This month, Visual Verse Volume 9 Chapter 4 gave us a bright image to cheer up the February gloom and, as usual, an hour to write 50-500 ekphrastic words inspired by a picture from Yasin Aribuga. The responses are fabulous and varied, and I recommend reading them all. Mine is on page 69, or, if you […]
Tag: Ekphrastic poems
Bath Time on New Year’s Eve
I love Dee Mulrooney‘s image for January’s Visual Verse Volume 9 Chapter 3, the starting point for ekphrastic writing of 50-500 words, for which we are given just one hour. I recommend reading all of the fabulous submissions, among which are familiar names. Mine is on page 73, or, if you want to read it […]
A poem in the current issue of Visual Verse
I am delighted that Visual Verse chose to include my poem on page 23 of the latest issue, Volume 9 Chapter 2. The image by Monica Silva is gorgeous, and all the pieces, prose and poetry, are fantastic. I recommend reading them all – or you can go directly to my poem ‘Horsehead‘.
Canned
I haven’t seen a Campbell’s can for decades, with its boring, old-fashioned label. When I think of all those tomatoes that were crammed inside, I wonder if they‘re out of date, whether they stink, if there’s mould on top, if they have dried out, shrunk, drained of bloody red to anaemic pink spotted with bits […]
Thinking
Mother Nature fell asleep thinkingand her thoughts became dreamsinto rich, dark soil sinking. Nothing in this world is ever as it seemsand her fantasies took root,watered by rain and underground streams. By spring, the roots had given birth to shootsthat sought the warmth of the sun,and the shoots grew and began to produce stalks and […]
Night Hawks
Tall buildings shadow pavements, squinting their windows against light that spills from an insomniac Manhattan diner. Anonymous at a timeless hour, customers sit at the cherry wood counter with dirty coffee cups and a hankering for cherry pie, sugar to take the sour edge off a night of cigarettes and alcohol. Smoky thoughts curl […]
Still Life with Crab
In the left-hand foreground, balanced on the corner of a table laid with brown and cream linen, is a knife with a decorative ivory handle. Directly behind, a shiny upturned glass on a platter of brass beside a bunch of plump black grapes, just in front of a dish of ruby pomegranate seeds, into which […]
