Art and Nature – inspiring poetry

Thank you Katrina Naomi for choosing my poem Framed Woman as joint-runner up in this year’s Poetry Society Stanza Competition. The poem was inspired by an Edward Hopper painting used as a prompt at Poetry Kit’s on-line ekphrastic poetry course, then polished to betterment following feedback from the Brighton Stanza Group. Yes, many hands make light work!

Katrina chose a rich variety of interpretations on this year’s competition theme ‘Choice’. My poem focuses on a woman trying to move out of a claustrophobic relationship. The possibility of choice comes to her as “a tendril unlaces in the white hot sun.”

You can read Framed Woman, together with the winning poem (Sarah Wimbush’s Blood Sugar), joint runner-up Liz McPherson’s Outsider, and the ten commended poems by Julian Bishop, David Bleiman, Partridge Boswell, David Bundred, Sue Burge, Virginia Griem, Sue Norton, Michael Saunderson, Michael Shann and Paul Wellby, by clicking on: https://poetrysociety.org.uk/news/sarah-wimbush-is-chosen-as-the-poetry-societys-2021-stanza-competition-winner/

Stanza groups exist all over the UK (and even abroad). Everyone is welcome to attend, share their work, feedback on other people’s poetry. Some Stanzas hold organised public readings, publish anthologies, run workshops – the sky’s the limit. Check the Poetry Society website for details of your nearest group.

Nature is never far away in my poetry, so it felt really special to have a poem included in the poetry and flash fiction anthology Awakenings, published online by The Sussex Wildlife Trust.

It’s the brainchild of Lucy Townsend, who approached the Trust with the idea as a way to celebrate its 60th anniversary. You can read it all for free at: https://sussexwildlifetrust.org.uk/awakenings

It’s great that organisations are increasingly including poetry in their communications with the general public. Every poem that reaches new constituencies is to be especially celebrated.

Living down here in Brighton, the South Downs are a big part of my life. The Brighton Downs Alliance now includes a poetry/flash section on their website. Check out Chalk It Up for my poem On Beacon Hill and 15 other snapshots of downland life at: https://www.brightondownsalliance.org.uk/chalk-it-up.html

Words for the Wild – the magic of nature

 

Visually sumptuous, verbally lively – the webzine Words For The Wild is a joyful way of spending time with words and images that relate to Nature.

So a big thank you to poet Hilaire for introducing me to the webzine, and to editors Amanda Oosthuizen and Louise Taylor for posting my poem ‘New Arrival’.

To read it, please click here: New Arrival The same link will lead you through to stories and poems by a raft of gifted writers, including Shanta Acharya, Kathryn Bevis, Stephen Bone, Alison Brackenbury, Maggie Butt, Caroline Davies, Kate Firth, Hugh Greasley, Chris Hardy, Hilaire and S.A. Leavesley.

Submissions of prose and poetry are welcome year round, with changing themes. Your work can already have been published elsewhere (subject to copywrite). So far, they’ve covered the themes of Jungle, Fruit, Gift, and New Build.

The ethos of Words for the Wild is one of celebration and action. “We are writers who love the countryside, and we want to stop the kind of development that will destroy our gorgeous green land; we want to conserve it for future generations. Of course we need houses but we also need to protect wildlife and retain these pockets of peacefulness where we can walk our dogs or jog or cycle or build dens, play or paint, or simply wander and think.”

Words for the Wild has published a paperback anthology of poems and stories (£6.40 from Words For The Wild) profits of which go to support the community campaign, AADD, which has just succeeded in preventing a housing development being built that would have threatened ancient woodland. More information at: Action Against Destructive Development