It’s a dream that never comes to me: there is no blossoming chestnut tree, no garden of rioting summer blooms, not even a house with empty rooms. My childhood garden has no calm, no mother to rock me in her arms. Because it was so long ago, I search for it with heart of woe. […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
November Morning
Tattered trees pose, stark in their tracery, leaves all fallen sopping to the ground without a sound. A thin veil of amber hints at a struggling sun behind the mist, a sensual bounty across town and country. Warning of the coming chill, frost and fog cover every hill, the muffled silence broken only by the […]
Tasting Books
‘Alex- A few moments of reading pleasure in return for an evening of sensual delights. Denis October Bacchanalia 1994’ Found on the flyleaf of The Physiology of Taste – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin Spidery writing offers pleasure on the pages of a mildewed book discovered in an antiquarian book stall by the Seine. Taste is something […]
Navigating November
there is no dawn or dusk no proper time of day like the depths of the dark forest we navigate November running fingers on bark and fungus to find north we lean in close listening for sap to rise and bubble signs that queuing behind winter is spring Kim M. Russell, 15th November 2022 Free […]
Leopards and Midnight Clouds
As anyone knows who visits my blog, I love all things feline, cats of all sizes and species. The image for Visual Verse Volume 9 Chapter 11 is a wonderful black and white print that looks like a lino cut by Omar Musa, which inspired me to write the poem that appears on page 28. There are […]
Elizabethan Kisses
Since summer’s wind has heated up our skin, there’s not a corner of our bed that’s cool, no furtive meeting of soft lips or limbs. Help me with caresses; play by the rules. Come winter, bring us closer with your touch, let russet leaves begin the year’s decline! Us mortals cannot stand the heat so […]
Lion Tongue
I trail scorch marks in my wake as I breach each firebreak. My voracious carnassials devour every blade of grass and flower, the leaves on every shrub and tree. Once I charge, there’s no stopping me. But when you feel the biting chill of winter coming over the hill, you embrace my crackle and roar; […]
MIND THE GAP
The image for Visual Verse Volume 9 Chapter 10 was unusual and challenging, an image by John Crozier, which really appealed to me, as I’m originally from London. We are given only one hour to produce 50-500 ekphrastic words, so I am thrilled that my poem appears on page 7. If you want to read it first, […]
Red Ox Staring
I’m still wearing my husband’s reading glasses but will be collecting a new pair of varifocals on Friday. I’ll also be getting my hair cut for a bit of air on my very hot neck – the temperature is rising! In the meantime, the image for Visual Verse Volume 9 Chapter 9 is a collaboration […]
Blue Period
As in Pablo Picasso’s depressive art, the long path through a winter dark with anguish, despair and frailty is a spectrum of indigo melancholy: from blue-tinged ice, cobalt and navy to the hopefulness of aquamarine, it echoes our blind faith in the seasons. And then, suddenly, pieces of sky drop to earth in hosts of […]
writing in north norfolk 