Day 1 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/01/day-1-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellow/
Day 2 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/02/day-2-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/
Day 3 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/03/day-3-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/
Day 4 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/04/day-4-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/
Day 5 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/05/day-5-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/
Day 6 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/06/day-6-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/
Day 7 https://thewombwellrainbow.com/2023/04/07/day-7-my-annual-national-poetry-month-2023-ekphrastic-challenge-is-a-collaboration-between-artists-aaron-bowker-beth-brooke-oormila-vijayakrishnan-prahlad-sara-fatima-mir-and-writers-tim-fellows/

Hill Street at sundown (OVP7)- unpublished piece ( only posted on my Twitter timeline)

SaraFM7

AB7

BB7

Passerines OVP7

I prefer my streets and lanes wavy, territorialized by the cars parked,
circumscribed by the utility poles
known for their gossips.

We have fish for lunch.
The curry thickens in the pan.
A cat runs hunger along the ledges.
If we stand some bent back of the way
we can see the afternoon boys
on the other peaks. The life in the cusps
lies low.

Breeze hums. Cables shiver.
Only when the black wheatears fall silent
we hear them in that muted note.

Kushal Poddar

Manifesto (SaraFM 7 + BB7 + OVP7)

Civilization
naked and sinking. Man still
inhabits twilight.
Glow-town neon imitates
the futility of sun.

Lynne Jensen Lampe

Prey (AB7)

Eyes focus, movement
sensed, claws extended, bird drops
like Death whispering.

Home (OVP7)

Cables criss-cross the sky,
messages broken,
powering houses
bathed in the sulphur yellow
of a late sun. Trees darken,
crowding him, his throat tightening
as the road dipped and warped,
zig-zag white warning lines
that came too late
all those years ago.

Tim Fellows

Eternal crow (all images)

Water-cycles are changing like the moon,
moon-water melting when the cold shrinks,
rising where the salt flows, dispersing
with the brush of the back of a titan’s hand,
our puny fringe-life, submerging.

And when all is done, the angry earth risen,
roaring, subsided, the furrows drained,
salt-filled and barren, our mountain ranges
of refuse levelled to drift in poisoned plastic
billows among medusas, there will still be crows.

Jane Dougherty

Comings, Goings

It seemed a gin and lime tonic soft-drink town, all sugar-sweet,
with National Geographic skies, sun rising
just beyond the horizon of sky-flowing trees, a forgotten
beach, just down and around from the charming
Main Street, just there, up and down the winding road.

Come with us, you wont fall off – these are the offerings.

But every cloud had a blackened-pitch spirit,
a bird-of-prey sensibility, the mud-tar of off-gassing
in the birth of rusting. In the heroine cough
of factories, masqueraded by maples and oaks,
awaking in the framework of the Autumnal,

Come with us, you won’t fall off – these are the offerings.

To the Nightmare, A Sign. Bodies coruscating behind
quiet soft-muted tones. Of former escapades, new excursions:
To a hidden dumpsite viewed mainly now by hawks. On
Offer: When the sun glides low, into vivid National Geographic
Sunsets, the edges of bedrock, a rock-a-bye-IV monitor, winking.

Come with us, you wont fall off – these are the offerings.

(day 7 poem uses all 4 images)

Robert Frede Kenter

Edward Hopper’s House

IMAGE OVP7

These nameless streets remain empty
as this town settles for solitude.
One road in – a road not taken
one way out – so often taken.

The only sound
a hum of overhead power lines.
Lights flicker at dusk
and shades are drawn

by manicured hands
in true Stepford style.
The clinical silence deafens
in premature anticipation.

Is this suburbia
where the dogs don’t run?
Or the ultimate American dream
living our lives on a 4K screen.

Paul Dyson

Statuesque (BB7)

you want to leave
your mark / something behind
to show / where you’ve been / what you’ve become
a footprint / isn’t enough / of a legacy
initials / just letters
put your soul / into the world
let yourself sink / drown / into the wet concrete
filling your shoes / your clothes
lungs unbreathing / arms unswinging
skin grey / eyes grey / hair grey
life embalmed / forever / still
no one will forget / you again

Jamie Woods

In the Aftermath

Inspired by all 4 images

A day of promise–
trees dressed in summer green
hug the street, where windows reflect
sun’s saffron beneath a violet sky.

A day of promise,
a promise you keep for yourself,
for humanity–
and when the fiery sun falls again
into the sea,
you are a hero,
left bound to suffer, wing-brushed,
talon-clawed,
torn apart every day,
you wake with promise and regret..

Merril D Smith

Main Street, Home

First inn last out at one end of the street
Always a call of port on my arrival
That can sometimes be as far as I venture
Last time it was closed. So I wandered
Along the main road passed the shops
Past the bakery with the smell of fresh bread
Stopped at the coffee shop and thought for a while
Decided against going in. The pull of The Old Castle
Was too dam strong, breaking through the Arabica.
Through the solid oak door that squeaked my presence
To sit drinking alone looking at the old wreck
staring back at me through the mirror

Frank Colley

Bios and Links

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

is an Indian-Australian painter, poet, and improv pianist. She is a self-taught artist who has been painting and exhibiting for over 20 years. Her work has been featured in several journals including Amsterdam Quarterly yearbook, Pithead Chapel, Two Thirds North, Kissing Dynamite Poetry,  and Stonecoast Review. She has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of The Eora Nation.  Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

Sara Fatima Mir

Born on the 26th of July, 2007, in Islamabad , Sara Fatima is a Pakistani of Kashmiri origin. Gifted by nature with an inborn aesthetic sense, she is passionate about art. It is not just a hobby for her, rather it is a well settled heart and soul, way of life which inspires her to visualize the fine beauty and form in the world around. She has won numerous art competitions at school level. She is a natural artist and has completed the following two Courses : a) Graphic Designing -2020 b) Resin Art Skills -2022 from the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Finishing School, Islamabad Capital Territory Pakistan. This learning has further enhanced her artistic skills . International Participation in Art and Poetry Project: Rucksack A Global Poetry Patchwork 2022 A Poetry Project by Ms Antje Stehn of Italy and Mamta Sagar of India. Sara made a Teapot with the help of dried teabags. A requirement .Its image is on display at the Poetry Museum Italy. Sara Fatima Mir believes Art connects people by portraying their lives. Different people, different drawings, different stories. Using all sorts of mediums, she flaunts her amateur talent and aspires to learn more to become the best version of herself. Please Follow her on Instagram @sketchfilez

Beth Brooke

is a Dorset-based poet and her writing is grounded in the Wessex landscape and history. Her debut pamphlet, A Landscape With Birds was published by Hedgehog Poetry in July 2022. Her second pamphlet, Transformations, will be published by Hedgehog next year. The poems are all inspired by the work of Dame Elisabeth Frink, the sculptor and artist.

Aaron Bowker

based in the United States is a super self-critical Virgo, walking a path between worlds while dabbling in art, photography, and poetry. Poems have been featured in Failed Haiku, Cold Moon Journal, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Heterodox Haiku Journal, with art featured in The Hooghly Review, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Black & White Haifa/Haisha. Special thank you to Jerome Berglund for being my mentor and pushing me to limits otherwise unexplored.

Robert Frede Kenter

is a writer, pushcart nominee & visual artist with work in many venues, on line and in print, incl: Storms Journal, Anthropocene, Fevers Of, Acropolis Journal, CutbowQuarterly, Anti-heroin chic and many others, as well as books including EDEN (2021) a visual poetry collection, and Audacity of Form (ice floe press, 2019). Work in anthologies: Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022), and Seeing in Tongues, an anthology forthcoming from Steel Incisors (2023). Robert is publisher & EIC of Ice Floe Press, www.icefloepress.net.

Jamie Woods

Swansea-based Jamie Woods is poet-in-residence at the charity Leukaemia Care. His work has been published in Poetry Wales, Lucent Dreaming, Ink Sweat & Tears and more. Jamie’s debut pamphlet Rebel Blood Cells is out in June, and can be pre-ordered from https://www.punkdust.com/shop
https://www.jamiewoods77.com

Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

Paul Dyson

is from Swinton, Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
He says –

“We all have an urge to be creative
whether it’s art, poetry, music . . .
or just putting together flat pack furniture,
being creative keeps us alive and feeling human”

Paul gave up his day job 5 years ago to dabble in art, poetry and music, and hopes the passion in his Art reaches and touches the hearts of fellow humans too.

Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in journals including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acropolis, and Humana Obscura, and anthologies, such as the recent Our Own Coordinates: Poems about Dementia (Sidhe Press). Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, was published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press, and was a Black Bough Poetry Book of the Month.

Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Blog: merrildsmith.org

Tim Fellows

is a writer from Chesterfield in Derbyshire whose ideas are heavily influenced by his background in the local coalfields, where industry and nature lived side by side. His first pamphlet “Heritage” was published in 2019. His poetic influences range from Blake to Owen, Causley to Cooper-Clarke and more recently the idea of imagistic poetry and the work of Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez.

Lynne Jensen Lampe’s

debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) concerns mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, and antisemitism. Her poems appear in many journals, including THRUSH, Figure 1, and Yemassee. A finalist for the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she edits academic research in mid-Missouri, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com; on Twitter/Spoutible @LJensenLampe; or Instagram @lynnejensenlampe.

Frank Colley

lives in South Yorkshire and has been writing poetry all his life. He is an active member of the Read to Write Group and has performed his poems at a wide variety of venues including CAST in Doncaster. His poems have appeared in several anthologies.
He is an admirer of Edward Thomas. His collection “The Story of Soldier A” was published by Glass Head Press in 2022. His self published pamphlet “The Nantcol Sonnets” both are available on eBay.

Kushal Poddar

The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.

Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe

BB6

Vision at dawn (OVP6)- Up the Staircase Quarterly

SaraFM6

Lunaticus (SaraFM6)

I can’t be outside at night without looking at the moon
it’s a force of habit now, a tic.
So familiar, so compelling,
It’s floating existence I just can’t comprehend
like watching a magician do close up magic
and somehow a 3 of Hearts appears inside an apple
when it was in his pocket (it was in his pocket?)
IT WAS IN HIS POCKET
and I understand hands and cards and fruit
but I can’t believe my eyes
I’ve stopped trying to work out the machinations
Overthinking leads to frustration
Enjoy the wonder and the scarred reflections
of light triangulation and gravitational pull.

Jamie Woods

After the rain (all images)

They sailed out with a sky, fierce dark and red raging,
on a sea thick as oil and the black swell rising,
while we waited and watched, as winds lashed, and oceans
poured monsters of whale-waves over the cliffs.

Though we peered through the spray and the kelp-spume flying,
the night was as black as a Good Friday Mass,
and as red as a planet lost out of its orbit,
blood red as a moon with disaster to sow.

The morning came quiet, wind sifting the high dunes,
sifting the sand where we waited in vain,
sifting the debris splintered and broken,
scattering what we had before the black rain.

Jane Dougherty

A Seaside Memory circa 1960

BB6

Pictures of deckchairs
take me back.
We used to holiday in a caravan
at Primrose Valley,
and Harlech and Tenby
and I remember Cornwall –
that was a long journey
in a Ford Anglia estate, blue.

I can still remember the number plate
349 CWJ – that was 50 years ago.
I can’t remember much from 50 years ago,
I know Angela Burgin lived next door
and that my parents loved me.
Oh how I miss them too.

We played cricket we kicked balls
we had picnics on the beach
homemade sandwiches
a bakelite flask of tea.
We built sandcastles with flags on top.

Mom and Dad would relax in deckchairs
read the papers and smoke –
smoking was popular back then.
I’d sit on a car blanket
and play in the sand.
Oh happy days.

It’s all so different now.

Paul Dyson

Now and Before

Inspired by SaraFM6 and OVP6

Massive blue-winged birds swoop
yellow tips to paint the sky
magenta, fuchsia, orange, and
indigo, but

I remember the moon,
perched between branches,
a negative image,
silver against the shadowed boughs,
a smile awaiting dawn.

Merril D Smith

Red Sky (OVP6)

The sun bows its head
Inundates a crimson sky
Takes its leave, for now
Empty Space (BB6, AB6)
There is an empty space
in a row of empty chairs
pointing out to sea.
The sea reveals nothing
as it retreats, leaving only dead
weed and wet sand.
I will not sit on a chair,
I will not fill that bleak space.
I think of nothing
behind my skull eyes.
I, too, connect nothing
with nothing on these sands.

Tim Fellows

Child as Noble Metal (BB6)

Empty chairs line cracked concrete,
watch the sea for miracles. Salt

settles on canvas. Waves take sand
hostage but only captors return to this

beach so wide whales have room
to die. On a long ago vacation a child

sits in a chair far from the rest,
pouting. Stubborn as iridium,

she refuses blue water, squeezes
her arms tight against her chest.

She sees herself as crucible, not
contents. Kicks air out of her way.

Lynne Jensen Lampe

The man in the moon

The man in the moon Is old and grey
life itself is slipping away.
Lend him a hand or tighten the rope
listen to what they say with hope.
Ignore them at your peril
stand up, become a rebel
Don’t follow blind sheep
out there is a world to reap.
The ocean’s pull is getting stronger
wave upon wave is getting taller.
Let’s turn the tide back
before the noon dies and all is black.
It’s in your hands the future bleak.
Recycling is power not just chic.

Frank Colley

That One Beach Chair

To BB6

I do not know why
the concierges array
one beach chair
askew and asunder from the rest;
Do all families and the circles of friends
bring someone who sports a grin
but listen to no gossip
other than the waves’, red crabs’,
tides’ and ebbs’?

This evening wave reaches the lone chair.
It rocks to the rhythm, trips.
Its moves seem unsteady, unpractised.
The water heaves it to the deep,
halts after a bit and leaves.
Sun sets. The grains of smell
garnish the rims of existence.

Kushal Poddar

Bios and Links

Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad

is an Indian-Australian painter, poet, and improv pianist. She is a self-taught artist who has been painting and exhibiting for over 20 years. Her work has been featured in several journals including Amsterdam Quarterly yearbook, Pithead Chapel, Two Thirds North, Kissing Dynamite Poetry,  and Stonecoast Review. She has been nominated multiple times for the Best of the Net. She lives and works in Sydney on the traditional lands of The Eora Nation.  Find her @oormilaprahlad and www.instagram.com/oormila_paintings

Sara Fatima Mir

Born on the 26th of July, 2007, in Islamabad , Sara Fatima is a Pakistani of Kashmiri origin. Gifted by nature with an inborn aesthetic sense, she is passionate about art. It is not just a hobby for her, rather it is a well settled heart and soul, way of life which inspires her to visualize the fine beauty and form in the world around. She has won numerous art competitions at school level. She is a natural artist and has completed the following two Courses : a) Graphic Designing -2020 b) Resin Art Skills -2022 from the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Finishing School, Islamabad Capital Territory Pakistan. This learning has further enhanced her artistic skills . International Participation in Art and Poetry Project: Rucksack A Global Poetry Patchwork 2022 A Poetry Project by Ms Antje Stehn of Italy and Mamta Sagar of India. Sara made a Teapot with the help of dried teabags. A requirement .Its image is on display at the Poetry Museum Italy. Sara Fatima Mir believes Art connects people by portraying their lives. Different people, different drawings, different stories. Using all sorts of mediums, she flaunts her amateur talent and aspires to learn more to become the best version of herself. Please Follow her on Instagram @sketchfilez

Beth Brooke

is a Dorset-based poet and her writing is grounded in the Wessex landscape and history. Her debut pamphlet, A Landscape With Birds was published by Hedgehog Poetry in July 2022. Her second pamphlet, Transformations, will be published by Hedgehog next year. The poems are all inspired by the work of Dame Elisabeth Frink, the sculptor and artist.

Aaron Bowker

based in the United States is a super self-critical Virgo, walking a path between worlds while dabbling in art, photography, and poetry. Poems have been featured in Failed Haiku, Cold Moon Journal, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Heterodox Haiku Journal, with art featured in The Hooghly Review, The Wombwell Rainbow, and Black & White Haifa/Haisha. Special thank you to Jerome Berglund for being my mentor and pushing me to limits otherwise unexplored.

Robert Frede Kenter

is a writer, pushcart nominee & visual artist with work in many venues, on line and in print, incl: Storms Journal, Anthropocene, Fevers Of, Acropolis Journal, CutbowQuarterly, Anti-heroin chic and many others, as well as books including EDEN (2021) a visual poetry collection, and Audacity of Form (ice floe press, 2019). Work in anthologies: Book of Penteract (Penteract Press, 2022), and Seeing in Tongues, an anthology forthcoming from Steel Incisors (2023). Robert is publisher & EIC of Ice Floe Press, www.icefloepress.net.

Jamie Woods

Swansea-based Jamie Woods is poet-in-residence at the charity Leukaemia Care. His work has been published in Poetry Wales, Lucent Dreaming, Ink Sweat & Tears and more. Jamie’s debut pamphlet Rebel Blood Cells is out in June, and can be pre-ordered from https://www.punkdust.com/shop
https://www.jamiewoods77.com

Jane Dougherty

lives and works in southwest France. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems and stories have been published in magazines and journals including Ogham Stone, the Ekphrastic Review, Black Bough Poetry, ink sweat and tears, Gleam, Nightingale & Sparrow, Green Ink and Brilliant Flash Fiction. She blogs at https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/ Her poetry chapbooks, thicker than water and birds and other feathers were published in October and November 2020.

Paul Dyson

is from Swinton, Rotherham, in the West Riding of Yorkshire.
He says –

“We all have an urge to be creative
whether it’s art, poetry, music . . .
or just putting together flat pack furniture,
being creative keeps us alive and feeling human”

Paul gave up his day job 5 years ago to dabble in art, poetry and music, and hopes the passion in his Art reaches and touches the hearts of fellow humans too.

Merril D. Smith

lives in southern New Jersey near the Delaware River. Her poetry has been published in journals including Black Bough Poetry, Anti-Heroin Chic, Acropolis, and Humana Obscura, and anthologies, such as the recent Our Own Coordinates: Poems about Dementia (Sidhe Press). Her full-length poetry collection, River Ghosts, was published by Nightingale & Sparrow Press, and was a Black Bough Poetry Book of the Month.

Twitter: @merril_mds  Instagram: mdsmithnj  Blog: merrildsmith.org

Tim Fellows

is a writer from Chesterfield in Derbyshire whose ideas are heavily influenced by his background in the local coalfields, where industry and nature lived side by side. His first pamphlet “Heritage” was published in 2019. His poetic influences range from Blake to Owen, Causley to Cooper-Clarke and more recently the idea of imagistic poetry and the work of Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez.

Lynne Jensen Lampe’s

debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022) concerns mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, and antisemitism. Her poems appear in many journals, including THRUSH, Figure 1, and Yemassee. A finalist for the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize, she edits academic research in mid-Missouri, where she lives with her husband and two dogs. Visit her at https://lynnejensenlampe.com; on Twitter/Spoutible @LJensenLampe; or Instagram @lynnejensenlampe.

Frank Colley

lives in South Yorkshire and has been writing poetry all his life. He is an active member of the Read to Write Group and has performed his poems at a wide variety of venues including CAST in Doncaster. His poems have appeared in several anthologies.
He is an admirer of Edward Thomas. His collection “The Story of Soldier A” was published by Glass Head Press in 2022. His self published pamphlet “The Nantcol Sonnets” both are available on eBay.

Gaynor Kane

Kushal Poddar

The author of ‘Postmarked Quarantine’ has eight books to his credit. He is a journalist, father, and the editor of ‘Words Surfacing’. His works have been translated into twelve languages.
Twitter- https://twitter.com/Kushalpoe