January 22nd
-Kerfe Roig “Moonsea”
-Christine O’Connor
-Marcel Herms “Words do matter”
Kr22 moonsea 1/22
If They Can Put a Man on the Moon…
The earth is as blue as an orange.
The moon is as dimpled as a golf ball.
I float in levity not in gravity.
Old Glory on my sleeve is upside-down.
Distress! Three shadow fingers point
to the sand dollar in the center
with its Christ symbols front and back.
The barrier must be broken, though,
before the doves of peace inside will fly.
-Holly York
In through the cracks (CO22)
The window leaks creativity today
Shapes drawn in the sky, in the dust;
we don’t discriminate. Today we are
punk, we are modern: skeins of colour
waiting for needles to make us whole.
Our collections are eclectic; we focus
energy in bright spots, in sudden waves.
You may not believe in all the things
we can achieve. Look how flawed
our arguments, how loosely we hang
together. You find us nebulous, far-fetched.
You are double-breasted, coated
with praise, accessorised with money.
But all of us are patched up; even you
have your snags. Our strength is in our outfit.
We combine to get attention, to cover
each other. Where is your shellac now?
We have stolen your only flash of colour
and glued it to our creation. Our prints
are all over your designs. Our motto: Be. Wear.
-Hilary Otto
Bios And Links
-Kerfe Roig
responding to
KR “Moonsea” and CO22
An Astronaut Speaks from the Moon
Was there once color in your dust and shadows,
did a sea of turquoise and cobalt dance in ripples
to shimmer, prismed, like stained glass, vibrant-hued
in the light of stars, and sun, and Earth—
I saw it rising
blue above your horizon, the color of dreams,
of sky and sea, but here–
here, it is the color of awe
and yearning. It is the color of home.
-Merril D Smith
Moonsea – KR22
Look at the Moon; that’s where I want to go.
We can build a ship and aim for Tycho.
Go through the void: a whisker from hell.
Soar over Terra Sanitatis if all goes well.
Soak up the Tranquility.
Feel the Serenity
and have a good gawp at Mons Usov geology.
Maria, step away from the Terminator.
21,Ja,2021(Moon phase: First Quarter, in Taurus) for the twenty-second of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/
-Christine O’Connor
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
-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.
=Redcat
RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.
Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.
Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.
Read more at redcat.wordpress.com
-Merril D Smith
is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-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.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History (
Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
Educational Consultant by Profession.
Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..
The Wombwell Rainbow 