Day 25’s poem for Paul Brookes’ April poetry challenge is inspired by the three images you can see here.
Illusions
To see a magic galleon
(aureoled in gold
sailing a tropical sea)
in the wreck on the strand
to hear the wolf call
(dominating the night
voice full of dark and glitter
hard as stars)
in the howl of the dog chained in the garden
it’s enough to change the filters
but each new tide
still loosens the timbers
and the dog still watches
the house door with longing
in vain.
Hartill’s poetry combines an interest in Buddhism with a political approach which manages to fuse an often sparse lyrical style with something more analytical so we have beauty and melancholy alongside anger and critique. We have ‘being in the moment’ and a celebration of the physical world together with a commentary on the negative consequences of capitalism and of the empire building realities of organised religion. I’m probably being a bit reductionist here but these seem to be the underlying themes of what is a wonderful book of contemporary poetry.
There’s a definition of the term Rhapsody fromCuddon’s Dictionary of Literary Termsat the end of the book which it’s worth bearing in mind:
Rhapsodymeans ‘stitch song’, a rhapsodistone who recited,
stitched together and improvised on various elements of epic
poetry.Inamoregeneralsensearhapsodymaybe an
emotional, perhaps even ecstatic, utterance.
From ‘Proverbs of Sugarloaf’ we get the following encapsulations:
If there’s no…
View original post 834 more words
Day Twenty-Five
-John Phandal Law
-Anjum Wasim Dar – Gold
-Gaynor Kane – Wolf And Witness Tree
Pax – Paska (25 AWD and JPL)
Once in another place, a man walked from a tomb
Once in another time, a flotilla amassed, little boats
to rescue those pushed to the edge of the sea
Easter: renewal, peace and indelible memory,
the little boats are sailed by no-one. They drift,
or, in exploded light, gleam against a sulphur sky
The sea is no safe passage
The passageways run under the ground, as safe as tombs.
-Lesley James
Seasickness
After JPL25
just
still
floating
alone on
inkless seas
no sail no anchor
no forward motion
incessant rocking
constant rocking
of the waves
and tides
to send
me off
– Jamie Woods
Unorthodox Easter
A stark wooden cross
pierced the blue April sky.
Far away, a gilded cross was carried,
reverently transported
by robed and pious men.
They light a candle and fires rage.
Whispered prayers order death.
Voices and eyes raised to Heaven,
their leader fresh from slaughter
makes the sign of the cross.
Jesus wept.
-Tim Fellows
The Skiff …
to JPL-25
… awaits my calm sea.
I shinny up thin shadows.
Aspire to New Moon.
Barbara Leonhard
Shipwreck: A Tanka (AWD25 + JPL25)
Murder in the crow’s
nest. One hurricane emptied
life, the next righted
the hull. Gulls squabble on deck.
Heaven fills the sails with gold.
—Lynne Jensen Lampe
Illusions
(inspired by all three images)
To see a magic galleon
(aureoled in gold
sailing a tropical sea)
in the wreck on the strand
to hear the wolf call
(dominating the night
voice full of dark and glitter
hard as stars)
in the howl of the dog chained in the garden
it’s enough to change the filters
but each new tide
still loosens the timbers
and the dog still watches
the house door with longing
in vain.
-Jane Dougherty
AWD25 – Gold
Do not accept it if you are told
value resides only in that which
can be sold/ trust your eyes and
soul to assess what is truly gold
As you sail towards your personal
horizon, be alert to the essential/
dismiss all views of preciousness
of metal as nothing but ephemeral
Storms may break the vessel before
landfall but of this you may be sure/
you will swim easily towards sunrise
when unencumbered by the material
-Peter A.
Soul (AWD 25 Gold)
Her shape is a wineglass drawn in water:
thoroughbred lines, a full-hipped stern,
discreet curve forward to narrow bow,
a towering golden mast: below
a paradise of old teak glows
the shade of conkers pocket-rubbed.
Look up from the helm, see living sails
blown tight: smacked by southerly gust
she beats like a soul through summer sky.
-Lesley Curwen
25. [Gold AWD25]
Agh! We be pirates,
Of course we Agh!
Fleetly floating, with a following
Tied to nothing but a swift
Shipping water in a stormy
See there’s gold on that there
I landed here with you here.
Be treasure.
Be dragons.
Be the spot I can put an X on.
Peg-legged, hook-handed,
patch upon my eye, I have
a map, if you want it, now
we’ve come to a safe harbour.
-Math Jones
Peace & Quiet (JPL25)
It’s the calm before a storm
Tempest is our nature
To rage, to ravage
What is harmony?
Lost
Undone by the very existence
Of mankind
It’s the quiet before a storm
Silence seems not in our nature
To roar, to wail
True peace, unattainable
Tranquility, serenity
Few, far between
Enjoy
While you can
-Carrie Ann Golden
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.
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)
Inspired by AWD24, Anjum Wasim Dar’s, “Pencil City”
Life Drawings
If we could outline our lives,
pencil-draw and illustrate,
pastel the years, crayon over tears,
erase mistakes, re-trace–
archive the drawings with a note,
highlight this place, add a quote
from that time–
remember
the bright beauty, the blues, greens, and pink
tattooed in indelible ink, shaded, but well-defined
rolled, tied with a ribbon,
filed in my mind.
I am once again participating in Paul Brookes’ April Ekphrastic Challenge. Each day, I will post my poem(s) here. You can see the art and read the other responses by going to Paul’s site here.
The artists are Gaynor Kane, John Phandal Law, and Anjum Wasim Dar. Thank you for your wonderful and inspiring art!
Day Twenty-Four
-John Phandal Law
-Gaynor Kane – Oversized Icecube
-Anjum Wasim Dar – Pencil City
Throwing Shade (GK24)
She picks her favorite
bar, the one where olives
and pickled asparagus adorn
the bloody marys and orange
slices swim in the sangria.
8 am and the bartender pushes
a paper umbrella into her drink.
Seems like everyone but us
is drinking coffee—plenty of mugs,
not one crowned with whipped
cream or sporting a pink parasol.
I order rye on the rocks. More
like rye under the rocks, a chunk
of ice wedged tight, trapping
the liquid, extending beyond
the rim of the glass. Weeping,
and not a coaster in sight.
She tosses her paper
umbrella on the bar. Jesus.
Even whiskey has to deal
with a square peg in a round
hole. Not belonging.
As in this ice cube doesn’t
belong in my drink. As in I don’t
belong in this bar. As in she
doesn’t belong to me.
—Lynne Jensen Lampe
24. [Pencil City AWD24]
Some are drawn here.
Some are lead.
But no-one’s ever penned in.
The hard like to make a point,
say, “sharpen up!”
but the soft like to blur a bit, to shade,
“everyone has six-sides,” they say.
Cops and rubbers on the TV.
Cross-hatching in the kitchen,
the smell of graphite in the air.
And the ancient stubs, shorter now,
sat around the bottom of a jar,
discuss the virtues of a long line, or
the legitimacy of charcoal.
-Math Jones
AWD24
Stick figures
Scarred by leaden
Abrasions
Then erased from existence
-Carrie Ann Golden
-Jane Dougherty
Ships
You lose perception of distance
the further away you get.
Jet trails in the sky,
ships on the horizon,
memories.
-Tim Fellows
Life Drawings (Inspired by AWD24, “Pencil City”)
If we could outline our lives,
pencil-draw and illustrate,
pastel the years, crayon over tears,
erase mistakes, re-trace–
archive the drawings with a note,
highlight this place, add a quote
from that time–
remember
the bright beauty, the blues, greens, and pink
tattooed in indelible ink, shaded, but well-defined
rolled, tied with a ribbon,
filed in my mind.
-Merril D. Smith
AWD24 – Pencil City
There isn’t always a point
There isn’t always a light
But where you find a light
you may find many lights
Then you will see the point
over and over for evermore
Yet if you try to write it down
the pencil will turn to candle
And then you will realise that
the only way to learn is to be
-Peter A.
Pencil Etymology
(after Pencil City AWD24)
A city of fine paint brushes,
trees as brush,
mountains defined
Siri translate Latin tail.
All designed by Sir Richard Rogers
C.B.E. O.B.E. N.O.B.
and other men with
phallic cars and bulging wallets.
A city of pencils
designed to project
their manliness,
their manhood.
The pen is a sword.
The pen is a sword.
The pen is a sword.
Rub it all out,
and tippex the patriarchy.
-Jamie Woods
Anniversary (24 AWD, GK, JPL)
We drink/ a cocktail /at lunchtime /to celebrate /our life / together/We buy cheese/ and home-made chocolates/ from a farmer’s market/We look out/ to a peaceful sea/ and imagine ourselves /afloat / While explosions / neonise /distant mountains/ and mortars/ detonate/
the lead news story is the shortage of cooking oil
-Lesley James
Supersize Me
To GK 24 Oversized Ice Cube
When you order a bourbon on ice,
he asks, “Would you like a glacier with that?”
No surprise about size. The 16-inch dinner plate
heaves a 20-ounce T-bone
and a basin of fries on the side.
You’ve already foraged
at the All-You-Can-Eat Salad Bar –
so long it is marked with trail signs.
“This way to the tater salad”. You can lodge
At Ranch Dressing. Rest at Mayo Clinic.
You tell the kids, “Eat it all,
or you don’t eat!” They slosh it down
with refills of Mountain Dew
with extra glacier. For dessert, gluts of apple pie
under mounds of ice cream.
Meanwhile that glacial ice is melting
onto the table, the floor, and out the door,
sweeping you up with gas guzzlers, trash trucks,
and hog haulers. You barely have time
to ask,
“Can I get that to go?”
-Barbara Leonhard
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
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.
-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.
-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)
Before I read A Triptych of Birds and a Few Loose Feathers (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2022) I had heard Pratibha Castle perform her poems on several occasions. I knew, therefore, she was a talented writer. However, it was only on reading her debut collection that I came to appreciate fully the magnitude of that talent, for her poems are full of wonderfully resonant imagery, not a word is wasted: she is a poet totally in command of her craft.
In this collection we see Castle using the external natural world as a vehicle for exploring and understanding the inner self. She is an acute observer of nature, captured in precise, eloquent language and breath-taking imagery. In Sparrow Love she describes the courtship of two birds. The behaviour of the female is impressively conveyed in the opening stanza: ‘The female flirts her tail,/ flamenco flounce/ of a doyenne cute at charm’…
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This poem, for Day 23 of Paul Brookes’ April poetry challenge, was inspired by Anjum Wasim Dar’s painting Drink.
These dark days
These dark days
I see no beacon on the rocky shore
no light at tunnels’ end
beneath the fields
forced with crops
the soil is silent.
I see the glass half-empty
where the wind whistles no turnstones
the only flood is blood
and in this tormented sky
of cold cloud cross-hatched with rain
where are the swallows?
The Wombwell Rainbow 