in your storm
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Yvonne Marjot
is a lost kiwi, now living on a Scottish island. She has been making up stories and poems for as long as she can remember. Her first volume of poetry, The Knitted Curiosity Cabinet, won the Brit Writers Award for poetry in 2012. She has published four novels and a book of short stories.
Twitter handle:
@alayanabeth
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
fa’, fall.
err.
v -/- | v -/- | v -/- | v -/- | v -/-
dubitatione_.
nibble.
moan!
no craven,
vale!
too
ea, etc.).
si- ma- az- zum
do so?”
nothing
stroke.–P.
cowardly sun god sperm cell
suffers performance anxiety;
flees from opportunity —
future world goes dark
-Rich Follett
*
I will remember lily pads. Each floating universe resting on time,
itself, water like time, like the streams of an eternal reoccurrence.
Every poem is permitted one act of being unnecessarily outlandish,
every life is permitted one or two acts of being unnecessarily
outlandish. Outlandish is not the word I am looking for, here.
There are other words, of course, words like lily pad, to describe
what I am seeing. ( , .)
-Alex Mazey
Established
As children, weren’t we all beguiled by water lilies?
I was sure the little rafts were stepping stones for traipsing
Across,
Sufficient to
Support my weight.
Although they are well-established,
Rooted deep
Beneath water bodies, on the surface
They are delicate creatures,
It seems.
You once asked if
We wanted to keep trying
To put the tent pegs in,
Only to have them continue to
Slip out again.
I’m grateful I learned the difference between
Solid and superficial, and that we, too, can be fastened
Tight to the ground,
More securely established
Than I might’ve imagined.
-st
the lily pond.
go down along the coast
through the village and up
the hill
find the lily pond
miles from anyone
you will find creatures among
the plants and reverie
some are tadpoles come recently
while others spawn later
this is the magic that
some have forgotten
with all their money
and sexual innuendos
the small plane still flies over
most days
-sbm
The first escape
We were lucky, when the fire came for us.
A murmur of orange, mumming
grey dust – in the night-ashes from the grate,
their bucket on the porch. The bloom
must have been beautiful, I thought,
a thing come to life
when our eyes were all closed.
In the morning, one wall of the house was croaking
with blisters, toadskin paint
still slick with the rain. With persuasion
from a disobedient finger, they popped,
and the stink of the fire was alive
inside each one. Even at five,
I set free a lot of near-death.
Tiny craters left behind,
none yet satisfied with a sacrifice.
-Ankh Spice
The Institute (Part Four)
The Prequel – ‘ Welcome back Mr and Mrs Sullivan,
I finally have the news you’ve been waiting for. One of
our cloned samples has survived the delicate procedure.
However, it will have to grow here until its fifth birthday,
Just to ensure total success. After all, we owe it to you
to return a perfect specimen. Have you decided on a
name yet?’ Ah yes, her name will be Rachel. We trust
that you will do your best, doctor…
Dear Self – It’s me, Rachel. You don’t know me yet but
I somehow know who you are. I saw you in a memory
not even born yet but quite significant to my survival.
I finally left that strange place, after getting rid of my
overly attentive nurse – A bit too keen for my liking!
The more I insisted for her to leave me alone, the more
she repeated, ‘There, there my dear child, Nurse Marsh
will take very good care of you, after all we will be together
for five years!
Homecoming – Dear Self, I am in my new home. The
Sullivans are weird but I cannot complain. Five years is long to wait for a new home. I made sure my new mother understood when I jabbed my finger deep into one eye and just giggled about it – It felt good, even though father had to call for help. Are you still there, hello?
-Don Beukes
Of Man Of Dust
Buses are butterflies
all blue and gold
Blind Mary and I catch one
to the black glass wedding
young, dead Lozzy comes
walks on water down the canal bright and shiny
like a new kitchen surface
the man’s landrover is a poisonous
lily packed with dust of death
climbs out of the lily
dust flying like red flour
politest of men. Pardon me, young Lady
to Blind Mary who coughs,
overcome by dust
lozzy, my poor dead son
a vacuum cleaner
with severe asthma
inhales the man of dust
and knows what it means.
man of dusts’ minder of water
floods the vacuum cleaner
lozzy coughs splutters.
Blind Mary’s wedding gift,
a carved coal elephant inhales.
sprays water over his back,
as if having a wash
black dust billows.
black mingles with red dust.
lozzy vacuums up
the man of dust
disposes of him
in the Place of No Breath
and if the dust meets breath,
life. dust waits.
-Paul Brookes
Dai’s Jungian Idea: Lines nominated from their poems today by the poets
The small plane still flies over
tiny craters left behind
rooted deep
beneath water bodies.
A summer’s dreamer,
her flowers are
purple rain catchers.
walks on water
down the canal
bright and shiny
like a new kitchen surface
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers three options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger, or an interview about their latest book, or a combination of these.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.
Paul Waring
is a retired clinical psychologist from Wirral, UK. A 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee, he was awarded second place in the 2019 Yaffle Prize and commended and shortlisted in the 2019 Welshpool Poetry Competition. Paul’s poems have been widely published in print journals and webzines including Prole, Strix, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Atrium, The High Window and London Grip. He was part of the planning team for the inaugural 2019 Wirral Poetry Festival. ‘Quotidian’ his debut pamphlet was published in July 2019 by Yaffle Press.
I think the poetry I studied at school and college in the mid-1970’s helped spark my interest, but I’ve always enjoyed wordplay/rhythm/rhyme as I wrote song lyrics between 1979-1985 and, prior to that, made up and sang daft rhymes at school.
I began writing poetry in 1990 after buying two excellent poetry anthologies. The first, ‘The New Poetry’ introduced me to American poets such as Berryman, Lowell, Sexton and Plath, and British poets like MacCaig, R.S. Thomas, Larkin and Ted Hughes. The second, ‘British Poetry Since 1945’, included other great poets like MacNeice, Betjemen, McGough, Heaney and Muldoon.
2. Who introduced you to poetry?
Mrs Pritchard, our English teacher at grammar school, managed to engage and enthuse a class of Monty Python crazy teenagers about Shakespeare and poems like ‘The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner’. I remember being very taken by Gerard Manley Hopkins’ ‘Windhover’. I was also lucky to have two excellent A-level college lecturers whose enthusiasm for poetry and writing in general enthused me.
3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?
I’ve always thought it important to be aware of the great poets from the past but I’ve never regarded them as a dominating presence. I’ve always thought it helpful to have some awareness of poets from the past, the history of poetry and different forms of poetry. In other words, getting a perspective on how we’ve arrived where we are now – how poetry has changed and developed over time and how it reflects life at different points in history.
4. What is your daily writing routine?
I don’t have a specific routine but I tend to work most mornings, helped by (strong) coffee at home or at coffee shops. I try to plan what I want to work on each day and, typically, switch between tasks such as drafting new poems, editing, revising, admin tasks like keeping up with submissions, posting and responding on social media, etc. I like to combine all this with reading – it helps reduce my guilt about having mountains of unread or part-read poetry books!
5. What motivates you to write?
Anything I experience, notice, think or dream about might motivate me to write something. I find nature and creatures in general fascinating and, as a retired clinical psychologist and neuropsychologist, I’ve always been interested in the brain and how people think and behave – human drives, urges, motivations, communication, etc. Looking at art or listening to music might motivate me, as might a funny word, phrase, thought, image or memory.
Put another way, my motivation to write might be to do with expressing what I (or others) see, feel or remember and how I (and others) view the world – or, it might be nothing to do with me, it may a poem from the perspective of a wildflower or a cheese grater!
6. What is your work ethic?
I try to read and write every day but I don’t force myself to do it, mainly because I want to enjoy doing it. In terms of writing, I learned some time ago there is nothing more painful than sitting in front of a screen or blank sheet of paper desperately trying to force words out. I aim to average 3-4 hours of reading and writing over the course of a day but I know some days I won’t and I try to accept this. For me, it’s about keeping going, doing things bit by bit. I do try to keep organised, mainly because I’ve never been able to function well in chaos.
7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?
I was an avid reader from an early age but I don’t remember reading much poetry. My parents did not read (or talk about) poetry and our household wasn’t one where we’d share things like poems or songs. Studying Shakespeare and poets like Gerard Manley Hopkins at school might influence me today but, if they do, it must be at an unconscious level.
8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?
There are so many but Jo Shapcott, Caroline Bird, John McCullough, Kim Moore, Alice Oswald, John Burnside, David Harsent, Jo Bell, Jean Sprackland, Andrew Macmillan, Helen Mort and Cheryl Pearson immediately spring to mind. What they have in common is an ability to write poetry that moves me: imaginative, with original imagery and language, fresh perspectives – poems that amaze and inspire me.
9. Why do you write?
It’s difficult to say. Similiar to my response to Q5 about motivation to write, I think I write to express what I experience, notice, think or dream about. I’m lucky to be retired and what started as a hobby is now a part-time job. Writing definitely brings structure and purpose to my day. However, after three years, writing often seems more difficult and takes longer, probably because I’ve become more critical – but I still get that tremendous feeling of relief and sense of achievement when a poem is finished and, hopefully, published. I also enjoy the process of learning and developing as a poet – reading as widely as I can in the hope that I improve and write better.
10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”
The often-offered advice “read, read, read, write, write, write” is probably not a bad starting point. I think it’s generally accepted that to develop as a writer you do need to read widely in addition to writing. I like this quote by Jane Commane from ‘How To Be A Poet’ (2017), the book she co-wrote with Jo Bell, “a good poet is one who strives to move on and to write better, and seeks to take up an apprenticeship with the master craftspersons of their trade.”
I also think it helps if you can find ways to keep making what you do fun and enjoyable because, with the exception of taking part in writing groups and workshops, writing is largely a solitary pursuit – and one with limited prospects of praise or reward! I think a big step towards becoming a writer is to ‘risk’ reading your work to others and submitting for publication – oh, and learning how to deal with feedback (hopefully, constructive!) and inevitable rejections. One of my tutors at university used the term ‘stickability’, meaning to get started, keep going and hang in there rather than give up or avoid when it feels too difficult. So, maybe persistence is key to becoming a writer!
11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.
Over the past year my debut pamphlet ‘Quotidian’ was published by Yaffle Press and I was part of the planning and delivery team for the first Wirral Poetry Festival as well as doing guest poet readings around the UK. As I write this (May 2020) my scheduled guest reading slots around the country have all been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, one advantage of the lockdown period is that I’ve had more time to read, research and work on new projects. One of these is my first full collection, which will be published by Yaffle Press in 2021 or, possibly, 2022.
Finally, I would like to say how grateful I am to have been invited to take part in this wonderful series of interviews. I thoroughly enjoyed answering these thought-provoking questions, even if it did take me an eternity!
A heartbeat before the slide
you know you’re going down
A monkey brain knows
when the branch is about to crack
And a kid feels the birth
of the tiny split in the ice
spreading from his last footstep
We learn to fall before we know
the promise we make by beginning to walk
which is to keep on doing it, even knowing
the ground will fail beneath us some day
And they say you time-travel just a little
before the cold takes you, the years
all that good footwork stamped into you
go for a wander under your lids, maybe
just trying to escape the inevitable. Did you know
what takes us under is not spared? This pass
through the mountains where your car went over
once lingered her beat, slicking sediment-ghosts
just before the blast split her. And that glacier
down south, undermined by a warming sea
shimmered with Pleistocene spring
just as her heart went to holes. Oh but wait,
that one went alone. The bones she holds
too deep to see the sudden blossoms
spiriting the ice.
-Ankh Spice
yūjō
cherry trees blooming
in unexpected places
cheer world-weary hearts
-Rich Follett
*
I recall vending machines in a small side street, someplace
I’ve not yet been, maybe in a dreamscape, anyway. Someone
will take me to Mt. Fuji, one day. Someone will take my hand
through Aokigahara, the Sea of Trees, and we will buy iced tea
in a carpark vending machine. Have I told you the trick to a good
car park? They will say – yes – it’s in the flower arrangements,
the peeling memory of bright sakura trees. I will remember this.
-Alex Mazey
..fourteen..
it starts at thirteen, moves forward
teenage years spinning
some,
a few stimming
later we watch the trees spinning
going about in a muddle
going down in trouble
those years
asked if there was a maypole
it was suggested to have a
roundabout
it is all a gift
-sbm
Blossoms
In my memory a
late snow had dried,
-leaving no trace-
though it still flaked
eggshell brittle from
the damp cellar walls.
I recall the deer park.
Richmond in early April,
probably a lifetime ago.
The pink and white a
growing bloom,
was joy within.
Did I dance the blossom
under ruck sacked back
and in leather shoes?
Dappled tree shadow,
as petalled canopies filled
the obscured skies.
A morning,
those trudging ways.
And everything was white
and pink. I loved
the pastel rain.
It made me cry.
The Revelation – Dear Self, I finally woke up to my reality,
As that wretched red mist cleared, my surroundings were
finally revealed. At first, I became aware of an annoying
hovering buzz – Invisible but audible. As my eyes adjusted
to where I was, I could swear I saw a cluster of microscopic
drones leave my body! ‘Oh, you are awake!’ I heard a
familiar voice say. I instinctively realised where the voices
in my head originated from and why I thought I was going
crazy. Next to me in similar pods wherein identical bodies
like mine were attached to, one of them spoke directly to
me! ‘I tried to warn you but you were too stubborn to
listen. We’ve got to get out of here before dear Marsh
returns to command more drones to replicate me’ –
But who are you? I don’t understand. ‘What do mean?’
‘It’s me, my name is Rachel.’
What? Impossible! I am Rachel!
‘Calm down dear – We are all Rachel…’
The Pink Forest
Cream screams ruby dreams
Strange happenings
White skies blood cries
Yellow wailing soul
Destroying – Hark the pink
Lark spreading false truths
Growing strange fruits
Falling on sour earth burning
Barren soil to reveal new growth
Where strange sounds can be
Heard – A fluttering of falling birds
A spluttering of green rain fauna
and flora in pain – Get out go back
retreat attack leave retrieve collect
reflect. You are not needed here –
This is our new sphere. No, go!
A broken nation shattered moral
Compass – You could have
prevented this…
-Don Beukes
Go
Heated chambers roil
with entrancing
little bugs, creeping out
the little ladies
who refuse to look
because their mascara
will collapse like tar.
Whipping off my myopia,
I alone am delighted.
If I could crawl through
to dance with the motley
harbingers of the abnormal,
I would squeeze myself
onto the slide, no regrets,
and wave to my companions,
who aren’t looking at me;
me, happy at last, fitting in,
dancing on a glass yacht.
-Elizabeth Moura
Finding Your Place
Paint peeling
From ancient walls
Reveals nothing of note.
But the preserved picture,
Of three parallel trees, once bespoke
By some
Now unknown admirer
Of the arts,
Leaves behind enough, perhaps,
To inspire a new start.
Finally,
The patron, artist and
Onlooker may know
The unparalleled merit of
Their respective roles.
-st
Frailty
is the strength to put one foot
in front of another against the gust.
is endurance of pain you inhale
and exhale as you catch your breath.
is a tree growing on ground known to dissolve
beneath the roots as a short life is lived.
is the sharp, severe loss of mam and dad
as your bones ask for a hug from the disappeared.
-Paul Brookes
Bios and Links
-Alex Mazey
(b.1991) received his MA (distinction) from Keele University in 2017. He later won The Roy Fisher Prize for Poetry with his debut pamphlet, ‘Bread and Salt’ (Flarestack, TBA). He was also the recipient of a Creative Future Writers’ Award in 2019. His poetry has featured regularly in anthologies and literary press magazines, most notably in The London Magazine. His collection of essays, ‘Living in Disneyland’, will be available from Broken Sleep Books in October 2020. Alex spent 2018 as a resident of The People’s Republic of China, where he taught the English Language in a school run by the Ministry of Education. His writing has been described as ‘wry and knowing,’ with ‘an edge that tears rather than cuts or deals blows.’
is a High School English and Creative Writing teacher who has been writing poems and songs for more than forty years. His poems have been featured in numerous online and print journals, including BlazeVox, The Montucky Review, Paraphilia, Leaf Garden Press and the late Felino Soriano’s CounterExample Poetics, for which he was a featured artist. Three volumes of poetry, Responsorials (with Constance Stadler), Silence, Inhabited, and Human &c. are available through NeoPoiesis Press (www.neopoiesispress.com.)
As a singer-songwriter, Rich has released five albums of independent contemporary folk music. His latest. Somewhere in the Stars, is available at http://www.richfollett.com. He lives with his wife Mary Ruth Alred Follett in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, where he also pursues his interests as a professional actor, playwright, and director.
-Ankh Spice
is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa (NZ). His poetry has appeared in a wide range of international publications and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He truly believes that words have the power to change the place we’re in, and you’ll find him doing his best to prove it on
Twitter: @SeaGoatScreams
or on Facebook: @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry
-Carrie Ann Golden
is a deafblind writer from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in northeastern North Dakota. She writes dark fiction and poetry. Her work has been published in places like Piker Press, Edify Fiction, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, GFT Press, Asylum Ink, and Visual Verse.
-sonja benskin mesher
born , Bournemouth.
now
lives and works in North Wales
as an independent artist
‘i am a multidisciplinary artist, crafting paint, charcoal, words and whatever comes to hand, to explain ideas and issues
words have not come easily. I draw on experience, remember and write. speak of a small life’.
Elected as a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy and the United Artists Society
The work has been in solo exhibitions through Wales and England, and in selected and solo worldwide.
Much of the work is now in both private, and public collections, and has been featured in several television documentaries, radio programmes and magazines.
is an American poet whose work emphasizes emotional integrity and social justice. She is the author of several eBooks including, Learning from Pompeii, Coffee for Neanderthals, Disgracing Lady Justice and others, available on smashwords.com and its affiliates.Chapbook:Ebola (West Chester University Poetry Center, 2014)
is a South African and British writer. He is the author of ‘The Salamander Chronicles’ (CTU) and ‘Icarus Rising-Volume 1’ (ABP), an ekphrastic collection. He taught English and Geography in both South Africa and the UK. His poetry has been anthologized in numerous collections and translated into Afrikaans, Persian, French and Albanian. He was nominated by Roxana Nastase, editor of Scarlet Leaf Review for the ‘Best of the Net’ in 2017 as well as the Pushcart Poetry Prize (USA) in 2016. He was published in his first SA Anthology ‘In Pursuit of Poetic Perfection’ in 2018 (Libbo Publishers) and his second ‘Cape Sounds’ in 2019 (Gavin Joachims Publishing). He is also an amateur photographer and his debut Photographic publication appeared in Spirit Fire Review in June 2019. His new book, ‘Sic Transit Gloria Mundi’/Thus Passes the Glory of this World’ is due to be published by Concrete Mist Press.
is an old new poet. He worked in social care but now has no day job. A keen photographer and eater of literature and lurid covers. Fascinated by nature, physics, pagans, sea and storm. His poetry seeks to capture image and tell philosophical tales. Published in Black Bough Poetry, Re-Side, The Hellebore Press and the Pangolin Review. He can be seen reading on #InternationalPoetryCircle and regularly appears on #TopTweetTuesday.
Twitter. @thnargg
Web seekingthedarklight.co.uk
lives in a converted factory and works with elders. She has had poetry, flash fiction or photographs published in online and print publications Human/Kind Journal, Rose Quartz Poetry Magazine, Hawk & Whippoorwill, The Cormorant, Radical: A Lit Zine, Chrysanthemum, Occulum, Flash, Paragraph Planet, and Flash Fiction Magazine. On Twitter @mourapoet, Instagram mourathepoet and mourastudio.wordpress.com.
-Paul Brookes
is a shop asst. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews.
-Mary Frances
is an artist and writer based in the UK. She takes a few photos every day, for inspiration and to use in her work. The images for this project were all taken in the last two years on walks during in the month of May. Her words and images have been published by Penteract Press, Metambesen, Ice Floe Press, Burning House Press, Inside the Outside, Luvina Rivista Literaria, and Lone Women in Flashes of Wilderness.
Twitter:
@maryfrancesness
-James Knight
is an experimental poet and digital artist. His books include Void Voices (Hesterglock Press) and Self Portrait by Night (Sampson Low). His visual poems have been published in several places, including the Penteract Press anthology Reflections and Temporary Spaces (Pamenar Press). Chimera, a book of visual poems, is due from Penteract Press in July 2020.
is an admin worker, currently not in work Married, 2 sons. Loves poetry and words. She considers herself a writer of scribble rather than a poet. She has written a novel and is using her spare time to finally get it published (self-publishing) which has been an ambition of her for the last 10 years.
Photo by Adrian Dorobantu on Pexels.com
The Wombwell Rainbow 