This is my poem in response to all Paul Brookes’ cloud photos. You can see them on Paul’s blog here.
Sky-birth
There are days when the sky sucks the life
from the earth, feeds on the stillness
the dry, the wet, the leafed and the stony,
draws all into the cloud-bloat above.
We crouch beneath the great presence,
longing for the rupture, the breaking of waters,
to birth a sea of tranquillity.
KANE4
JD4
PB4
Sky-birth (responding to all three images)
There are days when the sky sucks the life
from the earth, feeds on the stillness
the dry, the wet, the leafed and the stony,
draws all into the cloud-bloat above.
We crouch beneath the great presence,
longing for the rupture, the breaking of waters,
to birth a sea of tranquillity.
-Jane Dougherty
Bios and Links
-Julian Day
has a fine art background, which informs his photography practice. His aesthetic concerns for pattern, texture, asymmetric compositions, and light optics are influenced by his love of drawing and painting. His focus is currently centred mostly on the natural world and a special focus on water, clouds, birds, skylines and trees.
-Gaynor Kane
lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur artist and photographer. In all her creative activities she is looking to capture moments that might otherwise be missed. Discover more at gaynorkane.com
Twitter @gaynorkane
Facebook @gaynorkanepoet
Instagram @gaynorkanepoet
-Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
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Paul Brookes’ new challenge, writing what we see in the clouds. It started yesterday, and I didn’t post my poem. Here it is with today’s poem. You can see the photographs that inspired the poems on Paul’s blog, here and here.
Volcanic cloud
Lava flow
cracked grey
a glimpse of Pompei
beneath the smothering ash
and deeper
the billowing sea
and the dead light
guiding them home.
Wild hunt
Even in the sky, perhaps only in the sky,
the wolf, the boar, the winged beauties race.
Wolf-grey, swept back wings, a day of autumn
fury, as the world turns into steel-blue winter.
Earth summer-baked, now hard with iron-cold,
watches the wild ones gallop, hopes in their return.
The photos and poems are on Paul Brookes’ blog here. My poem is based on the third image PB3.
Mirror sky
In the light and silence, a single presence
that stalks unseen across the wilderness,
we listen, hoping almost for the patter of rain
to furnish the emptiness with familiar comfort.
Times like this, we shrink from gazing
on the face of the water, on the anger beneath,
when the complicit sky oppresses, reflecting
the darkness swelling in the lake’s deep heart.
Terra silhouette
Terra silhouette sheds its blackish red
on the sky face,
my heart bent over the water for tea,
and its evening;
we are only the shadows of our thoughts.
Dark of not-knowing waits to embrace them.
I add a pinch of dried leaves to the autumn boiling.
-Kushal Poddar
Bio and Links
-Kushal Poddar
An author and a father, Kushal Poddar, edited a magazine – ‘Words Surfacing’, authored seven volumes including ‘The Circus Came To My Island’, ‘A Place For Your Ghost Animals’, ‘Eternity Restoration Project- Selected and New Poems’ and ‘Herding My Thoughts To The Slaughterhouse-A Prequel’. His works have been translated in ten languages. Forthcoming book is Postmarked ‘Quarantine’ (IceFloe Press, Canada)
Find and follow him at amazon.com/author/kushalpoddar_thepoet
Author Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/KushalTheWriter/
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe
JD3
KANE3
PB3
Mirror sky (inspired by PB3)
In the light and silence, a single presence
that stalks unseen across the wilderness,
we listen, hoping almost for the patter of rain
to furnish the emptiness with familiar comfort.
Times like this, we shrink from gazing
on the face of the water, on the anger beneath,
when the complicit sky oppresses, reflecting
the darkness swelling in the lake’s deep heart.
-Jane Dougherty
Bios and Links
-Julian Day
has a fine art background, which informs his photography practice. His aesthetic concerns for pattern, texture, asymmetric compositions, and light optics are influenced by his love of drawing and painting. His focus is currently centred mostly on the natural world and a special focus on water, clouds, birds, skylines and trees.
-Gaynor Kane
lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur artist and photographer. In all her creative activities she is looking to capture moments that might otherwise be missed. Discover more at gaynorkane.com
Twitter @gaynorkane
Facebook @gaynorkanepoet
Instagram @gaynorkanepoet
-Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
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In the 1990s Sister Wendy Beckett, a contemplative nun, became the unlikely presenter of a series of BBC television programmes on the visual arts and author of a number of art books. She was often the subject of – sometimes warm-hearted, sometimes not – parody and ridicule, especially after one particular TV moment which saw her fondling the testicles of a life-size statue of a bull. These parodies and homages included the anarchic Sister Windy Bucket, the cross-dressing Sister Beatrice, and Postcards from God, a musical.
Her Sunday School demeanour and somewhat simplistic religious take on art did not endear her to everyone, but in person she was very different. At the 1990’s The Journey art exhibition and conference in Lincoln, she was a charismatic speaker and a sociable and engaged delegate who charmed everyone present. In a couple of brief notes she sent to me soon afterwards, she enthused…
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KANE2
JD2
PB2
Wild hunt (inspired by PB2)
Even in the sky, perhaps only in the sky,
the wolf, the boar, the winged beauties race.
Wolf-grey, swept back wings, a day of autumn
fury, as the world turns into steel-blue winter.
Earth summer-baked, now hard with iron-cold,
watches the wild ones gallop, hopes in their return.
-Jane Dpugherty
Bios and Links
-Julian Day
has a fine art background, which informs his photography practice. His aesthetic concerns for pattern, texture, asymmetric compositions, and light optics are influenced by his love of drawing and painting. His focus is currently centred mostly on the natural world and a special focus on water, clouds, birds, skylines and trees.
-Gaynor Kane
lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur artist and photographer. In all her creative activities she is looking to capture moments that might otherwise be missed. Discover more at gaynorkane.com
Twitter @gaynorkane
Facebook @gaynorkanepoet
Instagram @gaynorkanepoet
-Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
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KANE1
JD1
PB1
(responding to PB1)
The grey mass
turns swiftly
into a fleeting
figure
delightful
in
strangeness
and
music–
Ariel!
-Sunil Sharma
(response to KANE 1)
Volcanic cloud
Lava flow
cracked grey
a glimpse of Pompei
beneath the smothering ash
and deeper
the billowing sea
and the dead light
guiding them home.
-Jane Dougherty
Bios and Links
-Julian Day
has a fine art background, which informs his photography practice. His aesthetic concerns for pattern, texture, asymmetric compositions, and light optics are influenced by his love of drawing and painting. His focus is currently centred mostly on the natural world and a special focus on water, clouds, birds, skylines and trees.
-Gaynor Kane
lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where she is a part-time creative, involved in the local arts scene. She writes poetry and is an amateur artist and photographer. In all her creative activities she is looking to capture moments that might otherwise be missed. Discover more at gaynorkane.com
Twitter @gaynorkane
Facebook @gaynorkanepoet
Instagram @gaynorkanepoet
-Jane Dougherty
lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.
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M S Evans
Please join me in congratulating M S Evans on the launch of Nights on the Line published today by Black Bough Poetry.
Patricia’s Pen will feature M S Evans on 29th November 2022 when you can learn about this poet’s writing in detail.
In the meantime why not pop over to Black BoughPoetry and find out more about this poetry collection, check out the early reviews, and find links to purchase a copy of this fabulous pamphlet. Readers are in for a treat.
The Wombwell Rainbow 