Day Six

-Margaret Royall

-Sarah Reeson

 

 

sea glass

strange and precious we are, glinting and small;
our jewelled colours dulled by the sun,
our strange shapes buffed by the tides and sand

now parched, now aflood, now alone, now
murmuring, as we brush against each other;
we think we control our placement on this land.

gazing mildly up on stark dark nights,
we see the stars. That is where we came from, and
there we will return. We briefly understand

© Teresa Durran 210705

The Song of Eleanor Rigby

The shades of the window
are always drawn, now.

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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.

Day Five

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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.

Day Four

 

-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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.

Day Three

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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.

Day Two

Clapping

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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

-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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.

Lachrymose

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

© Teresa Durran 170612

-Sarah Reeson

Ghost in an Empty Chair

Sometimes it is just a flap of wings in a lonely meadow,
or a child’s shoes and socks left by a pond

Sometimes it is the intensity of darkness
or the emptiness in the kitchen at harvest

Maybe the laughter ascending from the street below
or the ‘stepford wives’ promenading past with their pugs;

the elation of cheering crowds at a football match,
the vicar’s wife fraternising with the village elite…

Whatever triggers it, you instantly know,
that lonely ghost in the empty chair is you,

as though you are marked out with a blood-red bindi….
folk turn away, rejecting the discomfort of your grief

The world tumbles to wrong conclusions
and your sealed lips shout ‘I am still here!’

You cannot fight the inevitability of it;
you ask yourself why grief is such taboo….

Sometimes all it takes is the wind kissing your hair,
the cyclist turning to smile as he pedals past,

moonlight catching the svelte stem of your wine glass,
or an unexpected call from a complete stranger…..

Just small things, singular, unremarkable, yet they have
the power to transform your world…and you are grateful

First published in The Blue Nib journal

-Margaret Royall

 

#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek Loneliness Sonnet: 1. Holgate

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.

Website: https://margaretroyall.com/ Twitter:@RoyallMargaret

–

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.

Their work has been published by Flights / Quarterly ejournal, Green Ink Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Acropolis Journal, Selcouth Station, Black Bough Poetry, Flapjack Press and Dreich, plus there have been performances at Gloucester Poetry Festival, Flight of the Dragonflies and the monthly event at Wordsworth Grasmere. They have read alongside countless poets, including Caroline Bird, Steve Camden, Deanna Roger, Jeremy Dixon, Julia Webb and Wendy Pratt, and in 2021 they read at the Essex Book Festival. They’ve also learnt and grown creatively via poetry courses run by Apples and Snakes, Kevin Higgins, Wendy Pratt and Jonathan Davidson. A self-produced poetry chapbook was produced in November 2020 (available to buy here).

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.