The Poetry Village

Posted

May 25, 2020

Category

earth shadow, Poetry

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Hongri Yuan

Each Rock is A Potala Palace

The sunshine is mellow wine
and there are golden palaces inside the sun.
Where a giant is its master,
he told me that I was his shadow on the earth.

I will still be much greater, like a mountain,
each rock is a Potala Palace.
And the epics I chanted came from billions of years ago,
there are huge number sweet homes beyond the Milky way.

每一块石头都是布达拉宫

阳光是芳醇的酒
而太阳的体内是黄金的王宫
一个巨人是那儿的主人
他告诉我我是他在人间的影子

我还会更加巨大像一座山
每一块石头都是布达拉宫
而我吟唱的史诗来自亿万年前
在银河系之外有巨多甜蜜的家园

Translated by Yuanbing Zhang

Hongri Yuan (b. 1962) is a Chinese mystic poet and philosopher. His poetry has been widely published in the UK, USA, India, New Zealand, Canada and Nigeria. He has authored a number books including Platinum City, The City of Gold, Golden Paradise, Gold Sun and Golden Giant.

About the Translator

Yuanbing Zhang (b. 1974), who is a Chinese poet and translator, works in a Middle School, Yanzhou District , Jining City, Shandong Province, China. He can be contacted through his email – 3112362909@qq.com.

Posted

May 22, 2020

Category

Poetry, Uncategorized

First Kiss – Cara L Mckee

Today we celebrate the launch of the latest collection from Maytree Press, Cara L McKee’s stunning debut, First Kiss.

Heartfelt and passionate, First Kiss invites the reader on a journey of discovery and sexual awakening. Whilst the central theme may be one of coming of age, the collection evolves into a heartbreaking antiphon for independence and survival. A wonderful accessible collection that deserves to be enjoyed again and again and with cover artwork by leading British artist, Annie Ovenden, one to be cherished for years to come.

You can join Cara for an on-line launch of the collection today (Friday) via her Instagram page – search CaraLMcKee. The book is also available from the Maytree shop

I took from the sea

I took from the sea
you, my fisherman-sailor
patterned with koi fish,
needled into human clay
which reddens, washed by water.

I gave you kisses,
needled Xs into skin
to remember flesh,
to mark the spots I miss you,
still kiss you on the water.

I took from the sea
your hot kisses which returned,
washed out by the waves.
Your fish swirl into sea.
Kisses fade, washed in water.

I gave my sailor,
kissed him deep into the sea,
all the coy kisses
needled into white clay bone
fading, gone to the water.

Nick

who wasn’t me though we were born
on the same day, lived in the same house. Nick,
today I saw you on screen. You were
alive, so alive that I Googled you.
Did you know online our birthday’s wrong?
Did you let loose that year with a shrug?
Did you lie? Flutter your lashes
make yourself pretty? Did you do that for them?
You did that for me once. We might have been
joking about being carved from the same clay
until that morning. You came early,
bringing me your fears of all you’d given
in the night – your stories, hardly set, untold.
We kissed them right again, remade you as
the man you claimed to be, a dazzle
in our small world as we climbed together
shifting our horizons. As the dew soaked us
you pulled your stories straight. That was all, and
much later, I did not feel you go, which
was proof really, that all our similarities
didn’t make us the same. You are done, Nick.
I am told death was not your doing, yet
I blame you. It’s your turn to prove me wrong.

Posted

May 21, 2020

Category

earth shadow, Poetry

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Amlanjyoti Goswami

Shapeshifting

The old ones have left
And the young ones hide behind shadow

We wait, only so long as patience demands
And slowly make our way

Into the woods. There lies danger and further on,
The disappearance of self

Into something sublime, resembling a wet sun
Rain that clings to emptiness

Time that longs for no rainbow
Streams that flow to no clock.

But before we go in, we pause
We know we won’t come back

The same way we went
We would change our stripes

And we ask ourselves, one more time
To no answer

If we are ready this time, to become lion and camel and buffalo
And leave our earthly robes behind.

Amlanjyoti Goswami’s poetry has been published around the world, in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Hong Kong, the UK, USA, South Africa, Kenya and Germany, and in the anthologies, 40 under 40: An Anthology of Post Globalisation Poetry (Poetrywala), A Change of Climate (Manchester Metropolitan University, Environmental Justice Foundation and the University of Edinburgh) and the Sahitya Akademi anthology of Modern English Poetry. His recent collection of poems, River Wedding, has just been published by Poetrywala and has been widely reviewed. His poems have also appeared on street walls of Christchurch, exhibitions in Johannesburg and buses in Philadelphia. He has read in various places, including in New York, Delhi and Boston. He grew up in Guwahati, Assam and lives in Delhi.

Posted

May 18, 2020

Category

earth shadow, Poetry

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Aziz Dixon

Cofiwch Dryweryn
(Remember Tryweryn!)There are places in Wales
I do not go, do not watch
for bubbles to surface
from the nation’s soul,

do not sit in this bright curlew’d field
nor look for Hedd Wyn
wording peace in the train he took
to the front, single track

that shows its bones in drought,
skeleton in a drained desert,
graves smothered in concrete guilt
while the waters parted.

I do not look behind the Wild Wales
Adventure Centre for Ceridwen’s
salmon-otter sparrow-hawk
corn-hen to shape-shift

fifty-six years of water. Do not
turn off the taps in Liverpool,
desalinate the Mersey,
apologise, do not

forget this fulcrum of the hen iaith,
lily white on dragon red
on the road to Llanrhystud.
Cofiwch Dryweryn!

After RS Thomas, Reservoirs
Hen iaiath: old language, ie Welsh

Aziz Dixon draws on Pennine and Welsh landscapes and his sufi experience. His work featured in Best of Bolton, November 2017 and Burnley Creative, September 2019. His first pamphlet is forthcoming with Maytree Press.

Posted

May 14, 2020

Category

earth shadow, Poetry

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Dave Martin

Asparagus Season

Spear heads thrust through seaweed shield wall,
like the sarissas of a Greek phalanx,
only for my blade to scythe down them all.
From St George’s Day the slaughter will last,
feasting until summer solstice has passed.
Then a truce is agreed, spears grow to fronds.
Are my stakes around you support or bonds?

Wild new enemies sail in on the wing,
beetles deadly than the hoplites of Ajax.
Black helms, yellow shields, it’s death they bring.
They would strip you, deprive you of light,
rob me of culinary delight.
Seeming foe yet your friend I watch them come;
snuff out their lives between finger and thumb.

And on the day when the old year is dead,
I will lay fresh tribute upon your bed.

Dave Martin’s poems have been published in South poetry magazine, the New European Newspaper and in the match day programmes of Torquay United FC. He lives in Dorset and writes poetry and history.

Posted

May 11, 2020

Category

Poetry

Penny Sharman

Tribe

We live between walls filled with wattle and daub. If you listen slowly
you can hear time run amongst the bricks. We do our daily habits in rooms;
we wash our faces and comb hair. Everyday we eat breakfast and lock
the front door when we leave. With each inhalation we breathe in what
we imagine to be clean air, even on top of a mountain or on the streets
of Mumbai, we kid ourselves, believe we are lucky. It’s enough to realise
we are awake in this dream of cash in our pockets and bread on the
table. It’s enough to open our eyes and see a blue sky and cumulonimbus
white-stuff. Some bird of paradise might tell us it will be okay, that the lost
tribes will wander no more, that shantytowns, displaced people camps,
sleepers on the streets, humanitarian good will, will not be normal
anymore. We live in a world of singularities, detached from the costume
of tribe, a rainbow of cloth and dance, ritual of sweet grass and drum,
bare feet on the soil. We live in dreams of more is more and less is
superficial. It’s enough to feel a mattress under a body, it’s enough to hold
out a hand, feel someone’s palm. It’s enough to gaze into a lovers eyes,
it’s enough to smile. Did I ever know my tribe of healers, witches, shamans,
herb-makers, tree-talkers, painters of caves, do I ever think of them now?

Penny is a qualified Complimentary Therapist with over 20 years experience. She is also a counselor, a healer and an awesome cook! Penny is a photographer and artist, but her focus for over 15 years has been writing poetry. Penny has an MA for Creative writing from Edge Hill University. She has had over 100 poems published in magazines such as The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Pipework, Strix, The North, Ink Sweat & Tears and Beautiful Dragons Anthologies.

Penny’s pamphlet Fair Ground 2019 published by Yaffle Press and her first Collection Swim With Me In Deep Water 2019 published by Cerasus Poetry are available to buy from her website: pennysharman.co.uk

Penny’s second collection is to be published in 2020/2021 by Knives Forks & Spoons Press.

Posted

May 7, 2020

Category

Uncategorized

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2 Responses

Bill Cotter

Night

Like stale water over charcoal,
The smell of smoke pools, eddies
And gullies, robbed of all their secrets,
Lie, helpless beneath the single,
Judgemental eye of the moon.
Cold as sleeper spikes,
Stars bury themselves in the iron sky.
Trunks, as if to avoid detection,
Cling on to the darkness.
Stripped banksia branches point accusingly upwards.
Grey as spoiled snow,
The forest’s orchestra pit lies deserted.
The choristers and musicians have all gone

And of the audience,
Only I remain.

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