=Ali Jones

-Sarah Males

-Geertje Geertsma

fungi

if we must have fairy circles
give them peals of wedding bells
stop
wedding mushrooms wedding
vows oaths explanatory phrases
& they don’t promise marriage
from an old maple
you don’t care close you
are so mad at the rain in the lake
enough w/feelings enough
circles of greyish day
how about that how
about crying rings
as a sign of commitment
circles of hollow
on the ocean walk
how about too much before
over & over
the same kind of what happens
give me a hidden tree umbrellaed
& I’ll see the allergies
in a forest of fairy circles
if it still feels if
it still smells sweet
what about circles

=Connie Bacchus (first published in Silver Pinion Dec. 8, 2019)
>

Quiet Life

The man next door
Woos me with fungi.
We are of certain ages,
Uncertain of tomorrow.
A quiet man.
He carries a basket
Pleasantly full of fungi
He’s gently plucked
From the quiet forests,
Where quiet men go.
One day he may ask me,
Come go there with me;
And I’ll go, if he asks me,
I’ll go, to watch him look.

-Elizabeth Moura

-Paul Brookes

5. The Mushroom

sits on a caterpillar
behind Alice’s eyes

> The mushroom engrossed
in its mobile phone,

Alice says to it: “How are you?”
“I love change too much.
Change isn’t quick enough,”
Says the mushroom.
“This Caterpillar should have pupated and flown.”

“Why?” Asks Alice.

“I’m not sure. You and I should be wrinklies.
You a middle aged woman,
and I mulch for something
creative and growing.

Time is too slack. Should
buck its ideas up. If you see
it about give what it for from me.”

And Alice tries but can get
no more from mobiled mushroom.

-Paul Brookes (From my reverse take on a classic I call “The Wonderland In Alice”)

November 15th

Background Radiation by p a morbid

Just Thinking by Terry Chipp

Dead Poet by Terry Chipp

DEAD POET

I’ve decided to stop
writing poetry,
due to my recent demise
and other mind to hand
coordination issues.

I now roam universal,
the eternal maverick,
shuffler of solar systems.

Great gravity storms,
I potshot their suns
into the nearest black hole.
It’s a quantum trick that
l learned on the trail.
I do this for money,
if you must know.

Now they call me
a street hustler,
as my likeness
waits in the next place
-carrying its own reward

As metaphorically
speaking,
I am now banned
from most galaxies
in this quadrant.

But they never said
it would be easy
being a poet.

-© Dai Fry 14th November 2020.

Just Thinking

Of anything but thinking.
Thinking of nothing and everything but that thing.
Thinking of the cold;
Cold floor, cold bones.
Count the goosebumps.
Listen to the drip
Of the tap
Like a metronome.
Hug your knees.
Think of comfort.
Think of touch.
Stop. Do not think.
Count the tiles.
Play imaginary chess.
It’s a game of resistant.
Let darkness come,
Become the white queen.

-Gaynor Kane

HUSH NOW

Hush now, sister,
this hurt will pass.

One day you’ll realise
its black roots
have left your heart
without you noticing.

So take this green bud.
Hold it to your chest,
let it unfurl inside you
and trust in time’s change.

=Susan Darlington

Dead Poet Thinking

both of us sit
downward contemplation:
one a sinner
other raised to heaven;
what has passed –
a moment, drawn

-Sarah Reeson

(Dead Poet)

“HELLO MY NAME IS something forgettable”

I’m a dead poet but if you stood by my grave
You wouldn’t know it
Not featured in textbooks
Not four hundred and something years old
Not critically acclaimed
My words aren’t dissected, adopted
Rearranged, reenvisioned
Banned or reaccepted
Streets don’t bear my names
No statues of my likeness
Not a feature of streaming networks’ original adaptations of my life’s work

(Just Thinking)

“This One Time In The Club”

What you were thinking:
That I was sad with drawn down corners of the mouth

What I was thinking:
It’s not natural to constantly smile
I’m fine
Besides, wasn’t aware that my expression
Didn’t meet your predetermined view of
What it should’ve looked like in that particular setting
Why can’t you stop smiling?

(Background Radiation)

“What You Playin’ At?”

Toxic behaviours like radiation
Reverbing round valleys
Nowhere to escape like
Trav’ling miles ending only on
The same spot again upside
Down try to change planes
On our backs but there it is again
Spun round eating our own tails
Something else has to change

-Lydia Wist

Background radiation

It’s coming like it or not,
the age of the three-legged pigs
and two-headed sheep,
the screaming chickens
and the calves with no mouths.

We watch the images on the screen,
pick up the groceries in their bright packages,
the meat neatly slabbed,
while the sun climbs higher and higher.

Ice melts,
forests burn,
we put on sunglasses.

-Jane Dougherty

Dead Poet

I sit here thinking how tired I am
of thinking. I’m desiccated,
an empty husk like the shell a cicada

shucks at rebirth. Waking is exhausting.
I crave the tender spring of new grass
underfoot, the soothing susurrus

of leaves slinging shadowed
silhouettes into catchments of pale
sun, the petrichor of clay in light rain,

muted comfort of slow-moving cloud.
Some days I want to burrow
into the roots of trees and sleep

for 17 years. Then wake insouciant,
winged; tymbals tuned to Summer’s
hymn.
-Gayle J. Greenlea

Flight

Jagged, snaggletoothed, these dreams of land,
a charred country where the dead tremble
like jig-sawed muppets, rag dolls, a raging of some sort,
almost spluttering, almost forgotten, forgone.
Where can I take these hands, these eyes? Mid-fall,
they start to look like someone else’s, flesh peeling right
off, bones emerging, hard and calcified, coagulated
veins and congealed with story, with history. They say
bones carry memory, carry time inside each deepening
groove. They say tombs are never silenced.
Somewhere, a woman gathers sarees
& jewels, spare change, scarcity, a stuttering earth
Somewhere a man packs knives just in case, for good measure, for a map,
a distance, a train ride, a rain full of eyes,
a sighing, a sighting. He looks around his home
one last time
before leaving it to burn.

-Anindita Sengupta

Dead Poet

The only good poet, some say.
Couldn’t live in a black and white world,
colorless, religion askew,
eyes ablaze for taking in,
mouth agape for savoring words.
A poet because long ago
a professor had leapt up on his desk
and declaimed out of the cradle
endlessly rocking, rocking the poet
to be. In the film he was portrayed
by a sad clown who later hanged himself.
Society of dead poets.

-Holly York 2020

Just thinking

Coiled into breath
words sink without ripples
in lightless waters, holding
in abeyance the hard wheel
of wind, spinning up from below
sternum, grasping my knees
suppressing the crying out
as emptiness pours
from my eyes, all my thoughts
a burning, lightning
touching sand, glass
not yet shattered.

-Peach Delphine

Dead poet

Hygiene not a virtue,
he lived for word
not even love,
what he used
holy for a moment,
always my horizons
we’re limited, expand
yourself, he liked to fuck
his proteges on the back porch,
an audience of squirrels
mourning doves, blue jays,
as if in that moment
fruit had dropped, golden
from the tree, now
here we are gathered
in the unity of the living
to give rest to the word
and flame, poor candle
burnt away to nothing,
utterance of ash.

-Peach Delphine

.day 15.

:: snowdrops ::

hold her up, you need to hold her up
stand each side of her

it is a challenge each day
to look at the images
remember

a challenge to deal with these things
some of us manage
to be vulnerable as naked
in private

some need holding up in sight
from my window

-..sbm..

Bios and Links

-Terry Chipp

grew up in Thurnscoe and ia now living in Doncaster via Wath Grammar school, Doncaster Art College, Bede College in Durham and 30 years teaching.

He sold his first painting at the Goldthorpe Welfare Hall annual exhibition at the age of 17 and he haven’t stopped painting since.

He escaped the classroom 20 years ago to devote more time to his artwork.  Since then he has set up his own studio in Doncaster, exhibited across the north of England as a member of the Leeds Fine Artists group and had his painting demonstrations featured on the SAA’s Painting and drawing TV channel.  Further afield he has accepted invitations to work with international artists’ groups in Spain, Macedonia, Montenegro and USA where his paintings are held in public and private collections. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition in Warsaw, Poland and a joint exhibition in Germany.

His pictures cover a wide range of styles and subjects from abstract to photo-realism though he frequently returns to his main loves of landscape and people.

Visitors are welcome at his studio in the old Art College on Church View, Doncaster.

e-mail:  terry@terrychipp.co.uk

Facebook:  Terry Chipp Fine Art Painting

Instagram: @chippko.art

-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.

www.marcelherms.nl

www.uitgeverijpetrichor.nl

-Jane Dougherty

writes novels, short stories and lots of poems. Among her publications is her first chapbook of poetry, thicker than water. She is also a regular contributor to Visual Verse and the Ekphrastic Review. You can find her on twitter @MJDougherty33 and on her blog https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/

-Peach Delphine

is a queer poet from Tampa, Florida. Infatuated with what remains of the undeveloped Gulf coast. Former cook. Has had poems in Cypress Press, Feral Poetry, IceFloe Press, Petrichor. Can be found on Twitter@Peach Delphine

-Dai Fry

is a poet living on the south coast of England. Originally from Swansea. Wales was and still is a huge influence on everything. My pen is my brush. Twitter:  

@thnargg

Web: http://seekingthedarklight.co.uk

-Susan Darlington

Susan Darlington’s poetry regularly explores the female experience through nature-based symbolism and stories of transformation. It has been published in Fragmented Voices, Algebra Of Owls, Dreams Walking, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. Her debut collection, ‘Under The Devil’s Moon’, was published by Penniless Press Publications (2015). Follow her @S_sanDarlington    

-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.

-Gayle J. Greenlea

is an award-winning poet and counselor for survivors of sexual and gender-related violence. Her poem, “Wonderland”, received the Australian Poetry Prod Award in 2011. She shortlisted and longlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2013, and debuted her first novel Zero Gravity at the KGB Literary Bar in Manhattan in 2016. Her work has been published in St. Julian Press, Rebelle Society, A Time to Speak, Astronomy Magazine, Headline Poetry and Press and The Australian Health Review.

-Helen Allison

lives in the North East of Scotland. Her first poetry collection ‘ Tree standing small’ was published in 2018 with Clochoderick Press. Her work has appeared in journals and magazines in print and online and she is working towards a second collection.

-Lydia Wist

Like someone who tries out hats or other samples before making a final decision, experimenting with different ideas and techniques is how Lydia spends some of her time. This allows for other portions of time to speak through the lens of fiction, creative nonfiction and art. You can find her work at Cargo Collective , Lydia Wist Creative and on Twitter @Lydiawist.

Website links:

https://cargocollective.com/lydiawist

https://www.facebook.com/lydiawistcreative/

-Sarah Connor

lives in the wild, wet, south-west of England, surrounded by mud and apple trees. She writes poems to make sense of the world, and would rather weed than wash up.

-sonja benskin mesher

-Liam Stainsby

holds a bachelor in English Literature and Creative Writing and is a secondary school teacher of English and Creative Writing. Liam is currently writing his first, professional collection of poetry entitled Borders that explores poetry from all around the world. Liam also Co-Hosts a movie discussion podcast entitled: The Pick and Mix Podcast. Liam writes under the pseudonym ‘Michael The Poet’ 

Links: WordPress: https://michael-the-poet.com/

Twitter: stainsby_liam

Instagram: Michael The Poet

-Sarah Reeson

is 54, married and a mother of two, who has been writing and telling stories since childhood. Over the last decade she has utilised writing not just as entertainment, but as a means to improve personal communication skills. That process unexpectedly uncovered increasingly difficult and unpleasant feelings, many forgotten for decades. Diagnosed as a historic trauma survivor in May 2019, Mental health issues had previously hindered the entirety of her adult life: the shift into writing as expression and part of a larger journey into self-awareness began to slowly unwind for her from the past, providing inspiration and focus for a late career change as a multidisciplined artist.

Website: http://internetofwords.com

-Gaynor Kane

is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast. She has two poetry pamphlets, and a full collection, from Hedgehog Poetry Press, they are Circling the Sun, Memory Forest and Venus in pink marble (2018, 2019 and Summer 2020 respectively). She is co-author, along with Karen Mooney, of Penned In a poetry pamphlet written in response to the pandemic and due for release 30^th November 2020.  Follow her on Twitter @gaynorkane or read more at www.gaynorkane.com.

Anindita Sengupta

is the author of Walk Like Monsters (Paperwall, 2016) and City of Water (Sahitya Akademi, 2010). Her work has appeared in anthologies and journals such as Plume, 580 Split, One and Breakwater Review. She is Contributing Editor, Poetry, at Barren Magazine. She has received fellowships and awards from the Charles Wallace Trust India, the International Reporting Project, TFA India and Muse India. She currently lives in Los Angeles, California. Her website is http://aninditasengupta.com 

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers three options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger, or an interview about their latest book, or a combination of these.

The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Philip Dawson Hammond

Philip Dawson-Hammond was born in 1959, in the industrial mill-town of Dewsbury, West Yorkshire.
The son of a shopkeeper, Philip was educated at Highfield Grammar School in Wakefield, and later at Leeds College of Technology, where he qualified as a machine printer.
However, he has previously spent over thirty years in the local newspaper trade, both on production and in an editorial capacity as a regular columnist and feature writer for a series of provincial titles.
Since starting to write at the age of sixteen, Philip has developed a style of his own, covering a rich variation of subject matter, which he feels has resulted in the discovering of his own individual voice within the diversity of modern verse.
Philip is married with one grown-up son, and now lives with Cathy, his wife of five years, in Sprotbrough, South Yorkshire.

https://pegasuspublishers.com/books/philip-dawson-hammond/out-of-mind

The Interview

1. What inspired you  to write poetry?

I think it was during that long hot summer of 1976 when I was studying at Wakefield College of Technology. I was hoping to get into some sort of publishing, though I didn’t yet know into which exact area I wanted to be. However, the college did have a very well stashed library, something I was quick to take advantage of. It was there I stumbled across the Merseybeat poets. Roger McGough, Brian Pattern and Adrian Henry wrote in styles I had never even imagined existed. It was quite an Epiphany for me. Admittedly I had already dabbled in the classics, and was very much aware of poetry as a means of expression, though it wasn’t until around this time that I had any inclination to write it myself. Interestingly, only one poem still exists from this period, and is about to be published in ‘ Out of Mind’, over forty-five years later.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

It wasn’t a person – it was a place: Tennyson Down on the Isle of Wight during the August of 1972. Like I said, I had dabbled in the classics from an early age. I was twelve-year’s-old, and very impressionable. Tennyson appears to haunt this very atmospheric Western tip of the island, and I was on a mission to learn more about the place. And the poetry of Alfred Lord Tennyson seemed to be the quickest route to take.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

Never really thought of it. I remember buying a copy of John Betjerman’s Collected Poem. I think, by this time, I must have been around eighteen, and Betjerman, to me then, was very much the ‘elder statesman of English poetry.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

Don’t have one. Having said this – I wish I had. It would be so convenient….!!

5. What motivates you to write?

The need to proverbially keep my head above water. I am constantly in fear of letting an idea slip me by. I don’t have a great memory, and I constantly feel the need to scribble things down before I forget them. These so called ‘things’ could simply be an opening line to a new poem, a rhyming couplet or an original idea (or, at least, original to me).

6. What is your work ethic?

Write as much as you can, when you can, and as often as you can. And then throw as much of it away – as you can.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Not many, I don’t think – not now, though I’m sure they did before finding my own voice. If I had to mention any, I would point to the ones already mentioned above, plus Dylan Thomas and Leonard Cohen.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

There are many. Keeping it confined to poets exclusively, though, I would say Bob Dylan, Ian Parks and Simon Armitage.

9. Why do you write?

Need.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Write.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

 Probably more now than any one time in my life. This interview is one of them, of course. My collected poems, ‘ Out of Mind’ is due for publication on the 26th. of this month. I don’t wish to announce details of other ongoing projects, as they are not guaranteed to be seen through to fruition at this moment in time.

Thank you for reading, Philip Dawson-Hammond.