This book is a quartet of slow, accumulative, long prose poems that touch on landscape, personal experience, geography, and philosophy. Sectioned and/or paragraphed, they gradually build up encounters with ‘Landscapes. Subtle shiftings of reality.’ These shiftings come from attention to detail, consideration of change, the seasons, the weather, how the light falls, and of how humans engage with the world around them.
Moorhead is interested in her own place in things, and inplaceitself, willing to be both scientific and emotional, rational and speculative, and to grapple with the unknown, in an attempt to allow ‘this existence to be full’. This fullness of experience, of course, means dealing with ups and downs, winter and summer, light and dark, the desired-for and the unwelcome. Death and mortality are part of nature, as is longing, absence, memory and anticipation; our own stories make sense of our lives, and ‘[f]ables frame the…
My thin reflection haunts the black- spotted mirror.
I have become dusk-scented; a moth-pollinated bloom.
The brush of wings jars against my face. Their kiss is made of dust.
I am submerged, sunk into this obscure room, left behind a closed door.
In my dreams, I travel far through spiral galaxies,
lighted by the moon.
-Louise Longson (She says: This poem features in the upcoming pamphlet Songs from the Witch Bottle: cytoplasmic variations by Louise Longson, Alien Buddha Press 2022)
Bullies
Meet in Geoff’s house to hear Led Zep’s “Presence“ on hifi in Seventy Six, Rush’s “A Farewell To Kings” Seventy Seven. Keen to guess how they would complete Cygnus.
Stood by rickety fence dividing Shaw Lane Cricket ground and school field catching Top Twenty, on uncertain reception raw on Mick’s smuggled medium wave playing
transistor radio, despair when Kate Bush Wuthering Heights reaches number one we wail like she does in Seventy Eight. As I sit at front of all classes teachers gone
they goad others to pelt me with screwed up paper, board rubbers until staff turn up.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Barbara Leonhard’s
work is published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Free Verse Revolution, October Hill Magazine, Vita Brevis, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, PhoebeMD: Medicine & Poetry, among others. Barbara won prizes and awards for her poetry in the anthology Well Versed 2021 and Spillwords, where she was voted Author of the Month of October 2021, nominated Author of the Year for 2021, and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. You can follow Barbara on her blog site, https://www.extraordinarysunshineweaver.com.
-Rachel Deering
lives in Bath with a cat. She writes poetry and takes the occasional photo whilst walking.
-Dana Clark-Millar
Over the past 2 years Dana has taken a deep dive into the world of haiku. When her fingers are not occupied counting out syllables, she is using them to weed and plant her garden. You can also find her cooking, canning and preserving foods, birdwatching, taking photos, playing out on the trails or enjoying a book while her 3 dogs and 2 cats attempt to out-cute one another.
-Cy Forrest
is state-educated, Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. MA Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London. Elvis at the Golden Shovel appeared in February’s issue of The Honest Ulsterman, the first in a set of four sestinas using end words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ twenty-four word poem, The Pool Players, Seven at the Golden Shovel. Billy Collins longlisted another in the set of four for the 2021 Fish Prize. Poems have been placed at Icefloe Press and here in The Wombwell Rainbow. Two are due to appear in Stand Magazine later this year. A full collection reached stage two in The North’s March 2021 open call.
-Louise Longson
cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.
Twitter @LouisePoetical
-Gillian Winn
is a mature poet, currently studying Creative Writing with the Open University. She worked as a nurse for the NHS for 40 years. She lives in North Yorkshire.
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
-Sue Finch’s
debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
The Wounded Angel – a Tritina After the painting by Hugo Simberg
They carry their precious cargo to safety, bandaged, wounded; fallen from heavenly realms, received by the rain-soaked earth. Dejected, she weeps in silence. Loneliness crushes her to the core.
She cannot move her lips, speak of the incident; pain enforces silence. Her stretcher-bearers move with gentle grace, knowing she is wounded. They wonder how such a holy child could have fallen unseen on earth,
when no one saw a parachute fail to open, saw her hit the cold earth. No gunfire audible, fields offering up no secrets, holding silence, in which she lay alone, her sacred body shaken, wounded.
She clasps a bunch of snowdrops, trusts them to heal her wounded wing, trusts Earth to keep her safe, hold mortal silence.
-Margaret Royall
-Sarah Reeson
Loneliness is a powerful thing to write about. No one hears even if you shout no one reads there is doubt Loneliness is a killing thing lump in the throat numb and afloat feet heart sinking and missing the beat Loneliness is a depressive thing It comes in a day when a dear one is indifferent and far away with reasons unknown what can one say- Loneliness is a lonesome thing it stays with the lonely and makes them sing when they cannot fly with their broken wings. Loneliness is a powerful thing when it builds patience when it fills emptiness when it heals wounds when it shows colors when it reveals character Loneliness is a powerful thing
when it does not come once when it goes and returns when it widens distances when it cools the burns – Loneliness is the absence of response.
-Anjum Wasim Dar
No Time For Me
I wake up suddenly too many times. Sometimes I just eat packets of biscuits. One after the other. All hours are mine. I eat and sleep when I want. I exist.
No workfriends. I walk home late from nightclubs. Hear my own footsteps in the morning streets. Talking to folk exhausts me. Drink in pubs hold my pint glass empty. Endless repeat.
Afraid to get caught staring at others. I hold my head low. I’m plain wallpaper. Old mates have family life, bairns, lovers. No time for me. Invitations taper.
They are better than me. Our friendship brief. Loneliness is sometimes a form of grief.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Barbara Leonhard’s
work is published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Free Verse Revolution, October Hill Magazine, Vita Brevis, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, PhoebeMD: Medicine & Poetry, among others. Barbara won prizes and awards for her poetry in the anthology Well Versed 2021 and Spillwords, where she was voted Author of the Month of October 2021, nominated Author of the Year for 2021, and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. You can follow Barbara on her blog site, https://www.extraordinarysunshineweaver.com.
-Rachel Deering
lives in Bath with a cat. She writes poetry and takes the occasional photo whilst walking.
-Dana Clark-Millar
Over the past 2 years Dana has taken a deep dive into the world of haiku. When her fingers are not occupied counting out syllables, she is using them to weed and plant her garden. You can also find her cooking, canning and preserving foods, birdwatching, taking photos, playing out on the trails or enjoying a book while her 3 dogs and 2 cats attempt to out-cute one another.
-Cy Forrest
is state-educated, Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. MA Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London. Elvis at the Golden Shovel appeared in February’s issue of The Honest Ulsterman, the first in a set of four sestinas using end words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ twenty-four word poem, The Pool Players, Seven at the Golden Shovel. Billy Collins longlisted another in the set of four for the 2021 Fish Prize. Poems have been placed at Icefloe Press and here in The Wombwell Rainbow. Two are due to appear in Stand Magazine later this year. A full collection reached stage two in The North’s March 2021 open call.
-Louise Longson
cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.
Twitter @LouisePoetical
-Gillian Winn
is a mature poet, currently studying Creative Writing with the Open University. She worked as a nurse for the NHS for 40 years. She lives in North Yorkshire.
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
-Sue Finch’s
debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.
They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.
Loneliness an illusion – we’re always connected by threads of light dreamt and drawn – this webbing cradles our minds our hearts our souls like bones that form a whole – we’re not alone – if only we can see our connections in time and space without squinting.
-Barbara Leonhard (She says: This is an original image I created. It’s a neurographica piece.)
Not Alone Loneliness an illusion – we’re always connected by threads of light dreamt and drawn – this webbing cradles our minds our hearts our souls like bones that form a whole – we’re not alone – if only we can see our connections in time and space without squinting.
-Barbara Leonhard
Loneliness
-photo by Rachel Deering
-Sarah Reeson
The Slick Street Part of the World after AM/TRAK by Amiri Baraka
Arriving in town with a one way ticket — scream, history, love, search; need a place to eat — play here says the smiling vertical medusa: the disused telephone exchange, the basement table; it’s the slick street part of the world in more ways than one — Spanish Harlem. Sit down — done ticket; the hip band, blows hard, you stare long at the postcard art, smoke the numbers, speak the clocks, eat the meal of cultural appropriation, the tisane of petals, the foraged creation; squid ink poured over warm, smooth pebbles, on the longest day, on the year’s midsummer.
-Cy Forrest
The Loneliness of the Condemned
There was a wildness in the rage of his eyes: ‘Let’s hold hands when they tie us to the stake!’ he urged
his fellow prisoners, groaning under the whip, toiling uphill to the place of ritual sacrifice.
Sweat dripped from tormented brows, blood oozed from open wounds – a nauseous stench of burning flesh licked at quivering nostrils.
He watched the girl in the sari crossing the field below, carrying a pitcher of holy water on her shoulder
She didn’t look up at him. Her feet burned as she crossed the scorching ground, water leaking
from the cracked pitcher, dripping down her jewelled sari Innocent droplets splashing onto the ochre dirt track
He grew frantic, calling out to the condemned – They had to listen! ‘ Solidarity, brothers, Let’s hold hands. Our last stand!’
But their ears were blind, their eyes deaf, their minds numb The girl in the sari reached the edge of the field and disappeared into oblivion.
-Margaret Royall
My Bella
There for me when wacked I trudge in from work. There for me when I am ill, barely lift my head from the pillow. Lays beside my hurt. Stroke her hair she arches her back, a gift.
Now nothing calms my heart as she once did. Hollowness in my lap, no soft greeting as I arrive. No brushing my cheek. Rid of her tenderness, I dream of seeing
her once more. How will she return to me? Her tenderness is the warm non-verbal I lack from my wife. Physicality our lass balks at, and calls her daddies girl.
She was abandoned, thrown out of her home. When I don’t see her for days I’m alone.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Barbara Leonhard’s
work is published in Anti-Heroin Chic, Free Verse Revolution, October Hill Magazine, Vita Brevis, Silver Birch Press, Amethyst Review, PhoebeMD: Medicine & Poetry, among others. Barbara won prizes and awards for her poetry in the anthology Well Versed 2021 and Spillwords, where she was voted Author of the Month of October 2021, nominated Author of the Year for 2021, and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. You can follow Barbara on her blog site, https://www.extraordinarysunshineweaver.com.
-Rachel Deering
lives in Bath with a cat. She writes poetry and takes the occasional photo whilst walking.
-Dana Clark-Millar
Over the past 2 years Dana has taken a deep dive into the world of haiku. When her fingers are not occupied counting out syllables, she is using them to weed and plant her garden. You can also find her cooking, canning and preserving foods, birdwatching, taking photos, playing out on the trails or enjoying a book while her 3 dogs and 2 cats attempt to out-cute one another.
-Cy Forrest
is state-educated, Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. MA Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London. Elvis at the Golden Shovel appeared in February’s issue of The Honest Ulsterman, the first in a set of four sestinas using end words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ twenty-four word poem, The Pool Players, Seven at the Golden Shovel. Billy Collins longlisted another in the set of four for the 2021 Fish Prize. Poems have been placed at Icefloe Press and here in The Wombwell Rainbow. Two are due to appear in Stand Magazine later this year. A full collection reached stage two in The North’s March 2021 open call.
-Louise Longson
cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.
Twitter @LouisePoetical
-Gillian Winn
is a mature poet, currently studying Creative Writing with the Open University. She worked as a nurse for the NHS for 40 years. She lives in North Yorkshire.
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
-Sue Finch’s
debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.
They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.
I softly whisper I do not know loneliness afraid it might hear
-Dana Clark-Millar
-Margaret Royall
-Sarah Reeson
Loneliness has enveloped me, in its shroud, A tsunami of sadness has drowned me, The heavy weight of sorrow, crushed my dreams, Life is an ever decreasing circle, Devoid of emotions and hope, The world still revolves around me, I am static, I can’t move on, My family try to reach me, Their arms are not long enough, My only solace is my alcohol, Smothered in its embrace, Cushioned by its intoxication, Sleep is my refuge, Dreams my escape, my only social interaction, I carry on, step by step, Day by interminable day, Waiting for my next period of elation, Mania, hyperactivity and then the next inevitable drowning.
-Gillian Winn
Intimacy Shy
Late mam stands in her white bra and panties ironing a dress for her cheese and wine hugs my eleven year old sobbing face, rallies, consoles, I push away her being kind.
I can’t recall why I wept, only shock of my mam undressed. Shy of forward women I walk away rather than stop. Younger I wet my bed, smelt, felt awkward.
What do I say to women? Argued I couldn’t afford to wine and dine, talked myself out of talking to strangers. Why I spent so long on my own. My words walked.
Always tongue tied, mind blank, touch, caress wary. Keep to myself, but hunger there, scary.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Dana Clark-Millar
Over the past 2 years Dana has taken a deep dive into the world of haiku. When her fingers are not occupied counting out syllables, she is using them to weed and plant her garden. You can also find her cooking, canning and preserving foods, birdwatching, taking photos, playing out on the trails or enjoying a book while her 3 dogs and 2 cats attempt to out-cute one another.
-Cy Forrest
is state-educated, Manchester, now living in Wiltshire. MA Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London. Elvis at the Golden Shovel appeared in February’s issue of The Honest Ulsterman, the first in a set of four sestinas using end words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ twenty-four word poem, The Pool Players, Seven at the Golden Shovel. Billy Collins longlisted another in the set of four for the 2021 Fish Prize. Poems have been placed at Icefloe Press and here in The Wombwell Rainbow. Two are due to appear in Stand Magazine later this year. A full collection reached stage two in The North’s March 2021 open call.
-Louise Longson
cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.
Twitter @LouisePoetical
-Gillian Winn
is a mature poet, currently studying Creative Writing with the Open University. She worked as a nurse for the NHS for 40 years. She lives in North Yorkshire.
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
-Sue Finch’s
debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.
They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.
You can hear your own clapping louder than anyone else’s. You are not matching the rhythm of anyone in this room. Soon they will be looking at you willing you to stop. You try to change the way your hands hit one another but you cannot unhollow the sound.
-Sue Finch
-Sarah Reeson
Lodger
Even after some time, she was never seen as part of the family. When they remember her at all, it is through a mobled veil of muffled memory: never quite able to recall anything definite about her features, her voice.
She lived unremarked, unreal. If she had been a colour, she would have been a drab shade; musty olive-green, the utility-grey of a government building with fly-blown, thick-frosted wire-glass windows.
Later, after she had gone, they cleared away what remained of her vestigial presence, gifting her with unwonted attention, finding hard evidence of her inherent quiddity in an unlikely cupboard, where the third-best sheets once lived. Neatly shelved: a-hundred-and-thirty pickle jars, empty now save for clouded vinegar.
Empty now, save for the full-hearted attempt to preserve something forgotten, a bitter memento of something lost, embalmed with the dead mustard seeds, the slime of baby onions, the faded red pimento.
-Louise Longson (These poems feature in her upcoming pamphlet Songs from the Witch Bottle: cytoplasmic variations by Louise Longson, Alien Buddha Press 2022)
Judith Losing a best friend far too early
‘All Things bright and beautiful’ dresses, that’s what we wore on Summer days, Judith and I, They even had matching knickers too! Wearing them we were true princesses, playing hopscotch under the sun, for back then the sun shone all summer long – (Or maybe that was that just how it seemed?)
We walked together to school each day, Judith and I, wearing the same blue macs with hoods, white ankle socks, Clarks t-bar shoes. Our hairdresser couldn’t do trendy cuts, she only had one style she really knew, so both of us sported the same prim bobs adorned with cute silk bows on top.
During the six-week holidays We’d skip together down Hardy’s Lane, Judith and I, hand in hand, teddies under our arms, we visited Billy the Bull on the farm, dared each other to climb on his pen and tickle his back with mare’s tail grass.
In later life, though living apart we always made sure that we kept in touch, Judith and I. Each time I had news, whether good or bad, I would rush to the phone to call her up, hear her say ‘North Kelsey 490’. We were twin souls who belonged together.
And still I want to rush to the phone and hear her say – ‘North Kelsey 490’ But then I remember she’s no longer here….. Life has moved on and the whole world has changed. Twenty years on I still miss her so much – I just wish I had told her how special she was!
-Margaret Royall
Distinctive
I and one other told join the top class only for History, finds us betwixt and between, defined as strangers we pass from world to world, always apart, a mixed
reception. We must use Ordinary level text, not CSE. All their eyes say, tha thinks tha better n’ us. Wary make effort not to be noticed, our try
highlighted by teacher always asking one of us our opinion. Our Mam and Dad’s fought for this, for us, arguing with school were bright enough, should be top rank.
Our parents want, work towards best for us. We are separate in distinctiveness.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Louise Longson
cleared enough space in her spare room and head to start writing ‘properly’ during lockdown 2020. She is published by One Hand Clapping, Fly on the Wall, Nymphs, Ekphrastic Review, Obsessed with Pipework, Indigo Dreams Publishing, The Poetry Shed and others. She is a winner of Dreich’s chapbook competition 2021 with Hanging Fire. A qualified psychotherapist, she works with historic trauma and the physical and emotional distresses caused by chronic loneliness. Lives with an orange cat and a silver Yorkshireman. In her head, sky is always blue, grass always green, leaves always golden. Needs to get out more.
Twitter @LouisePoetical
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
-Sue Finch’s
debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. Her work has also appeared in a number of online magazines. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
-S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.
They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.
It has become customary for me to spin; To change my perception of events. To reframe my worldview, to begin To build a positive narrative sense.
So, in that vein, let me not dwell On all that I am not, all that I haven’t got. Instead, let me enumerate and spell Out all that I am. Recite the lot.
I am tired. I am burdened and old. I am low, alone. I am sick of clinging to hope. I am bowed, cowed, unloved, cold, Sick of always having to cope
Alone. Enough of being brave. Drained. Sick of my solitary sentence for a crime I don’t recall. Hollow. Tear stained. Broken, adrift in a heartless sea of time
New uniformed, trousers, shirt, tie, bag, shoes. mam’s warning nailed in my head: Woe betide! He said Your new. What’s your name? Mine’s Brookes too. No one’ll hurt thee. He’s tall, broad, on my side.
Never see him again, the stranger who helps. I learned in another school last year. Now I see a boy forced down cellar steps. A crowd look down on him, hawk spit and jeer.
Spice, laikin, all words I don’t understand. Shy. Afraid to say a wrong word I’m called posh from Ha-RR-ogate. School’s a cruel land. My accent ridiculed, so quiet, at a loss.
Mam says I’m mumbling or shout when I speak. I need to stay silent. Any words break.
-Paul Brookes
Bios And Links
-Teresa Durran
was born in London and lives in Hampshire but has rarely felt less English; the blood of Celtic ancestors flows through her veins. Being the daughter of immigrants has entirely informed her world view and she has always instinctively empathised with the outsider and the ‘other’.
She writes delicate poems for fragile times because she has to. She wanders and wonders and dreams, and she is always lost in music.
–Margaret Royall
has six books of poetry published. She has appeared widely in print, in webzines and poetry anthologies. She has won or been short-listed in several competitions and her collection ‘Where Flora Sings’, published by Hedgehog Press, was nominated for the Laurel Prize in 2021. Her latest collection, ‘Immersed in Blue’ was published in January 2022 by Impspired Press. She leads a women’s poetry group in Nottinghamshire and takes part in open mic sessions online and in person. She is currently working on a third poetry collection.
S Reeson [she/they] is 55, bisexual and married with two children: they have suffered anxiety for all of their life, and started telling stories as a ten-year-old in order to help them cope. Now, they write and record poetry, short stories and episodic fiction, whilst dissecting their unique creative process using both video and audio as the means to continue coping.
A considerable lived experience of mental health issues, a passion for niche arts and media and an undimmed enthusiasm for environmentalism combine, to allow creativity to emerge, and new stories and projects to be created. They love to experiment and push creative boundaries, and gain a huge amount of motivation and inspiration from talking about both the journey and continued evolution as a creative.
After winning a Poetry Society members’ contest (and reading that piece at the Poetry Café in Covent Garden) they attended the inaugural Mslexicon in 2019 and took part in their first ever Open Mic event. In that same year they wrote 24 poems about their home town for the Places of Poetry online initiative, one of which is included in the official anthology published for National Poetry Day in October 2020 by Bloomsbury and subsequently reproduced by the Sunday Telegraph.
In October 2021 they were nominated for the Best of the Net Award.
They enjoy living online, but also find great joy from lifting heavy weights, running and cycling in the meat-space. When not doing these, they are pursuing an ASD diagnosis on the NHS.
The Wombwell Rainbow 