Bio And Links

Sue Finch’s debut collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020. She lives with her wife in North Wales. She loves the coast and the scent of ice-cream freezers. You can often find her on Twitter @soopoftheday.

Old Moor

Here, a moment’s peace
Here, near-stillness
Here, near-silent space
To watch without waiting
To the lake and wavy reed

Winter’s blanket has cast wide
Cold fusion of landscape
Of air, and the natural world
Survival is at work
In limpid pools, dark-water edges

To do is to sit and to be
Dial out the urgent world
Observe and connect
Watch change unfold
Fade, renew and renew again

You, hidden, unnoticed
A panorama of form
In a wide embracing arc
Of colour, camouflage
Stillness, silence, peace

-©️ Glenn Barker 2022

-Soo Finch

-Jonathan Totman

A Dawn Chorus (Vacana 11)

O, Lady of the Breath.
how to arc in your air?

A dozen or more tiny caves
sing you into the world

from the trillbudded barkskin
volume and delivery

a root that connects with
its origin tree,

broadcasts to my ears,
territory songs,

and chat up lines, a Saturday
night on the town played out

on a morning before the wormshop,
home repair, teach bairns how to fly,

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Glenn Barker

has only recently come to writing poetry, having been engaged by the effects of the pandemic on the human mind, and the effects of lockdown. Latterly he has broken out into free verse, to explore who we are, how we relate to others and the psychological dynamics of inner lives, as well as far less weighty subjects.

Day Thirty

-Anjum Wasim Dar – Rainbow

-Gaynor Kane – Trees In Snow

-John Phandal Law

Ways of knowing

Shall I paint a prism,
write a rainbow in the teaming trees?
Is the peeling silver bark a peering badger face,
the blue of frosted sky a jay’s bright-striped wing?

Last year’s leaves sift and sigh,
sinking underfoot into deep earth,
my hair caught in the frothing laughter
of new green growth.

Dull day sullen on the strand,
grey pebbles click and clack
where oystercatchers search in pied beauty
for sandy scuttling things,

one eye on the wave-curl
shaved off the skin of the sea,
waiting for a stray ray to turn on the footlights,
the sound of glitter.

Some days of winter dark,
a thrush sings high and clear,
and suddenly we remember
spring.

-Jane Dougherty

Somewhere
to JPL-30, AWD-30

Bird song wings
over clear blue waves.
Golden sun, thick as honey.
Memories lap the beach
to the caws of gulls.
Ancient stories, written on agate.
Shells whisper secrets.

-Barbara Leonhard

 

Where stillness comes (inspired loosely by Gaynor’s painting of trees in snow (GK30)
Vicky)

here, it is all stillness
silence
the air is silver light
bright and shattered gleam

here, stillness holds
spacious
wreck of time
forgiven, concealed

here, stillness invites
quietens
soul’s landscape expands
enchants

here, it is all stillness
holding
inviting
here, where stillness comes

-Vicky Allen

Inspired by both AWD30 – Rainbow
and GK30 – trees in snow

Rainbows are everyday miracles
(ignore the scientific explanations) –
they are airborne miracles, surely
we can all agree, seen so often yet
it may overstate their regularity
to describe rainbows as everyday.

I am not aware if ever they appear
above the land when snow is on
the ground below (have to internet
search the answer) – don’t recall
seeing that but have seen colours
multifarious spring from the one.

Some may call it white but under
sunlight split by the blue and green
shadows of orange-brown-silver
trunks and branches, the eye sees
the rainbow truth upon the cold
ground uncovering the lie of snow.

-Peter A.

-Carrie Ann Golden

Just Press Play
after Rainbow AWD30

Look at a record
under a magnifying glass
you’ll see tiny bumps and ridges
a dark uncanny valley of inaudible sound.

Hold a CD up to the light
and angle it, just so
shining over microscopic pits of data
you’ll see a rainbow.

Just drop the needle, press play:
let the kick drum heartbeats
and string theory soundwaves
tie you up in joyous stereo technicolor.

– Jamie Woods

who hasn’t wanted both (all 3 images)

line & circle
             order & abandon
agency & freedom

chaos bends perspective
refract childhood memories
wings of stone grasp air

—Lynne Jensen Lampe

Final Prayer (30 AWD JPL & GK)
When you need ammunition, not a ride,
if rainbows don’t cut it
don’t look away.
If a bird’s eye view,
forensic,
soars into the trees,
and when the drone of missiles
stops –
in an explosion of murderous intent,
persist.
When your allies send investigators
not tanks
when the war is not yet done –
forgive them.
Above all, in your coasts and forests,
over rocks, in fields, in labyrinthine bunkers –
succeed.
The heart-beat trace
of your war
                         is ours.

-Lesley James

Colours

Red – weathered stones on the beach
Orange – glowing winter sunset
Yellow – leaves fading as they dry
Green – seaweed draping stones
Blue – pale, empty sky
Indigo – the blue-black sea
Violet – tree-shadow

The seabird rising from the ground
has all of these and none of them.
Snow and night.

-Tim Fellows

Rainbow Dreams (Day 30 inspired by all three works.)

A rainbow in my dreams–
cantaloupe sky, pink quartz beach, and light-drenched trees
dripping green, gold, blue. Here birds stop to perch
on chromatic rocks. Yet nothing remains as it seems–
shadows come, even within dreams, my mind sees
but also alters. Gulls become robins whose birdsong brings
dawn-light to forest—now, color-spray the birch
with rainbow stripes and feathers. In dreams, my heart sings.

-Merril D. Smith

-Math Jones

Bios And Links

-John Phandal Law

is 68. Lives in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses‘ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids

-Gaynor Kane

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

-Anjum Wasim Dar

started drawing at St Anne’s Presentation Convent High School, Rawalpindi.
Drawing was taught as a Core subject from  Kindergarten.
Anjum learnt the  skill of  Still Life, Sketching,  Landscape Drawing, Coloring  and Shading  She recalled the scented wax crayons and black  paper sketch books vividly.

Subject of Fine Arts at Intermediate level at Govt.College for Women Rawalpindi,   was stopped by the Indo Pak War of 1965. Anjum continued her passion for art privately.
Her job as a Teacher Instructor allowed her to pursue Art work designing and preparing  Thematic Bulletin Boards and Low cost teaching Aids with the Fauji Foundation Teacher’s Training Institute Rawalpindi. www.faujifoundation.org.
This won her the National Education Award 1998.
 
Completing  a Course in Graphic Designing  at NICON Academy Rawalpindi , Anjum began working as a Digital Artist, On Line, registered her Own Firm CER Creative Education Resources 2004 and is a Member of DRN Drawing Research Network UK  and www.bigdraw.org.uk
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/tracey/drn/
 https://sites.google.com/site/cerprofessionaldevelopment/
With her artistic skills she plans and conducts “Environment Awareness Workshops for Children” and is a member of www.unep.org and www.earthday.org
CER Participated in World Environment Day and Earth Day Programs 2011-2013
“Face of Climate Change”
Anjum  loves Nature, landscapes and abstract imagery. Works with pencils, crayons and  the Software ArtRage 2.0  and MyPaint.

Anjum Wasim Dar’s Art Portfolio  can be accessed  here:

https://www.artwanted.com/anjuartwriter/gallery/

-Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in several poetry journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic,  Fevers of the Mind, and Nightingale and Sparrow. Her first full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press.  Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Website/blog: merrildsmith.com

-Lesley James(she/her)

is a teacher and writer. She was shortlisted for Love Reading UK’s 2022 Very Short Story Award. Featured flash can be found in The Broken Spine, FullHouseLitMag and RoiFaineant. Kathryn O’Driscoll selected her poem Empty for Full House’s 2021 mental health live reading and forthcoming podcast. Brian Moses, The Dirigible Balloon and Parakeet Magazine have published some of her writing for children.

-Lynne Jensen Lampe

has poems in or forthcoming from Figure 1, Olney Magazine, Yemassee, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Also to come is her chapbook Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) about mothers, daughters, and mental illness. She was a 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize finalist. Born in Newfoundland and raised in the Deep South, she lives in mid-Missouri where she edits academic books and journals. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com. Twitter: @LJensenLampe.

–Barbara Leonhard’s

work appears in various online and print publications. She earned both third place and honorary mention for two poems in Well Versed 2021. She is currently writing her first poetry collection about her relationship with her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. From that memoir collection, her poem “Marie Kindo Cleans My Purse at Starbucks” was voted Spillwords Publication of the Month of January and February 2022. Barbara was also voted Spillwords Author of the Month of October 2021 and recognized as a Spillwords Socialite of the Year in 2021. You can follow her on WordPress at https://www.extraordinarysunshineweaver.blog.

-Math Jones

is London-born, but is now based in Oxford. He has two books published: Sabrina Bridge, a poetry collection, from Black Pear Press (2017), and The Knotsman, a collection of verse, rhyme, prose and poetic monologue, which tell of the life and times of a C17th cunning-man. Much of his verse comes out of mythology and folklore: encounters with the uncanny and unseen. Also, as words written for Pagan ritual or as praise poems for a multitude of goddesses and gods. He is a trained actor and performs his poems widely.

-Caroline Johnstone

is an author and poet from Northern Ireland now living in Scotland. She has been published widely including Poetry Scotland, The Blue Nib and Marble Poetry. She loves spending time with her grandchildren, curling up with a good book and champagne or cocktails in no particular order. 

-Lesley Curwen

is a poet and sailor living in Plymouth. She often writes about loss, rescues and the sea.

Her work has been published in anthologies from Arachne Press, Nine Pens, Quay Words, Slate, snakeskin, and soon by BrokenSpine and Broken Sleep.  

Her poetic relationship with sound has been helped by her work as a BBC broadcaster, editing words on screen.

-Carrie Ann Golden

is from the mystical Adirondack Mountains now living on a farmstead in the Red River Valley of North Dakota (USA). She writes dark fiction and poetry. A Deafblind, her work has been published in places such as GFT Press, Doll Hospital Journal, The Hungry Chimera, Asylum Ink, Piker Press, Edify Fiction and others. You can find her on her writing blog as well as Medium and Twitter.  

-Jen Feroze

lives by the sea in Essex with her husband and two small children. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of publications including Ink Sweat & Tears, Chestnut Review, Atrium and The Madrigal. Her first collection, The Colour of Hope, was published in 2020 and she’s currently working on a chapbook of poems about early motherhood. 

-Paul Brookes

is a shop asst in a supermarket. Lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. First play performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews, book reviews and  challenges. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and, videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions. Most recent is a poetry collaboration with artworker Jane Cornwell: “Wonderland in Alice, plus other ways of seeing”, (JCStudio Press, 2021)