This month’s Visual Verse image is from the Rijksmuseum and is by Adriaen van Utrecht – the perfect image to inspire ekphastic poetry. The responses have been fantastic, and I’m pleased to say that my poem is on page 40 and is entitled ‘Rocking It‘.
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Between Speed Skating and Waitressing
We were chalk and cheesebut thick as thieves,haunting the ice rink together:bright smiles in the photo booth;cheese burgers and ice cream floats;sneaking in the bar underagefor rum and coke. We were young, and drunkon our own loveliness,maxi coats buttoned against icy air,dashing through the foyerwith cheeky grins and a waveat red-coated bouncers,embarking on a friendship […]
This Song
Image by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash This song is mist on a distant hill, a welter of water, whiffling overhead. From unknown skies geese arrive with autumn on their wings, twisting and turning, climbing and falling. This song is a rolling, breaking wave of green on a distant hill. From unknown skies geese arrive with […]
If Only
I didn’t realise that one of my poems was published in the January issue of Visual Verse, Volume 10, Chapter 3.
Dreamless
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. […]
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 […]
writing in north norfolk 