Review – Carrying Women Across Rivers

‘Dear reader, please don’t have great expectations about my poetry collections because you might be disappointed and I don’t wish to be hated by you’ warns Welsh writer Rhys Hughes on the back cover of this collection, ‘Carrying Women Across Rivers’.

In fact, the warning wasn’t necessary because I found myself enjoying this collection immensely. I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure what I would make of it at first. I’m an avid collector and reader of poetry. My shelves groan under the weight of books, many written and self-published by friends and fellow poets. They vary enormously in style, but most are I suppose what you’d classify as ‘serious’ verse. Rhys Hughes’ poems and prose poems are, for the most part, light-hearted in tone. The author describes them as ‘comical’, but ‘absurdist’ is a much better description – and, to be honest, that’s what I love about them.

The poems and the poet don’t take themselves seriously, but behind them is an admirable skill that belies their irreverent take on life. Not all of them grabbed me straight off, but those that did stuck fast.

One of my favourites is the prose piece ‘When I Discovered Laziness’ which a great example of the kind of perverse ‘it works but it shouldn’t work’ logic that underlies lots of the pieces in this collection (and accidentally reinforces my view that laziness really is the best policy).

The writer makes good use of wordplay, as for instance in Fruit Ditty: ‘Mango, but Woman stay’. Visual imagery also comes to the fore in poems like Lip Zipper:

‘the zipper of his lips had broken through misuse, His tongue flopped free and licked the sea while the cheek trees were in bloom’.

‘Whirlwind Romance’ sent me spinning with its clever notion of a couple whose love is a natural vortex – a great example of the writer’s knack for taking a well-worn phrase and twisting it until it becomes something entirely different.

‘Leaving You Because’ is another clever poem – an amusing idea in itself, in which a partner lists their ex’s bad habits – which springs a clever verbal surprise at the end. Worthy of mention, too – if only because I’ve never come across such a thing before – are ‘Three Grid Poems’, which have been designed to be read coherently down every column, across every row and along the diagonals, with the grids interacting with each other (a lot easier to read than to explain!) There are shape poems, too, such as the clever ‘Pyramid Scheme’ and ‘Uncommon Prayer’ in the shape of a golem.

The writer employs a witty sense of playfulness, which often borders on the absurd and occasionally meanders into the grotesque, as for example in his poem ‘Slimy Man’ – a wonderful, if painful, parody of that type of ego-driven performance poet who is all too familiar a figure to those, like me, who inhabit the poetry open mic scene.

My favourite poem in the collection is ‘Sensible Ode To An Absurd Moon’. This, like most of my favourites, is a non-rhyming poem. It tells a story, of sorts – a stream of consciousness which encompasses separation, desire, jealousy and frustration – and like many of these poems abounds in unexpectedly sensuous imagery, in amongst the absurd:

‘Standing in the tide next to me, breasts and thighs flecked with foam – That’s her all over’. I also loved the line: ‘The dungs of the moon will grow kisses and strange thoughts and raids on tombs and eels’.

Throughout the collection, I get the sense that beneath the playful witty exterior lies a sensuous vulnerability:

‘Wane and wax, gibbous and spread

I was moon all over,

A moon in the shape of a man,

Lonely man, lonely moon,

One face, endless orbit’.

All in all, despite my initial reservations, I surprised myself by really enjoying this book. It says something about it that, long after finishing this review, I kept finding myself sneakily dipping back into its pages, each time finding new things to enjoy and amuse.

Rhys Hughes was born in Wales but has lived in many different countries. He graduated as an engineer and currently works as a tutor of mathematics. He began writing fiction at an early age and his very first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995. Since that time he has published more than fifty other books, and his short stories have been translated into ten languages.

Rebecca Lowe is a poet based in Swansea, Wales, UK. She has two published collections, Blood and Water, publ. The Seventh Quarry, Nov 2020 (www.seventhquarrypress.com) and Our Father Eclipse, publ. Culture Matters, April 2021 (www.culturematters.org.uk).

Twitter: @BeckyLowePoet
Instagram: Beckyloewpoet

http://www.facebook.com/rebecca.lowe.poetry

Day 15

75 million years at spurn beach

-John Law

Ace of Cups

-Kerfe Roig

-Jane Cornwell

Inspired by all three

Too Late

Cosmic after-
glow, echoes of light,
energy
and matter
through time, before time
before our time–eons

of coursing
color no one sees–
from the sky
to the sea
repeating cycles, fractals
and Fibonacci

on the beach,
a nautilus shell—
you hold it,
marveling
at its spiral curves, ancient
sailor, now moored here

amidst stones
and gull laughs, soaring
as Gaia
cups the world.
This is how life unfolds, in
circles and seasons

without hate.
Too late for her, or
him, or them—
the Other—
though filled with stardust, too. See
how cycles repeat?

-Merril D Smith

We left the hospice for some air
The piwakawaka has been following us
for an hour, since we left the news
behind. I have gripped the pretty shell
you handed me when we began to walk
so hard the scallop of it has ghosted a fan
on my fingertips. I hold them up, pincer
the watery sun with the rays
of my new lumpy sun. You smile
without your eyes involved and I can’t
stop thinking about a tiny wet life
lived in so much dark, how what’s left of it
just easily unstamps the whorls
that mean me. All I had to do was hold on
tight for a while, this walking shell, strong
but delicate by comparison. Delicate, too
compared to the persistent bird, and spiralling
just the same. Fan of his tail
a spread hand, waving him around and down, updraft
and plummet and beeping like a heart
monitor gone haywire the whole damn time.
You know they’re messengers
you finally say. So much silence
before those words that all around us generations
of shellfish have hatched and begun to build
their armour. I guess it’s time to crack
the hinge. My hand finds the shell
in my pocket, grips so hard
it hurts. Yes. I say, letting that beautiful thing
erase my pattern. They tell you
someone’s time is up.

-Ankh Spice

Three Times Three Times Three

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
So her mother didn’t have to her unwanted child see
So the other children could hurl spear insults with glee
So men could do as they pleased while she couldn’t flee

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the crime of not stifling her curiosity
For the crime of speaking out against bigotry
For the crime of being different as all could see

She was hung upon the tree
Three times three times three
For the sin of searching creativity
For the sin of reading witchery
For the sin of speaking knowledgeably

When the God of the Hanged saw a woman tested on the tree
Three times three times three
Fjolnir sang one of the magic song to set her free
The One Eyed taught her how to truly see
Wayfinder showed all the ways on land and at sea
Forni taught her the world’s history
Ygg showed the secrets of the tree
Glapsvid taught her spells to once more happy and healthy
Odin showed her the runes to unravel every mystery
The All Father gave her mead to awaken her poetry

-©RedCat

Erosion

Memories cast in stone
            for safe keeping
Reaching back through time
             winding, knotting, leaping
Bumping, knocking, scraping
             Clarity from edges leaking
Cracked, chipped, eroded
             Embattled by time, decreasing
Until washed up as sand
             on life’s beach heaping
The young and old alike
              look back and smile as castles building.

-Tony Walker

The Lynching Tree

(Inspired by Jane Cornwell’s 15th Painting)

The guide, Sam, shows us the tree,
and if you query which tree it may be,
he says, the lynching tree;
its boughs bear the fruits in arbitrary seasons;
those drupes look almost like you and me;
their heads droop a little like the half open jackknives;
the scent of ripening reminds you
of the morgue or the sweaty shivering body
of one grieving widow who disappears
after lodging a complaint against a local baron.
We click a few snapshots and, although no body
hangs from the tree presently,
the photos reveal one – his dark skin
contrasts with the mean daylight
on every detail of the village, houses, ruins,
political slogans written on the walls,
tobacco juice spit against the wordings.
-Kushal Poddar

JL15

picking up shells and weighing them in his hand he saw
they fit his fingertips microscopically

whorl to whorl adhesion

dreams of sea and sea life shuddered through him

in his mind he was on his knees
allowing the tide to take him
-Simon Williams

The sky the sea is full
Inspired by all three art works.

The sky is filled with voices, the sea
with the heavy rhythm of rolling pebbles,
the clash of shells, fossils cracking
beneath the weight of water.

Sky is a-flutter with feathered cloud-birds,
rain-falls and the leaf turbulence of the wind.

Sea roars in the silence of its deep green,
fish-full and secret where light never pierces
the dark with probing needles,

and only the daggers of gannet bills
strike sparks from mirror scales.

No hand or foot of man comes here,
only his breath of poisoned air,
the sunken midden of his leavings.

-Jane Dougherty

The Old Tree

The old tree felt a profound sadness.
It had seen so much, so many summers
and winters.
Its leaves had come and gone, its girth
expanding ring by ring.
There had always been creatures that
lived their brief lives in and around it.
Other trees had gone too, felled
by gales and axe, but it was spared.
For the first time, the weight that pulled
on its branch reminded it that its roots
no longer drank the way they did.
Its core felt dry and empty.
Soon, it thought, I will return
to the earth, leaving only a shell.

-Tim Fellows

Love Song
(inspired by JC15)

He reaches beneath the sweltering soil,
pushing fingers into a nest of thorny roots,
a perfect hiding place for a death wish.
He is just ten years old.

At fifteen he talks more to the trees
than to other boys his age.
He hears music in the rustle of leaves,
a language only he can understand,
and dreams of falling asleep in the earth,
safe beneath willow and elm.

On his twentieth birthday,
he walks into the woods at dawn,
gathering the wind into his lungs,
and offers the notes of a love song
to the canopy above him.
He is going home.

Resting his cheek against
the warm body of his favourite tree,
he breathes deeply,
inhaling the scent of her,
and pulls himself into her arms,
climbing with purpose toward the sky.

He strings a rope over a high branch,
an expression of joy playing on his lips,
touches the skin of his lover for the last time,
and drops into the hands of death.

-Susan Richardson

JC15

I was 13
It was summer
The season of fevers and sweats

And exam results

I heard word about something strange at the
Space Research Institute staff quarters
Something unusual where the
Space scientists lived

So I went walking down, from my apartment building
On the corner of Cambridge Road and Cambridge Layout
Down to the staff quarters

Those squared-off, nondescript, stalwart buildings
They’re still there. I still pass by them often

Anyway this was a summer and I was 13
And I’d gone there to stand in the road and gawk
Because someone had told me

And now I saw

A boy – older than me, probably 20, 21, but still
A boy
Hanging so calm and quiet by the neck from a window
No breeze, he hung so still
So dead

He’d failed his engineering exams

And I think of him, the first dead person I saw
Hanging there forever
But not really – I pass that way a lot
And obviously someone cut him down, carried him down
• Was it his father? A neighbour? A servant? The police?
And he’s not there anymore
But he is

Like at the tree in the compound
Of the teacher’s quarters where a friend lived
And we’d gone there to smoke weed
And watch Live In Pompeii on VHS
When his parents were gone travelling
And we’d gone out at night to get rum and coke
And he pointed to the tree and said it was
The suicide tree
A woman had gone strange after a miscarriage
And hung herself there

My friend swore in the right kind of moonlight
You could still see her hanging there
So quiet, so calm

[The hanged man in the Tarot is in a different quandary
He is inverted, alive
He may be seen to be smiling

Do suicides smile?
On the inside, I mean
I don’t think so
But if they did, would I blame them?
I don’t know]

I almost went the same way, once
But the belt snapped
I fell on my ass
And I’m still here

Really still here

Sometime around that time my new rock n’ roll hero Kurt Cobain
Shot himself
And he isn’t here anymore either
Except in certain kinds of moonlight
Or on the radio or on the stereo

And some years later I used to hang with
The guitarist in my first band
And he had a neighbour, a cool, kinda nerdy older boy
And that summer my guitarist told me
His neighbour failed his exams
And hung himself

So he’s still there too
But not really
But really

He was an only son.

I think of ropes and trees and steel railings and fans and

I think of how I’m still here. And I want to just sit under a tree and
Think.
I really don’t have a point here
If you feel the need to die by suicide
I respect that
I can understand that
It’s not a sin
If you hatelove someone who died by suicide
I respect that
I can understand that

A belt broke
And I’m still here

A tree branch didn’t break
A window frame didn’t break
A steel railing didn’t break
A shotgun spat lead
And they’re not
And they are
And we all are
Ever and ever

I suppose my point is that time is always
Standing still
And I want to be still too
For a moment
And just remember
That
Shadows gather
Light beckons
We exist
And then we don’t.

-Jayaprakash Satyamurphy

His Card Drop

Holds in one hand a card in other rope,
blue mariner’s rope he recovered pulled
out of ever altering sands of hope
seventy-five million years of Spurn nulled.

Fossilised ammonite from dinosaur
coast, odd deposits drift onto this spit.
His decision depends on how his flaw
is seen by how the card falls, stay or flit.

Ace of Cups is upright so this time stays
the hanging rope, the drop, game of chance
ever shifting sand spit of his life’s ways.
Waits for next time he can’t decide his plans.

Making decisions is never easy.
In your own hands the responsibility.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-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/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-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/

-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.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms  (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.

Father insisted flower pots be mended,
Because he regarded them as old friends.
I assisted him each spring with the pot
Pilgrimage from his musty dirt cellar,
Though these last few years, we’d go later
In that most fecund season.
How he loved those old clay pots,
Scratchy to the touch, a soothing color
He said reminded him of better days.
When one mysteriously broke
During their hibernation, he saved
The pieces for the bottom of others.
The last spring of his life, he couldn’t
Raise himself to work on his garden.
He didn’t want me to help him.
Perhaps he knew his spring season,
Quickly ebbing, would not become summer.

-Elizabeth Moura

feathers & colors

a mourning dove landed on a branch above me
attempting to capture my attention
they say that means an angel is watching
it means

spring is easter
& flowers
/hope/
& think about
flowers &
/peace/
planting & thinking
about planting
/hope & peace/
& spring greens you
haven’t seen & it

seems like there has
only been soft brown
& alabaster

primrose

petals surprise
&
thought they would
freeze when removing
dried maple
leaves, she
wore, she swore, she woke up
in abril

there are mas flores
y ella brags
her color even
when no one looks

/wild convoluting rojas y rosas/

crimsons/bloods

saffron/anaranjados/sage/lavender/verdes

& she said
they made him pull his
garden up & I thought
que triste
-Constance Bacchus

(First published in mineral lit mag: ​feathers & colors by Connie Bacchus – mineral lit mag

Pleeeeeeeease, Mow the Lawn Dad
MAY 19, 2016
Pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
It’s like a jungle out there
Full of lemurs, llamas, pythons, piranhas
Raccoons, baboons and grizzly bears

There’s a pretty pink porpoise
In love with a tortoise
A huge hippopotamus too
A bobtailed cat
A hog that’s too fat
Who escaped from the local zoo

I spy a chinchilla
Chest-beating gorillas
A herd of wild horses stampeding
A sunbathing slug
All kinds of weird bugs
Plus a clever rhinoceros reading

A mountain goat’s
Entertaining a stoat
By doing a dance with a fox
While a hoverfly sighs
As she passes by
And sits herself down on an ox

Pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
Or at least make a start on the weeding
Salamanders and pandas
Swing from high verandas
And I can hear hyenas screeching

There’s a large land snail
Checking his email
A leopard, a leech and a lark
While moles, voles and rats
And four flapping bats
Are venturing out when it’s dark

On top of a sheep
(Out cold, fast asleep)
Is a dingo devouring his lunch
A wombat and wolf
Hide under the gorse
While holding their noses near skunks

So pleeeeeeeease, mow the lawn Dad
Or this problem we have will not pass
The police will be round
And new animals found
If you don’t get rid of that grass!

-Neal Zetter

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

How Not To Maintain Your Mother’s Garden

The green thumb hewn by chance and misfortune
still gardens every other day; the other days my mother
reads the almanacs – in those later days,
downloaded from the net, and I watch the lad
looking for a fascinating illustration,
reading some adult advertisements,
skipping stones along the brick path
between two bushes of blooms of some obscure pedigrees;
I watch him and imagine him growing old enough to be me,
tired, sighing, sniffing the flowers gone wild,

so wild that those bark at the full moon when my dreams darken.

-Kushal Poddar

SUMMER MEADOWS
Cooperation is the buzzword;
harmonious consensus.
Opulent symphonies with
Nature the sentient conductor.
Poppy, ranunculus and kingcup
rising and falling in gentle cadence
with cornflower, salvia and forget-me-not;
a fragrant patchwork in the sweet grass,
like an eco rainbow, tipping the earth,
radiant with inner beauty.
A ballet of delicate blooms
dressed in powder-puff tutus,
thoughtfully choreographed,
dancing to the tune of sun, wind and rain.

Wildflower meadows echo the vibe
of cottage gardens in a bygone age….
Green spaces flourishing
with aphids, beetles, butterflies,
moths and caterpillars,
bumble bee numbers multiplied tenfold –
that gentle, hypnotic hum reassuring
as they delve in the throats of foxgloves.
The project enhances both water and soil,
a winning outcome for biota.
This wild beauty brings closer
the goal of a greener future.
Just stop and look!
Paradise stretches out
before your eyes,
a triumph of rewilding

-Margaret Royall

SISSINGHURST AT MIDSUMMER

A veil lifts between earth and sky,
Revealing a lush green paradise,
its mullioned windows thrown open
to the gardens….

Mood music captivates:
Harp song through tall grass,
bees crooning in lupin throats,
swallows darting overhead.
The ambiance is relaxing,
sight, smell and sound seamlessly
fused together in a heady symphony.
Bouquet of rose, lavender and herbs
tease the sharpening senses.
Crooked chimneys peer down onto
exquisite garden-rooms blooming
with a riot of colour.

Oast houses nestle in the shade
of the castle tower.
Along paved walks bemused statues
observe the constant parade of visitors,
all curious to experience this romantic
idyll created by Vita and Harold*….
An enchanted corner of Kent, wrapping
visitors in a cloak of midsummer magic.

*Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicholson, creators of Sissinghurst gardens

-Margaret Royall

Day 14

-Jane Cornwell

Sheffield

-John Law

Shadow people

-Kerfe Roig

Tanka for the Flowers
(inspired by JC14)

Beyond castle walls
flowers blooming in mauve hues
remind me of you
A kiss we shared in Springtime
lingers in the Autumn dusk

-Susan Richardson

Urban plan

When it dawns you are a city
it’s a heavy responsibility. In your streets
everyone is hungry all the time, eating
of your dust. I read that skin flakes are, to a mite,
something like a bowl of cornflakes. After breakfast,
I will the behemoth to its feet, an earthquake
of indecision, my somewheres sounding tiny sirens.
Should I warn them about this latest inevitable change
of climate, what will befall us all
when I subside into the sea, one flawed brick
at a time? It might be easier on everyone
not to see it coming. I’ve run along the crumbly edge
of these cliffs so many times, matter-of-fact
that rocks bounce free, that soles slip
of their own accord. There’s never been any plan
except to finally reach the wide field beyond
the walls, to sink down into grass so cool, so sweet,
everything you carry leaps to feed it.

-Ankh Spice

Creeping up on the city from ground level,
Newcomers let’s be, gazing between stems and stalks
Petals and leaves, at that glowing settlement ahead
Its lights stealing stars from our skies and eyes
Its tendrils reaching out for everything

Out of this dawn reverie let us step
Into the centre of some teeming town
Schools of architecture clashing, zoning incoherent
Factories and shops and godowns and apartments
A hive that makes nothing quite so sweet as honey

And there, in a corner, let’s get closer,
A clearing, some earth, some trees, some shade
A bench. Let’s sit and talk about shadow people
About black-eyed kids, about tulpas and skinwalkers
Let’s talk about how all the ways we contrive
To look at each other from across an uncanny valley

Let’s drop down to ground level now, shrug off
Panorama and human scale
Now we can see them. In shadows. Like faded inkblots
On the torn paper of the frayed ends of the city
And its dispensation to use and produce and nurture and shelter

Shadow people. Barely seen.

Zoom out.

Palimpsest of building styles

Zoom out.

City afar, seen through stems and stalks

Zoom out.

Zoom out.

Shadows and stars. Clouds and dust.

Shadows. People.

Fade out.

-Jayaprakash Satyamurphy

Wildflowers
Inspired by all three images

On the edge of every town
there’s a derelict place,
where the wildflowers grow
among tumbled stones
of an industry long dead
and a past we’ve all forgot.

And among the peaceful stones
where the wildflowers blow,
in the arches still left standing
where trams once slept,
or where rail tracks crossed the river
where stevedores barked,
are encampments of the outcasts
where the shadow people live.

On the edge of every town,
at the end of every tether,
at the back of every mind,
and the limit of its patience,

is a mired misunderstanding
on both sides, and the outcome
is, instead of peace and wildflowers,
grow the burning seeds of hatred.

-Jane Dougherty

Steel City

City and folk alike calved from White rose and Black stone
Forged, purified, cast by pals, thee, thine, in the crucible of home
Industrial roots washed and watered, fed and nourished
On the Don, Sheaf, Loxley, Rivelin and Porter Brook flourished
Strong steel skeleton holding all up proud
Molten metal in the veins of this Yorkshire crowd
On each day of the week not just Wednesday, all united
Across river deep or mountain high one day all re-united.

-Tony Walker

Inspired by all three works of art

The Shadow People

It began—after The Before. You remember?
When the world was colored with optimism,
primary colors and pastels, sun-spackled roofs, rose gardens,
blue skies? Even the winter ice sparkled with trapped starlight.
We went to work and school and shows,
traveling on buses and trains through the city.

I used to make up stories about the people we saw in the windows—
the little girl with the dandelion, the woman
who danced in a red dress? All those windows dark now.
Please say you remember.

Then cough by cough, the world turned greyer.
The flowers lost their brilliant hues, fragrances disappeared.
And the shadow people came.

They walked out of my dreams
to gather around the TV set–strangely drawn to it.
They follow me now, almost eagerly, like ghost puppies.

They have no faces, but they look like me. Haunted.

-Merril D Smith

Sheffield 1979

A city, whose blood was molten steel,
waited for me in September sun.
Concrete flats loomed over the station
as the diesel fumes of weary trains
lay in the valley air.

Long gone, the veil of sulphur
that clogged this city’s lungs
to the sound of rattling cream trams.
Still, it had a hole in its road

and arches on the Wicker. Pride
in its knives, sharp and without stain.
There I rode a paternoster
(for no good reason), breathed in Hendo’s,

discovered the 2p bus fare
on the number 60 to Crimicar Lane,
treacly beer at the Frog and Parrot
and the love of my life.

-Tim Fellows

Shadow People Before My Eyes – A Triple Triolet

Shadow people before my eyes
Drifting aimlessly through their lives
Foggy as rainy crying skies
Shadow people before my eyes
Fading as sorrow’s darkness rise
Remembering just negatives
Shadow people before my eyes
Drifting aimlessly through their lives

Nobody holds then as they cry
No one a kind helping hand gives
Sorrow without friends multiply
Nobody holds then as they cry
Nobody these souls fortify
They are dark depressions captives
Nobody holds then as they cry
No one a kind helping hand gives

Shadow people before my eyes
What can get then to see bright life
Fading away ‘til their souls dies
Shadow people before my eyes
Unable to see the blue skies
Lost without finding hope inside
Shadow people before my eyes
What can get then to see bright life

-©RedCat

Shadows’ Identities Interchange

(Inspired by Kerfe Roig’s 14th Painting – Shadow People and Jane Cornwell’s 14th Painting)

Buried in his own garden,
my uncle stares at those roots
hung at his eye-level,
night-blooms flourished inches above –
his heaven, an eternal screensaver
slowly shifting with the seasons,
and then there sit those shadow people
on the pavement outside,
and sometimes while
trying to converse with those,
he realizes some are alive. He forgets.
He disremembers what being alive leads to,
and he repeats every act again and again.

Tonight the shadow people endures a drizzle;
wind dissolves them into one; for a tick
they become a watercolor of one large hair ball;
when they part, their souls and ids have been exchanged.
Buried, my uncle breathes in the rain.
The flowers lash at each other as if
their household hosts a party,
and a quarrel has sprawled over a decision
regarding those shadows watching
them cavort from the insurmountable social-distance.
Ah, drama! Chuckles my uncle,
wishes he could have invited me to observe
the way we used to, like invisibles,
like shadows watching others.

-Kushal Poddar

JC14
spring thoughts spring feeling
flowers scissored blue paper
always alive now

-Simon Williams

My Ancestors

are shadow people who appear in wills,
advertisements and newspapers, no photos.
Take William Laurence who lived on a hill,
a Quaker incomer to Sheffield’s roads.

A Linen Draper up Moorfields where thieves
stole linen from front of the shop. All I know.
Wildflowers, shadow flowers, whose names leave
my head as I see them in a meadow.

One has name but no image, one image
but no name. I wonder at delicate
shape of stems and petals. Absorb page
after page of Victorians love and hate.

I try to make some kind of rounded sense
based on a scarcity of evidence.

-Paul Brookes

Bios and Links

-John Law

“Am 68. Live in Mexborough. Retired teacher. Artist; musician; poet. Recently included in ‘Viral Verses’ poetry volume. Married. 2 kids; 3 grandkids.”

-Jane Cornwell

likes drawing and painting children, animals, landscapes and food. She specialises in watercolour, mixed media, coloured pencil, lino cut and print, textile design. Jane can help you out with adobe indesign for your layout needs, photoshop and adobe illustrator. She graduated with a ba(hons) design from Glasgow School of art, age 20.

She has exhibited with the rsw at the national gallery of scotland, SSA, Knock Castle Gallery, Glasgow Group, Paisley Art Institute, MacMillan Exhibition at Bonhams, Edinburgh, The House For An Art Lover, Pittenweem Arts Festival, Compass Gallery, The Revive Show, East Linton Art Exhibition and Strathkelvin Annual Art Exhibition.

Her website is: https://www.janecornwell.co.uk/

-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/

-Tim Fellows

 is a poet and writer from Chesterfield whose poetry is heavily influenced by his background in the Derbyshire coalfields – family, mining, politics, and that mix of industry and countryside that so many mining areas had. People can email me at timothyjfellows@gmail.com for a copy of the pamphlet or visit http://timfellows13.blogspot.com for recent poems

-Jayaprakash Satyamurthy

is a writer based in Bangalore, India. His books include the novella Strength Of Water (2019) and the poetry collection Broken Cup (2020). He used to write horror, but now it’s anyone’s guess. 

-Anjum Wasim Dar

Born in Srinagar (Indian Occupied )Kashmir,Migrant Pakistani.Educated at St Anne’s Presentation Convent Rawalpindi. MA in English MA in History ( Ancient Indo-Pak Elective) CPE Cert.of Proficiency in English Cambridge UK. -Dip.TEFL AIOU Open Uni. Islamabad Pakistan.Writing poems articles and stories since 1980.Published Poet.Awarded Poet of Merit Bronze Medal 2000 USA .Worked as Creative Writer Teacher Trainer. Educational Consultant by Profession.Published http://Poet.Author of 3 Adventure Novels (Series) 7 Times Winner NANOWRIMO 2011- 2019.

-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/

-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.

-Tony Walker

By day Tony climbs the greasy pole of clinical hierarchy. Not yet at the top but high enough to feel the pole sway and have his grip challenged by the envious wind of achievement. Looking down on the pates and gazes of his own history, at times he feels dizzy with lonely pride. By night he takes solace, swapping scalpel for scripts and begins his training and climbing again, in the creative world of writing. His writing is an attempt to unify the twenty-four hours. @surgicalscribe seeks to connect the clinical and creative arts of surgery, science and writing. Hoping to do for medicine and surgery through creative writing what Prof Cox has done for physics with television.

So, he practices his art.

-Ankh Spice

 is a sea-obsessed poet from Aotearoa. His work has been widely published internationally, in print and online, and has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He’s a co-editor at Ice Floe Press and a poetry contributing editor at Barren Magazine. You’ll find him and a lot of sea photography on Twitter @SeaGoatScreams or on Facebook @AnkhSpiceSeaGoatScreamsPoetry.

-Simon Williams

lives and works in Edinburgh, where running clears his head and creates space for ideas. He publishes short stories and poems on www.simonsalento.com

Paul Brookes

Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull.  His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms  (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.