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 form for last week’s challenge from Paul Brookes was the bob and wheel. It’s a Medieval French form, a sort of interruption in a long poem, that draws attention to itself by its short lines and particular rhyme scheme that contrasts with the style of the main body of the poem. Since the bob (two syllable first line) and wheel, (the four six-syllable lines that follow), doesn’t mean anything alone, I’ve preceded the bob with a verse of context.
Walker and stalker
Walking where the leaves drift deep and rust-red dry,
in silence broken only by the wild jay’s cry,
where dapples fall in golden coins on dusty earth,
and every breathing thing waits for the rain, rebirth
of sprout and shoot and crawling things, tight buds, the spring,
we wait, hoof raised, paw poised, birds balanced on the wing.
I hear
twigs crack and heavy tread
of boots…
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A Welsh form an Awdl Gywydd:
In summary:
• Four lines
• Seven syllables per line
• The final syllable of the first and third lines rhyme with the 3rd 5th syllable of the following lines
• 2nd & 4th lines rhyme.
Useful Weblinks:
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-poetry/awdl-gywydd-poetic-forms
https://allpoetry.com/list/76449-Welsh-form–Awdl-gywydd
Ghost Mill, revisited
Again
grooved granite mill-stones grind
formless flour from coarse grain.
The brake wheel clanks; the wind
thrums an untuned refrain.
How Did It Go?
I had not heard of the Bob and Wheel and enjoyed spending some time researching the form – this led me to revisit Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, echoes of which may perhaps be found in my use of alliteration.
I always like content and form to interact, so wanted to invoke a sense of turning, of repetition, but also of disruption. After one or two false starts I settled on a ghostly windmill (modelled on De Valk in Leiden, the Netherlands) as a metaphor for the current Groundhog Day politics here in the UK. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to political commentary in a poem!
In my writing I frequently make use of syllabic constraint, but not of rhyme schemes, so it was an interesting challenge to work within the restrictions of this form while at the same time trying to express a coherent idea in five short lines. The second and third lines are deliberately weighty while the final two lines are intended to have a lighter, but also disquieting, music.
Thank you for introducing me to this form! I very much enjoyed the challenge. One day I would like to try applying the Bob and Wheel as ‘punctuation points’ within a longer poem, as the poet of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight does.
-Marian Christie
Halloween
Pumpkins
in fogged October skies
weird lop-sided grins
gleaming with Devil’s eyes.
Such darkness hides within.
How Did It Go?
This poem came fairly easily once I decided to use Pumpkins as the “bob”.
-Tim Fellows
Walker and stalker
Walking where the leaves drift deep and rust-red dry,
in silence broken only by the wild jay’s cry,
where dapples fall in golden coins on dusty earth,
and every breathing thing waits for the rain, rebirth
of sprout and shoot and crawling things, tight buds, the spring,
we wait, hoof raised, paw poised, birds balanced on the wing.
I hear
twigs crack and heavy tread
of boots. Red flash, a deer
on flying hooves has fled
the danger creeping near.
How did it go?
I hesitated over this one. The purpose of the bob and wheel was to be a sort of interjection, an interruption in the flow of a story, drawing attention to itself with the command-like ‘bob’ and the phrasing of the ‘wheel’ that stands out from the rest of the verse with its short rhymed lines in a different meter. I didn’t see how it would make sense without context, so I added a preceding piece of verse. Maybe I’ve completely misunderstood the point, but there you are.
-Jane Dougherty
Two Bob And Wheel
1.
Banquet /Linens (A Bob and Wheel).
We recoil,
drink more shots than we should.
Drop down tables soiled.
Promising we could
expect fat more broiled.
2.
Annotations (A Bob and a Wheel)
To temper
The tenacious tenor’s
Notes on Emperors
Open September
Drawing the censor
How Did It Go?
A Bob and A Wheel is an unfamiliar form to me; short but short not always the easiest to pull off. That this is a Medieval construction makes sense – also theatrical dynamism and long epic. From what I read, sometimes these short sequences were interspersed with longer prose or other poetic forms/metres – an early hybridity! I realized as I worked on this, I was creating little ‘dialogues’ or monologue (stand front-centre, deliver the lines, exit stage left). I think the two pieces go together; I ask you, dear readers, to imagine some text in between – a scene, a landscape, — is there (in invisible ink) – or imagine your own scene, time, place, past meeting indelible futures / stamp/ liminal erasure – Robert Frede Kenter http://www.icefloepress.net
-Robert Frede Kenter
Bios And Links
-Marian Christie
was born in Zimbabwe and travelled widely before moving to her current home in Kent, southeast England. Publications include a chapbook, Fractal Poems (Penteract Press), and a collection of essays, From Fibs to Fractals: exploring mathematical forms in poetry (Beir Bua Press). When not reading or writing poetry, Marian looks at the stars, puzzles over the laws of physics, listens to birdsong and crochets.
She blogs at http://www.marianchristiepoetry.net and is on Twitter @marian_v_o.
-Robert Frede Kenter
is a widely published writer, visual artist, Pushcart nom & the EIC/Publisher of Ice Floe Press. Books incl. EDEN (2021) available http://www.rareswanpress.com. Work in Anthologies incl. The Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022) & Before I Turn into Gold, (FeversOftheMind). Publ. recent: Erato, CutbowQ, Streetcake Magazine, WatchYrHead, Anthropocene, Anti-heroin chic and others. Toronto-based, previously, NYC, San Francisco, etc. Living with ME/Fibro, Robert, sometimes sidelined, is never out of the game. Twitter: @frede_kenter & @icefloeP.
The Wombwell Rainbow 