For Paul Brookes’ challenge, 30DaysWild.
Painting by Mary Cassat
There are things we never forget
like skies, windy,
with the cutting edge of spring,
scudding clouds
and the song, drifting earthwards,
of the skylark,
still light, throbbing with heat
and only half-cool shade,
limp leaves,
sunlight sliding like melted butter,
butterflies and bee-buzz,
first blackberries,
and the heavy air, salt-sticky,
loud with gulls and the crash of the waves,
foam-hiss,
the running rippling of outgoing rills,
rolling grains of sifted sand
between bare toes.
There are things we never forget
like skies, windy,
with the cutting edge of spring,
scudding clouds
and the song, drifting earthwards,
of the skylark,
still light, throbbing with heat
and only half-cool shade,
limp leaves,
sunlight sliding like melted butter,
butterflies and bee-buzz,
first blackberries,
and the heavy air, salt-sticky,
loud with gulls and the crash of the waves,
foam-hiss,
the running rippling of outgoing rills,
rolling grains of sifted sand
between bare toes.
-Jane Dougherty
Photo: Nathan Kosta
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I began writing regularly forty years ago, in a workshop with Peter Levitt, a Canadian poet, Buddhist teacher, and translator (see his exceptional rendering, with Kazuaki Tanahashi, of The Complete Cold Mountain, from Shambala). I lived alone, taught high school history, and wrote over weekends and summers
In the early 90s, I went to grad school (history again), and started a family. For the next twenty years, that’s where I devoted my time and attention. Then, ten years ago, forced out of my routines by a cluster of losses, I quit full time work and developed a daily writing practice. I wrote Empire of Eden between 2013 and 2018, and, in The High Window’s David Cooke, found a sympathetic, supportive, and energetic publisher.
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About these poems:
‘Police Photograph of Robert Walser, Dead’ — My dad’s grandparents were small-town portrait photographers, and my…
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My poem for the sixth day of Paul Brookes’ challenge, in partnership with The Wildlife Trusts. If you have a poem about birdsong, send it to Paul here.
Summer morning
pale gold air
slants through the shutters
a boat slipping from sea to sky
and back
buoyed on waves of song
sifting through leaf-fronds
swaying tree-kelp
carrying me from dreams
into the waking.
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Jane Angué • Loukia Borrell • Bob Cooper • Julian Dobson • Alan Dunnett • Alexandra Fössinger • Hedy Habra • Chris Hardy • Hilary Hares • David Harmer • Rosie Jackson • Sheila Jacob • Nigel Jarrett • Maureen Jivani • Fred Johnson • Alex Josephy • Phil Kirby • Wendy Klein • Alison Mace • Richie McCaffery • Beth McDonagh • Gill McEvoy • Konstandinos Mahoney • Laurence Morris • Jill Munro • Alistair Noon • Abigail Ottley • Stuart Pickford Les Pope • Gordon Scapens • Derek Sellen • Ruth Sharman • Susan Castillo Street • Matthew Stewart • Judith Sutherland • Mark Totterdell • Carol Whitfield • Richard Williams • Marjory Woodfield
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Previouis Poetry: Update by 3?
THW25: March 6, 2022 • THW24: December 3, 2021 • THW23: • THW22: June 6, 2021 • THW21: March 8, 2021 • THW20:
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‘Paolo and Francesca da Rimini’ by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1862)
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DANTE’S COMEDY: TRANSLATION AND INTERPRETATION
Three things keep drawing me back to Dante’s Commedia: the skill, inventiveness and human depth of his story-telling, his lyrical genius, and the beauty of his terza rima meter. His use of terza rima can only be enjoyed in Italian, which for me involves heavy dependence on English translations and on the notes and glosses in modern Italian given in Anna Maria Chiavacci Leonardi’s editions of the Commedia for Zanichelli and Oscar Mondadori. In this essay I want to focus on comparing how the narrative and lyrical aspects of the poems come through in Ned Denny’s freely adaptive poetic version, B: After Dante, and in two scholarly translations, one by Robert and Jean Hollander and one by Robert M. Durling, though I will make some more mention of the terza rima…
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Rowena Sommerville Introduces herself:
I was a lucky baby-boomer, able to go to art school to study Graphics and Illustration despite my parents’ (perfectly justified) anxieties, and despite knowing nothing, either on arrival or on graduation, of how one actually earned a living from these skills. I then worked in a variety of youth justice, psychiatric and social care settings while picking up bits of illustration work (including for Spare Rib!), and gradually learned how to put together a creative life. When I had children I also began to write ‘for them’ and eventually had my first children’s book published, which I had written and illustrated.
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In 2020/21 I had the pleasure of working as a writer, artist and community development artist/writer on a project called ‘Virtual Ark’. This project, funded primarily by Arts Council England, was led by visual artist Paul Evans, and was an experimental bit…
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Pass us by
We have our swifts & martins here, of course,
And they stretch our skies all summer,
But on September days like this: blue skies, a southerly wind, and fluffy clouds
We hear them: someone else’s swallows pass us by.
And what is poignant, beautiful? They take a break
And buzz our houses, playgrounds, parks, and gardens:
A flock of fifty stops to feed, and suddenly our space is full
Of chew-it calls, sky-acrobats; and, always, a few males singing.
So, unlike other birds that only sing at home, our swallows
Leave a trail: songs of leaving, songs of arriving, from their barns
Along their way to southern Africa: spread out and spun,
A Day at a time; our thread of home, traced by our passers-by.
-Dave Garbutt
lost in chaos
life walks in on a bed of nails
and runs its’ fingers through my sails
and often like the night’s caress
with sharpened claws it does possess
and from the corner of my eye
i catch a glimpse of clear blue sky
and silhouetted by the sun
a distant shadow on the run
and when i feel the moment slide
i reach inside for what i hide
and taking off my glasses rose
i watch my shadow as it grows
between my eyes, before my time
so overwhelming in its crime
across the borders of my skin
stealing my past and what i’ve been
to feel my life and touch my light
future, past, and second sight
and doing so, leaves just a trace
across my eyes, and on my face
then from the corner of your eye
you think you see me wave good-bye
but when you’re sleepy eyes awake
i am the bird that you mistake
and as i spread my wings to fly
i shed this skin without a cry
and then, without a backward glance
i leave this for another dance
-Derek Dahl
Bios And Links
-David Garbutt
is retired and living in Dornach, Switzerland.
He is a fan of photography, writing, and snowboarding.
He is also interested in outdoors and birding.
-Derek Dahl
hails from the pacific northwest and is currently finalizing his first book, “Souls Fluorescent”, a mixture of poetry and digital art. He first discovered computers in the 1980’s and has been pounding away at the keyboard ever since. He enjoys twisting words into rhyme and meter puzzles. His art is heavily influenced by Picasso and Escher along with a smattering of Mayan culture and is called Cubic Fusion, where the background lines become the foreground lines and back again, just like all of life is intertwined. His next books include one of art and one of flash fiction.
www.soulsfluorescent.com derek@soulsfluorescent.com
The poem I submitted to Paul Brookes’ blog for the fifth day of the 30 Days Wild challenge.
All
This life that surrounds,
enfolds in its arms,
cradles the child, all,
a nest, a burrow,
this sky that over-arches,
cradle-canopy,
the mother bending to smile;
to shield,
these strong arms,
tree trunks that hold up the sky,
roots that weave the carpet
beneath our tread,
water running in sweet veins,
lying still in mirror lakes,
fruitful seas billowed
and dancing with silver,
this world of earth, sea
and sky is all,
cradle and grave, arms, lungs
and the one beating heart.
The Wombwell Rainbow 