I have always loved Will’s work from the moment I was introduced to his plays at school, and I remember falling in love with the sonnets as if it was only yesterday. The first poems I wrote as a teenager were sonnets and I still fall into the form when I least expect it. The […]
Tag: Shakespeare
This Island
This island was mine, I lived alone with everything upon it, unnamed but known to me. Fresh springs sparkled for my eyes only. Twanging music accompanied the lullaby of voices on the wind and waves. Now I collect sticks for firewood and share the bounty of my isle, with no hope of unconditional love, a […]
A Pair of (Still) Blue Eyes
We have retained our lustre, no vile jellies, and yet we know darkness. We orbs are oratory with the resonance of a Shakespearean player. We have a direct line to the brain, filtering light to conjure colour. But we need lenses, windows on blurry landscapes, distorted Giacometti figures, aliens in our owner’s ocular world. We […]
A Shakespearean Distillation
on sweet-scented days absence casts wintry shadows colours fade to grey Kim M. Russell, 22nd May 2019 My response to Carpe Diem #1631 A new chapter: leaving the Kumano Kodo Today we are being inspired by a Shakespearean sonnet, Sonnet 98 or ‘From you have I been absent in the spring, in an episode of […]
Sonnet to a Poet’s Hands
The young man’s hands were slender, quick and strong, composing sonnets to his unknown muse, creating worlds in drama and in song to challenge the emotions and amuse. The busy writer’s hands were stained with ink and words. His skin was cracked and raw with rhyme. The scratching of the pen spurred him to think […]
A Rag Man
The beginning of the day is drab, no inspiration for an ageing bard who, in his callow youth aspired and now knows only bleak despair. No longer a willow sprouting green, he searches for a fitting genre for the wires in his hoary beard. He prays his muse won’t leave him bared for all to […]
Erasing Shakespeare
Saucy and overbold beldam of death, mistress of charms, spite and wrath loves not you. Vessels and spells provide a dismal and a fatal end. Upon the corner of the moon, artificial sprites raise little spirit in a foggy cloud. Kim M. Russell, 2017 My response to dVerse Poets Pub Meeting the Bar: Look What […]
Paradise Cobbled
Cobbles have been laid over paradise With stables for carriages and horses, Bawdy taverns, markets, court masques and plays. Life does not follow preordained courses, Cherishing what you have is good practice For tomorrow may well be its demise. Cobbles have been laid over paradise With stables for carriages and horses; They have taken an […]
Aerial Comes of Age
For the eleventh time this year, one of my poems has been published on-line by Visual Verse. It’s on page 14 of this month’s edition, Vol 4, Chapter 02, which is full of fantastic poetry and prose, all based on one unusual image. You can go to visual verse.org and read all the prose and poetry, […]
My Response to Sonnet 12
Read by an actor at Arachne Press’s Midsummer Night in the Garden: