February 4th
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “Winter Forest”
Mistress of Watery Midnight
As night settles, her dark vigil begin
Guiding shadows every night
Watching over all hunted by demons within
Calling lost souls to the light
As countless as the stars her kin
Find at her side, respite from the daily fight
All those made to feel uncomfortable in their skin
Feel recharged by her watchful caring sight
When teary sorrow and stormy fears set in
Her birds catch nightmares in their flight
As she new rainbow dreams spin
Mistress of watery midnight
-©RedCat
Responding to CO4
Like Birds
She chants the words–
like tiny birds they fly
from her lips, the magic drips,
and she slips fever-nipped
to the riverside.
Is the reflection hers, or some other–
who might have been spirit or grandmother?
Is it past or future, what was, or what will be?
In the water, what does she see?
Stars and moon, earth and loon,
sky, earth, all upside-down,
she can’t decide
as she gazes there, unaware of time–
it seems like ages–
but only a moment has passed—
and when it’s over, she’s still not clear
what she has seen in the bits and flashes—
they collide,
the feathered-darkness and eagle-sight—
the stark gloom and the brightest light,
both appeared, both are here—
under Orion’s Belt,
they glide,
and she knelt
while the moon was rising,
now midnight blue shifts and drifts
to eastern pink, and as the wind sighs
she watches doves soar, with coo and cry,
to vanish—somewhere far, up in the sky.
-Merril D Smith
Undercover (CO4Feb)
If you interrogate the cormorant
he will tell you how he hangs himself
out to dry on the shale outcrop by day,
wings open in submission. He will explain
how he roosts on the cliffs, one eye open
to see the smugglers come in hoods,
candles in hand, dragging their bound loot
to the pickup spot. The lookout lowers
his hat, checks for trouble, ignores
the birds sleeping like headless corpses
on the rocks. This beak has more to tell;
but it will cost you. Moonshine flashes
on the water, a cold torch to mark the time.
A boat slips into the cove. A breath, release
the bird, and wade to catch the turning tide.
-Hilary Otto
KRFeb4 Winter Forest
Winter graffiti
Branches scrawled in black
tag the white landscape,
write their story in
a weak winter sun.
Birch trunks like mirrored
legs reflect a few
leftover maple leaves
underfoot, or is it
instead a splash of bright
blood? Shadows of scratches.
Bird tracks slash the path.
-Holly York
Bios And Links
-Kerfe Roig
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/
-Christine O’Connor
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
-Marcel Herms
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
-Redcat
RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.
Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.
Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.
Read more at redcat.wordpress.com
-Merril D Smith
is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History (
Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
Educational Consultant by Profession.
Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..
In Response to Kerfe Roig “What grows Here”
paradise descends
River of plenty flows on
Good grows here with peace
Kerfe Roig ~ Cool Silver
some enjoy the snow and play,
for them cold snow is a game,
some lie shivering,
no name-
some build bonfires the same,
sing dance and be merry
for tomorrow is, no blame
will come to shine and light,
my heart says forgive more,
make happiness and space
for others to share,
spend less
save more, war looms ahead
who knows what life may have
in store,
For Paul Brookes Special January-February Ekphrastic Challenge January 7- February 6. This is for February 3, and my poem is inspired by the three works below.
Wishes in the Snow
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
into the birch forest, there by the trees,
where blood bloomed like flowers, red in the snow—
and I wondered if we’d be caught first–or freeze.
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow–
Manya whispered stories of when women were fish,
and as the cold wind continued to blow,
she told of sea-blue wonders and a come-true wish
of times and people long ago—
before the snow.
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
and I wished for roses, sunshine, birds, sheep,
but we were here, and where…
View original post 134 more words
Under the frost and ice moons don’t despair
The maidens quickening is soon near
The winds turning warm and fair
Singing budding spring for all to hearIn the grove of skeletal birch don’t feel sorrow
Let the cold silver moonlight shadows spear
Beneath the snow hides the seeds of tomorrow
Let purple blue moonlight guide souls vision hereWhen the world is frozen, ice, snow, white
Listen to what intuition hears
Teeming life comes back with the light
Spring’s awakening is soon near©RedCat
I’m revelling in the fact that Stockholm is white and covered in snow. I chase blinding sunlight on snow whenever it’s there. The lengthening days are noticeable. Still in the core of most northerners lies the longing for spring.
This poem has an ababcbcbdbdb rhyme pattern.
To read all poems and see all artwork…
View original post 12 more words
All I have is memories of memories –like feathers, plucked and swirling –the fires they lit at the end,in places that had been kept darkfor years. Dancing. My fatherhanding over hollowed bread,a telegram that broke a woman. Bodies in the water. The horses, being led away,through the farm gate. Lost. A city full of women. […]
How do I write about war? — Sarah writes poems
This feature is dedicated to the memory of Harry Hilgrove Lucas (1913 – 1991) who first taught me Old Occitan at Nottingham University and introduced me to the poetry of the troubadours (Ed.)
*****
The poems featured below have been translated from Old Occitan, also commonly known as Old Provencal, by Rennie Parker. The work of the troubadours and their female equivalents, the trobairitz, appeared in the South of France in the eleventh century and, from there, their influence spread across much of Europe and lasted for centuries. You can find more information here. As lyric poetry, these poems were intended to be sung and many musical settings are available on platforms such as YouTube and Spotify.
If you already enjoy, or would like to find out more about medieval music, a good place to start would be this version of ‘Farai un…
View original post 2,208 more words
Victoria Chang’s collection of mostly prose poetry, Obit, published by Copper Canyon Press, calls on a literary tradition of loss that builds from the poets whom Chang references such as Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, and I would say more modern poets like Sharon Olds and even Ted Kooser in his discussion of the loss of his father. Chang is a Los Angeles-based poet who has reached that time in her life when she must deal with the death of the previous generation, and Obit is simultaneously about that loss and the strange position those who mourn are put into.
With the gravity of loss, any other concern seems trivial and moving on with one’s life seems wrong. She discusses that emotion most directly in “The Doctors” where she writes, “To yearn for someone’s quick death seems wrong. To go to the hospital cafeteria and hunch over a table…
View original post 302 more words
*The following interview & poetry was published in Fevers of the Mind Press Presents the Poets of 2020 Anthology*
*Catrice Greer is a Spotlight Poet in the Anthology*
1) Please describe your latest book, what about your book will intrigue the readers the most, and what is the theme, mood?
Catrice: I am working on my first chapbook publication. I expect this to be a selection across topics. I have several books planned. The books planned beyond that one are specifically themed. Themes I write about are a broad span of Spirituality, transcendence, trauma, consent, disability, healing,mental health, love, the environment, human nature, the cosmos, ancestral topics, cultural traditions, identity, dialect, food & culture, Orishas, and music I often weave my love of the sciences, math, astronomy, astral travel, biblical spiritual references, and futurism into my work.
2) What frame of mind and ideas lead…
View original post 2,384 more words
February 3rd
-Kerfe Roig “What Grows Here”
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “Winter Forest”
-Marcel Herms “We Are Little Children Of The Sea Kleurets”
Frost and Ice Moons
Under the frost and ice moons don’t despair
The maidens quickening is soon near
The winds turning warm and fair
Singing budding spring for all to hear
In the grove of skeletal birch don’t feel sorrow
Let the cold silver moonlight shadows spear
Beneath the snow hides the seeds of tomorrow
Let purple blue moonlight guide souls vision here
When the world is frozen, ice, snow, white
Listen to what intuition hears
Teeming life comes back with the light
Spring’s awakening is soon near
-©RedCat
Inside the snow globe (KRFeb3)
The light escapes, invisible colours bounce
off the trees. This wood is a trick, its layers
repeat into the distance in a tangled blur.
Each tree is a prism that splits into many trees.
This is the forest of silence, no tracks or trails.
Keep your coat close, breathe to make clouds
of warmth and stride deep into this new dimension.
-Hilary Otto
Response to KRFeb 3 “Winter Forest,” KRFeb3, “What grows here,” MH, “We are little children of the sea”
Wishes in the Snow
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
into the birch forest, there by the trees,
where blood bloomed like flowers, red in the snow—
and I wondered if we’d be caught first–or freeze.
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow–
Manya whispered stories of when women were fish,
and as the cold wind continued to blow,
she told of sea-blue wonders and a come-true wish
of times and people long ago—
before the snow.
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
and I wished for roses, sunshine, birds, sheep,
but we were here, and where would we go?
Where would we find food, a warm place to sleep?
We ran from the soldiers, out into the snow,
and I dreamed of butterflies, apples, the song
of thrush and soft owl hoots, the way a river flows
in spring, and fish swim in it all along
the way to the sea,
where maybe we could be—
but we’ve run so far, out into the snow,
now Manya says, “Look, there’s a house ahead,”
inside, no people, only gifts bestowed–
a sea-scene painted, a rose, and a loaf of bread.
-Merril D Smith
what grows here
Yes, a snake, a bat, a roach
but also a chrysalis
and butterflies. If a bear
stands in the woods and no one
sees him he is still there. To
show off his thousand points
of flowers the buck stops here.
-Holly York
Winter Forest. – KR3F
A Winter Forest,
leafless, barren, trees with snow.
Which way shall I go ?
2,Feb,2021 for the third of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.
What Goes Here. – KR3F
What goes here I ask.
Deer, bear, rabbit, beetle, bat,
butterfly, flowers.
2,Feb,2021 for the third of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kerfe Roig.
Bios And Links
-Kerfe Roig
A resident of New York City, Kerfe Roig enjoys transforming words and images into something new. Her poetry and art have been featured online by Right Hand Pointing, Silver Birch Press, Yellow Chair Review, The song is…, Pure Haiku, Visual Verse, The Light Ekphrastic, Scribe Base, The Zen Space, and The Wild Word, and published in Ella@100, Incandescent Mind, Pea River Journal, Fiction International: Fool, Noctua Review, The Raw Art Review, and several Nature Inspired anthologies. Follow her explorations on her blogs, https://methodtwomadness.wordpress.com/ (which she does with her friend Nina), and https://kblog.blog/, and see more of her work on her website http://kerferoig.com/
-Christine O’Connor
is an artist working in glass, metal, fibre and paint. Sometimes her work is based on photographs, but more often, she creates in the moment. She loves to play with texture and colour.
-Marcel Herms
is a Dutch visual artist. He is also one of the two men behind the publishing house Petrichor. Freedom is very important in the visual work of Marcel Herms. In his paintings he can express who he really is in complete freedom. Without the social barriers of everyday life.
There is a strong relationship with music. Like music, Herms’ art is about autonomy, freedom, passion, color and rhythm. You can hear the rhythm of the colors, the rhythm of the brushstrokes, the raging cry of the pencil, the subtle melody of a collage. The figures in his paintings rotate around you in shock, they are heavily abstracted, making it unclear what they are doing. Sometimes they look like people, monsters, children or animals, or something in between. Sometimes they disappear to be replaced immediately or to take on a different guise. The paintings invite the viewer to join this journey. Free-spirited.
He collaborates with many different authors, poets, visual artists and audio artists from around the world and his work is published by many different publishers.
=Redcat
RedCat’s love for music and dance sings clearly in The Poet’s Symphony (Raw Earth Ink, 2020). Passion for rhythms and rhymes, syllabic feets and metres. All born out of childhood and adolescence spent reading, singing, dancing and acting.
Her writing spans love, life, mythology, environment, depression and surviving trauma.
Originally from the deep woods, this fiery redhead now makes home in Stockholm, Sweden, where you might normally run into her dancing the night away in one of the city’s techno clubs.
Read more at redcat.wordpress.com
-Merril D Smith
is a historian and poet. She lives in southern New Jersey, where she is inspired by her walks along the Delaware River. She’s the author of several books on history, gender, and sexuality. Her poetry has been published in journals and anthologies, including Black Bough Poetry, Nightingale and Sparrow, Anti-Heroin Chic, and Fevers of the Mind.
-Godefroy Dronsart
is a writer, teacher, and musician currently residing near Paris. His poetry has appeared in Lunar Poetry, PostBLANK, Paris Lit Up, The Belleville Park Pages, and Twin Pies Literary among others. His first chapbook, “The Manual” (Sweat Drenched Press, 2020), explores the space between poetry, prose, and gamebooks. He has a sweet tooth for all things experimental, modernist, and strange. Follow him on Twitter and his Bandcamp for electronic explorations.
-Joy Fleming
Born in County Down, Joy has studied, mothered and worked in Scotland since 1980. Brief excursions to follow her heart, back to NI mid-1990’s and England for first round Covid-lockdown ’19, Joy is currently back living in Glasgow. Joy’s first poem was accepted as part of the C. S. Lewis themed Poetry Jukebox curation A Deeper Country in Belfast in 2019. This poem, Ricochet was published in The Poets’ Republic Issue 8 Autumn 2020. A love of reading poetry is now accompanied by sporadic writing of poetic lines which spill out as an apparent by-product of processing dark and sorrowful days.
-Holly York
lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her two large, frightening lapdogs. A PhD in French language and literature, she has retired from teaching French to university students, as well as from fierce competition in martial arts and distance running. She has produced the chapbooks Backwards Through the Rekroy Wen, Scapes, and Postcard Poetry 2020. When she isn’t hard at work writing poems in English, she might be found reading them in French to her long-suffering grandchildren, who don’t yet speak French.
-Alan Gary Smith
A Lincolnshire Ludensian living in Grimsby who built up his poetic stance after visiting Doncaster and Mexborough during his real ale and comedic music searches. Surprised to find a recent DNA check leaned heavily towards being a strong mix of Scottish, East Yorkshire and Lincolnshire. A sixty year old baldy who loves Julie, astronomy and chocolate; after giving up on football and telly.
-Hilary Otto
is an English poet based in Barcelona. Her work has featured in Popshot, Black Bough Poetry, AIOTB, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and The Blue Nib, among other publications. She received her first Pushcart Prize Nomination and performed at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival. She tweets at @hilaryotto
-Jim young
is an old poet living in Mumbles on The Gower. He does most of his writing from his beach hut at Rotherslade – still waiting for the blue plaque
Anjum Wasim Dar was born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir, She is a migrant Pakistani.Educated at
St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi she has a Masters degree in English Literature and History (
Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English from Cambridge
UK. , a Diploma in TEFL from AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan. She has been writing poems,
articles and stories since 1980.A published poet Anjum was awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal in 2000 by ISP International Society of Poets and poetry.com USA .
She has worked as Creative Writer at Channel 7 Adv. Company Islamabad, and as a Teacher Educator for Fauji Foundation Education Network Inservice Teachers
Educational Consultant by Profession.
Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) Fiction..
The Wombwell Rainbow 