Inspired by all three photos, you can see them here on Paul Brookes’ blog.

Cloudpools

Whirlpools in the sky
of dragon-feathers and bird-scales
the clotted shadows of sea fret
midnight-dark
turn with the constellations
glittering in the unsounded depths
of black space
reflected in still water
all anger stripped away.

This is based on all three photos. You can see them on Paul’s blog here.

If

If the sun is fire
and clouds are ash
what is the blue?

Mirror, illusion, a wish?

Skyscape always in motion,
tracked and driven
by the winds of the world,

trawled, not by the finger of God,
but by veils of cormorants,
grey herons,
white egret drifts,

through reds and blues
and into night.

It is a delight to invite my lovely friend and talented author, Joy Wood, back to Patricia’s Pen. Congratulations to Joy on the launch of her brand new novel Secrets and Lies. Joy has come along to tell my readers a little about it. Without further ado it’s over to Joy.

Writing is my Passion

Joy Wood

Writing books is the “easy” bit – I come up with a story but then need to make it desirable for my readers. Fortunately, I’m surrounded by people who want me to succeed, including my brilliant, insightful editor, and talented cover designer.

I strive with each novel to create a narrative that invites the reader into a captivating, engaging and menacing world. My previous five independently published books fall into the crime category and use twists and turns to keep the reader turning the pages well into the night.

My…

Be Feared, Jane Burn, Nine Arches Press, 2021, ISBN: 978-1-913437-27-5, £9.99

The Pleasures of Peace, Paul Rossiter, Isobar Press, 2021, ISBN 978-4-907359-34-8, £14.61

Infinite Cilia, David Greenslade and John Welson, 2020, ISBN13 9798669045395, NP

Ubiquitext, David Greenslade, Stephen the Great University Editions, Romania, April 2021, NP

City of Opal Altars, David Greenslade, Muşatinii Press (also Romania), 2021

The poems in Jane Burn’s Be Feared are typically richly textured bundles of language, somewhat reminiscent of Dylan Thomas, and serving to enact a kind of sensory overload, the taking in of more reality than the brain can easily contain:

See how this bird knocks her cheek against a cupboard door

and bat, bat, bat! comes a sound of wood bumping against flesh.

The smell of varnish, bitter. The nurture of wood, divine.

Elbow-flicker, elbow-flack, great misguided flight. The air

is a flabbergast of space, a fatigue…

This Overflowing Light: Selected Poems, Rin Ishigaki (edited and introduced by Janine Beichman), Isobar Press, 2022, ISBN 978-4-907359-41-6, £15.04

With the publication of Rin Ishigaki’s selected poems, Isobar Press continue my education in 20^th century Japanese poetry. Ishigaki’s story is a peculiarly Japanese one, it seems to me. Born in 1920, she seems to have had a conventional enough Shinto upbringing with one exception; from an early age she wrote and published her writings in magazines aimed specifically at young female writers. As she did not collect any of these early poems, they do not feature here.

As was the case for so many of her compatriots, defeat in 1945 changed everything as she discovered that all she had been brought up to believe about her country was built on lies.

She had, by then, been working in a bank for a number of years, and under…