Day Six: Combine nature with creativity

https://youtu.be/xDWhTlGNz3o

-Masquerading As Rocks, written and performed by Kathryn Cowley

Muses

Here are her muses, ocean borne,
beach combed. Her teenage confusions
and mumbling frozen tongue that can win
no arguments bring her out here, where
stories are written in a language
she understands.

Endless tourists snap their picturesque
romance of seals and seabirds, the painted
clinker-built boats. She doesn’t talk to them,
hooded parka pulled tight, alone on beach
below ancient stone pier, touching base
with her realm.

Among the Sulphur perfumed seaweed,
things speak to her. Blue, blue, fishing nets
twisted into gordian knots. Barbed wire, rusted
orange and no friend of the unwary. A yellow
fish-box. A clear bottle of Klondyker’s vodka –
a mostly empty message.

Excited tourists photograph a pod of orcas,
she sees oil rigs, trawlers netting vast subsidies,
a white sheep skull poking ridiculous teeth
through the weed. She pockets a lava rock
from Iceland, maybe sell it to a tourist after,
maybe not.

And here, a bird with a broken neck, bright
feathers catching sun, dead eye pinned to the sky
perhaps homesick. If she could only speak
to others as this bird speaks to her, say
all that matters, ever matters, is to
honour the world before you.

Originally published The New Shetlander

-Maxine Rose Munro

 

STRAY DOG IN THE RAIN

It has been wet for days. The sun is a fading memory,
squeezed beneath these swaddling clouds. Compressed,

her outline smudges blood and mud across the sodden sky.
Her skin turns black and blue under the violence of the storm.

The weather is dictating terms. Invading ocean roars, heaves
its bulk onto the land, drowning out the little cries of birds.

Her throat shapes anxious sounds beneath her tattered coat.
No-one here will hear her prayers. Stone deaf in its rage,

the supine land will lie in wait. Soon it will have its say.
It coils its spring. It does not care what becomes of her.

-Clare O’Brien (First published by Lunate, March 2020)

TO A SINGER, FROM HER SONGS

You have driven us for years.
Counting our notes like sheep, urging us over storm-weathered hills.

Our cries are nothing to you.
Some you catch, stretching them beyond your rhythm, into the dark.

Some of us you call, softly at first;
Some you flay alive, the sound reverberating as you feed.

Sated, you are tender then;
caressing our bones, draping our wet skins over the chords to dry.

-Clare O’ Brien (first published by Nightingale & Sparrow, May 2020)

-Jane Rosenberg LaForge from her collection, Medusa’s Daughter, Animal Heart Press

 

(untitled)

I’ve strayed too far from this mud, this earth
to which we all belong,
I will plunge my hands into the cool soil
and feel fresh roots strike forth
from my fingertips
anchoring this trembling heart
deep
within the land.

-Charlotte Olivet

I Create

Something to care for, saved on this blessed earth.
A poem’s words walk into wilderness.
A painting is a deep focus, unearths
details, how trees frame, repairs
brokenness.

Folk in my head seem quieter in woods,
and in the cemetery. I usually
only hear the loud mouthy ones, the no goods.
Now, I listen to quiet ones slowly.

Some are no goods too, but most, not. Listen,
They tell me woodland air is sacredness.
Keen, I write and sketch, all senses sharpen.
I never knew here, in my inwardness.

Outside of myself there are outside selves.
Too many is a burden, all is wealth.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Jane Rosenberg LaForge

writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir,  AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com 

-Jo Fearon

Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology.  Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.

-Maxine Rose Munro

writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com

—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire.  She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.

She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.

She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.

-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler

has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless

Day five: Exercising In Nature

(Originally published Between These Shores)

Streams

The holiday hike arrested as slow
treacle time drips down leaves, oozes
over boulders. Held by cessation, embracing
abandonment, you entered and left yourself
behind. You sit in forgotten worlds
that do not see you become lost
in the vastness of how small you are.

-Maxine Rose Munro

The Void

I take a look, see myself in the void.
So I resolve to walk in Wombwell Woods.
Ancient forest. Once called dark and devoid
of kindness. Home to killers, thieves no goods.

I can handle ghosts. Real folk do my head.
I find a regular track. Don’t want to be lost.
Uphill patched with cobbles leads to spread
Of water, folk call the res where anglers boss

their lines, I wend the other way through bird
talk,
twigs snap underfoot. I am elsewhere, home.
Things float in spring sunbeams as I slow walk
Intoxicated, bathing in trees dome.

This is not a void, this is substance, worth.
Something to care for, saved on this blessed earth.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Jane Rosenberg LaForge

writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir,  AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com 

-Jo Fearon

Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology.  Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.

-Maxine Rose Munro

writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com

—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire.  She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.

She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.

She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.

-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler

has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless

Day four. Bring nature to you.

(Originally published in Southlight)

She’s building a tower

One stone for every day
she is ok. This one
is from a loch.

She reached into cold water
and took it home,
the first, her chosen

foundation. It sparkles
darkly. The second
came from a hill.

Under uprooted Ash,
between exposed roots
that fed still-living tree,

broad, flat, and coloured
earth. Her third
a broken, river-rounded

section of tile, taken
from a garden.
Terracotta, pitted

yet smooth to feel
when held against cheek.
Next, reddish slate

from a shore below castle,
slipped from turret above,
part of the roof.

Its fall shaped it
into a heart
that echoes her own

romantic notions. One day
she will find a stone
belonging to the sky,

it will be blue. Or white.
Her tower will be done.
She will rest.

-Maxine Rose Munro

Happens

You can’t plan it. Get out. Breathe. It makes sense.
I fetched in wild as postcard from nature.
greetings and wish you were here. Some intense
rock from a Wombwell charity shop shares

space with unpainted pine furniture, grain
and knots need to be seen, to lose myself
in swirls, still rivers whose eddies are tamed
in these marble bookends split whole length

reveals metamorphic designs pressured
heated limestone packed with coloured crystals
formed from impurities. Beauty impured.
I am not pure. Who split me ogles.

When nature is a mirror I avoid,
I take a look, see myself in the void.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Jane Rosenberg LaForge

writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir,  AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com 

-Jo Fearon

Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology.  Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.

-Maxine Rose Munro

writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com

—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire.  She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.

She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.

She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.

-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler

has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless

Day Three: Get Out Into Nature

(Originally published in Between These Shores)

Streams

The holiday hike arrested as slow
treacle time drips down leaves, oozes
over boulders. Held by cessation, embracing
abandonment, you entered and left yourself
behind. You sit in forgotten worlds
that do not see you become lost
in the vastness of how small you are.

-Maxine Rose Munro

-Kathryn Southworth from “A Pure Bead”, an account of Viginia Woolf’s life.

Wellbecoming

I forgot how afternoons could be simple and peaceful,
and how to lose myself in the murmur of the tide;
how life was – before the busyness, pressure and anxiety
– and ghastly decisions which muddle the mind completely.

How to close my eyes, absorbing the atmosphere,
appreciating the essence of the day, without it having to ‘count’.

I didn’t consider how a group of new friends could drift to the beach,
enjoying the break without guilt. I forgot how it felt to be healthy,
with a clear mind, and a future full of possibilities.

I learnt once again how to sit still, enjoying the breeze on my face,
and the smell of the seaside; how to watch a lone bird on a rock,
surrounded by water, and to casually wonder why
it was not with the others on the bank.

In this creamy sunlight, a pair of swans
are swimming in slow, silent circles.
The world has ceased spinning around me, and my spirit is lifted;
whatever the future holds, I am optimistic.

-Sara Louise Wheeler, Tŷ Newydd, 2019.

Written on the beach near Tŷ Newydd writing centre. Originally published in Welsh as ‘Dychwelyd’ (return) by Y Stamp literary magazine; later renamed ‘Llesddŵad’ to match the English title. This English version was published by Dark Poets Club and featured in an associated anthology about mental health called ‘Pluviophile’.

-Jo Fearon

Will Get Out

Not enough for myself, but I will, I will
get out. Force this skin against itself.
My head screams “No!”, stay here, stay safe until
pain in your head is gone, in better health.

All you will find out there is death, disease
you don’t want to infect kindly old folk.
I get out. Sat in cemetery’s ease.
Jackdaws turn their beaks as if I’ve just woke.

Don’t sit with me. Don’t don’t talk to me. Don’t.
A ladybird appears on my coat sleeve.
A delicate thing. Blow it away. Won’t.
It unlocks it’s cage and flits and I breathe.

Unexpectedly wonder just happens.
You can’t plan it. Get out. Breathe. It makes sense.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and links

Bios and Links

-Jane Rosenberg LaForge

writes poetry, fiction, and occasional essays from her home in New York. She has published four chapbooks of poetry and three full-length collections, the most recent being MEDUSA’S DAUGHTER from Animal Heart Press. Her novel, SISTERHOOD OF THE INFAMOUS from New Meridian Arts Press, was inspired by the life of her sister, a one-time punk rocker and prodigy in mathematics. She also is the author of the novel, THE HAWKMAN: A FAIRY TALE OF THE GREAT WAR (Amberjack Publishing 2018) and an experimental memoir,  AN UNSUITABLE PRINCESS (Jaded Ibis Press 2014). More information is at jane-rosenberg-laforge.com 

-Jo Fearon

Is Public Sector Administrator and hobby poet. Second of Ian McMillan’s guest Hear My Voice Sonnets on You Tube. Soon to be published in HMV Barnsley 2020 competition anthology.  Passionate about live music especially rock/blues/punk. Aiming to devote more time to what I love. Rediscovered love of writing the past 2 years.

-Maxine Rose Munro

writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com

—Kathryn Southworth was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, and now lives in Camden Town, London and Prinknash, Gloucestershire.  She is married with three surviving children and three grandchildren.

She has always written poetry but returned to it in earnest only after a long career as an academic in midlands universities. She was a founding fellow of the English Association, Head of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Wolverhampton and held senior management posts there and at Newman University and also worked for the Quality Assurance Agency. She has been a governor of the Camden and Islington Mental Health Trust and is currently a governor of Rose Bruford College of Drama and Theatre Arts.

She has published poetry and reviews in several magazines and anthologies and reads at a number of London poetry venues, including the Poetry Café and Torriano Meeting House. The literary canon informs her writing, as does her Catholic faith, surreptitiously.

-Dr Sara Louise Wheeler

has Waardenburg Syndrome Type 1, a genetic condition which affects her physical appearance as well as her hearing. She writes the column ‘O’r gororau’ (from the borders) for Barddas Welsh poetry magazine and her poetry, belles lettres and artwork has been published by Unique Poetry Journal, Dark Poets Club, Fahmidan Journal, Cloverleaf Zine, and 3am Magazine. Sara is currently writing an autobiographical bildungsroman opera called The Silver Princess, funded by Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru. Originally from Wrecsam in North East Wales, she now lives on the Wirral peninsula with her husband Peter and their pet tortoise Kahless

Day Two: Using All Your Senses To Connect With Nature

 

Catching Giants

Here, on my lichen painted stool,
cold air blown in from the sea collides
with my own extremities till flesh
becomes hill and glen together
with tear choked streams,
and the winds blow ragged spoor
of a haunted wilderness to me.
I know I am not alone.

Hidden in hillside scrape, gnome-like,
squarely placed at the median
like the old duke of York, neither
at the bottom nor the top, ice eases
in when I inhale, foretelling snow,
but I am happy and will cast
out nets of dream to catch
myself a wish.

Elsewhere in this liminal landscape
filled by emptiness and secrets,
a bird pipes once, twice, thrice,
but before I can eyeball it it’s gone –
a Boojum my inner ornithologist says.
Yes, truly I should have come
in the spring, when everything
was fresh and green.

Still, I will bide awhile. I’ve come late
and I’ve come old, but yet I’ll wait.
For maybe then I’ll see again the lands
beyond our home, where trows play
and giants stravaig.

Trow: fairy creature of the Northern isles
Stravaig: wandering journey

-Maxine Rose Munro

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Barrel rolling through currents and tides, you ventured
too close to the edge of the world. The ocean swell
delivered you, a parcel spilling helpless mystery.
Out of your element, you toiled in our alien gravity,
Your lustre drying in the sun. I came upon you
in the evening. You were quite dead by then, your
stilled frilled limbs like soft blown glass. Your bell,
with its grey fishmonger slab sheen, had settled
like a parachute in the sand. Beneath your skirts
you were the ancient oyster pink of corsetry.

If I wade into the shallows, let the water lap
around my soft white legs, will I make sense?
Will the world you came from be my life support
if I lie down and let my body float out to sea?
Or will my muscles slacken, robbed of resistance,
my bones slowly softening in the salt? Your sea
would dissolve me like a slug. I’d drift, defenceless,
silent, stingless, until all that was left was a shadow
and a sigh, my voice whispered in a wave’s breadth.
Fading like these jellyfish, whose dehydrated
pink rosettes are shadow printed on the sand.

-By Clare O’Brien (Originally published Northwords Now, April 2020)

NATURE

For days and months
I sit and watch
for hours on end
receive with happiness
what Nature does send
birds on the trees
singing with the breeze
or silently praying
while I shivered and sneezed
but again the clouds would stay
and I would know the rain will pray
take away the sadness and the pain
and then let the sun shine
all the way
Life is in the clouds
in the skies
if we turn our eyes
and hearts and listen
we would know
there’s no one else
no place to go
Nature is The One
The Truth
I Share
Nature loves
Nature Takes Care

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Believe

Loud birdsong, speaks of more than I believe.
Nature’s struggle to survive gives me peace of mind.
Breathe in slaughter of those who must leave
hungry young to murder another kind.

Delight in tranquil forest where spiders
chew on trapped prey. Where they find energy
to keep going on I wish I’d their verve,
strength to up and out, answer mystery.

Where’s the sense, where’s the good in going on?
You struggle and then you die. Why bother?
The dead are dead despite the wild birdsong.
Folk say how I moan while others suffer?

Wish I wasn’t so selfish, cared a little,
not enough for myself, but I will, I will.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-Clare O’Brien

Born a Londoner, for the past two decades Clare has lived by a sea-loch in the north-west of Scotland, which suits her much better.  She’s currently working on a novel about atomisation and disconnection, called ‘Light Switch’. Her recent fiction and poetry credits include Mslexia, Northwords Now, The London Reader, Lunate, The Mechanics’ Institute Review and The Ekphrastic Review, and anthologies fromThe Emma Press, Hedgehog Poetry and Unimpatient.one.

-Maxine Rose Munro

writes in English and her native Shetlandic Scots. She is widely published in the UK and beyond, both in print and online. She runs First Steps in Poetry, which offers feedback to beginner poets. More here http://www.maxinerosemunro.com