I am no gaunt, leafless winter hawthorn: my trunk is not gnarled nor are my branches a twisted mass, no dark hoard of barbs. I am not creamy froth on outgrown hedges, no early dog rose drenched in dew or sun. I dance and rustle with fallen leaves and glow with autumn fruit, nut and […]
Tag: Meeting the Bar
A Molotov Cocktail of Poems
I put my poems […]
Aporia Avenue
Footfalls echo in the memory down the passage we did not take; instead we took the avenue of apathy, moonful children exploring half-hearted graveyards with lichen-covered stones over row upon row of mouldering bones. What was at the end of the passage, the one we did not take? A message of hope, a future of […]
Rubai of Light
The moon is a balloon that fills the night which bursts with stars and constellations bright, reminding late night lovers of the dawn whose fingers shatter dreams with early light. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Variations on the Rubaiyat This week our host for Meeting the Bar […]
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 […]
A South London Childhood
Balconies and concrete stairs, beery piss in broken lifts, every night the same old prayers, someone get us out of here. Tightrope walking on the fence, leap the gap between the sheds, long walk to the traffic lights, sideswiped by a motorbike. Buttercups and dandelions crowd long grass by rusty gates; in the alley, shadows […]
Phantom Shadorma
snow ghosts drift in a late blizzard rags tattered dignity phantoms of the fantastic suspended in ice and we hide behind heavy drapes misty panes bated breath while winter and spring battle it out once again Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Phantom Form – Shadorma Amaya is […]
To My Unborn Grandson
Dearest boy, I am counting down the days and knitting. I am amazed at the butterflies of anticipation, imagining your eyes, mouth and nose, your tiny fingers and toes, the fresh-baked smell from the top of your head. I can’t wait to sing the songs I once sang to your mother, and the ones mine […]
Mid-February
Winter – saturated by a winnowing wind, bare branches are ready to yield to spring. Kim M. Russell, 2018 My response to dVerse poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Brevity — Five Lines This Thursday Frank is hosting Meeting the Bar and the theme today is brevity. We are writing poems with no more than five […]
Gathering Poems
Another poem’s formed, quiet words in a silent room for an anonymous anthology read in a silent room. Poems map success and failure, track winter’s raging floods and untarnished summer skies dreamt in a silent room. The playful winds of spring throw blossom at the moon, while winter draughts weave shadows in a silent room. […]
writing in north norfolk 