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#National HuggingDay artwork and writing challenge. In these Lockdown Days hugs are precious to me, especially with my daughter and grandbairns. Are they to you? Have made artworks about hugs? Have you written unpublished/published work about hugs? Please DM me or message my WordPress blog?
In Grandma’s Garden
Old, gnarled trees give hugs.
Roses smell of antiseptic.
Especially when you’ve grazed
your knees. Dew is a sloppy kiss
And leaves a red mark.
Her arguments with Grandad
Are unmown grass, unweeded borders,
Magnolia bushes that need a prune,
Daisies between the cracks of flagstones.
My pocket money is her laughter.
Gradually even the raised beds
Need a hired gardener. She sits
In a white plastic chair at a white plastic
Table on the patio flagged by her son in law
And granddaughter and says
I’m going to have to move.
That sun is in my eyes.
-Paul Brookes
#SquirrelAppreciationDay artwork and writing challenge. Have you artwork about squirrels? Have you written unpublished/published about squirrels? Please DM me or message my WordPress account.
The fallen Escurel
Fear glare shock of leaping slip,
upper body twisted shovel flat
instinct power kicks hind legs
to distance human path. Dog scent
desperation heaves , burrows head
in mounded litter leaves, camouflage
of mottled grey. Luscious auburn tail
is splayed against the sanctuary heights.
Teeth gnaw at the buried roots
clinging as the surefoot limbs to bark.
Dimming life pulse fades to dark.
-Val Anderson
SCIURUS VULGARIS
The Plight of the Red Squirrel
Pinecone clutched adeptly between his paws, he hesitates,
ears quivering, alert for a predatory fox or a swooping goshawk.
Danger lurks unseen within this innocent sylvan landscape.
Concealed by the dense tree canopy, a stealthy pine marten
Waits to pounce and crush the fragile bones, strip bare the russet coat.
Reaction must be swift, his tail balancing him perfectly in flight.
High overhead in the tree’s hollow his vulnerable kittens cower
in the patchwork drey of woven twigs, leaves and moss.
Instinctive parental behaviour kicks in. He is their survival.
Recognising a sudden chill in the wind, he scrabbles urgently
among the dying leaves, as autumn makes its last stand.
‘Chuck chuk’, he stamps his feet in bold defiance, eyes darting warily.
His breed shows dwindling numbers year on year,
disappearing from their British haunts.
This is our watch, we cannot ignore the call –
Sciurus Vulgaris looks to man for protection;
Tomorrow may be too late!
-©️ Margaret Royall
Leaving
Leaves fall to their end.
Cold darkens every step.
Naked limbs outstretch.
Untidy trees slough,
abandon clothes all over.
Others clean their mess
Squirrels skitter up,
hold bounty for a nibble.
Stop, look and listen.
Sky looks at itself,
sees scumbled clouds, palette knifed
blue flecked by cold gust.
-Paul Brookes
Writing the Book: When I Think of My Body as a Horse
I received my author copies of the new book last week. Except for sending some copies out to the people who endorsed the book and a couple to friends who had been particularly supportive whilst I traversed the long journey to completing the book, I haven’t touched them. They are on my bookshelf, their lavender spines pleasingly neat. Next month the book will be launched officially, and I will begin selling some signed copies and it will be the end, properly the end, of me owning this story; the book will go out into the world and strangers will read it and form opinions on it, it will be reviewed; positively or negatively, it will be judged in competitions and will either be successful or not. The poetry, the stories, the craft in the book will be reimagined inside other people’s heads. They will connect with it, or they will…
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#CervicalCancerPreventionWeek Artwork and writing challenge. Have you made an artwork about this? Have you written unpublished/published about your own or someone elses experience? Please DM me or message me via my WordPress blog.
Day Fifteen. Special January Ekphrastic Challenge Jan 7th to February 6th. Please join writers Merril D Smith, Jim The Poet, Holly York, Angi Plant, Michael Dickel, Joy Fleming, Leela Soma, Hilary Otto, Godefroy Dronsart, Alan Gary Smith, Redcat, and myself as we respond to the remarkable art of Chris O’Connor, Marcel Herms and Kerfe Roig and others to arrive in the coming weeks. Thursday.
January 21st
-Marcel Herms “We-are-little-children-of-the-sea”
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “Milky Way”
Man at sea (MH21)
A choppy shadow falls, a figure looms.
When I surface, I see a man stare through
the shallows. It’s clear he’s not staring at me,
but looking for something lost beneath.
Visibility is good today; he might find
what he seeks. Children gather behind
him and follow his gaze, but ignoring
them, he studies his image. It’s moving
as the surface breaks him up, abstracts him.
I approach to offer help, but he is fixed
on himself. Ripples give him feathers or scales
or on reflection, perhaps they’re petals.
-Hilary Otto
Space Oddity – Acrostic poem
Spread your wings
Prepare for fantasy’s flight
Adventure begins
Come sail star studded space
Expect unexpectedness
Open heart, open eyes, open mind
Dare to fly free
Dream the impossible
Investigate with curiosity
Trust inspirations gifts
Yearn for the wisdom hiding behind the unknown
-©RedCat
Responding to all three works of art for January 21.
Nothing and Something
From nothing, something—
a boom, a rush
of feathered light, star-dusted gas swirl-twirls
air, water into life. From the sea, we come
from the deep-water blue, crawling, falling, squalling
voices, reaching hands toward the azure sky—
from which, after the snow blows and goes,
spring rains pitter-pat on rocks and stones, and
from a pastel palette, petrichor will rise,
like birds, into the air,
but you won’t be here to smell it, or to see the flowers
emerge slowly from cold, dark ground. Treasures thought lost,
now found,
like time. Do we have more or less of it?
I don’t understand the time before time, without stars,
an infinite nothingness beyond black.
I know there’s a hole where you once were,
but it’s plugged with memories, an ocean, deep and wide. I can swim
through them, through the shadowed caverns, like a fish. At the surface,
the ripples gleam, like smiles—the water dances in the light.
-Merril D Smith
Bubbles – (code CO21)
Where the land meets the sea
and the sea meets the sky
the fish are seen swimming
as the birds fly high.
My gill helps me breathe
and I like to blow bubbles.
I have no care in the world
and I have no troubles.
20,Ja.2021 for the 21st of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and painter Chris O`Connor.
Milky Way – KR21
The Milky way flows across the sky
akin rivers across our land.
Up there we can see huge birds
as our terrestrial friends sleep.
Signus glides on it’s wave free jaunt.
When your eyes adapt to the darkness
more birds can bee seen
and what if each star was a bird on it’s own ?
Flock upon flock.
Yay. Four hundred billion.
20,Ja,2021 for the twenty-first of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
KR21 another thing with feathers
Another Thing with Feathers
all beak and talons,
a swirling attack–
hate swoops in
not knowing
that the heart
it consumes
is its own
-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..
Invisible Portal – Ekphrastic Challenge January 20
See the shimmering rift
Sea of twinkling stars
Blooming fantasy’s gift
Awakening souls avatarTravel through the portal
Enter unlimited possibilities space
Experience like an immortal
Every imaginable placeCreative heart’s vision
Ethereal timeless wisdom show
Embark on artistic mission
Lighted by muses crafted glowFollow stories of the rainbow
Sail the word-stream on a moonbeam
Befriend the shadow, she inspiration bestow
Clear singing book-stream, a poet’s dream©RedCat
See artwork and read all poems at The Wombwell Rainbow.
Day Fourteen: Special January Ekphrastic Challenge
For Day Fourteen of Paul Brookes’ Ekphrastic Challenge, I’ve responded to these two works of art.
-Marcel Herms, “The Confession” 
-Kerfe Roig, “Invisible Cities”
The Confessor
With unruly hair, capped-tamed,
she stood before the white-wigged judges
to confess the sins of her wandering mind.
On and on her words poured out
to dance around the room—
the dreams she’d seen, the visions hued
in blue and gold and silver-
streamed they rushed from head and heart,
of a specter at a portal, a future seen
of cities now invisible, but that would someday gleam–
tall towers reflecting the sun, rising high
and bridges spanning rivers, and ships that sailed the sky.
No witch, am I. Only a dreamer.
The watchers sighed. The dazed and dazzled judges called for order,
and she was punished, a time in the stocks and weary-work
to check her mind’s meanderings.
But even a small spark…
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Day Fourteen. Special January Ekphrastic Challenge Jan 7th to February 6th. Please join writers Merril D Smith, Jim The Poet, Holly York, Angi Plant, Michael Dickel, Joy Fleming, Leela Soma, Hilary Otto, Godefroy Dronsart, Alan Gary Smith, Redcat, and myself as we respond to the remarkable art of Chris O’Connor, Marcel Herms and Kerfe Roig and others to arrive in the coming weeks. Wednesday.
January 20th
-Christine O’Connor
-Kerfe Roig “Invisible Cities Portal”
Invisible Portal
See the shimmering rift
Sea of twinkling stars
Blooming fantasy’s gift
Awakening souls avatar
Travel through the portal
Enter unlimited possibilities space
Experience like an immortal
Every imaginable place
Creative heart’s vision
Ethereal timeless wisdom show
Embark on artistic mission
Lighted by muses crafted glow
Follow stories of the rainbow
Sail the word-stream on a moonbeam
Befriend the shadow, she inspiration bestow
Clear singing book-stream, a poet’s dream
-©RedCat
Responding to MH “The Confession” and KR “Invisible Cities”
With unruly hair, capped-tamed,
she stood before the white-wigged judges
to confess the sins of her wandering mind.
On and on her words poured out
to dance around the room—
the dreams she’d seen, the visions hued
in blue and gold and silver-
streamed they rushed from head and heart,
of a specter at a portal, a future seen
of cities now invisible, but that would someday gleam–
tall towers reflecting the sun, rising high
and bridges spanning rivers, and ships that sailed the sky.
No witch, am I. Only a dreamer.
The watchers sighed. The dazed and dazzled judges called for order,
and she was punished, a time in the stocks and weary-work
to check her mind’s meanderings.
But even a small spark can flare a blazing fire. She still dreamed—
and now, so did the others.
-Merril D Smith
Take this crime (MH20)
and keep it safe for me
I have carried it for so long
that it has grown larger
since I first committed it.
Now it strains to escape
the walls of the box
I noticed the flaps lifting
and knew it was time
to find it a new home.
You must be sure
to water it once a day
with tears or even blood,
as long as you keep it moist.
Above all, it must be protected.
On no account expose it
to light. If you do, it will explode
and the consequences
may destroy us both too.
-Hilary Otto
MH20
The Confession
This isolation’s not so hard, I confess.
Trees are still black shadows against the sky
when I arise. I jingle kibble into
dog bowls, pop in a pod of Keurig French Roast,
and head back to bed with a pile of books.
I read and scribble on the unmarked day,
staying away from complicated lines.
Morning walk beside carless streets– I see
no one and that’s ok. Not a bad way
to live, I confess, as long as my thoughts
don’t stray to questions of why.
-Holly York
Invisible Cities Portal – KR20
Barriers appear with structured openings.
Dark clouds abound yet we still see the Sun.
Vastness of space and a comet will come.
A man thinks a small hill is a mountain.
Others see a tunnel, a bridge or a flight
that can take you to the cities far out of sight.
19,Ja,2021 for the twentieth of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
The Confession – MH20
I’ve got to admit
it was me.
But I did it for the best
can’t you see ?
I offer you my hand
to show that I care.
I know what you’re thinking
with that horrid, dog stare.
19,Ja,2021 for the twentieth of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Marcel Herms.
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..
Fall Maiden – A Sonett, Ekphrastic Challenge, January 19
The flowing tresses of auburn man bind
Follow drawn by every curvy sashay
Swift bubbly laughter sings love in their mind
Among leaves twirling she dances awaySmile drawing the hunting merry wild chase
Darting vision of fall forest beauty
Feet leaping lightly through swaying trunk maze
Further into skin on skin, touch frenzyGreen dusted with gold secret yearning hold
Unlock with a honest champion heart
Requires her suitors to be fiery bold
Adore her, love her, never be apartDeep in the woods on a bed of soft straw
Men worship her season with spellbound awe©RedCat
Been wanting to write a sonnet for a while but haven’t found the right inspiration. Today I did thanks to falling deeply Kerfe’s artwork.
See all artwork and read all poems for today at The Wombwell Rainbow.
The Wombwell Rainbow 