
JD7
In response to the photos, day 6 of Paul Brookes’ what shapes can you see in the clouds challenge.
Cloud-break
a shaft of sunlight
streams in golden glory,
cathedral-filling,
dust mote-floating, touching
the shadowed fields below
with the echoing voices of infinity.
In pale imitation, we scrawl our names
in exhaust from screaming engines
across the purity, scratch the coping
of the sky with fingernails,
until the white stuffing bursts,
disperses, sea foam.
JD6
KANE6
PB6
Cloud-break
a shaft of sunlight
streams in golden glory,
cathedral-filling,
dust mote-floating, touching
the shadowed fields below
with the echoing voices of infinity.
In pale imitation, we scrawl our names
in exhaust from screaming engines
across the purity, scratch the coping
of the sky with fingernails,
until the white stuffing bursts,
disperses, sea foam.
-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.
.
“Slumber in this quiet burn that flickers away. As my peace suddenly arrives, so does my passion for a better world 🌎
-Arun Kapur
Bios and Links
-Arun Kapur
Enigmatic. Charismatic. Passionate. Arun Kapur is a Wolverhampton born and bred poet who aims to bring change to the world through his vision. He believes through us, the world shall find it’s voice x
Desecration
In the dry dark cracked open,
gold is mute, gemstones without fire,
air without breath.
The walls crawl
with picture-written magic,
in processions of silence.
Lamplight pierces the gloom
of rooms sealed in lead, beeswax
and the deep indifference of time,
where corpses, babies and a boy,
dried, gutted and embalmed, wrapped
and barded with amulets and prayers,
are still dead.
-Jane Dougherty
The Oracle trying to keep things in perspective. And pushing that sausage.
I’ve just seen the photos for Paul Brookes’ cloud challenge, and this poem seems to fit. You can see the images here.

A pause in the tempest
Blue immensity,
this wind-driven change,
this turning into the cold,
we must pass through,
almost a dream, sea-deep,
not death not sleep.
We follow in the seals’ wake,
their rolling, tunnelling
passage, to the place
where the whispering of the sun
is the language of the moon,
the tongue of the planet.
Nigel Kent - Poet and Reviewer
Today I have the special pleasure of welcoming the very talented poet, and fellow OUPS member, Kate Youn, to reflect on a poem from her new pamphlet, A Spark in the Darkness (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022).
A Spark in the Darkness is my first full pamphlet published with Hedgehog Press, so I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to talk about its conception. Many thanks Nigel for the invitation.
A Spark in the Darkness was collated in Lockdown. Some of the poems had been written previously and others emerged from the long, afternoon hours of isolation, but they all have the theme of hope. Let’s face it- without hope, life is bleak. In many ways the poems are typical of my poetry in as much as I love playing with words, imagery and rhythm. Walter de la Mare had a significant influence on my love of poetry throughout my…
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PB5

KANE5

JD5
A pause in the tempest
Blue immensity,
this wind-driven change,
this turning into the cold,
we must pass through,
almost a dream, sea-deep,
not death, not sleep.
We follow in the seals’ wake,
their rolling, tunnelling
passage, to the place
where the whispering of the sun
is the language of the moon,
the tongue of the planet.
-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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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.