Fifteenth Day -Shoreline

-All photos by Geoff Holmes

Beyond The Bounds by Geoff Holmes

http://geoffsreflections.blogspot.com/search?q=beyond+the+bounds

-Steven Stokes (chwydd y môr – Welsh for ‘sea swell’)

Sea E-Scape

Relax, close your eyes and listen
to the gentle sound of salty waves
lapping against a sun kissed shore
feel the delicate sea breeze
admire the orange tinged sunset
gaze upon the far away horizon
which seems impossible to reach
and know the fear and doubt
can be overcome
in the secret and secluded sea scape
of your mind

-Diane Rossi

SHORELINES 

The only sure lines in life
are those drawn by the maker.

A tiny turtle who speed-skitters to reach the surf,
what is his life worth ?
That sharp-eyed ever-present shadow,
is hard-wired to hunger.

Each nip of a lobster claw,
every dodge of beak and maw,
life becomes slightly better prepared for.

Coping strategies for limpets to hold on.
Anchoring to sea grass with a prehensile tail.
Hiding amongst floating weeds until the coast is clear.

But when the tide dumps you onto a beach
like a refuse pile,
amongst other refugees you mingle,
Scratting amongst steamy bladder-wrack
slipping twix bits of stony shingle.

This is No Man’s Land for whale, mermaid, turtle;
because limbs so agile out there,
drag without the buoyancy of water.
Opportunists rub their hands –
a Gull’s sharp beak plucks defenceless turtlings
from beach to sky,
where it is all but certain now, these little mites,
before really living, will die.

Nature is crueller than Jimmy Saville.
Only some species survive the transition.
Ones who tolerate salt, wind, drought ;
Ones who eat other ones slow on their feet ;
Ones who manage to return to their natural habitat;
Ones who avoid being boiled alive by people;
One is a small number.

To survive a shoreline requires specialist skill,
sense to select a sure line your life will take.
Is it instinct, or luck, which determines,

-John Wolf 7th August 2021.

-Ann McDonald

-Ryan Gibbs (First published in Mediterranean Poetry)

https://soundcloud.com/sonja-benskin-mesher/head-above-water-a-swimmers-perspective?utm_source=clipboard&utm_campaign=wtshare&utm_medium=widget&utm_content=https%253A%252F%252Fsoundcloud.com%252Fsonja-benskin-mesher%252Fhead-above-water-a-swimmers-perspective

.head above water – a swimmer’s perspective.

Metaphorically, i have spent much of my life, keeping my head above water.

Dealing with life facts and disappointments, not forgetting the quiet times to help the work along

I lived on the coast, played by the sea

As a child, I floated gently until all became spongey. Now I swim head above water, up and down obsessively counting, hoping all will come clear..

Friends in water talk more, baring much, reflecting their clothing

I am drawn to water, my work reflective. Writing, swimming, painting, drawing.

I collect cuttings of people in water.

“a diary, a personal relationship with the landscape.

“Shoreline would be more an exploration of the concept….shorelines more related to actual examples…..how about that?

Shoreline…..an ever-changing interface……between 2 media…..2
worlds…..can be crossed in both directions, but only temporarily?……but
aren’t we only here because something had the courage to cross
permanently…..something emerging from the sea is such a powerful
image….turtles, ursula andress in dr. no, monsters from the deep…..and
why do we find it such an attractive place to be
xx salty”

sbm.

Sea Shanty

I’ll sing you a song of the foreshore and strand
Way down Redcar
I’ll sing you a song of the foreshore and strand
And we’re bound for the vertical pier.

Then howay, pet, howay,
Way down Redcar.
So tara to all you who bewailed the cost
For we’re bound for the vertical pier.

Sing ‘Hello there Beacon, all shiny and new,’
Oh, down Redcar.
And ‘Hello steps up to the wraparound view,’
For we’re bound for the vertical pier.

Then Howay, pet, Howay,
Way down Redcar
And tara to all you who bewailed the cost
For we’re bound for the vertical pier

And this is Redcar

You’ll love it here. There’s sand and sea. Sometimes there is sun. And sex is not unlikely.
The wind turbines off-shore add to the attraction, don’t you think? Look at them milling their arms like old lady giants at a keep-fit class.
The beach is wide – ideal for dogs and horses too. Watch out for the shit. Just on that stretch though. There’s family sand nearer to town.
You should’ve seen it when we came on club trips as kids. You couldn’t move for deck chairs, windbreaks, kiosks selling jugs of tea. And shuggy-boats and that high slide we used to climb, clutching a little mat to sit on, glide down again. These days, there’s roundabouts and trampolines.
There is a pier – maybe you haven’t noticed? It’s vertical. Looks like a helter-skelter. Some say it’s an abomination. I like it though. Do you? It catches your eye, scintillating purple in the sun. And you can climb it like a spiral staircase, come out at the top, view the town, the waves, the length of beach.
Oh look! The sand’s all gone down there, swept away by storms last month. A morass of mud now amid the remains of ancient forest – see, stumps, branches, roots, at least 7000 years old, they reckon. It’s really brought the people in. Hundreds more than usual
though it’s always popular here on Sundays, a multicultural crowd strolling along, facing that North Sea wind, buying lemon tops from Pacitto’s, eating chips in the refurbed shelters near the water-spurts.
That way? That’s South Gare. You can watch tankers head into Teesport, visit the little village of fishermen’s huts, crooked chimneys smoking.
Over there? The steel works. Closed down. They’re dismantling it.

Undercover in Redcar

We scan the beach, note
the exuberance of dogs bounding
across the sand into the waves,
peer into flotsam – sea coal, crab claws,
razor shells, the vertebrae of fish.
The sea has set them out;
displays them warily; sidles
up to check their whereabouts.

On wet shore, horseshoes sink, tracks
confused with paw marks, footprints.
At South Gare, we miss the steps,
scramble instead over the rocks, haul up
by rusting No Entry sign. A tanker
heads in to Teesport, noiseless under
the wind’s bluster, the churn of waves.
We survey through our binoculars.

Tugs close in. Dwarfed by its bulk,
they chivvy the ship their way and it goes
quietly. Round the corner, fishermen’s huts
are shuttered, hunkered down
against the searching wind. One smoking
chimney signals as we walk past.
Down the road, in the hulk of steelworks,
one light pretends that things go on as normal.

4 stanzas in the North Sea wind
1
In hulk of steelworks, one light pretends that things go on as normal
though the blast furnace is turned off, coke ovens extinguished,
a community of workers left to cool five years ago
in the North Sea wind.

2
Sea coal, crab claws, razorshells, the vertebrae of fish,
footprints, pawprints, hoofprints,
the runes of sanderling and oystercatcher
honour the North Sea wind.

3
The pier is a beacon, draws you to its verticality.
Offshore turbines, bright as local Lemon Tops,
transmute energy, wring electricity
from the North Sea Wind.

4
Turbines’ feet become mini-reefs where the benthos
spawn, forage, shelter – molluscs, bivalves, worms,
echidnoderms stirring up carbon, foundation of our world
beneath the North Sea wind.

Redcar, March

Windy Redcar beach.
Caterpillar tracks lead us to another age.
Creatures once light and fluid
lie heavy now in dark stone.

Sea water fizzles, bubbles
round smooth stones, sinks.
Lugworms extrude their sand-spaghetti heaps,
wind-strewn white feathers cling,
icing the sticky shingle.

Mussel shells crunch under heels.
Sanderlings skitter in unison
and oyster-catchers, herded by the waves,
pipe complaints.

From the sea
I am rooted in the sea.
Waves roll stone after
stone, anchor my feet.
Foam spawns round my ankles,
aeon-worn grit grips my toes,
encrusts them like barnacles –
my feet are ancient artefacts
brought up by divers.
Salt of the sea, I crawl
(too painful to stand)
up the shingle
(unable to stand)
until I reach dry land.

Sea Change

Crisped brittle-black,
I contort in salty sunlight.
Time was, I’d glide, fluid,
slime-slide. Then, I swayed
sinuous. Now, I twist on the shingle, dried.
Once, immortal water wrote my name.
Now, I’m just a scribble on the shore,
a frozen writhing, a mourning ribbon
tied to the sea’s portal.

-All poems above by Ann Cuthbert

Bios And Links

-Geoff Holmes

was born in Cambridge and grew up in Jersey and East Anglia.  He now lives in Barnsley, South Yorkshire where he tries to improve his local greenspace, the Swanee.  He is lucky also to be able to spend time quite often on The Wash at Snettisham Beach. He is father to four children and was once a vicar but now works in medical statistics and modelling.

-Ryan Gibbs

is an English professor who lives in London, Canada. His over forty published poems have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Malta, and Saint Pierre and Miquelon. His children’s poetry has been included in the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness.

-Steven Stokes

is a South Wales-based haikuist who began writing and sharing his poetry in 2020. Steven publishes his work via stevenlstokes.wordpress.com and three of his poems were included in the recent Dylan Thomas-inspired anthology ‘How Time has Ticked a Heaven Around the Stars’

Fourteenth Day – Deep Sea

Open Sea photo by Paul Brookes

MIkely and Monkey are wavily, bobbily swimming along
In search of the ear-splitting, teeth-rasping din.
Noddily, dippily riding the splish-splashy waves,
Deep in the bubbly shadows,
Gloomily rears a sinister silhouette

Of a chain-rattley, ghost-hidey wreck

Of a surge-fluttery, sting-bristly squid

Of a claw-snappy, eye-poppy crab

Of a side-swipey, jaw-grabby shark

Of a jump-happy, play-smiley dolphin

Of a sore-weepy, shrill-screechy…… angler fish

The song is called Wavily Bobbily and was composed for Swansfield Park Primary School in Alnwick using the children’s own ideas. They imagine a disturbing noise at the bottom of the ocean, set off to investigate and come across plenty of other undersea creatures before they finally find the source of the noise. The creatures and other things that the divers find can easily be substituted by new ideas from a new class!

-Cheryl Camm

DEEP SEA 

I’m an Angler
a cunning dangler.
Follow the shiny light . . .

“She’s a fearsome gob on her !
Get this – reporter in a bathyscape,
friend of Attenborough,
down here, interviewing me !
You’re Di-curious ?
We’re Dimorphic – what do I do ?
Skinny man, sperm donor.
I’ve been called a parasite, imagine that ?
I’m basically a gonad. I’ve had worse gigs.
Big momma’s the boss.”

I’m John Wayne.
This unsuspecting swim past,
will be your last.
Boom !
Join the larder.
Bobbit.
What’s my name ?

It’s official, I’m the world’s ugliest animal.
Pour me a beer, sport.
“What ya got there skippy ?
Oh, it’s a Blobfish.”

A gelatinous mass
with a gas-filled ass
it can swim but chooses to float.
It lives at abyssal pressure
so bringing one up here tends to depress her

-John Wolf 6th August 2021

Pelagic

We are not dry land, we are open sea.
Marine snow, always falling detritus,
feed zooplankton, organisms in deep sea,
where sunlight cannot reach you will find us.

We are more different deeper you go.
Muscular bodies become flabby, strong
ossified bones become weak, eyes so
large, sensitive, small, heart too, pressured throng.

Lantern fish, a sound scattering layer,
deeper when the moon is out, if a cloud
passes over moon, it becomes shallower.
Night ascent, day return to cold, dark crowd.

Depth changes the way we live, how we are.
Shallower, more predators, under stars.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

Cheryl Camm

is a composer living in Northumberland. Her songs for schools and choirs are performed around the world. Recent commissions include a celebratory song for a retiring RAF helicopter pilot, songs for composing workshops at the Hepworth Wakefield Gallery and a song celebrating and mourning the remarkable hen harriers for Hen Harrier Day 2020.

Thirteenth Day – Coastal And Marine Vegetation

 

Flat holm / Steep holm

Too Welsh for the English
Too English for the Welsh,
sometimes it seems I should make my home
in the middle of the Severn estuary
with oozings and miles of mud,
to be drowned twice a day in the brisk tide
as punishment or reminder that I am
Too English for the Welsh
Too Welsh for the English.

But I am all oyster-catcher
and sand eel, stunted grass and drift,
flat-topped and steep-sided on my
island-home sanctuaries come prisons,
places reserved for those who are
Too Welsh for the English
Too English for the Welsh,
where all kinds of gull call and cry,
but cannot teach me the anthem’s words.

I am wild peony and golden samphire,
Buck’s plantain and wild leeks
snaked about by slow worms, blue
in their markings like the sea.
I am crane’s bill and trefoil, stone crop
and rock lavender, all the colours
of land and sky, yet still
Too English for the Welsh
Too Welsh for the English.

-Kate Noakes

Sea Rocket

5,000 miles in a 747
have taken you to Harris Beach, Oregon,
to find Sea Rocket by the boardwalk
where nobody will ever know your name
and the place you’ve come from:

Seaburn, where the same genus of plant
stowed perchance in cargo holds
to unfurl in spores at Hendon Docks
now protrudes from dunes by the North Sea
which you know doesn’t know your name.

Later, looking into the window front
of the Brookings branch of the Democrats
you’re mistaken for an eager voter
who shares a common belief
in free access to public health care.

Pineapple Weed grows in the slats
of paving here, too—the way it does
on the Ash path where your parents live.
Some things you know the names for,
others you’re yet to learn.

-Jake Morris-Campbell (This poem – first published by Fragmented Voices – is from a sequence written for Stringing Bedes: A Poetry and Print Pilgrimage, a Heritage Lottery Funded project which linked the twinned Wearmouth-Jarrow monasteries in 2015-16.)

Ray Mears Beavering A Wild Wind-swept scene

Dense spiky tufts, bind the dunes.
Swaying, lush, feathery, coastal prairie.
Knobbly, slimy, tide-abandoned.

Succulently seeding salt-flats in vibrant green,
is it baby asparagus; no
it’s a a thornless mini-cactus.

Blasted gorse.
Wind-bent Pine.
Wasted wine bottle
misses message.

Sea Campion –
Witches’ Thimble.
Meet me on the shore;
Wear a carnation.

Fancy a cabbage ?
Tried sea kale ?
A splurge of stems
root in shingle.

Salt-laden winds, shifting ground,
challenge a plant –
they respond with tolerance.

Needle-leaves, yellow flowers, rock-niched.
Is that coconut I smell ?
Of gorse.

Sea Thrift; Sea Pink ; Rock rose ;
in low clumps, marshed, shored,
on cliffs it grows.
It’s nectar-rich flowers
buzz with pollinators.

What hides behind those dunes ?

Vikings . . .
Off road buggies . . .
Nudists . . .
Trendy Cuisine . . .
Ray Mears beavering . . .

-John Wolf 5th August 2021.

The Marine Sonnets

Marine Plants (List Poem)

Eel Grass, Sea Grass or Grass Wrack, Dwarf Eel Grass
or Sea Grass, Marram Grass, Sand Sedge, Hound’s Tongue
Sea Couch, Sea Rocket , Common Scurvygrass,
Sea Kale, Yellow Horned Poppy, Adder’s Tongue.

Sea Holly, Sea Spurge, Sea Stock, Sea Spleenwort,
Autumn Lady’s Tresses, Rock Sea Spurrey,
Ray’s Knotgrass, Sea Milkwort, Long-spiked Glasswort,
Sea Beet, Sea Stork’s-bill, Lesser Sea Spurrey.

English Scurvygrass, Shore Dock, Autumn Squill,
Common Glasswort, Sea Arrow-grass, Rock Samphire,
Cord-grass, Sand or Warren Crocus, Spring Squill,
Sea Pink, Sea Daffodil, Golden Samphire.

Saltwort, Buck’s-horn Plantain, Sea Plantain,
Sea Campion, Sea Aster, Sea Purslane,

Eel Grass to Sea Arrow Grass (As Found List Poem)

Eel Grass, Sea Grass or Grass Wrack, Dwarf Eel Grass
or Sea Grass, Marram Grass, Sand Sedge,
Frosted Orache, Sea Rocket, Sea Bindweed,
Sea Kale, Hound’s Tounge, Sea Holly, Sea Spurge,
Yellow Horned Poppy, Sea Stock, Adder’s Tongue,
Sea Daffodil, Ray’s Knotgrass, Sand
or Warren Crocus, Saltwort, Sea Spleenwort,
Sea Pink or Thrift, Hottentot Fig,
Rock Samphire, Sea Stork’s-bill,
Golden Samphire, Rock Sea Lavender,
Buck’s-horn Plantain,Sea Plantain,
Shore Dock, Autumn Squill,
Spring Squill, Sea Campion,
Rock Sea Spurrey, Autumn Lady’s Tresses,
Sea Aster, Sea Purslane, Sea Beet,
English Scurvygrass, Common Scurvygrass
Sea Couch, Sea Milkwort, Long-spiked Glasswort,
Common Glasswort, Purple Glasswort,
Perennial Glasswort, Common Cord-grass,
Townsend’s Cord-grass Lesser Sea Spurrey,
Annual Seablite, Sea Arrow-grass.

-Paul Brookes

Bios And Links

-Kate Noakes

is a PhD student at the University of Reading researching contemporary British and American poetry. He most recent collection is The Filthy Quiet, Parthian, 2019. She lives in London.

-mary frances

Mary works with found art, collage, and cut-up text, always curious about alternative ways of looking and the rearrangement of things. She walks a lot, with a pocket camera, drawn to small, hidden, or neglected places where she takes pictures of things which may or may not be there.

-Jake Morris-Campbell

is a writer, critic and tutor based in Tyne & Wear. His debut collection of poetry, Corrigenda for Costafine Town, is forthcoming with Blue Diode Press. This poem – first published by Fragmented Voices – is from a sequence written for Stringing Bedes: A Poetry and Print Pilgrimage, a Heritage Lottery Funded project which linked the twinned Wearmouth-Jarrow monasteries in 2015-16.

Day Twelve -Sea Shanties, and other sea songs

 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Sea Shanty

I long for the peaceful sea
the vast water floor holding me
aloft I float undisturbed
and I just sing
Ho Ho Ho, Step firm on the deck’
Hold On Hold On, on the deck’
I long for the peaceful sea
if only I were on Phlae
waving the burgee
but I just sing
Ho Ho Ho step firm on the deck
Hold on Hold on, on the deck
I long for the peaceful sea
so I could sail my razee
all over free
but I hold on, see!
Ho Ho Ho step firm on the deck
Hold on Hold On, on the deck
By
Anjum Wasim Dar

Chantey for the Merfolk’s Child

The sea is wide, the sea is wild.
Sing hey and haul away.
Raise a song for the merfolk’s child.
Haul away my dears.

She was born on a different wave.
Sing hey and haul away.
The treasured child of the merfolk brave.
Away and have no fears.

The sea is dark, the sea is deep.
Sing hey and haul away.
The merfolk sing the sea to sleep.
Haul away my dears.

The merfolk’s child was sweet and mild.
Sing hey and haul away.
But the ocean’s heart is old and wild.
Away and have no fears.

The night was nigh and the waves rose high.
Sing hey and haul away.
They swept the merfolk’s child away.
Haul away my dears.

She washed up on a homely strand.
Sing hey and haul away.
A strange and human-haunted land.
Away and have no fear.

The merfolk’s child sang sweet and strong.
Sing hey and haul away.
But you shouldn’t go where you don’t belong.
Haul away my dears.

The landfolk turned and ignored her plight.
Sing hey and haul away.
For landfolk just don’t know what’s right.
Away and have no fears.

But the sailors saw and they knew the score.
Sing hey and haul away.
For merfolk can’t live up on shore.
Haul away my dears.

They took her back to the deep and black.
Sing hey and haul away.
Close-hauled tight on the sunset track.
Away and have no fears.

A storm arose and wild it blows.
Sing hey and haul away.
It blew all around the compass rose
Haul away my dears.

The topsails tore and the mast came down.
Sing hey and haul away.
But the merchild sang them safe through storm.
Away and have no fears.

They brought the merchild safely home.
Sing hey and haul away.
And she swore she never more would roam.
Haul away my dears.

The sinking wreck with its broken deck.
Sing hey and haul away.
The merfolk raised it and sent it back.
Away and have no fears.

So if you see the merfolk’s child.
Sing hey and haul away.
Sat on a beach stone sweet and mild.
Haul away. Haul away.
Leave her alone my dears, my dears.
Away and have no fears.

-Yvonne Marjot

SEA SHANTEY 

My soul is the sound of the sea
bonny lads
from the first heartbeat’s echo
to her haunting melancholy.

She calls to to me, calls to me
as we haul and we haul
dark drink from the bilge bonny lads
and we haul and we’re free.

My soul is the sound of the sea
bonny lads
White horses plough by the prow
and when I dream, she returns to me.

I yearn for the salty spray
bonny lads
Bitter bite
of the strong south-westerly

Haul of the rope on the rail
bonny lads
The swing of the boom
bonny lads

And one day I will dive to Davy Jones’ locker
Open treasure chest there
so long denied to me
bonny lads

Until then, she calls to me
on a siren’s lips like Spanish gold.
Calls to me, calls to me
so we haul and we haul
till we’re old bonny lads
and sing the song of the sea.

Afore dawn rises, scrub them decks,
bonny lads,
cleaner than a cabin boy’s chin.
Muzzle them canon good, bonny lads
For on the Spanish Main, we will win.

If you whalers get to tonguing
while the rest get to longing
know this, bonny lads –
We will hear Poseidon way before we see him
grasping like a Kraken
at lazy lackeys like thee !

Heave away, haul away, draw that anchor,
Feel the heart swell with pride.
For wild-adventure, we’ll go a-roving,
bonny lads
For we are away on the tide.

NOTES

As Sea Shantey is a song sung in RHYTHM with their work. They’re motivational or UPLIFTING, similar to negro spirituals sung by a chain gang in slavery.

Sailors sang shanties as they worked pumps up and down, (windlass shanty)
removing water from the hold of the ship.

They sang as they sanded the decks in the earliest hours of the morning,
or turned the capstan that pulled the heavy iron anchor up from the ocean floor,
or when they hauled sails into position.

Halyard shanties were sung during long laborious tasks.

Tonguing has a triple meaning :
Musical – Altering the voice in a staccato effect like a wind instrument.
Whaling term – Stripping blubber to make whale oil.
Spiritual – It is the voice of the gods. Sailors were superstitious.

-John Wolf 4th July 2021

Bios And Links

-Helen Meissner

started producing music last year. She calls herself a late starter as while she has been involved in the music promotion business for the last decade, she’s only just, in her mid fifties ventured into the creative arena herself.

Based in Hertfordshire, Helen, who calls herself Helefonix, is about to release her debut album Nature’s Grace. It is heavily influenced by the nature she’s captured around her over the last year and two of the tracks have had national radio play – (Teaching Darkness) How To Fly featuring poet/broadcaster Ian McMillan on Radio 3 and Song Thrush Serenade by Cerys Matthews on 6 Music.

Helen openly professes to be using lockdown inspired production methods to create her sonic landscapes. While the occasional human voice features in a track, most of her work is instrumental.

Nature’s Grace opens with Dawn Chorus and closes with Evensong. Her homage to the important rituals which top and tail her day. In between there are nine tracks which are unique and varied. The album is available on her website & is on general release 5^th Sept ‘21. A few of the tracks are already on her spotify page.

Bandcamp : https://helefonix.bandcamp.com/

Twitter :  https://twitter.com/helefonix

Soundcloud :  https://soundcloud.com/helefonix-midlifemix

Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Helefonix

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyLXvfwXjdPo1bsaF24t_3A

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7xXiGIzlyGqrl91hDNb66i

Website : www.helefonix.co.uk

Email: helefonix@gmail.com

Eleventh Day – Mermaids And Sea Monsters

Lyonesse front cover

-Penelope Shuttle (from her new Bloodaxe collection “Lyonesse”)

-Helen Laycock (as it appeared in Visual Verse)

MERMAID

Wedded to the sea,
I am sheened in salt-glint.
A froth veil trails
from my seaweed crown
as he shows me the shore
then scoops me back down
to the deep
where we sleep
in a blue lilt,
a mosaic of sun
tilting mirrors on our backs.

-Helen Laycock

THE DWELLING

In that secret place, a sea lantern swings,
splashing shards of jade and teal
into the folded silk of the rock.

The bowed hag’s watery grief
seeps its magic into the splinters
as she waits with clamped wings.

She is frozen into a waterfall of stone,
onyx daggers pinning her into the strata
like a fingerprint.

Hooded and veiled, charmed hands
draped, she sucks the light as she dreams
of conjuring marble into cloud.

-Helen Laycock

For Sale

He saw the advert in the local paper, on the right-hand side right next to the one about the missing cat. Mermaid for Sale. Price on application. He called the number and, later in the day, found himself at a small red-brick house with geraniums in the window.  A woman answered the door, wearing faded jeans and a splattered T-shirt. She led him down the stairs to the basement where the light flickered blue and dim. There were fish in tanks, a small shark; three pink crabs. ‘Here,’ the woman said. ‘She doesn’t say much.’  The mermaid was sat under a disco ball. In the moving light her tail glittered and sparkled, like sun catching the waves. How beautiful she looked, and strange. Those sea green eyes, the hair that reminded him of old ropes, breasts like limpet shells. He’d have to sell his car to afford the price of her but he’d do it, yes he would.

*

He knew deep down she’d be a fake. Even though he’d had hope. He always had hope. His mother said that was his trouble. Head in the clouds. Feet not even touching the ground.

The mermaid spoke with a funny accent. When he asked where she’d come from she said she’d hitched a lift in a cargo boat. She’d hated wearing the tail. It made her itch all over. He said he loved her anyway. He brought her tea and cake. She said she’d stay. She liked the house. She was from Birmingham, she claimed. No sea there. Just a few reservoirs and some sickly fish.

-Bronwen Griffiths

The Nøkken
(Late night serenade)

He sang in hoof gallop canto
which slowed to canter
as waves rippled lightning
into a dark waiting grave

The heat of his words
were a barometric headache
lyrics that drowned in heads
all closed thump-pulsed eyes

A lusty brook horse
he played through pitch
a, star shaking, violin whinny
steam snorting out his heat

Until shutters swang wide
as prickled arms broke
through flume and flotsam suck
for lapping kisses in black
or to banish him
for being so wet and blue

-Z.D. Dicks (First published in Runcible Spoon)

-Katie Byford (This was yesterday’s Weekly poem on Oxford Brookes University Poetry (Weekly Poem for 02 August 2021 – Oxford Brookes University)

Mermaids and Monopods

The Mappa Mundi shows mermaids and monopods;
the former, basking attractively,
the latter, using its huge foot as a sun hat.

The Medieval map of the world
depicts weird creatures from unknown lands –
a Cylops and Cynocephalus,
with a man’s body and a dog’s head;
Blemmye, headless men with eyes in their chest,
an early form of V.A.R.

Of course, we know now,
that mermaids are seals and sea lions,
giving voice to their fishy frustrations,
Or, inebriated, they might be manatees
flatulating among sea grass.

There are no Krakens, but Humboldt squid,
and if you like ecology you can study it in degrees –
Monopods are military amputees
after life-changing injuries with IED’s.

Cyclops are those people who walk around with one eye open,
Politicians not Terra incognita.

You’d have to dive to land on Mars now,
to get far enough to imagine how they saw the world.
From the mystery and romance of ancient ways,
something has been lost in translation.

We need mermaids and monopods
because being unique and different
teaches us a valuable lesson.

Monopods.
We’ve got their modern equivalents in the ocean –
evolutionary marvels like bivalves
who anchor with a single leg
extruded from a razor shell.

Mermaids
Are they able-bodied or adaption-assisted ?
Monopods
Took the minority status route.

They’ve both been given clearance
to compete at the Paralympics
though nobody can decide in what category.

Blemmye, not from Motorhead –
suggested that we go with our gut.

-John Wolf 3rd August 2021

-Catherine Graham

Doggerlands

Below the waters of the German Sea rests
imagination bound with histories.
Massive creatures roamed valleys and forests,
folk hunted them down for wondrous stories.

In firelight told how they killed great toothed beasts
whilst feasting on the monster’s meat and bones,
Then the landslide., waters rose and all ceased.
Their remains tell tales to fish, crabs and stones.

Above they farm the gust that turns the blades.
Ferries wend their way to the other shore.
The sea now beast that harbours other trades.
A sunken land to be discovered once more.

A sea becomes land, as land becomes sea
Geography of our narratives legacy

Bios And Links

-Penelope Shuttle

lives in Cornwall. Her thirteenth collection, Lyonesse, appears from Bloodaxe, June 2021. Covid/Corvid, a pamphlet written in collaboration with Alyson Hallett, appears from Broken Sleep Books, November 2021. Father Lear, a pamphlet, was published by Poetry Salzburg in June 2020. Shuttle is President of the Falmouth Poetry Group, founded in 1972. She is widely published, and her radio poem, Conversations on a Bench, set in Falmouth, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2020. She is currently working on a new collection, History of the Child.

–Katie Byford 

is a poet and filmmaker from London. She has a BA in Classics from Durham University, where she received the Maltby Exhibition Prize for her dissertation on Sappho’s work as translated and interpreted by contemporary poets and artists. She regularly delivers guest lectures at Durham on the use of Greek and Roman sources in her poetry. Katie’s poem ‘Appetit, for Persephone’ placed first in the open category of the 2020 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition; her poem ‘Son, for Thetis’ was also shortlisted. She was part of the Barbican Young Poets from 2011 to 2014, and since then has worked extensively with the Barbican Centre, most recently delivering workshops and performing commissions for 2019 exhibitions AI: More than Human and Lee Krasner: Living Colour. Other commissions and performances include those at Durham Castle, the Wellcome Collection, Spread the Word and the Houses of Parliament. Her work has featured in Magma, Popshot, Modern Poetry in Translation and anthologies Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books) and She is Fierce: brave, bold & beautiful poems by women (Macmillan). Find out more about Katie on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

-Stevie Mitchell

is a Derbyshire-based artist and illustrator creating captioned drawings, fragments of stories and uncanny happenings, presented under the collective banner, INKY CONDITIONS. He works with ink and brush and some deliberately lo-grade technology. Amongst a playfulness, themes of personal loss emerge. Part therapy: a loving and cathartic catalogue of everyday life – and death.

Stevie shows and sells INKY CONDITIONS work at arts trails and fairs across Derbyshire and Staffordshire, including the Wirksworth Festival, and is a Staff Illustrator with The Hungry Ghost magazine. Alongside this, he works as an independent commercial illustrator, making useful drawings for beer branding, businesses, and for Barnsley Museums, including visitor guides and poetry anthologies.

Website: www.inkyconditions.co.uk

Instagram & Twitter: @mitchsteve / #inkyconditions

-Catherine Graham’s

sixth poetry collection, The Celery Forest, was named a CBC Best Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. She was a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, featured in Exile Magazine and published in Poetry Daily, Gutter Magazine, The Malahat Review, Southwordand more. A previous winner of the Toronto International Festival of Author’s Poetry NOW, she leads their monthly book club. Æther: An Out-of-Body Lyric, her most recent collection, was nominated for the Toronto Book Awards. Her second novel, The Most Cunning Heart, is forthcoming. http://www.catherinegraham.com @catgrahampoet

-Z. D. Dicks

holds an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. 

In 2016 he founded the Gloucestershire Poetry Society and the Gloucester Poetry Festival. His poetry is widely published.

He currently has three collections ‘Malcontent’ and ‘Intimate Nature’ with Black Eyes publishing (2019) and one ‘Vexed’ with Hedgehog Poetry Press (2020). 

Helen Ivory (Ink, Sweat and Tears) described his work as ‘muscular language’ and is himself ‘a gothic Seamus Heaney’ according to Anna Saunders.

-Annest Gwilym

Author of two books of poetry: Surfacing (2018) and What the Owl Taught Me (2020), both published by Lapwing Poetry. Annest has been published widely in literary journals and anthologies, both online and in print, and placed in several writing competitions, winning one. She is a nominee for Best of the Net 2021.

-Bronwen Griffiths

is the author of two novels and two collections of flash fiction. Her flash fiction has been widely published both online and in print anthologies. She is currently working on a novella. There is no mermaid in the novella but it features a distant rocky island, a lighthouse and a strange bird.”

-Helen Laycock’s

writing has been showcased in Visual Verse, The Best of CafeLit, the Cabinet of Heed, Reflex Fiction, the Ekphrastic Review and Lucent Dreaming, whose inaugural flash fiction competition she won. Poetry has been published in Popshot, Poems for Grenfell, Full Moon and Foxglove and The Caterpillar.