Tag Archives: poem

Sublime Lungs – guest poet

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It is a great pleasure introducing guest poet Kate Noakes. The four poems are from her new collection Sublime Lungs, published this month by Two Rivers Press.

Carrie Etter writes ‘With each successive poem, Sublime Lungs expands the scope of how this condition affects one’s experience of the world in poems by turns witty and moving.’

You can find Kate’s biography after the poems. On her website you can also find details of future launches in the UK. The online launch is 24 April.

At a lecture on the lungs

Saying they look like cauliflower
is troublesome. I don’t much like it.
Can’t you imagine some other vegetable
for me to care about?

Describing particulate-caused cell change
as columnar to cobblestone won’t do it either.
These are impossible to traverse in heels
and I’ve broken so many stilettos.

Nor does learning of mucus-producing cells,
on the increase and ready for infection,
given this conjures fat black slugs
smearing themselves around in my chest

and in the coastal redwood fog forests,
banana slugs are choking me.

Bronchospasm, barotrauma, embolism

Is it worth it to see anemones
flowering deep, and multi-coloured fish
which never appear to the snorkeler?

Shall I risk it for sea pens and being dyed
by an octopus shooting to her cave
in an ink cloud?

What chances with vicious
silver barracuda and the inevitable
circling sharks?

Enough of purple jelly blobs
faceting rock pools, or their pink selves
unfurled between the tides.

Masked and wet-suited
on the side of a boat
with an artificial lung

a tank of air that will take me, where?
Heaven or hell. Slowly,
cautiously, let me live to tell.

Kent marsh frogs

Oat gold grass, swathes of rush in purple-brown,
the Oare marshes stretch to the horizon.
Mercurial tides leave a slice of silver water
isolating us from the Isle of Sheppey.

Clouds are quickening and the late summer wind
seeds my eyes – a second wave.
Half-blind with redness, I almost miss
the brackish pond with the largest of frogs

– dinner plates are no exaggeration –
and as for the ring-necked grass snakes
waiting in the surface weeds, I watch their vigil
through hay-fever tears.

A snake lunges. And again. The frog
breathes on through skin or mouth or lungs.

Caunes-Minervois

Swifts squadron the sky from early light.
All day they gorge on the wing, resting
only for seconds on the cream-stone sills
of tight-packed village houses.

They catch their breath quick, quickly
under orange-lichened pantiles and are off.
It’s a wonder their small hearts, their lungs
can cope with such long sorties.

There’s never a hint of wheeze
in this warmth and my chest expands
when I can take in the heady scent
of star jasmine. It’s good

there are men in their potagers,
chivalrous enough to cut a stem of roses –
doubles, old-fashioned, and perfumed
to fill my breath with healing.

Biography


Kate Noakes lives in Bristol and has a PhD from the University of Reading. Her new book (her ninth full collection), Sublime Lungs, is published by Two Rivers Press in April 2026. Bog Queens, a pamphlet from Green Bottle Press, is going to be published in June this year.


 She was elected to the Welsh Academy in 2011. Her content rich website, Boomslang Poetry, is archived by the National Library of Wales. Kate’s first non-fiction title is Real Hay-on-Wye (2022, Seren).


During six years in Paris, she was founding president of Paris Lit Up. Kate acted as a trustee for London literature development agency, Spread the Word, between 2018 and 2022 and she is one third of Bristol poetry performance group, Braid. She programmes the poetry events for the Clifton Literature Festival.

For Easter, try egg blowing – guest poet

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Here is a sample poem by our April guest poet Kate Noakes. The poem is from her new collection Sublime Lungs, which will be published by Two Rivers Press on 21 April. This is her ninth full collection. More poems after Easter.

Kate will read at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 14 April. There is an online launch on 24 April. You can find the schedule of online and live launches on Kate’s website

Kate Noakes Breath of Fire

For Easter, try egg blowing

David Attenborough stood on an ostrich egg
to demonstrate its strength once.
‘The toughest egg in the world,’ he said.
He may even have jumped on it for emphasis.

Of course, no-one had drilled it and sapped its yolk
with mega-breaths and an extra-thick straw,
which is how it withstood his weight, unlike
the three souvenirs we bought in Oudtshorn,
their weakness apparent under failing coving.

They smithereened the carpet and needed
hand picking, the hoover’s inhalations proved weak.
We’d have been better off buying feather dusters
from the hawker pitched outside the super-market.
They’d have been easier to carry home.

Metamorfosen – poetry

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Poëzie Week ran last month in The Netherlands and Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium. Events were arranged in libraries, bookshops, schools, etc.


If you spent at least 12,50 Euro on a poetry book, you’d receive a copy of the poetry pamphlet Metamorfosen, written by poet Ellen Deckwitz specially for Poëzieweek and published by het Poëziecentrum, Gent.


Op = Op. So, I dashed to the nearest bookshop and checked at the till copies were still available. You’re not surprised to learn the poetry section was small, but I found the new collection Tussen mij from the poet and artist Maria Barnas, just published .



Ellen Deckwitz is a tireless ambassador for poetry: daily podcast for a radio station, columns, visits to schools and colleges. Her Eerste Hulp bij Poëzie (Poetry First Aid) is an accessible introduction to contemporary poetry. Her poetry has been translated into several languages, and she has received several Dutch awards and in Italy (Premio Campi).


I listened to a short interview she did with Hanna van Binsbergen (monthly podcast of het Poëziecentrum). Some of her poetic influences are Tomas Tranströmer, Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Osip Mandelstam.


She talked about the unrealistic demands placed on romantic love and how friendships have increasingly become important. The nine metamorphoses in the pamphlet challenge the cliché of romantic love, our need for some significant other:


Ooit droomde je van een mens voor jezelf.
Iemand die je geliefde, je ouder, kameraad
of leider kon zijn.


Once you dreamt of a human for yourself. / Someone who could be your lover, your parent, comrade / or leader.


Transformation and metamorphosis as often seen as positive events: the pupa turning into a butterfly, catharsis leading to rebirth, renewal. Deckwitz reminds us that in Ovid’s Metamorphoses many of the metamorphoses do not turn out well – Icarus, Narcissus.


Romantic relationships can be violent: the facts are often also just pleasant machetes – en feiten zijn vaak ook gewoon / prettige machetes.


The person ending things with ‘Sorry, maar –’ changes into an earthworm, while the one left behind ‘jumped furiously up and down in his underpants’ – ‘sprong woedend op en neer in zijn onderbroek‘.

Writing Prompt:


How do you view metamorphosis?
Have you used any myths to inspire your writing? Or folk tales, fairy tales?


I drafted the poem Snow woman on a workshop. When I read through the notes, I realised it refers to the myth of Sisyphus. The poem first appeared on Atrium.

Snow woman

My father didn’t give up.
For many years, he kept going.
He carries the white with bare hands,
rolling the fresh snow uphill.
He shapes and sculpts roundness.

The snow woman stands in the shade,
so my mother has a greyish tinge
from the outset. Six small coals
give her a static smile. She does
not want to live in the shadows.

During the night, sometimes,
her silk scarf disappears. He buys
her new ones. Winter is their season,
spring follows. It’s warming up,
and a long, long time till summer.

My father never asked for help.
Mother starts shedding, and now
she is snowing words, words, words.
It’s soon a white-out.

Riddles – writing prompt

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Most of January I was on Lanzarote. I was unwell, so I spent much of my time reading in the Piano Bar of the hotel. Here is a view from the balcony. In the distance is Fuerteventura.

I also forgot about posting the answers to Vasko Popa’s riddles which I posted in December. The riddles are from his collection The Golden Apple, 2010. It’s a round of stories, songs, spells, proverbs & riddles that Popa himself selected from various anthologies of Serbo-Croatian folk literature. Here are the riddles and their answers, followed by another riddle.


Riddles

  1. In one room both bone and flesh grow.
  2. I stretched a gold thread through the wide world and wound it up into a walnut shell.
  3. I shake a tree here, but the fruit falls half an hour away

Answers


1 Egg
2 Eyesight
3 The sound of a bell

    Photo
Photo credit: stevepb via Pixabay

Riddle


With an iron key
I open a green fortress
And drive out the black cattle

Canada is as far away as bibles are – poetry

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I was very pleased to see my poem Canada is as far away as bibles are on After. Many thanks to Editor Mark Antony Owen. You can read the poem here.


After publishes ekphrastic poems and my poem was inspired by The Avid Reader, 1949. Rodney Graham (1949 – 2022) was a visual artist, painter, and musician. He made the lightbox in 2011.


‘We see the middle-aged man / carrying a hat, smoking a pipe, / because Graham inhabits him.’


The Avid Reader, 1949 was one of the works on display at Voorlinden Museum, Wassenaar, the Netherlands in the major exhibition of Graham’s work titled That’s Not Me. An ironic title as Graham appears in all the works – as a builder having a smoke, a lighthouse keeper, historical figure.

Voorlinden is a fabulous museum – more about it some other time.


I was struck by the attention to detail and the scale of the works. The woman is ‘his wife, swing coat, high heels, walks past on the right.’

Having the last word – guest poet

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credit: Monika1607 via Piaxabay


Cliff Yates was our guest poet last November. You can read the poems here. As I was going through his New & Selected Poems (The Poetry Business, 2023) to select a set, I came across the poem below.


It’s even sweeter on Valentine’s Day…

from Another Last Word

EXPENSIVE CHOCOLATE

There are eight pieces. She has two
and gives me one. ‘Confiscate this,’
she says, handing over the rest.
‘Hide it, or I’ll be tempted when you’re out.’
When I get back, the drawer’s open,
there’s one piece left, and a note
on a scrap of paper: NOT VERY WELL HIDDEN.

CLEARING UP

She’s cooking Sunday lunch and I’m clearing up.
‘It’s ridiculous,’ I said, ‘you spend time
getting things out of cupboards
and I spend time putting them back in.’
‘Not enough time in my opinion.’

BIRTHDAY

‘You’re being nice,’ she says, ‘you’ll be running
out of steam soon. You’ve been nice
since 7 o’clock, that’s 3 hours, 10 minutes.’

DANCE

‘It’s great the way we dance around each other,’
I said, ‘when we’re getting the meal on.’
‘We only do that because you get in the way.’

SATSUMA

‘I can’t be bothered with this satsuma.’
‘Give it here,’ she says. ‘Can’t peel a satsuma,
can’t peel an egg. We’ve been married how many years,
and I’ve made no progress with you whatsoever.’

WRITING

‘I had to work on that one,’ I said, ‘because
you didn’t actually say that. I am in fact
writing these poems.’ ‘That’s what you think.’

ENTERTAINING

‘Some of these make me sound terrible,’
she says. ‘It’s because you find me so entertaining.
It makes me worse when you start laughing.’

LUNCH

‘Apart from the salad and potatoes,’
I said, ‘what did we have for lunch?’
‘If you can’t remember what we had for lunch
I feel sorry for you.’

GETTING IT RIGHT

‘I’ll get it right one day.’ ‘I doubt it,’ she says.
I laugh. ‘It’s not funny really, is it?’
‘No,’ she says, ‘but at least you’re hopeful.’

PHILOSOPHY

‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ she says,
‘when I wake up I just want a cup of tea
and then I want to be entertained by life.’

FISH

‘What we need is a special pan for fish
and a fish spatula.’ ‘No,’ she says,
‘what we need is for you to eat fish.’

COLOURING PENCILS

She’s at the kitchen table, going at it
with her new colouring pencils.
‘I had some when I was little,’ she says,
‘but I was never let loose. It was always
What’s THAT supposed to be? or Where’s the SKY?’

Photo credit: Andrew Taylor

Biography

Cliff Yates was born in Birmingham and has been publishing poetry since the 1980s. His New & Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2023) brings together work from various collections including Henry’s Clock  (Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition), Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Arts Council England Writers Award) and Jam (ACE Grant for the Arts). He taught English at Maharishi School in Skelmersdale and wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, following the success of his students in poetry competitions. He has led courses for, among others, the Arvon Foundation and the British Council. Read more on his site here

wetting the ink…guest poet

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It’s a great pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Julie Mellor.

Julie holds a PhD in creative writing from Sheffield Hallam University and has published two poetry chapbooks with Smith/Doorstop: Breathing Through Our Bones (2012) and Out of the Weather (2017). In 2019 she became interested in haiku, and since then her haiku and haibun have appeared in Blithe Spirit, Frogpond, Modern Haiku, Presence, The Heron’s Nest and Tinywords, as well as two Red Moon anthologies. She recently retired from a career in education, and enjoys walking her dog, attending art classes and playing the banjo.

Here are recent haiku and a haibun with their publication details. You can find more of Julie’s writing on her site here.

Modern Haiku 54.3 (Autumn 2023)

toe-hold weeds
things that were said
years ago

Blithe Spirit 35:2 (May 2025)

long night joining the dots between stars

The Heron’s Nest Summer 2025

wetting the ink
a ghost orchid blooms
from its painted stem

Presence issue 82 (Summer 2025)

morning moon
beside the fretless banjo
pistachio shells

BHS Hope anthology 2025 (ed Neil Sommerville)

butterfly summer
I write a letter
to my future self

Presence 73 – Summer 2022 – and included in Contemporary Haibun 18 (Red Moon Press, 2023)

The Coffin Path

Grass, waist high this morning, and wet with last night’s rain. Brushing past it, my jeans wick the droplets from seeding cock’s-foot and brome. No one else walks this way. Behind the hawthorn hedge is the cemetery. People tend to use the other path, the one that the council mows. Or else they drive – ‘to save their legs’ my mother says. Some days she says she wants to be buried. Other days, she thinks she’d prefer to be cremated and have her ashes scattered next to a memorial bench. No rush to decide, I tell her, trying to make light of things.

elderflowers
pressed in her prayer book
a recipe for wine

Solstice and poetry – books

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Solstice: a clear day here in the Netherlands with the sun breaking through as I type this.


My holiday reading is sorted. The seven books include translations from French, Spanish and Norwegian. The latter an interesting set of haiku and haiku-like poems about the Japanese ski-jumper Noriaki Kasai.


Broken Sleep Books use the world’s largest on-demand publishers. The parcel came from France: no import duties, no VAT, no waiting while parcels linger in the customs depot. A bonus!


This is my last post for 2025. Season’s Greetings and many thanks to you all.


Here is the link to James Schuyler’s poem Linen. A poem about gratitude, starting with a question, and almost a sestude.

If there were no wind, cobwebs…writing prompt

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Photo credit: Der Tobi via Pixabay


Thanks to poet Jonathan Davidson for introducing me (and the other poets on the course) to the Sestude. This form (a poem of 62 words) was invented by John Simmons, co-founder of the ‘26’ writing group in 2003. The English alphabet has 26 letters and 62 is its opposite.


It started with a project ‘26 treasures’ in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s British Galleries. The creative community 26.org.uk is a not-for-profit organisation which still undertakes a range of creative projects.


I enjoyed playing around with the form and, going through my folders, came across a short prose poem that only needed to lose a few words:

If there were no wind, cobwebs would cover the sky.

If there were no wind, cobwebs would cover the sky. Soon enough, the clouds would get angry, address the spiders Have you no manners? Your offspring is just sitting around. The angrier the clouds got, the greyer they looked. It was a battle of grey against grey. Battles and wars always end in tears. The people below were relieved: Rain at last.

Note: Serbian proverb quoted by Vasko Popa, The Golden Apple, 2010.

The Golden Apple collection is a round of stories, songs, spells, proverbs & riddles that Popa himself selected from various anthologies of Serbo-Croatian folk literature.

Writing Prompt


A few more proverbs and riddles. I will share answers next month!

Proverbs

  1. Get your moustaches together, you’re going on a journey.
  2. If you put him on a wound, it would heal.
  3. When did fog ever uproot a tree-trunk?

Riddles

  1. In one room both bone and flesh grow.
  2. I stretched a gold thread through the wide world and wound it up into a walnut shell.
  3. I shake a tree here, but the fruit falls half an hour away.

Poetry Worth Hearing – poetry

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Many thanks to Kathleen Mcphilemy for including three of my poems in episode 37 of Poetry Worth Hearing or you can listen on Youtube, Audible and Spotify.

One of the poems is his ashes on a corner.


The theme was hiding and/or seeking. The episode is 60 minutes. The first half hour or so is an interesting interview with poet Nancy Campbell who talks about her residency on Greenland among other things. The interview and Nancy’s poems bookend poems by Guy Jones, Zelda Cahill-Patten, Lesley Saunders, Pat Winslow, Richard Lister, Dinah Livingstone, and Sarah Mnatzaganian.


The theme for the next episode is all things ‘eco’. Send up to four minutes of unpublished poems (text and sound file) plus a short biography to poetryworthhearing@gmail.com by 18 January 2026. Find more information on poetryworthhearing.biz.

his ashes on a corner

of the dining table
by the small square
votive container
the discreet
undertaker’s logo

she greets him
will have a glass
at six his ashes
waiting with us
for borders to open