How do we find our muse in these dark times? For some, I know that lockdown has deadened their creativity which is having an impact on their wellbeing, as they are also coping with isolation from friends and family. For those home schooling there’s no head space or time to write, and those working from […]
Creativity in Lockdown – poets and editors advice during these uncertain times — The Poetry Shed
The superb Dragonflies Spoken Word returns with its first event of 2021 on the 16th Feb at 19.30 GMT and I will be the featured poet amid an evening of Open Mic readers. Hosted by fellow Poets Barbra Kirbyshaw and Darren J Beaney, it is always a perfectly packed Zoom room of artists and supporters…
Dragonflies Spoken Word 16th Feb — Deuxiemepeau Poetry by Damien B. Donnelly
January 15th
-Marcel Herms “Ignore the real world forever”
-Kerfe Roig “ennui-with-eye-by-marcy-erb”
-Chris O’Connor
MH15
Serpentine world becoming venomous
day by day night by night
real it is in cruelty, abuse by torture loud,
ignoring it where can one go?
poisonous virus is everywhere, hidden
ready to pounce and bite,
forever ? Or make efforts to make it better?
KR15
No do not lose hope
restless inner eye seeks peace
groans with pains untold
CO15
Cities bloody, dying citizens
surging death, all round and red
breathless, nothing green helps
whither lakes forests? Life ends
on ground and space shaking, empty
silent grotesque, houses look as graves
who rules ? who kills? Who saves?
-Anjum Wasim Dar
Epilogue CO15
This decaying city leaks red
from painted poppies, tongues,
from winter cyclamen,
from the blood on paving stones.
It’s like an Ellroy today;
all clean lines and dirty bars
with leopard skin chaise longues.
It’s raining, raising the hard-boiled urges.
This world is blurred, a noir
told many times before, repeated
through frosted glass in dim light.
All the days that have passed have been long.
We’ll believe anything from someone wearing a suit (MH15)
In my dream two football mascots stood
over my hospital bed. They grinned
(their masks gave them no choice)
and waved. “What’s the story, doctor?”
I asked. They did a little dance.
“The truth is,” the blue hippo replied,
“we don’t exist, we are simply creations
of your semi conscious brain.”
“OK,” I said. “But what’s wrong with me?”
The pink shrimp stared manically, and said
nothing. The blue hippo sighed. “I can’t
tell you that,” he said. “This is just a dream.”
“Ok,” I said. “So what does all this mean?”
The pink shrimp ran around until he fell over.
The blue hippo would have rolled his eyes
if they hadn’t been stitched on.
“You’re the poet,” he said. “You tell me.”
-Hilary Otto
Responding to “Ennui with eye “(KR) and “Ignore the real forever” (MH)
I’m weary of the grey January sky–
the pewter-plated clouds simmer in gloom
but never warm, despite their chafing, and
their mumbling conversations drone on endlessly,
causing the wind to bite in reply. And I–
I want to ignore the real—this forever-frost that beckons
with a glistening smile, and then attacks with fierce lion claws,
pinking my skin, but
I want color,
bright red blooms and blue horses,
grazing on emerald grass. I want to wake
from a summer dream,
to a robin gathering golden rays into song.
-Merril D Smith
Ignore The Real World forever – MH10
Foot down, time to get away.
No need to travel, no need to hide.
Switch off all appliances including the lights.
Nothing, not even a pin.
Just a smile and colours on the receptors.
My own boring yoga.
14,Ja,2021 for the fifteenth of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Marcel Herms.
CO15
After the Riot
Skeletal frozen frieze against
denseness of cloud smoke.
Brutalist window bank where
rows of empty eyes witness
piled rubble of life and death.
The only clear thing is the corner
with its slick of blood
spreading like spilled burgundy.
Pen pointed skyward:
Is it mightier than this?
-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..
The Fevers of the Mind Press has a huge collective of poets, writers, interviews, recommendations & more in the new book https://amzn.to/3sjgWnz (Deluxe edition) https://amzn.to/35EJ8Yl (Volume 1) https://amzn.to/2LyiedF (Volume 2)
Volume 1 includes contributions from myself (David L O’Nan), HilLesha O’Nan, Rob Z photography, Ankh Spice, Catrice Greer, the Poetry Question & Chris Margolin, Jenna Faccenda, Ethan Jacob O’Nan, Icefloe Press, Robert Frede Kenter, Moira J Saucer Darren Demarree, Abdulmueed Balogun, Bradley Galimore, Anisha Kaul, Foy Timms, David Ralph Lewis, Paul Brookes, Sidney Mansueto, Lawrence Moore, Karen Mooney, Jenny Mitchell, Makund Gnanadesikan, James Lilley, Richard Waring, Vern Fein, Ediney Santana, Rachael Ikins, Samantha Terrell, Al Matheson, Ceinwed C E Haydon, Will Schmit, Dai Fry, Barney Ashton-Bullock, M.S. Evans, Megha Sood, Jane Rosenberg LaForge, Matthew M C Smith, Lucy Whitehead & Merril Smith as well as an interview with Americana/Indie/Punk musician Austin Lucas
Volume 2 includes contributions from myself (David L…
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For Day Eight of Paul Brookes’ Special January Ekphrastic Challenge, my poem responds to all three works of art below.
The Dance
An unlikely traveler,
with no longing for adventure,
only a desire to live without fear.
Money exchanged, his life rearranged–
one suitcase and a view
of storm-chased clouds and waves like horses,
galloping toward a hazy horizon, somewhere ahead
perhaps, there’s a quiet island, a house
with windows looking out on azure sky and singing seas,
golden-downed ducks and geese
with bicycle horn honks—he laughs, it would be
a dream, he thinks, as a whale breaches–and
for a moment they are eye-to-eye,
connected, branches of the same ancestral tree–
all of us–swaying to a universal rhythm.
Shuffle, slide, snap, and with jazz hands twirl,
smile. Tilt your head, in wonder
of the world…
View original post 6 more words
January 14th
-Kerfe Roig “Dancing Tree Of Life”
-Christine O’Connor
-Marcel Herms “I don’t like to travel”
KR14 Dancing Tree of Life
Rance floor, fer de lance
rhythmically coils, life a trance
oceanic sea gardens.
CO14
Transformed world, no more romantic
nature’s wings clipped, emptying boundless skies
existence ensnared in the web of wires, in weeded
boxes fixed while digital receptive kist beams
hellish pleasures. No sanctuary sacred, but an unseen
flame burning away worth.
MH14
Life is a journey not only of body but of mind and soul
a spiritual time line unseen unrecorded , on land, in sea
Like it like a journey through a book or on a map whole
from state to state from river to river from pole to pole
I see oceans with marine life, reefs cut out, weeds waving
in the deep, yet I see printed words spread across, hiding
Fears of pollution germs hinder the aesthetics but perceive
the stirrings of this universe, travel far with inner eye, receive
Seek the good of all and you shall feel the wonder of nature
the joy of beauty and truth of art and the Great Artificer.
-Anjum Wasim Dar
KR 14.
Meadow of Lust
Pause, just to take a deep breath
Follow the smell of flowers
Arrive at the meadow of lust
Feel sun on skin
Dance with heart’s passion
Run and jump as frolicking deer
Fly free, feel wind on wings
Worship by sweat and toil
Leap like a dolphin
Dive deep, hear sea songs
Warble and chirp like a songbird
Sing life’s sweet joy
Flutter like a butterfly
Experience all
Soar like an eagle
See everything anew
Gain soul wisdom
Purr like a cat, cuddle in sunshine
Stalk like a lion, find soft touch
Be faithful in heart and soul
Love free
-©RedCat
A response to all three works of art.
The Dance
An unlikely traveler,
with no longing for adventure,
only a desire to live without fear.
Money exchanged, his life rearranged–
one suitcase and a view
of storm-chased clouds and waves like horses,
galloping toward a hazy horizon, somewhere ahead
perhaps, there’s a quiet island, a house
with windows looking out on azure sky and singing seas,
golden-downed ducks and geese
with bicycle horn honks—he laughs, it would be
a dream, he thinks, as a whale breaches–and
for a moment they are eye-to-eye,
connected, branches of the same ancestral tree–
all of us–swaying to a universal rhythm.
Shuffle, slide, snap, and with jazz hands twirl,
smile. Tilt your head, in wonder
of the world. He wants the dance to continue.
-Merril D Smith
The white room CO14
I am wrapped in sheets
which spread into space
blank cells in which I am confined
with no formula
they have pierced my body
like a chip cutter
I am split into cells
this room is a cell
the city is a grid
the sky is a grid
please save
Nature Vogue KR14
this pretty crowd
fires limbs in a riot
of poised misfits
one rogue cloud
can’t overshadow
this outfit
stepping out loud
on a wave of daring
combinations
no ugly creatures
or dried up blooms
allowed
-Hilary Otto
MH14 and KR14
Armchair Travel
I don’t like travel. I’d rather envision
from cell-like stillness the dancing tree of life.
It blooms hibiscus, sunflower, bachelor button.
Chaotic choreography of claws, paws, and fins.
Dog, cat, llama, rabbit, killer whale the size of a crab,
tortoise and seahorse. Speaking of horse,
a flying blue to match a flightless origami bird. But then
a cardinal not much smaller than an elephant.
And humanity! six legs, five faces and hands,
more or less. I couldn’t tell
from my home in the cell.
I’ll never summit
the dancing
tree of life
because it
won’t stand still.
–Holly York
Dancing Tree Of Life – KR13
I’m so happy; I’ve learnt so much today.
A deer ! A butterfly on it’s way.
How tall shall I grow ? I’m sure I’ll get to know.
A cardinal (I shall not sin), a racing horse I’m sure will win.
I’m so fulfilled with all the learning. I shall succeed with all this yearning.
Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Dance, dance, dance; The way to go.
13,Ja,2021 for the fourteenth of.
-Alan Gary Smith, inspired by Paul Brookes and the painter Kiroji Roige.
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..
Recently, I was invited over to PoemByPoem, Saving the World one Poem at a Time by fantastic fellow poet Annick Yerem to take part in an interview with some of the best questions I have ever had to stop and consider. 15 more words
Meet the Poet, Me and the Magical Miss Yerem — Deuxiemepeau Poetry by Damien B. Donnelly
This new lockdown, I am writing in my notebooks again, letting what emerges, emerge. You can read about the Lockdown Poems here – their immediacy, their rootedness in my place.
Once again, I have begun writing what I see, and what is before me in this moment. Whereas the earlier poems, starting in March, are largely written outside, this one is about looking out. Beginning to write is a revealing thing. As I proceeded, I felt that what I was exploring was that sensation of being stuck inside – looking out, but not with longing. I am looking out at a world that is far from inviting. Cold, wet, and darkening as it is. Once again, that small moment, that everyday feeling of watching the rain, seemed to unfold and reveal a wider and deeper difficulty. Not so much of being stuck inside, but of not wanting to venture out…
View original post 406 more words
The Wombwell Rainbow 