Featuring the poet Claire Dyer & artist Charles Burns
Issue 4 – October 2012 – Poetry & Art – ISSN 2048-0709
Issue No.4 – October 2012 Publisher
IMPpress, Downstream, 55 Broadtown, Wiltshire, England, SN4 7RG • • • • • • • •
website Editor Guest Poet-editor Proofing Guest Artist-editor R&D + Design Delivery Printer
www.IMPpress.co.uk John Richardson Claire Dyer Friends Charles Burns the editor Issuu Magcloud
Acknowledgements
The Editor gratefully acknowledges the help, support and encouragement of his BlueGate Poets friends and to the editor of the now defunct Ouroborus review which proved an inspiration for this e-zine. Donations
Your gifts of ones, tens or hundreds, in whatever currency, would be wonderful! Subscriptions
There are no paid subscriptions to the IMPress, it is a free online e-zine available from the website. You are also able to download the free digital distribution copy for off-line reading. If you require a printed copy this may be obtained for a small fee via our printers, direct from their website. Pamphlets & books
We also publish poetry pamphlets and books. Visit our website for further information. Contributions
Your poems and art are always welcome, via email, please see our website for submission details. Cover art
Hugh Blue and Grey and featured artwork
all courtesy of Charles Burns Copyright
© retained by the editor, the contributing poets and artists.
Editorial Welcome to the fourth edition of the IMPpress. In this edition I am pleased to feature the work of: •
Claire Dyer, a poet from Reading and
•
Charles Burns the Reading based artist
You will see that Claire and Charles have been both diligent in helping me with the selection and pairing of poems and artwork for this issue and, in addition, have been very generous in providing examples of their work. Again for this issue I asked the poets to make recordings of their work, something I started in the previous issue. Regrettably Issuu is still unable to publish an e-zine with multiple audio and video links, however you will find the recordings on the website. To indicate that a poem has a recording the contents list has an A or V beside the page number. I’d encourage you to the download digital version of the issue and would very much appreciate your feedback via the comments page on the website. As ever, enjoy! John Richardson Editor
Contents Poet
Artist
Eleanor Leonne Bennett Janice Booth Pei Lim Rachael Clyne Featured poet - Claire Dyer Charles Burns Stephen Mead
Jane Milner-Barry Stephen Mead
Charles Burns Mitch Grabois Charles Burns Charles Burns Michael Lee Johnson Charles Burns David King Charles Burns Anna-May Laughter Charles Burns James McLaughlin Mo Needham Charles Burns Rehan Qayoom David Riley John Duncan Fergusson Walter Ruhlmann Charles Burns
Page 6 7 8A 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 A V 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 A 28 29
30 A 31 A
Poem
& Artwork
Photograph no.6 Open to Interpretation Woman with head in the clouds Terminal Conversation Chalice Hill Fiction Sarah on a Green Cloth The Font Baptismal Mary ‘n stairs merge Cuffs Wall angels Attic bedroom Things of the moment 31yr old dad with baby farm sky merge Flying with dragons The poet and the artist discuss words Studio with Sarah Exhibition Sister Antonia in Orange Kneels Planet Becky on Pink Cloth Picture Me Old – v2 Hugh in Blue and Grey Riddle Witness Tapering Days David no.22 Turning Turtle John no. 15 McDonald’s C Moon I want you to eat me Gloria no.6 A Poem of Maturity In the Sunlight In the Sunlight, 1907 (with the kind permission of Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections)
With Love from Euphor Bath Becky no.5
Contents Poet
Artist
Page 32 A
Jill Sharp Beverley Grieg Fiona Sinclair Eleanor Leonne Bennett Christine Tipper Martin King Clinton van Inman Wikimedia Commons Library Anthony Ward Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Brief biographies
Poem Pumpkin Pi
Within Pepo I-Vi
33
The Room
34 35
New Girl Red Furrows
36 37 38 39
& Artwork
Photograph no.8 Red Furrows Lightness Comet Lovejoy crossing the Milky Way Sylvia i-? Photograph no.3
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Photograph no. 6 – Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Janice Booth
Open to interpretation dusk turn on the first light and see how it blots out the universe space diminishes what reflects back in the glass closes in on itself a moon face enigmatic night in sleep we walk in the long shadows of childhood dreams drifting in on lunar tides not remembering birth emerging the deep anesthesia of long purple nights a disorderedly tangle of hot sheets the unmapped horizontal landing into life daybreak we are fragments refracting the whole as the hemispheres spin the moon fades awakening to the first blush a tree stroked with sun dancing into orbit in a soft
Woman with head in the clouds – Pei Lim
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Rachael Clyne
Terminal Conversation What can we talk about when events in the rest of the house no longer hold meaning when tomorrow really is a singular possibility and the outside world or any future stops at this room? What can I say when everything I mention points to your departure? Tending your body bathing in silence together: the only conversation left.
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Chalice Hill – Rachael Clyne
Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Fiction Dust dances inside her eyes and its glisten reminds her of fish. Her neck’s hot; she’s sweating into her hair. Breasts stretched flat, she thinks how sunlight can be carried sideways on the wind, hears the ocean’s muscle-flex, remembers a schoolroom, fields of high grass, the first press of lips, and the scratch in her bones is like running. She doesn’t move, but her belly is stinging for childbirth, her hips for fiction. Her fingers jitter, pull a thread of green cloth. She rolls it, rolls it until it feels larger than it is. There’s a hum between her legs, the noise of cars and birdsong; the room’s warmth is the burn of his kiss on her face. Somewhere the man she married is looking out a window, his shoulders bent forward as if listening. She must buy milk on her way home.
Sarah on Green Cloth – Charles Burns
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Featured poet – Claire Dyer
The font She died that soft November and we found it in a cupboard in the hall between a worn leather briefcase and a box of books. Surprisingly small, its wood was warm and, in the dusted quiet, you said, Hush, it’s like there’s someone somewhere praying. Its brass bowl had greened, but the plaque spelt out my great-grandfather’s name and, in my head, the church, its nave, the colours of its light and this man from a photograph, his coal-black, stranger’s eyes. Both here and there, the air was soundless, only the words they chose were open-mouthed and howling: He did part of his duty. No one has ever said about the absence of the rest.
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Baptismal Mary ‘n stairs merge – images from Our Spirit Life – Stephen Mead
Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Cuffs And in the crackling heat my grandmother is hanging out the wash, watched by his marigolds, the privet, me. And she is held small in this vertical air, safe in the absence of war. She is deft, seamless with his shirts, the snackle of them, their blind of white. She stops to hold a cuff, bring it to her lips, smile her turquoise eyes at something he must once have said.
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Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Wall angels That morning, the last of the holiday that winter she waited for him to wake. And through a gap in the curtains the sun sent an aurora the colour of saffron to dance on the wall of their room. The shadows of bare branches were as wings that sang to her in the rhythm of his sleep and as she watched the music came, and shapes like angels. And she mourned them as they moved towards the door, put out a hand to stop them in the waltzing air but, by the time he woke, the sun had slipped that fraction; her wall angels, their gold blessing, had moved on.
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Attic bedroom – Jane Milner-Barry
Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Things of moment Snowdonia, 2012
I will wash each word with water from this mountain; clear and cold, it will sound of tambourines. And I will lay each word like a stone amongst this gorse, this haphazardness of slate and wait for the sun to dry them to a shine. And they will steam and the steam will rise, laced with beads heavy with the taste of mercury, what I cannot say held fierce inside. And these beads will lodge small and precious in the feathers of these birds to cross the deep, this blue of oceans, land quiet where you stand and speak these things of moment; I love you. I’m sorry. I do.
31yr old dad with baby farm sky merge – images from Our Spirit Life – Stephen Mead
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Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Flying with dragons That night in my dream there were dragons. A zinc sun smote the wild grasses; the air was purple, filled with pollen and dust and, at the end of land above a shifting sea that breathed spume, breathed blue, I heard them come: footsteps like heartbeats; they ran in formation behind me – a squadron of heat, flame and bright burning eyes. They lifted, a skein; were green and steel, each wing-beat was language, myth, pause and repeat. I clamoured to catch one, feel his neck-flex between my hot thighs; ride him out hard to the thin curve of the earth. But they flew fast, flew high; left me empty of sky, left me nothing but red and the heft of their hearts beating huge in the dark of their chests.
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Featured poet – Claire Dyer
The poet and artist discuss words His studio’s spent as theatres are after-the-show and a plane is scorching the sky into silence. The model’s left her wrap on the chair, it’s sloughed like skin, shines its waterfall shine and they’re being watched by paper, the pierce-eyes of a cat. There’s a marble-run of words inside her mouth; a thousand pages of them that fizz with heat. I have colours instead, he says, and the line from foot to hip; an exact articulation, my signature almost. Her tongue swells, presses against her teeth, she has no idea what to say.
Studio with Sarah – Charles Burns
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Featured poet – Claire Dyer
Exhibition In the white room the walls are patient. The woodblock floor has, deep down, some remnant of cigarette smoke and how he imagines the Thirties to have been. As a van stops on double-yellows outside the door and men carry his pictures in, he remembers his mother telling him once that it’s unlucky to tread on butterflies. He holds his breath as he tries to think if he ever has, wishes hard he hadn’t had the coffee that’s swilling now in his throat tasting somehow brackish, like water from the sea. His pictures rest against the skirting; the order of them like poetry perhaps, how he’s heard books of them should bear scrutiny, have some inbuilt synchronicity, let the reader see the inner workings of the heart. Like this, he thinks as he watches men hang his art in the patient room with its white walls and waits for the public to come, curious to read the story he’s written them, see the cracks and flaws he’s painted over, painted in.
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Mitch Grabios
Sister My brother pushes me through set after grueling set of crunches He has a six-pack, he should be an underwear model He runs with celebrities Me, I’m surrounded by brown recluse egg sacs and so many mixed emotions Antonia in Orange – Charles Burns
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Mitch Grabois
Kneels An Arab mother kneels before her son as she dresses him as a suicide bomber for Halloween A thousand joules of energy course through my leg bones and make dancing unnecessary and obsolete
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Mitch Grabois
Planet This woman makes me want to call an escort service or put on a silk shirt emblazoned with dragons and fly to a planet where the sun is purple and the atmosphere is methamphetamine
Becky on Pink Cloth – Charles Burns
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Michael Lee Johnson
Picture Me Old – v2 Picture me in an old oak frame with old wretched, wrinkled hands. See me as an aged sugar maple tree dropping small dual-wing shaped seeds, swirling to the ground, for the very last time− end of season, and splotched brown. No family, no real friends, no important lovers. I sit in the darkness naked with my empty begging bowl. I concentrate with Alzheimer's on a bright new beginning, And a humbled new earth, a cycle of thought I can’t quite find. I burn out the devil in the depleted mental night; I pop crispy as a critter in bright desert sun, and pass on. Picture me.
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Hugh in Blue and Grey – Charles Burns
David King
Riddle Hidden in the stream and in the spray of flowers that overhangs the stream, amongst dancing midge and mayfly, in continual daisies, in constant grass, woven by night snow, in each flake and in each gap between each flake, hidden, deep inside the faithful grain of oak and ash, in every molecule of air, each atom, in sifted sand, each lick of flame, between the crash and suck of drooling waves, beneath the waiting eye, curled talon of the hawk, hidden, even in the wet dereliction of autumn rain.
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David King
Witness I was the first to see the inside of this tangerine, a secret I now secure for all time with the help of a carrier bag in the bucket we keep under the sink. Even so, I may still hint to a stranger in a shop queue or at a shared table in a cafÊ that I possess a special knowledge‌by mentioning I once witnessed the effect of light falling on Morocco.
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David King
Tapering days We grow out of our lives as if they were old clothes, except we shrink, made small by distance or remembrance because it is our tapering days that walk away from us. Easy to sense life vibrates beautiful but out of reach, a humming bird in a cocoa tin, easy to flit through our loose change years lost in the assembled darkness’s, bats in a hotel wardrobe, hiding from the light to crack the armour of our seed, our unploughed seed. David no.22 – Charles Burns
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Anna-May Laugher
Turning Turtle Like the men in country songs this John is overwhelmed. His woman left no note, took the car, even his clothes. What can he do but hex himself, utter a disappearing spell. Deep breath and the changes begin his vertebrae condense to form a carapace. Skin toughens, then the leathering from pink to yellow-brown. No words or gentleness left in him as arms turn leggy and mouth turns beak. Ridges appear from the fusion of teeth. Cold, languid, learning his new reptile blood he shudders at the loss of a chamber in his heart. A gasp as belly muscles harden, become plastron. Now he can retire, ease into mud’s viscous welcome. Shame he made the hex so strong; without his lips the words can never be undone.
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John no.15 – Charles Burns
James McLaughlin
McDonald’s No one looks happy ordering food. ‘Can I have a happy meal’. I’ve got the full set of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Let’s climb into a yellow spaceship. Ronald smiles. Prepare for blast-off. Are two hundred and fifty napkins enough! No one looks happy eating food. A finger glistens in the air like a golden sword and disappears to be sucked. ‘Do you have the Daily Mail dear.’ Golden liquid oozes along pulmonary canals and drips like dollar coins into an tightening aorta. Sodium sugar jags sparks to orgasm along neurons and axons. A germ scanner glows pink over the ketchup dispenser. A frozen red chip falls from the sports pages.
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James McLaughlin
C moon The electric Costa Coffee neon sign said £3.60 for an all-day breakfast. A good deal I thought. One day I might have one. A C moon hung in the sky with two silver tears falling into the crag. A paramedic ambulance sat below waiting for another Scot to have a heart attack. The song c moon by Paul McCartney kept revolving in the air. An orangeybluegreen glow outlined the hills. Perhaps Sir Paul is not a lightweight as I once thought he was. Gypsy fires winked in the darkness. One of the ambulance headlights wasn’t working. I was a wonderful evening. It was all there: a moon, an imagination and a four by four zebra defibrillator waiting to pounce..
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Mo Needham
I Want You To Eat Me Cup your hands, and grip me firmly. Now feel my skin, cool and damp after the cold shower. Look at the thin rivulets of water sidestepping with gravity. Open your mouth wide. Bare your teeth and touch my waxy, blushed body with your tongue. Close your eyes and anticipate the delights to come. Enjoy the warmth as your mouth begins to water. Now, place your teeth hard against me. Don’t be afraid to bruise me as, in turn, each tooth tears through my skin. Bight hard and deep, until your jaws meet. Wrench and twist at the same time. Pull me apart and listen as you do, the tearing sound will be edible too. Feel the zest of my juices splatter upon your palate. Keep your eyes closed and do not look at my wound, which will be cut to the core. Instead, slowly, savour my astringent juices. Swallow, my lovely, chew and swallow my sweet pulp. Now sleep winter girl, then lie in your glass coffin, for they will think you dead. Gloria no.6 – Charles Burns
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Rehan Qayoom
A Poem of Maturity Sobbing like a child he insisted That they bury him alive with his dead wife The lads nudged and winked At each other The elderly said 'He has gone mad' And the priests had a hard time dragging him back home! Routinely he would go to Mewashah after work Carrying flowers and incense candles Then he would go every Thursday Then every ninth day Then on the 2 Eids, and then every Shab-barat Then annually Till one day he alighted from the number 60 bus Into the scorching sun And his eyes settled upon a tree As he remembered The new typist who’d arrived at the office that day He laughed Realising that the world Does not consist of one person alone
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David Riley
In the Sunlight Even if I touched the paint, were allowed to, so much has escaped from the day you mixed her face from greens and red and secrecy, even down to her name. So much is lost; I don’t suppose it matters except to an antiquarian’s turn of mind - but I hanker to know what she said to you, you to her, where you found each other, made a deal that caught an age, a smile a disguise. Was she cheap? Pure? Haberdasher or chanteuse? Did she see you in some café, know of you tangentially? You, exploring furrows of light, colour twisting doing jobs it never knew it could. She, the mystery, the muse, the canvas, used to being used? Fleeting. Coins clinked. The bargain impenetrably done.
In the Sunlight, 1907 – John Duncan Fergusson by kind permission of Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections
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Walter Ruhlmann
With Love from Euphor On the tiled floor, I saw strange forms appearing. The head of Spartacus or that, more exciting, more modern also, of Actarus. Princes whether they come from Thrace or Euphor always haunted my frozen mornings, my capsized nights. Later - much later it is by their laughter that I was started the most. The princes always had an open throat and amazed eyes in bed. I saw their wings growing at the same rate as their sexes who were spread out around me everywhere in me on me in my eyes and the clouds. I flew away too far from this nest to join in dream in the bathroom unreal colorings, small encrusted gravels, in the shape of happy princes, in the shape of dark princes.
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Bath
Walter Ruhlmann
She wanted to lie down next to me. She did. I said she ought to know there were no chances; she took hers. I remember this silent night in my flat up there up the Plantation Shop Bath Nineteen Ninety-six Fanny was her name she once met the Native and shared his wrath against the wall of uncertainties that went up between us. Andy and Paul were cutting plants, tidying the shop, clearing things, counting money. When she went downstairs she helped herself with a cup of coffee the smell of it filled up the kitchen.
I let her go I had to she had to go and there were no other ways. The Native would come back shortly after. He had been out all night. Staring at the sky, talking to the moon, to the stars, his fingers touching the darkest patch of the ethereal net up there. He entered the room I was still lying on my bed. He lied next to me. The wine vapours still lingered in his hair, on his clothes, on his pale skin. I touched his back. He said I ought to know there were no chances; I got up and went to work.
Becky no.5 – Charles Burns
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Jill Sharp
Pumpkin Pi make your mark not from the tip of a brush dipped but with fingers and hands your touch and imprint is the matter fruit crushed – the faces lanterns coach pulled by mice now a world from space seas volcanoes – a world in a grain The point is to go outside. the lines – not be afraid to Go Against the grain when the point Is the going when you’re going outside and might be Some Time
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Within Pepo I – VI – Beverley Greig
Fiona Sinclair
The Room In the waiting area, after Hello, silence; we are tongue tied by the house rule never to trespass on the personal, outside. At 11, the psychotherapist shuts the door on: cheery smiles donned with coats for the chatty cashier at the co-op, an animated I’m fine to family and friends who roll their eyes at depression’s monotone . ‘’ How is everyone this week?’’ We stare at the carpet, examine our nails…. reluctant to appear too greedy; until Amy’s eyes begin to drip tears after years of schizophrenic husband attaching himself to her like a tag as she cleans , shops, pees… vomiting has become her guilty pleasure. Liz, relives tending daughter’s bruises, her ‘Leave him’ parried with ‘Don’t start mum’; striking the woman with the same paraplegic helplessness as her six year old self unable to get ‘father to stop.’ ‘Room’ etiquette means we listen in trappist silence to each other’s Alan Bennett monologues, then offer only palliative words , understanding that some lives are incurable. 12.30 the psychotherapist’s eyes flick to the wall clock. We scatter with cheerful ‘Goodbyes’ and ‘See you next week’ like casual acquaintance from a Pilates class.
Photograph no. 7 – Eleanor Leonne Bennett
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Fiona Sinclair
New girl Our small talk uncovers similar literary taste, occupation and post code, then I am ambushed by ‘Do you have children?’ ‘No’ snaps the subject closed. I see the women’s eyes quicken with questions, ‘barren, miscarriage ’ or the female heresy ‘Doesn’t want kids’. Impossible to explain: my twenties spent mothering mother; since then a white rabbit pace of driving lessons, A’ levels… Now 50 , in my mind I have a decade in hand, so am ready to follow the fashion of forty something celebrity mums; if it wasn’t for my job’ s worth body.
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Christine Tipper
Red
Furrows
In landlocked Nepal a sea of red ebbs and flows as tides of shrill scarlets, circumspect crimsons, voluminous vermilions swirl.
Waves of furrows sprawl across steep slopes of the Himalayan foothills. An ox pulls a plough - a snatched image from another time? No, from this place trapped in the past.
In landlocked Nepal a sea of red rubescence, incarnadine flames flutter as folds of pashminas and saris settle on plastic chairs. In landlocked Nepal a sea of red fabrics brushed with gold spark flashes under the winter sun, turning framed faces amber.
In Nepal, the second poorest country on Earth, red clad women die before men. Harsh lives dig deep furrows on worn amber faces trapped in the past.
In landlocked Nepal a sea of red ruby beauty spots, rare ones bejeweled, squat between jet black eyes, below furrowed brows.
In the brick-strewn playground fuchsia furrows of school children chant loyalty to their homeland with honeyed hands on ruby hearts, trapped in the past.
In landlocked Nepal a sea of red wed women. Sanguine furrows ploughed from nuptial knots signify sustenance, but true richness - is a son.
Educated girls will staunch the flow of bloody nuptial knots, ideas kaleidoscope, spark new realities that spare their brows the furrows trapped in the past.
Red Furrows - Martin King
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Clinton Van Inman
Lightless Each year the light is less. We can barely see it now, The faint necklace of The Milky Way. The old ones were wrong, You know with their waxed fingers Pointing up like abandoned adobe. Yet you know better in your cubical gardens And half moth-eaten moons, You have arrived in Handcuffs.
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Comet Lovejoy crossing the Milky Way Galaxy – Wikimedia Commons Library
Clinton Van Inman
Sylvia I hear they have placed blue plaque So tourists can find you say this is the spot killed yourself. modern Sappho Like a comet to take your place the darkest regions of empty space that few can keep to know you
a pretty high above your flat and where you Lucky girl, you to take the quantum leap among with a brilliance and even less the mind where no dull planet can perturb as fallen flowers have no faces.
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Anthony Ward
i-? Little Charlie had a dream. He dreamt that he was runningthe world beneath his feet like an elephant on a ball he ran and ran until the world was so small he thought he would lift it above his head (bright spark that he was), but as he crouched to pick it up, he began to question...
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Photograph no. 3 – Eleanor Leonne Bennett
Brief biographies
Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16 year old internationally award winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, The Woodland trust and Postal Heritage. Her photography has been published in the Telegraph , The Guardian, BBC News Website and on the cover of books and magazines in the United states and Canada. Her art is globally exhibited , having shown work in London, Paris, Indonesia, Los Angeles, Florida, Washington, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Canada, Spain, Germany, Japan, Australia and The Environmental Photographer of the year Exhibition (2011) amongst many other locations. She was also the only person from the UK to have her work displayed in the National Geographic and Airbus run See The Bigger Picture global exhibition tour with the United Nations International Year Of Biodiversity 2010. Here website is:
www.eleanorleonnebennett.zenfolio.com
Janice Booth grew up in East Anglia and found herself as a writer drawn back into the
Norfolk landscape in order to keep defining something of herself and how much a birthplace determines destiny.
Charles Burns is a member of Caversham Artists. On the website he says: “My current
work is with a series of small studies in oil. I’ve always felt a natural affinity with oil paint, the physical smell and consistency of it seems somehow comforting and familiar, yet this is the first time since leaving art college in the 1980’s that I’ve found a way of working with it which suits my intentions. These are also some of the smallest paintings I’ve ever done, and I find myself enjoying the unexpected intimacy that this scale brings, luring the viewer into a kind of one-on-one communication which is both close-up and personal.” His website can be found at: www.charlesburns.co.uk
Rachael Clyne
lives in Glastonbury, where she works as a psychotherapist. She has written and performed poetry for many years, having been a professional actor in her youth. She is involved with groups in Bath Wells and Glastonbury. Her poetry collection; She Who Walks With Stones and Sings (PSAvalon) is available on Amazon.
Claire Dyer has been published in many magazines and
anthologies and her first full collection is forthcoming next year. She is Chairperson of Reading Writers and gives solo and group poetry readings at locations around the UK. She is currently undertaking an MA in Poetry at Royal Holloway and her debut novel is due for publication by Quercus in 2013. Claire works part-time for a Human Resources research forum in London and, as their former Clerk, is a Liveryman of The Worshipful Company of Management Consultants and a Freeman of the City of London. She lives just outside Reading. Her website is: www.clairedyeronlyconnect.co.uk
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Brief biographies Mitchell Grabois’ poetry and short fiction has appeared in nearly seventy
literary magazines, most recently The Examined Life, Memoir Journal, Marco Polo Arts Mag, and Commonline Journal, all published this Spring and Summer. His novel, Two-Headed Dog was published in April by Dirt and is available for Kindle, Nook, all other e-readers and for download to your PC.
Beverley Grieg lives and works in Swindon, Wiltshire. She graduated with a BA (Hons) in Fine Art (Drawing for Fine Art Practice) from Bath University in 2011. Selected the same year for the Cork Street Open Exhibition, London she takes part in local art initiatives including Swindon Open Studios, the Swindon Film Festival, the Swindon Literature Festival and other themed exhibitions hosted by Artsite Ltd., Swindon. Beverley participates in open calls nationally. In 2012, had work selected for the Grant Bradley Gallery Snapshot and New Visions II Exhibitions, Bristol, The 91st Annual United Artists Open Exhibition, London, The Fringe Arts Bath Open Exhibition, Bath and The September Fest, The Vibe Gallery, London. Here website is: www.beverleygreig.com
Michael Lee Johnson is a poet, freelance writer and small business owner of custom
imprinted promotional products and apparel. He is heavily influenced by: Carl Sandburg, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen, and Allen Ginsberg. His new poetry chapbook with pictures, titled From Which Place the Morning Rises, and his new photo version of The Lost American: from Exile to Freedom are available from Lulu. Michael has been published in over 25 countries. He is also editor/publisher of five poetry sites, all open for submission, which can be found at his website: poetryman.mysite.com
David King lives in Salisbury and began to write poetry 6 years ago while studying creative writing at Winchester University. He has been most influenced by Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and Billy Collins. He aims to offer work that is accessible but intriguing.
Martin King is a Swindon based artist and member of Artsite Ltd
Anna-May Laugher was born 1959, she lives with her partner, two cats and four gerbils and a (yet to be determined) number of goldfish. She is a prize winning poet published in several magazines and a student at the Poetry School in London. She writes full time; mostly using paintings or sculpture as a starting point. Currently she is working on a collection written entirely in response to one of Paula Rego's works. The painting is situated in the Sainsbury Wing's National Dining Room at the National Gallery. It is called Crivelli's Garden.
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Brief biographies Pei Lim
was born in Penang, Malaysia and moved to Auckland, New Zealand in 1990. She is currently based in Swindon, England and lives in a world with many rules and regulations. Through art, she is free to explore with uncensored emotional ties and with a level of passion ordinarily too reserved to reveal. She is a self taught artist, her style tends to evolve with the influences she experiences, either through visual art, music, literature, or through intuition. Her attraction to the unexplained and mysterious has been with her since childhood. As a child growing up in South East Asia, her subconscious was steeped in a culture of folklores concerning the supernatural and the spiritual. This terrain has become a rich source of inspiration and these esoteric concepts are visible in much of her work. The female figure within her paintings is the main storyteller, it’s where she develops and communicates how she perceives the world.
James McLaughlin is from Dumbarton in Scotland, a graduate of University of Glasgow 2003 English and History MA. He has published 3 books of poetry to date and one on the way. You can find his blog at: jamesmclaughlinpoetry.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/navheaderformatnavheader-ditch-poetry.html
A resident of NY, Stephen Mead is a published artist, writer, and maker of short collagefilms. He says: “Please feel free to place his name in any search engine for links to his multimedia work and merchandise.”
Jane Milner-Barry in an interview for Swindon Open Studios in 2009 Jane
said: “I am a Londoner but have lived in Swindon and Highworth for twenty years. I work for Swindon Borough Council some of the time and have a typing speed of 82 words a minute. Painting is a much slower process unfortunately. As children we are all interested in art. We enjoy playing about with colours and patterns, making likenesses of things, telling stories with pictures, all the different aspects of the visual arts. Some of us just have the good fortune not to grow out of this inclination.” Her website is: www.janemilner-barry.co.uk
Mo Needham
started his poetry studies in Swindon at the Bluegate plant in 2010. He was a successful engineer but will always be Apprentice Poet (No 3). All his stories and poems, warts and all, are published on his website www.Original-Short-Stories.co.uk, it is called The Adventures of a Strange Mind, he thinks that says it all.
Rehan Qayoom is a poet and writer of English and Urdu. Educated at Birkbeck College, University of London, his poems and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and periodicals and he has performed his work across the world. You can find his blog at:
www.rehanqayoompoet.blogspot.com
David Riley - David Riley is a writer from Blackpool, England. He has published poetry
and worked collaboratively with visual artists. He is especially interested in ekphrasis and Belle Epoque Paris, reflected in the contribution to this issue.
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Brief biographies Walter Ruhlmann works as an English teacher. He has been publishing
mgversion2>datura (ex-Mauvaise graine) for over fifteen years. Walter is the author of several poetry chapbooks and e-books in French and English and has published poems and fiction in various printed and electronic publications world wide. He is a 2011 Pushcart Prize nominee for his translation of Martine Morillon-Carreau's poem, "Sans début ni fin, ce rêve" published in Magnapoets January 2011 issue. His blog can be found at: thenightorchid.blogspot.fr
Jill Sharp works as an associate lecturer with the Open University – the best work in the
world, teaching adults who are returning to study, and eager to learn. She also enjoys running a local life writing group. Jill is a member of Swindon’s BlueGate Poets.
Fiona Sinclair’s work has appeared in numerous publications. Her second pamphlet A Game of Hide and Seek is due out in May from Indigo Dreams Press. She is the editor of the online poetry magazine Message in a Bottle.
Christine Tipper’s first love is language. She is an internationally published literary
translator of French poetry, prose and drama. Her second love is travel and her poem relates to her first trip to Nepal where she was deeply moved by the beautiful country and its people.
Clinton Van Inman is 65 and was born in Walton-on-Thames, England and graduated
from San Diego State University in 1977 with a degree in philosophy. (Don’t laugh, so did TS Eliot) Currently, he is still working as a high school teacher in Tampa. He is one of the few last standing Beat poets and artists and trying to get a collection of poems together for future publication called, “Far From Out” or “One Last Beat.” He has had had many poems published over the years. Recent publications include the Tower Journal, Essence, The Warwick, Journal of Victorian Poetry, Yes Poetry, Poetry, Out of Four, and Black Cat Poetry. Also some of his poems have been recently read on YouTube by Janet K. of Down in the Dirt magazine, which publishes many of his poems.
Anthony Ward has been writing in his spare time for a number of years. He has been
published in a number of literary magazines including Enhance, Word Gumbo, Drunk Monkeys, Speech Therapy, The IMPress, Thousand shades of Grey, Ginger Piglet, Torrid Literature Journal and The Rusty Nail, amongst others.
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