Know if lives in nature’s song—
thick on spring’s rustle

between every breath that comes
verdant and sublime, there was
an almost,
never rooted,
a moon-rose, eggshell fragile—

but ask, ask, ask, she says–
for dreams,
a dance on a long bee-path,
soft blooms of dusk,
a shadow-fiddle
like a lullaby as night’s blanket rests.

Watch, as frost-lichens bloom,
and then color, stone to berry-warm

reflections in ancient rivers–
a murmur, a laugh,
the embrace of sky,

rippling secrets, there and gone.

The Oracle really wanted me to ask today. Every set I looked at gave me that word. Then these lines came, and the poem fell into place.

This week I welcome reviewer and poet, Gerry McGrath, to reflect on his wonderful chapbook, Love All the People.

The Makings of a Good Conversation – ends & beginnings

Poetry can stop the heart, if not time.

Recently I was in correspondence by email with a friend. We’ve both been doing the poetry thing for a long time and trust each other’s instincts and responses. Anyway he said something I’m sure he won’t mind me reproducing here. It’s about getting your body into the right angle. The reason I like this so much is that it uses ordinary straightforward language in order to say something quite captivating. That’s not as easy as it sounds. Not at all. How do you begin to talk about how poetry begins?

The more I look at it, the more I think The Makings of a Good Conversation is about ‘voice’. Voice has its…

Alan Price lives in London. He is a poet, scriptwriter, short story writer, film critic for filmuforia.co.uk and blogger at alanprice69.wordpress.com . His short story collection The Other Side of the Mirror, an alternative take on vampirism, was published by Citron Press in 1999. A TV film A Box of Swan was broadcast on BBC2 In 1990. Alan has scripted five short films. The last one Pack of Pain (2010) won four international film festival awards. His debut collection of poetry Outfoxing Hyenas was published by Indigo Dreams in 2012. A pamphlet of prose poems Angels at the Edge (Tuba Press) appeared in 2016. The poetry
chapbook Mahler’s Hut was published in 2017 by Original Plus Books. The High Window published his collection Wardrobe Blues for a Japanese Lady in 2018. In October 2019 Ebionvale Press published a collection of stories and flash fiction called The Illiterate Ghost. His…