Overcast
sheep-fleece and buttermilk
mackerel and mare’s tails
mother-of-pearl and herringbones
ice-creams and cauliflowers
cotton-balls and silk sheets
mushrooms and oblivion
-Louise Longson
Uncategorized
Cloudshapes day 20
Our small town hit the national news yesterday for all the worst reasons—a fourteen-year old schoolgirl from the collège was abducted and murdered on Friday. The police arrested her killer within four hours of the girl’s mother sounding the alarm, but it was already too late.
Nowhere is safe for girls or women to walk alone. Yesterday 80,000 women marched to protest against our political leaders’ lack of interest in the crimes perpetrated against 51% of the population. It’s 2022 not 1022, surely time for women’s rights to be taken seriously.
Small town Sunday
We walked beneath the heavy clouds
en deuil beneath the spitting tearful rain,
in the tolling wind we trod a pall of leaves.
Herons called, untidy flocks
of cormorants black as priests, stilts
in the river water, egrets statue-white,
and through the heavy tolling sky,
a single gull headed for the…
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#CloudWriter #Cloudshapes. Day Twenty. What shapes can you see? What stories are developing in these cloud photos by Julian Day, Gaynor Kane and I? You may contribute your own cloud photos and/or videos as inspiration. Writers and artworkers have been fascinated by clouds and what they see in them for centuries. This challenge features three different cloud shapes a day for thirty days. You may respond to one, two or all three photos. Could you write on the day you saw the photos and email your drafts to me, with a short, third person bio?
Drop in by Valerie Bence
This is a first for the website, a drop in by a poet published by the fabulous Emma Press! Welcome, Valerie Bence.
Thank you Nigel for this opportunity to reflect on my writing and to look at Press me in peat from my latest Emma Press pamphlet Overlap.
After a career as a librarian and researcher, I finished a very dry PhD in my late 50’s and wanted to see if I had a creative thought in my head – so I undertook a couple of online creative writing courses. After the second the tutor (a poet) told me to forget fiction and move to poetry. This was a revelation and six months later I was on a poetry MA at MMU. A year’s mentoring resulted in my first pamphlet published by Cinnamon Press Falling in love with a dead man (2019) rooted in my MA final…
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#CloudWriter #Cloudshapes. Day Nineteen. What shapes can you see? What stories are developing in these cloud photos by Julian Day, Gaynor Kane and I? You may contribute your own cloud photos and/or videos as inspiration. Writers and artworkers have been fascinated by clouds and what they see in them for centuries. This challenge features three different cloud shapes a day for thirty days. You may respond to one, two or all three photos. Could you write on the day you saw the photos and email your drafts to me, with a short, third person bio?
JD19
KANE19
PB19
Seige and Symphony by Myra Schneider (Second Light Publications)
In her latest collection, Myra Schneider uses poetical language to investigate our difficult times. Her lines develop concerns and thoughts in expanded imageries that search for new paths. Her detailed observations give a clear and multi-layered vision of the arguments she explores. Nature is often at the fore and helps us to understand our situation and our role on the planet and what it means to be human. Environmental concerns and the everyday struggle to survive in this troubled period are therefore paramount; Schneider’s response is complex and expertly nuanced but eventually positive. We will survive despite conflicts, depression, oppressions, failures and fragilities and the damage we are inflicting on the planet. We will survive even though the situation may look hopeless. In the final lines of some of her poems the message about having faith in the renewal of humanity is constant and undeniable, allowing the reader to rethink…
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Cloudshapes day 18
For Paul Brookes’ challenge. You can see the photo by Julian Day that inspired the poem here.
When the winter king
When the winter king blows cold,
frost-breath furring the roof,
even the clouds crack like black ice,
gold in his crown stolen
from the failing sun, while
we hunch before the fire,
ruffled and fearful as pigeons,
cold to the marrow
of our slender bones.
#CloudWriter #Cloudshapes. Day Eighteen. What shapes can you see? What stories are developing in these cloud photos by Julian Day, Gaynor Kane and I? You may contribute your own cloud photos and/or videos as inspiration. Writers and artworkers have been fascinated by clouds and what they see in them for centuries. This challenge features three different cloud shapes a day for thirty days. You may respond to one, two or all three photos. Could you write on the day you saw the photos and email your drafts to me, with a short, third person bio?
KANE18
PB18
JD10
Cloudshapes day 17
Another intriguing cloudshape from Julian Day which you can see on Paul Brookes’ blog here.
Hunting
If there were a wild hunt
it would be wild wolf-led
and I would follow
through high tide and gale
through tempest
and boiling clouds
cheek by wolf jowl
the hunting of the moon
the netting of the stars.
The Wombwell Rainbow 