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Prompt: Rhythm — Take 2 Size: 13 cm x 13 cm #cdccreativechallenge25 |
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Prompt: Rhythm — Take 1 #cdccreativechallenge25 |
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Prompt: Rhythm — Take 2 Size: 13 cm x 13 cm #cdccreativechallenge25 |
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Prompt: Rhythm — Take 1 #cdccreativechallenge25 |
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Poet and co-MC Maggie Ball launches 100 Poets |
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Poet Sarah St Vincent Welch launches Bitumen Psalms (Kolkata/Calcutta style). Photo: Dylan Jones |
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Poet and singer/songwriter Clark Gormley (left) has a moment with co-MC Richard James Allen |
So it was a raging success! A ton of Flying Islands poets, friends and supporters at The Shop Gallery in Glebe, January 26, all celebrating this year’s seven new Pocket Poetry titles, alongside Flying Islands’ first anthology 100 Poets!
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Phyllis Perlstone reads her poem published in 100 Poets |
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At The Shop Gallery: Floodplains exhibition by Brian Purcell; Pocket Poetry sales on the pavement |
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Poet and exhibiting artist Brian Purcell — also co-editor of 100 Poets |
Pleased to be reading with Irish-Australian poets Moya Pacey and Rosa O'Kane at the Canberra Irish Club on Saturday. We are celebrating St Brigid patron saint for poetry, learning, healing, protection, blacksmithing, livestock, and dairy production. Also Celtic Goddess for the same.
There's a great read at Image — 'Brigid: The original female trailblazer' — where you will learn that Brigid liberated women from slave and bondswomen roles, had healing powers, was a master brewer of ale and as Abbess managed 15000 nuns. Ireland only recently gave her a public holiday of her own putting her finally on the same level as St Patrick!
Anyway come along on Saturday at 1.00 pm — there'll be poetry, singing, dancing and stew! And I'll show you my new book Bitumen Psalms.
When you look out the kitchen window and see a distinctive golden glow to everything, that you can't quite describe and find yourself thinking it's the exact gold — pink-gold/brassy gold/amberish gold/slightly blood tainted gold as — and take your own word for it and dash outside and sure enough! The neighbouring land is a rainbow spot. This is possibly the longest bow I've seen stretching from neighbour on the left to neighbour on the right, some distance. I haven't heard who got the pot of gold.
(Speaking of gold, there is bound to be a tube of paint with just the right name ... ) More views with and without in the changing light. And now for some haiku — I hope.
Delighted to be included in the latest Eat the Storms podcast edited by Dublin’s Damien Donnelly, tomorrow 5 pm Irish time (2 am Australian EST). Of course, as a podcast it can be accessed any time after on most platforms. Also featured: Roisin Smith, Simon Maddrell, Roger Waldron, Isabela Basombria Hoban. Isabella’s book Rain Love Death Poets will have its Irish launch at the Ennistymon Book Town Festival Saturday August 26 - see you there Isabela.
The fairies oblige us but only up to a point ... We collect presents on the way. Ruby thinks my one sycamore (?) leaf and two blackberries is a bit sad compared to her colourful selection of meadow flowers and leaves.
It’s a ten minute walk but as the forest is in full summery glamour it’s maybe a half hour or more before we find what we’re looking for. Up this track then that track. Brambles, leafy carpets, low young limbs, a bounding squirrel. Walk along that outer edge of the forest. Find another track from another direction. Peer into the forest for the distinctive shape, peer in for the surrounding pole markers. Google Maps telling us we are one minute away every time we check. Aroona — giftless (hands and head full of clues and phone maps) — eventually picks a lime green leaf. Bingo (the fairies are happy). Before us, the Belvoir Oak! Part of Ireland’s living history. All the more magnificent for its ageing. (500 years.) The front half of its eight metre girth broken away, the remaining half carved and etched, cloaked with lichen, ivy and ferns — AND — I’ve just read — a rare fungus. It’s thick foliage surprises me — I thought it was mostly beyond that. There are new acorns.
Thank you fairies — but you did it again. Sent us in the wrong direction afterwards, again — tampered with Google Maps, again — teased us with incorrect advice from walkers, again. Brought us out at the lock gates this time, yet another half hour from the entrance we used. At last, sound advice from extremely fit extremely sweaty forest runners. (The trainer can run the forest in the dark!) We are confident. Still somehow go slightly off course. At least it’s a main road this time. Wth a hotel. Coffee, chips … taxi to our car …
Our first pilgrimage to the Belvoir Oak — it only took three attempts to find the actual tree — was in January 2022, mid-winter. I’ll see if I can find that post — also our first encounter with the fairies!
Maybe the fairies just wanted us to have the extra scenic views?
I said I’m fine but next time I see a log I’m sittin for a bit — and even better — a tree stump appeared! With wood creature.
Links that may be of interest:
Belvoir Oak nominated for Tree of the Year —
https://www.itv.com/news/utv/2023-08-15/belfast-tree-nominated-for-tree-of-the-year
Woodland Trust —
https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/british-trees/tree-of-the-year/