-Marcel Herms “All the talk about getting results”
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “I was born (after Yayoi Kusama)”
All the Strands Carried, Come Together and Dissolve
The talking heads talk, on TV screens and from online streams, pontificate and remonstrate elucidate, and then negate— but flowers do not wait
for thoughts and prayers, the analysis of fools’ blares. Unaware of blithering-blather, the slathering lather of rabid madness—
feeling neither hope nor sadness, they simply do
until they’re through.
And, I am born, as are you– in their petal-dust, scattered or buried, river-ferried or eagle-carried, or by winds and air brought here—again, again, again–
then on a sigh, we’re here to live until we die, and nourish once more the flowers that grow and glow— with a wave to bees, a waltz for trees—
We cast shadow puppets
on the bedroom wall,
in the circle of light we’ve made,
the lamp angled up so it beams across
the single mattress, and us.
I can manage an adequate
rabbit, and a Homer Simpson
that’s good, or bad, enough to
make her laugh.
Like this, she says, feathering my
palms, turning me into an eagle.
Together, four-handed,
we figure out ways
to create fantastic creatures,
alien worlds,
visions of the future.
About the Author:
Joe Williams is an award-winning writer and performing poet from Leeds. His latest book is the pamphlet ‘This is Virus’, a sequence of erasure poems made from Boris Johnson’s letter to the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic. His verse novella ‘An Otley Run’, published in 2018, was shortlisted in the Best Novella category at the 2019 Saboteur Awards. His poems and short stories have been included in numerous anthologies, and in…
We know Jane as an outstanding poet from the North East of England whose skill with words is regularly recognised both nationally in the UK and internationally. Today, we introduce her as a supremely talented visual artist. She works in a wide variety of mediums, from watercolour, acrylics, pencil and pen & ink through to lino cutting and sculpture. Much of her work carries a strong environmental message, having been produced on or with reclaimed materials in order to lessen the burden on landfill. Most of her artwork is sold privately and her illustrations have been used as covers for many of the pamphlets published by BLERoom Press. She has provided the artwork for the covers of anthologies including Noble Dissent (Beautiful Dragons), Bloody Amazing (DragonYaffle), Be Not Afraid: An Anthology in Appreciation of Seamus Heaney (Lapwing) and Witches, Warriors. Workers (Culture Matters).
It all started with moss dotting the pavement, grass edging through the crack between the steps, shrubs seeding on roofs and poking out of tiles. In the distance on the hills defining our horizon we could see the pine forest. Some days it looked bigger, but we thought it was just a trick of the haze. Soon, it got harder to close the door. The clematis and jasmine wound their way around hinges and sent shoots around the lintel, spreading inside. One of my friends called to say a sapling had sprouted in her living room. She has to prune it before she can watch the telly. Apparently it is a sycamore. Down the road they had a problem with hydrangeas taking over the entire housing development, invading each flat one by one like the ants used to way back. I think we won’t hold out much longer. I opened the window this morning to find an enormous hollyhock blocking my view. It muscled high into the air, its baby pink flowers raising their stamens to the sun like satellite dishes looking for a signal. I closed the window, but tendrils curled over the glass, spiralling out of control. I called the police, but I think it’s too late. Just now I dared to approach the balcony and saw that now the entire street has turned green, disappeared completely underneath trees.
-Hilary Otto
A response to all three works of art: “All the talk about getting results” MH17 CO17. “I was born” KR17
All the Strands Carried, Come Together and Dissolve
The talking heads talk, on TV screens and from online streams, pontificate and remonstrate elucidate, and then negate— but flowers do not wait
for thoughts and prayers, the analysis of fools’ blares. Unaware of blithering-blather, the slathering lather of rabid madness—
feeling neither hope or sadness, they simply do
until they’re through.
And, I am born, as are you– in their petal-dust, scattered or buried, river-ferried or eagle-carried, or by winds and air brought here—again, again, again–
then on a sigh, we’re here to live until we die, and nourish once more the flowers that grow and glow— with a wave to bees, a waltz for trees—
a balm we seize, a thread connecting bodies, earth, air, sea- from the stars reborn, hearts, heads—we.
-Merril D Smith
I Was Born (after Yayoi Kusama) – KR17
It was the D.N.A. That made me this way. When I was an egg we all looked the same and to tell me apart they gave me a name.
I found fellow beings with arms legs and faces, I even discovered there were numerous races. I became different, sometimes crazy, not wild. There’ll be no one like me; for I have no child.
16,Ja,2021 for the seventeenth of. =Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
CO17
Scrapbooking
I’m Dead, Now What? Title of a journal pushed to the far back corner of my desk, a work of love. I tuck in needful info for my children to find some day. Hollyhocks will greet them in their search for car titles. Shelves of books, sunrises and tax returns– Midway in this journey, a dark wood. Location of the will, how to care for the dogs. Deed to the hundred-year-old house, the sea. Scraps of my life to be plugged in where needed. Wrap it all up. Scatter to winds I have chosen.
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.
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’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.
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
These fuzzy-brained days– I’m a hand-puppet, waiting for direction, a sense of what to do, which way to go some sense at all to my sensibility—magical realism it may be when the surreal is real in this inside-out and upside-down world—where is the key to unlock it?
Somewhere, a butterfly flutters, and the world shudders; Somewhere a rabbit hops, escaping a predator, or setting off a bomb. Crow caws, and I open my eyes, there is light, crystalline bright— just over there. See?
I have the pleasure of beginning 2021 by reviewing one of THE collections of 2020: ‘Alchemy’ by Fiona Perry (Turas Press, 2020), though it will be difficult to do justice to this fabulous first collection in the space available.
I don’t think Perry could have chosen a more appropriate title for a collection poems that deal with transmutation. Perry examines how events in our lives are transformational, impacting upon the nature of the inner self. Take for example, ‘Last Port of Call’. The recently bereaved husband struggles with how to grieve for his deceased wife; their marriage had been ‘a mistake’ and her loss leaves ‘his spirit’ like ‘a seaweed air sac//the illusion of volume hiding the dawn//of collapse.’ In order to come to terms with her death he must rewrite the history of their marriage: ‘he nets and caskets/ her in revised memory’ with the effect…
KR16 Hand Eye Frantic movement revealed a rabbits panicky hopping “I’m late”, but who is on time we can ask, who holds the key to the door of reality? No not Alice. No wonder in any land exists, no gardens, just a flower and a butterfly’ What happened where did the world go? “Mr Rabbit, do you know?” Whose hand destroyed it all and saw it all? Ordained to be crushed once and then all shall rise again. “Is that why you are in a hurry Mr Rabbit?” “You shall not be late if you are prepared”. The bird gives sign of the light and the heart shines bright and when love is true and right the hand is strong and The eye clear and straight in sight.
MH16 In distance space we are safe, transcending cult of isolation each swimming in its own orbit each creating its own divine music no fumes but darkness visible a power unseen yet felt in spheres a flight to unmeasured distances from dust to particles to form again and all be matter formed in spirit same eternity infinity forever in domain love is pure love supreme love is life from chaos to order from war to peace no blame in the celestial affair or game.
CO16 Preparing a face to meet another with grace evil spoils beauty
-Anjum Wasim Dar
TheSeersPalm
Every time you look at me you glance At your hand and I imagine That in the centre is an eye Because you say the same thing I see in an all knowing way Generally you don’t see, but it’s said The expected comment to pretend at Listening to what’s being said Instead of what you want it to mean. A shell described becomes a butterfly A key a lop eared rabbit and so on Until my heart says why share the acorns That grow into truth trees Or rose bushes that hold thorns And not everything is neatly packaged As a diamond ring The sky doesn’t only hold pretty birds Or the sky hold only sunshine. All is a mix , unpicked threads that make Something different or new You see imperfections, ruins Rusty keys, thorny flowers, cold nights I look for both sides neat and messy Both bring their gifts making up a new Pattern in my palm to see the world In colours swirling in my palm. As I watch the moon shine and stars Vie for place in the palm of the sky.
Charm bracelet (KR16)
Around my wrist is a dotted line. Here I hold my charms, stitched to my fingers. They bring me luck, in rose quartz and shell, and all the earth’s bounty is held in my hand. I watch over my charms with the unblinking eye in my palm. I will place my hand on your body as a blessing; run the key of my finger over your skin until it opens.
=Aisla Crawley –
-Hilary Otto
KR16HandEye
Frantic movement revealed a rabbits panicky hopping “I’m late”, but who is on time we can ask, who holds the key to the door of reality? No not Alice. No wonder in any land exists, no gardens, just a flower and a butterfly’ What happened where did the world go? “Mr Rabbit, do you know?” Whose hand destroyed it all and saw it all? Ordained to be crushed once and then all shall rise again. “Is that why you are in a hurry Mr Rabbit?” “You shall not be late if you are prepared”. The bird gives sign of the light and the heart shines bright and when love is true and right the hand is strong and The eye clear and straight in sight.
MH16
In distance space we are safe, transcending cult of isolation each swimming in its own orbit each creating its own divine music no fumes but darkness visible a power unseen yet felt in spheres a flight to unmeasured distances from dust to particles to form again and all be matter formed in spirit same eternity infinity forever in domain love is pure love supreme love is life from chaos to order from war to peace no blame in the celestial affair or game.
CO16
Preparing a face to meet another with grace evil spoils beauty
-Anjum Wasim Dar
Responding to CO16 and “Handeye” KR16
Just Over There
These fuzzy-brained days– I’m a hand-puppet, waiting for direction, a sense of what to do, which way to go some sense at all to my sensibility—magical realism it may be when the surreal is real in this inside-out and upside-down world—where is the key to unlock it?
Somewhere, a butterfly flutters, and the world shudders; Somewhere a rabbit hops, escaping a predator, or setting off a bomb. Crow caws, and I open my eyes, there is light, crystalline bright— just over there. See?
-Merril D Smith
Ikonttrekmij– (codeMH16)
Goodbye. Why the questions ? I have my reasons Please accept.
You have everything you need. You will not miss me. I will leave no gap. I am not going anywhere.
Withdrawal will not affect. Hello.
15,Ja,2021 for the sixteenth of. -Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Marcel Herms.
KR16
Hand-eyeCoordination
The evil eye, the left one of course, has fixed us for so long in its curse that we need more than a left-handed hamsa to free us. So here is a whole handful of charms. On the thumb, cowrie shell for wealth and eternal feminine. The pinky offers transformation with golden acorn and blue butterfly. On ring and middle fingers, love: rose and heart, rabbit for fertility. Index finger brings the secret key. Sewn-in redundance to counteract the crow on its high diamond perch. All stitched together with care, but there are loose threads. Beware!
-Holly York
MH15
Serpentine world becoming venomous day by day night by night real it is in cruelty, abuse by torture loud, ignoring it where can one go? poisonous virus is everywhere, hidden ready to pounce and bite, forever ? Or make efforts to make it better?
KR15
No do not lose hope restless inner eye seeks peace groans with pains untold
CO15
Cities bloody, dying citizens surging death, all round and red breathless, nothing green helps whither lakes forests? Life ends on ground and space shaking, empty silent grotesque, houses look as graves who rules ? who kills? Who saves?
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.
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’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.
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
How do we find our muse in these dark times? For some, I know that lockdown has deadened their creativity which is having an impact on their wellbeing, as they are also coping with isolation from friends and family. For those home schooling there’s no head space or time to write, and those working from […]
The superb Dragonflies Spoken Word returns with its first event of 2021 on the 16th Feb at 19.30 GMT and I will be the featured poet amid an evening of Open Mic readers. Hosted by fellow Poets Barbra Kirbyshaw and Darren J Beaney, it is always a perfectly packed Zoom room of artists and supporters…
Serpentine world becoming venomous day by day night by night real it is in cruelty, abuse by torture loud, ignoring it where can one go? poisonous virus is everywhere, hidden ready to pounce and bite, forever ? Or make efforts to make it better?
KR15
No do not lose hope restless inner eye seeks peace groans with pains untold
CO15
Cities bloody, dying citizens surging death, all round and red breathless, nothing green helps whither lakes forests? Life ends on ground and space shaking, empty silent grotesque, houses look as graves who rules ? who kills? Who saves?
-Anjum Wasim Dar
EpilogueCO15
This decaying city leaks red from painted poppies, tongues, from winter cyclamen, from the blood on paving stones.
It’s like an Ellroy today; all clean lines and dirty bars with leopard skin chaise longues. It’s raining, raising the hard-boiled urges.
This world is blurred, a noir told many times before, repeated through frosted glass in dim light. All the days that have passed have been long.
We’llbelieveanythingfromsomeonewearingasuit(MH15)
In my dream two football mascots stood over my hospital bed. They grinned (their masks gave them no choice) and waved. “What’s the story, doctor?” I asked. They did a little dance. “The truth is,” the blue hippo replied, “we don’t exist, we are simply creations of your semi conscious brain.” “OK,” I said. “But what’s wrong with me?” The pink shrimp stared manically, and said nothing. The blue hippo sighed. “I can’t tell you that,” he said. “This is just a dream.” “Ok,” I said. “So what does all this mean?” The pink shrimp ran around until he fell over. The blue hippo would have rolled his eyes if they hadn’t been stitched on. “You’re the poet,” he said. “You tell me.”
-Hilary Otto
Responding to “Ennui with eye “(KR) and “Ignore the real forever” (MH)
I’m weary of the grey January sky– the pewter-plated clouds simmer in gloom but never warm, despite their chafing, and their mumbling conversations drone on endlessly, causing the wind to bite in reply. And I–
I want to ignore the real—this forever-frost that beckons with a glistening smile, and then attacks with fierce lion claws, pinking my skin, but
I want color, bright red blooms and blue horses, grazing on emerald grass. I want to wake from a summer dream, to a robin gathering golden rays into song.
-Merril D Smith
IgnoreTheRealWorldforever – MH10
Foot down, time to get away. No need to travel, no need to hide. Switch off all appliances including the lights.
Nothing, not even a pin. Just a smile and colours on the receptors. My own boring yoga.
14,Ja,2021 for the fifteenth of. -Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Marcel Herms.
CO15
AftertheRiot
Skeletal frozen frieze against denseness of cloud smoke. Brutalist window bank where rows of empty eyes witness piled rubble of life and death. The only clear thing is the corner with its slick of blood spreading like spilled burgundy. Pen pointed skyward: Is it mightier than this?
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.
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’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.
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
The Wombwell Rainbow 