Publications

My Mother Always Painted in Blue

She always wanted to live by the sea,
to feel herself consumed
by sky and light, exist
only at the wild edges

but she never moved,
remaining land-locked
and dreaming, afraid
that if she ever did

she would find her lost skin,
walk in to the water,
her body disappearing
into blue.

Victoria Bennett

Victoria Bennett is a poet, creative activist, full-time mother and founder of Wild Women Press. Her work focuses on the ways we remember and retell our personal narratives and how these shape us. Her pamphlet, To Start The Year from its Quiet Centre, is due for publication with Indigo Dreams in 2020. She tweets as @VikBeeWyld

Photo credit @sbittinger at http://www.unsplash.com

Beach Huts

April means unlocking, sweeping off spiders
and sand; putting out to air the rug,
stripy beach towels and faded sun-loungers.
Checking the kettle, rinsing out the mugs,
closing the fridge for beer and lemonade.
Dusting down the body-boards, bucket, spade.

When they opened Springtide they found Alice,
still as a waxwork in a garden chair,
dry like blown sand, her dress nibbled by mice.
They’d never thought to search for her in there.
Police believed she’d gone to Birmingham
(judging from some grainy CCTV) –
back to where her own spring tide once ran.
Her rigid fist was locked around the key.

Marc Woodward

Marc Woodward is a musician and poet living in the rural English West Country.
He has been widely published. His collections includes A Fright of Jays (Maquette Press, 2015); and Hide Songs (Green Bottle Press, 2018). A further collection The Tin Lodes written collaboratively with poet Andy Brown is due from Indigo Dreams in 2020.

Marc tweets as @Marcomando

http://www.facebook.com/marcwoodwardartist

http://www.marcwoodwardpoetry.blogspot.com

Photo credit @thejoyoffilm at http://www.unsplash.com

Moon-Pull

The moon will pull the tide out.
Muscular and grey, it lurches
spits and fizzes, licks the beach
tinkles pebbles and glass
hollows out the rattling rocks
sucks the sand from his feet.

The moon pushes the tide in.
He rushes out, legs flail, eyes sting
as he breasts this thing. Returns
salted, humbled for land.
Later, up the hill, he sees
the crinkled silver creature
crawl under a clouded sky.

He understands then.
You cannot know the sea.
The moon does not care.

Pen Kease

Pen Kease holds an MA in Writing from the University of Warwick and her poems have been published widely in magazines, anthologies and websites such as The Interpreter’s House, Algebra of Owls, Prole, The Recusant, Atrium, Here Comes Everyone, Militant Thistles, and The Thimble Literary Magazine.

Photo credit @arizonanthony at http://www.unsplash.com

Waterborne, this changeling

drifts, an inch under brine.
Translucent, just a rippling pink thing.
Soft, not able to drown, and so small,
but with the look and feel
of far more visceral tissue.
An organ sliver, perhaps,
no longer trapped
between microscope slides.
Escaped, to sashay
in gentle harbour waves.
But it’s only a bougainvillea bloom,
cut from life’s papered abundance.
Up there, land-rooted, Kodachrome vines
ramble arches, spill cliffs.
Here, a soaked sample turns morbidly fleshy,
colour thins into grim.
A separated entity
from its dry-alive heyday.
One moment’s death flirts on,
strange as it never was.

Beth McDonough

Beth McDonough’s work connects strongly with place, particularly to the Tay, where she swims year round. Her poetry is in Gutter, Stand, Magma and elsewhere. In Handfast (with Ruth Aylett) she explored experiences of autism, as Aylett examined dementia. McDonough’s solo pamphlet, Lamping for pickled fish, is published by 4Word.

Photo credit @crmtphotography at http://www.unsplash.com