We wake up one day and find out who we really are. Souls, hearts and lips touch; we feel it deep into our bones and say ‘Eres tu’: it’s me and it’s you. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to Imaginary Garden with Real Toads Eres Tú Marian says that Carla Morrison needs no introduction […]
Category: Poems Inspired by Artists, Music and Other Writers
Beginning a Poem with a Line By Heaney
To flood, with vowelling embrace, a page agape at my pen’s impudence, is to leave wounds of words upon its face, carved with the sharp and flat of consonants. Blood is ink dried in thirsty lines and margins, annotated stanzas, editor’s cut and thrust. All the while my stack of notebooks burgeons, shrouded in poetry […]
Sea Front at 7 a.m.
Heavy tide inhales wind and gasps out chilly salty spray, tangles tongues with rain, spattering the windscreen with Neptune’s saliva. Waves wallop the sea wall – no gulls today. In the dry heat of the car, a disembodied voice on the radio mourns the devastation of last night’s storm. The car behind sounds its horn. […]
After Walcott
When I first read the opening lines of ‘Love After Love’, I knew your poem would fit me like a glove; I felt I might have met you in a previous life so deeply cut your poetic knife. You taught me to look into a mirror with elation. The future is clearer as I feast […]
Poetry in the Music
I came to poetry through music. My mother was very musical and loved to sing. She had a broad taste and, instead of lullabies, she would perform popular songs of the day to get me to sleep, songs by Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Frank Sinatra; Harry Belafonte’s ‘Scarlet Ribbons’ (which reminds me of mum) and […]
Vincent’s Self Portrait
‘…painted portraits have a life of their own that comes from deep in the soul of the painter…’ Vincent van Gogh A grubby strip of cloth bound around his head distracts from the bright spot of burning reds, a Japanese print pinned to the wall before he sliced his ear. He painted the background of […]
Fetching
While I was staying with my daughter, her husband and brand new grandson, another of my poems was published in Volume 5, Chapter 5 of the Visual Verse Anthology. You can find it on page 18 or you can follow the link to Fetching. I’m delighted that Rajani and Misky are also featured again.
Vincent’s Valentine
Vincent said, “There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.” But Vincent, when you braved love’s snarling thicket, you didn’t expect nervous coughs in quiet rooms. You believed that fungus and algae are stronger together, survive every kind of weather. Now, you gaze at your lover and see no white doves but a […]
Dream in a Teacup
Cradled in a teacup, her infused dream intertwines and rises with fragrant steam. She drowsily waits for lips to press porcelain and savour the sweetness of flowers of jasmine, lotus and hibiscus, unfurling below the liquid meniscus. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Poetics: Inspired by Art! – also linked to […]
The Language of Seagulls
His cry’s a stentorian swoop in the azure, draws curlicues in and out of the clouds. Apart from the flock, with its dodging and fighting, he lifts up his beak and whispers of wind. He lowers his feet, curves his wings, scrawls a wake, a poem in water with fricative feathers, a lone gull’s sonnet […]
writing in north norfolk 