Tag Archives: england

An Ashford Maid’s Lament by Linda Goulden

09 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

An Ashford Maid’s Lament

My mother caught my father’s eye.
My father wooed a wife.
My parents took a summer’s day
and sang it into life.

This little bird would not be caged
but roamed as soon as weaned,
to gather lily of the valley
and rosemary so green.

I never hooped my petticoats
nor gloved my busy hands
but stitched white roses onto cloth,
wove rush and withy bands.

I promised Jack, the blacksmith’s boy,
I’d never wear a scold.
He promised he would marry me
at twenty-one years old.

Love’s blushes never reddened me.
I never was a wife.
Before I made my wedding vows
the fever took my life.

My sisters three, who weep for me,
pray that the good Lord grants
the time to lose your maidenheads,
not win your virgin crants.

This is the writer’s response to seeing examples of the virgin crants tradition in Ashford-in-the Water in Derbyshire. For more information, if you wish: Maidens’ Garlands or Crantses in the Peak.

Linda Goulden is a Scot settled in Derbyshire. Her poems won prizes from Nottingham Open Poetry and Poets and Players and have been published in Magma, in Poetry News and anthologies from Derbyshire County Council, Manchester Cathedral, Beautiful Dragons and the Emma Press.

Moon on the Water by Liz Ferrets

31 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Moon on the Water

And I’m walking through the city
Quiet night time in the city
Sparkly dark time in the city
And the full moon falls
through a broken window
and lands on the water
Throwing shadows on the back beat
like the whisper on the street
wisely shading crystal mysteries
Herstories and histories
And in a silent solstice mist
Where bats and cats are sleeping
I had a dream
Where 5 stars point
to 5 point stars
that fall before me
make a pentagramic path that
shines like tarnished silver
Leads me on
Through the city
Crazy shady lazy city
Concealing secret places
occult enchanted spaces
Obfuscated
Circle of the Stones
And no one knows that
hidden in plain sight
it fits within the shifting shadows
of the city
The pretty city
The frailty of the veil
is seen
It’s lifting
Silver tessellating pentagrams shine
and time slides
The crow flies
The crones chant
The maidens dance
And the mother sits among the stones
Knits among the stones
And there is righteous anger in her bones
as she is weaving hopes and fears
Children’s tears
Too many years of bleeding
in the city
The scarred and tired city
And a smack rat stumbles down
another blind alley
in the valley of lost direction
as she casts the spells that she has stolen
from the jaws of extinction
On the brink of destruction
she is reconstructing reason
at the changing of the season
And listen …
There is a rumble in the thunder
There is a storm in the teacup
There is a riot in the city
The brave relentless city
And there is a revolution in the land
Shifting sand
And the earthquake
Shakes us awake

 

Liz Ferrets hangs out of Sheffield with her four stinky thieving mice killing familiars. New to the poetry circuit, she performs her (as yet) unpublished works anywhere that will give her air time - enraged and frustrated by social injustice and crimes against humanity she finds plenty to write about and is truly a Troubadour for the Revolution.

Familiars by Andrew Shields

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Familiars

+++ after Keith Thomas

Witches worked
with birds and ferrets,
hornets and hares,
beetles and frogs,
moles and moths,
crickets and snakes,
crayfish and snails,
rats and toads,
blackbirds and crows,
wasps and flies,
spiders and mice.

Did Elizabeth in Manningtree
keep a whole menagerie?
Her interrogators found
a rabbit and a greyhound,
a white dog and a polecat
and a toad (but not a bat).

A witch was powerless
when she heard Hopkins hiss.
She must burn,
said Sterne.

 

Andrew Shields lives in Basel, Switzerland. His book Thomas Hardy Listens to Louis Armstrong is being published by Eyewear in June 2015.

The hare by Rebecca Gethin

26 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

The hare

Gusts flood the moorside
flattening grasses.

A tussock blinks,
veined ears

catch our footsteps,
its heartbeat alert.

Through split-lips
it tastes the cluttered air –

sheep, marsh,
buzzard’s shadow.

Wired to leap, back paws
out-pacing the front

leaving a press of stalks and blades,
a furred print in the grit –

a whiplash of thinking
itself into another form.

 

First published in the author’s own collection, A Handful of Water (Cinnamon Press)

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor. Cinnamon Press published her second poetry collection, A Handful of Water, in 2013. Her first novel, Liar Dice, won the Cinnamon Press Novel Award and her second, What the horses heard, was published in 2014. New poems have appeared in Prole, The Interpreter’s House and Lighthouse as well as Her Wings of Glass, the Exeter Poetry Festival anthology, the Battered Moons Competition pamphlet and The Broadsheet. Her website is rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

The Green Man by Allen Ashley

30 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

The Green Man

You’ve seen him on pub signs, of course:
a country-dwelling, jovial chap.
Today he’s been rendered safe:
follow him across the road.
He’s the smiling bearded face on church walls
but we’ve known him longer than we’ve known
           the Church
           or Christianity
or other mystery cults from the Middle East.
He’s there in jack o’ lanterns, jack of shadows,
Pan and Robin of Locksley;
every heroic British man-jack;

Follow him across the river and into the trees;
don’t look back.

We draw him in clothing – ragged trousers.
hand-sewn jerkin – but really we
know he would most likely frolic
unclothed
with nymphs, dryads and Wiccan priestesses
coyly described as “sky clad”.

See him grinning at our mortal concerns.
He is laughing at those who equate him
with the Horned One, The Beast, Old Nick.
Too many in these days think in black and white
and he is green. Fertile, virile, abundant…
Forgotten
almost
but due for rebirth.

Allen Ashley’s latest book (as editor) is “Sensorama: Stories of the Senses” (Eibonvale Press, 2015). He recently guest-edited the online magazine “Sein und Werden”. He is the judge for the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. He is also the co-author of “Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System” with Sarah Doyle (PS Publishing, 2014).

Excalibur Lost by Ron Savory

27 Wednesday May 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Excalibur Lost

Lust breaks free and sheathes the fear
That mortals cast as mothers love
Forever trusting, in dust filled ruin
An angel fills the font with tears
Whispers, gather gloom and colour
Unseen hands caress the hills
Faith and hope betrayal laden
Discover, truth embracing loss

 

Reflecting his eclectic passion for people watching and the beauty that surrounds them, Cross Hands “Tin Plate Poet” songwriter /poet Ron Savory spends his days fishing. Perched upon Bica’s Tooth, amid the silent battle weary cliffs of Llangrannog, he hooks inspiration from the crane skin bag of Manannan. Weaving the glint of universal truths into songs and poems (in time honoured Celtic folk / acoustic blues tradition) he journeys wherever the wind takes him.

Unfamiliar by Sarah Doyle

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

First Witch: I come, Greymalkin.
Second Witch: Paddock calls. *
                          Macbeth, Act I, scene iii

Unfamiliar

With scale and claw, with claw and scale;
with tail and fur, with fur and tail.
Most ghastly, cherished animals:
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

Our ancient spirit chaperones,
ungodly to their very bones:
enchanted, feral sentinels.
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

We may traverse through many plains –
each mistress and her beast remains
conjoined by subtle manacles.
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

We sense them on the blasted heath,
companions from the realms beneath.
The summoning that so appals:
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

Macbeth is caught: our mischief, done.
The web of destiny is spun,
and poison drips from castle walls.
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

Now enmity and havoc reign
within the world of Dunsinane,
we fade to wisps, as brightness falls.
I come, Greymalkin. Paddock calls.

 

* The witches’ familiars: Greymalkin, a cat; and Paddock, a toad.

 

Sarah Doyle is the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s Poet-in-Residence. She has been widely placed and published, with her first collection, “Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System” (co-written with Allen Ashley), being published by PS Publishing in autumn 2014. Sarah co-hosts Rhyme & Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club at Enfield’s Dugdale Theatre. More at:www.sarahdoyle.co.uk

 

Elder by John C. Nash

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

elder by john c nash

 

John C. Nash finally settled down as a self-employed bookbinder and writer in Northampton, England. His poetry has been published in various magazines including Antiphon, Cake, The Delinquent, Verse Kraken and Lighthouse . He co-edited the anthology ‘Making Contact’ for Ravenshead Press and is currently working on a collaborative project with the photographer Sam Webster.

The Woodland Wether by Kay Buckley

08 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

The Woodland Wether
after ‘Lost Lad’ by Richard Furness

As autumn gives up her turn
a lad wonders from home.
Off to find the shepherds out
penning sheep that roam.

“Where are yer Abraham
best cut of me heart?
In spite of all trouble
a couldn’t be withart.”

So his mother wrung out
her tears ‘til folk got together,
and the cry came out,
“Send for our running man, the Wether!”

With light falling and torches
lit like scratches against the black,
a tall thin man set the pace
onto the hill slack.

Night-wet the flat slap
of feet made it to Cut Gate.
Barefoot, the Wether’s soles
scythed sky. His shadow gait

like that of a hare running
in circles at trouble’s scent.
He sprang over Feather Bed Moss
and began to make the ascent.

No stone moved as he ran
across shales of millstone grit,
arching Cranberry Clough
as the hanging clouds split.

Moon scarred light picked
out paths that ran like streams.
He saw the jackrabbit riding
and followed his grey gleams.

In a shallow dip the boy lay
half clothed and shivering.
His hair was twiddled into knots
as he sat there whimpering.

Tending to him like a leveret,
the Wether carefully dried
his face. Soothed him,
until he felt warm inside.

The boy on his shoulders,
framed by the moor,
as the Wether brought him
back to his Mam’s door.

On Margery Hill a cairn marks
the place where the Wether
found the boy. Lost Lad alone
in the peat and the heather.

 

Kay Buckley lives in Barnsley. In 2013 she received funding for a Mentoring Programme run by Writing Yorkshire. Her poem ‘Huskar’ was overall winner of the 2014 York Mix Poetry Competition. Her poems have been published in magazines and anthologies including Butcher’s Dog, Brittle Star and The Darker Side of Love by Paper Swans Press.

Black Shuck Prowls Tonight by Alan Blyton

06 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in poetry

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Black Shuck Prowls Tonight

The woods are still and silent,
All birds have taken flight.
No creature ventures above the ground,
For Black Shuck prowls tonight.

The trees are hushed and frozen
And the bushes hold their breath
As a cold breeze blows and a shadow falls
With the stink of fear and death.

Along the forest pathway,
Pads a shape as dark as pain,
Green glowing eyes and dripping jaws,
That no man could restrain.

And in the nearby village,
An icy sense of fear.
The silence screams the message,
That danger’s drawing near.

No one goes near their windows,
No curtains even twitch.
The streets are dead as a stone grey corpse,
The sky as black as pitch.

Was that a growl I heard outside?
A sound of panting breath…
I dare not peep for just to see
Means swift and certain death.

For if his gaze falls on you,
‘S too late for fear or dread.
Just catching sight of that hellish hound,
Means you’re already dead.

So clasp your hands together,
And drop down to your knees.
Beg God to bring the morning,
And hope he hears your pleas.

Till then bolt up your windows,
And pull your blankets tight.
For in the gloom, ‘neath a blood red moon,
Black Shuck prowls tonight.

 

Alan Blyton was born in Cambridgeshire and now splits his time between London and the fens, where he occupies himself as an actor, writer, musician and entertainer. He has a special place in his heart for the macabre and has been fascinated with ghost stories and spooky folklore ever since he can remember. He is currently working on a collection of horrible poems for children.