In an English spring-time

to me there be daffodils, bluebells, crocuses, forget-me-not in this English spring-time rain cold from bluer sunlit skies showers occasional drop heavy hail bringing back snow, cold sunlight white yet in blue will bloom green to summer 2004, Cambridge — This poem features in my recently published (first) volume of poetry.  I write in my

At noon

Quiet or quick off the mark, it’s your draw now, cowboy! At the trough a whinnow mane shakes desert dust. A shutter creaks and midday wanes. Brass badges rust out here. — This is a poem I wrote in mid-2012. It will be one of about a dozen poems in a set I’m compiling entitled “Emily’s Poems

Dante’s Barmaids

  Of nymphs, I write for money; On canvas, there they dance. “Champagne,” they laugh, in corsets corked with bubbles popping out.   — This poem was inspired by a detail from “Inferno,” a painting by contemporary Swedish artist Per-Inge Isheden. “Inferno” is a portrait of the nineteenth-century Swedish playwright, literary luminary and painter August Strindberg (1849 –

If Turtles Listened to Jazz

If you were a turtle lady and you loved a turtle man It would not be odd in turtle-land if you had known the waves four hundred years and he another sixty-one; or he knew the beach for twenty, you the sand for forty-six; you each lost your turtle-hatchlings in the week you turned and

20 Poems That’ll Shine for You

My first volume of poetry is now available for purchase via http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/4110533-shining-in-brightness Enjoy the preview pages, then please share this exciting news on Facebook and Twitter. Here’s the book’s ‘blurb’: “Shining in Brightness” presents twenty poems about loss, love and growing up in quiet suburbia. These poems chronicle a young woman’s journey from 18 to early adulthood.

The hummingbird stands for love

In old Dutch paintings a green-winged hummingbird might stand for love when it’s on the inside of a pane of glass. Hovering outside, it signifies the woman within has been betrayed. How would you know this were it not for the scholars and books? You would have to be Dutch from 1656. — In my notebook,