landscape – Foxglove Journal

The Beach of the Cathedrals – Glenn Hubbard

The pseeping of pipits. The ticking

of robins. The flicking of redstarts.

Is the curtain-raiser.

Descend to the sand to walk up

dark naves. Arches and stacks

of schist and layered slate.

Stop to peer into the cracks and caves,

the patient work of tireless waves. Wait.

To hear the drip of fresh water.

Blue mussels in dense colonies.

Clenched goose barnacles in clusters.

Safety in numbers.

Near the shore

note the pools.

How they shelve.

Imagine the sun-tempered cool

on a day in July. The slide

in from the soft edge.

The sand sucks at the soles

of your shoes. Ascend,

the sound of the sea dissipating.

The pseeping of pipits. The ticking

of robins. The flicking of redstarts.

Is the send-off.

Glenn Hubbard has been writing since 2013 and lives at the foot of the Sierra de Guadarrama near Madrid. He has written a good deal of nature poetry over the years, inspired by the flora and fauna of both Spain and the UK. Some of this work has been published in journals such as Words for the Wild, the Dawntreader and Sarasvati.

May 25, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: animals, beach, birds, creative, creativity, elements, Galicia, Glenn Hubbard, landscape, Lugo, nature, place, poem, poet, Poetry, sand, sea, senses, shore, Spain, sun, water, writing 1 Comment

all – Mark Goodwin

all

washed from

land-rim through

sea’s miles

-high-sky &

fathoms-deep

twined

light

Mark Goodwin is a poet-sound-artist, and speaks & writes in various ways. He is also a walker, balancer, stroller, & climber. He has a number of books & chapbooks with various poetry houses, including Leafe Press, Longbarrow Press, Nine Arches Press, & Shearsman Books. His poetry was included in The Ground Aslant – An Anthology of Radical Landscape Poetry edited by Harriet Tarlo (Shearsman Books 2011) and The Footing edited by Brian Lewis (Longbarrow Press 2013). His latest chapbook – a compressed mountain travelogue called Erodes On Air – was recently published in North America by Middle Creek. Mark lives with his partner on a narrowboat just north of Leicester. He tweets poems from @kramawoodgin, and some of his sound-enhanced poetry is here: https://markgoodwin-poet-sound-artist.bandcamp.com.

May 8, 2022May 8, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: all, creative, creativity, depth, distance, earth, elements, fathoms, land, landscape, Leicester, light, Mark Goodwin, miles, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, sky, UK, wash, writing Leave a comment

Arran Postcard – Anna Percy

Dear T.

I know you have cycled on the coast road where I bumped along on the bus I haven’t asked if you stopped here at Kildonan where seals are promised or whether in fact the flop of their sea adapted bodies fills you with the same glee a fortification crumbles in a dark stone on the hill a look out a warning place the first line of defence the current light house sits on an islet must be lonely have to row back and forth to find another body the sun has started to blaze and yet the sea froze my toes a swimming costume was a dare to the water the water itself is all subtle movement and glitter past the sand everything is bands of blue and white you would swim.

Anna Percy has been writing for the page, stage and publication since 2004 mostly in the North of England. In 2010 she co founded the feminist collective Stirred Poetry. She has three full length collections with Flapjack Press. This poem is from an upcoming pamphlet The Everlasting Now from Some Roast Poets.

April 4, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Anna Percy, Arran, coast, colours, creative, creativity, elements, hill, journey, landscape, movement, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, postcard, road, sea, seals, sun, travel, UK, writing Leave a comment

Francis Ecstatic – Julian Bishop

Brother Leo gives chapter and verse

on this ecstasy: as if heaven were exploding,

its glory splashing forth in millions

of stars like waterfalls. But it’s the reverse

for Francis on the mountain of Verna

at this moment of stigmata – no flaming

angels but a beefy stripling shoehorning

the stubbled saint onto his seraphic lap.

The landscape is blissful, Francis basks

in the afterglow of some divine happening.

No stigmata, no wound, no bleeding

except perhaps within the saint’s heart?

(The lad-turned-angel is identical to the youth

in the painter’s infamous Boy Peeling Fruit.)

This is one in a series of poems about the painter Caravaggio

Julian Bishop is a former television journalist living in North London who is a member of several London stanza groups. A former runner-up in the Ginkgo Prize for Eco Poetry, he’s also been shortlisted for the Bridport Poetry Prize and was longlisted in this year’s National Poetry Competition. He won the 2021 Poets And Players Competition judged by Sean Hewitt with his poem Sitting For Caravaggio.

He’s also had poems in The Morning Star, XR’s Rebel Talk, Riptide Journal, Finished Creatures Magazine and the first few issues of The Alchemy Spoon. He is one of four poets featured in a 2020 pamphlet called Poems For The Planet. Read more at https://www.julianbishoppoet.com.

March 6, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: afterglow, angels, art, Caravaggio, creative, creativity, ecstasy, glory, heart, heaven, Julian Bishop, landscape, London, mountain, nature, painting, poem, Poetry, religion, saint, stars, UK, writing Leave a comment

The tender pines – Robert Beveridge

It is not far, not far at all beyond

the city limits where the road ends,

even the tire tracks peter out amidst

the wild-grown grass surrounded

by trees, invisible from buildings.

Just enough room to park, lay out

a blanket, pitch a tent.

Off to one edge, a ring. I thought

at first of mushrooms. But no—

of snails, their variegated shells

ablaze in the afternoon light.

I read to them awhile, until the sun

was low enough that it was time

to gather wood. Whether they

enjoyed it I’ve no idea.

A fire just long enough to warm

ramps, mushrooms, beans, a chunk

of bread torn to pieces, then to bed

and dreams of snails who aspire

to write their first poems.

Robert Beveridge (he/him) makes noise (xterminal.bandcamp.com) and writes poetry in Akron, OH. Recent/upcoming appearances in Blood and Bourbon, The Stratford Quarterly, and Stonecoast Review, among others.

January 16, 2022 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Akron, creative, creativity, dreams, fire, food, landscape, light, nature, OH, pines, poem, poet, Poetry, road, Robert Beveridge, shells, snails, tender, time, trees, US, writing Leave a comment

Bogquilt – Jacob Riyeff

blue goose road at night

cuts thru bog country

streams of leaves

flow the road

and moats dogs

aflight, all

of them. gray

light purpling

the air. vertigo

round cedar-lined

curves. watching

for deer –

there – the moon

shines over acid

water, pitcher-plant

relics, my brow.

jacob riyeff is a translator, poet, and scholar of medieval literature. his work focuses on the western contemplative tradition and the natural world. jacob teaches in the english department at marquette university and lives in milwaukee’s east village.

December 12, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: air, animals, bog, colours, creative, creativity, elements, Jacob Riyeff, journey, landscape, light, Milwaukee, moon, nature, night, poem, poet, Poetry, road, US, water, WI, writing 1 Comment

Carnota – Elizabeth Gibson

We are in a glass dome of summer – pick us up and shake us,

and pollen-dust will swirl around us. The delirious strip of sea

is the other side of our zip: we curve and arc into each other.

Life is reduced to blue and green, with dots of pink and yellow,

and all I could ever need for fullness again is this sea and sky,

these hills of foxglove and gorse, and long Galician granaries,

their stone frames warming lizards and cats. We stop, to sprawl

among the brittle mauve patches of seaweed, watch dolphins

spinning like cogs, in and out, in and out of the wave machine.

Hey, I see a whale – well, I see spray – but no-one believes me.

We find the corpse of a small creature – a porpoise, maybe,

all beak and curve, now brittle with sand. Across the meadows

are chubby brown goats, and foals gulping from patient mothers

whose fringes tumble like kelp. It all keeps circling in on itself.

Elizabeth Gibson is a Manchester writer and performer, and the Editor and Photographer for Foxglove Journal. Her work is often inspired by her travels, as well as themes of queerness, community, body image, and mental health. She has recently been published in Aurelia Magazine, Giving Room Mag, Lighthouse, Popshot, Queerlings, and York Literary Review. She is @Grizonne on Twitter and Instagram, and she blogs at https://elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.com.

August 10, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: A Coruña, animals, Carnota, colours, creative, creativity, death, elements, Elizabeth Gibson, Galicia, landscape, life, moment, nature, poem, poet, Poetry, sea, Spain, summer, travel, UK, writing 1 Comment

Passing Colours – Martin Potter

Rail journey

Thickset windows fix

Fleeting landscape green-chill

Outside carriage warmth

A winter sun’s

Tentative intense

Strikes brushwood bark-bole

Bounces lemon curd

Off the trees’

December slumber skin

Insinuating dazzle

Lichen imbued light

Martin Potter (https://martinpotterpoet.home.blog) is a poet and academic, and his poems have appeared in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Eborakon, Scintilla, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Poetry Village, and other journals. His pamphlet In the Particular was published by Eyewear in December, 2017.

August 2, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: carriage, colours, creative, creativity, journey, landscape, lichen, light, Martin Potter, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, rail, sun, travel, trees, UK, view, warmth, windows, winter, writing Leave a comment

Baskett Slough III – Marc Janssen

The milk sun combs uncombed fields

While

An atonal chorus of geese concert invisibly directly overhead.

All around

The illusion of softness

In the graceful curving hill-scapes,

Rust carpets of oak leaves,

Before it is broken by an insincere tittering of human voices.

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.

July 16, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: birds, chorus, creative, creativity, elements, fields, geese, grace, hills, illusion, landscape, leaves, light, Marc Janssen, nature, poem, Poetry, senses, softness, sound, sun, US, voices, writing Leave a comment

A Chapel of Sunflowers – Marc Janssen

Driving out west of town

There is a field, maybe part of an abandoned farm,

Filled with sunflowers.

There should be a name for a group of sunflowers,

Rank on jumble they stand

Lion-faced their ragged yellow manes roar in a June rain shower.

Their faces a cloud confusion.

This field of flowers could be called a landscape of sunflowers

A beauty of sunflowers

A Saint Francis of sunflowers

A van Gogh of sunflowers

A peal

A heart

A tender

A good grove of sunflowers.

Then it was gone

Somewhere behind me,

And the next thing comes into view

Between rain drops

Green and colorful and new.

May 31, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: beauty, colours, creative, creativity, driving, elements, farm, field, flowers, grove, heart, journey, landscape, Marc Janssen, moment, nature, poem, Poetry, rain, sunflowers, US, view, writing Leave a comment

Interior design for fools – Demi Lloyd

Come and pick up your stuff by Thursday

or I’ll take it to the tip.

The voicemail repeats,

clanks round eardrums

I pull up, golden hour drips through,

glazes your ornaments. Bittersweet.

The white rabbit clock,

five minutes too fast.

I trace my fingers over the curves

of your sofa, green velvet hills

like last summer at the castle in Dover,

when we realised it might be over.

I look at your art for the last time,

shapes and maths, strong and clear.

My abstract dreamscape is

Decaying in a landfill

I collect what’s left of me.

Obnoxious orange and purple bags.

Full of the things you detested;

resting on your polished oak desk.

My wrist threads through the handles.

We could never thread love like that.

The cat, thrown from the cradle,

but she lands feet first.

Demi Lloyd recently gained a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Nottingham Trent University. She is part of a poetry group based in Nottingham called GOBS and is working towards her contribution to their spoken word showcase in March. In her spare time you can find her reading, listening to podcasts or thinking about cats.

March 2, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: art, bittersweet, castle, cat, clock, creative, creativity, Demi Lloyd, Dover, ending, landscape, light, love, memories, Nottingham, poem, Poetry, relationship, senses, time, UK, writing Leave a comment

Cromarty, 29 April 2019 – Neil Fulwood

Wake early. Take a cafetière

through to the conservatory.

Mist blanks out everything:

the road, the firth, the sea

beyond the curve of headland.

The oil rigs are vague shapes –

storybook monsters; phantoms.

Plunge; pour a mugful. Take

your first sip of the day. Feel

the bitter kickstart of caffeine.

The day hasn’t come alive yet.

Give it time. The sun will burn

through the mist. Landscape,

sea and sky will correlate.

Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works. He has published two pamphlets with The Black Light Engine Room Press, Numbers Stations and The Little Book of Forced Calm; and two full collections with Shoestring Press, No Avoiding It and Can’t Take Me Anywhere. His third collection, Service Cancelled, is due for publication later this year.

February 8, 2021 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: creative, creativity, Cromarty, elements, landscape, mist, morning, nature, Neil Fulwood, Nottingham, place, poem, Poetry, scenery, Scotland, sea, senses, sky, sun, time, travel, weather, writing Leave a comment

Riverdawn – Daniel Tobias Behan

Dawn-break

over water –

cold depths she runs

in her course;

shifting blue-grey

and orange juice

canvas, of

painted sky’s

mirroring;

sombre: her

undulating

ice-flow

belies the

busyness

of city-day

scurrying.

Daniel Tobias Behan is a London born-and-based poet. From 2017 to 2019, Daniel performed regularly at the London Irish Centre, Camden; in 2018 Daniel was interviewed by the Irish Post as part of their London Calling podcast series, and in 2020 had a short film made of ‘The Visit’ featuring acclaimed actor Nora Connolly and directed by Patrick O’Mahony, was interviewed for Wombwell Rainbow, and commenced a poetry series ‘Findings’ on channillo.com.

December 20, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: canvas, city, cold, colours, course, creative, creativity, Daniel Tobias Behan, dawn, elements, flow, ice, landscape, London, nature, poem, Poetry, river, senses, sky, UK, water, writing Leave a comment

The Rainham Diver – Rebecca Metcalfe

The tide slips away, the river lowers, and he is there beneath the water. Striding across the mud towards the bank, he does not move. Seagulls circle overhead and shriek, boats chug past going East or West, but he does move. His body is a cage that imprisons river water with each high tide, releasing it as the moon shifts. In front of him, the reeds lead up to the bank, and beyond them the oil refineries, chemical works and factories that line the estuary all the way to the sea. Behind him is more of the same, just with the heaving mass of grey water between. He has sunk into the thick, green mud and so there he stays; a grey figure against a grey skyline. And he does not move.

Originally from Essex, Rebecca Metcalfe studied first at the University of Chester and then at the University of Liverpool. She now lives in an attic in Manchester with two black cats and works part time in a museum and part time in a restaurant. She has previously been published in Spelk, Flash: The International Short Story Magazine, Peach Street Magazine, Lumpen Journal, and Foxglove Journal, among others. She can be found on Twitter at @beckyannwriter.

September 19, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: flash fiction, Prose, UncategorizedTags: bank, creative, creativity, fiction, flash, flash fiction, landscape, mud, nature, place, Prose, Rainham, Rebecca Metcalfe, river, short, short story, skyline, story, The Diver, tide, UK, water, writing Leave a comment

Spending a Day with an Uncanny Nature – Chandan Dey

a snowy day–

the green leaves of the garden

are wrapped in the thick blanket of ice

the dangling white rose

is the face of a black tiger

in such a depressing morning

a flock of one-winged birds

are migrating to a sunless island

through gray clouds arranged unruly

in this pale light of dreary noon

the deepening dusk

with its illusive movement

is descending swiftly to the earth

through eerie sound of the crickets

in the distance–

the wavy mountain

is a strayed dolphin, swimming

in the ocean of night-fog

alone

Chandan Dey is a new and emerging writer living in Kolkata, India. His work has appeared in Liquid Imagination, Vayavya, Sky Island Journal and is forthcoming elsewhere. He works in Kolkata and is a passionate reader and writer of poetry. He loves to write articles on scientific philosophy; some of them have already been published online. Some of his work can be found on http://www.chandankumardey.blogspot.in.

May 17, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, Chandan Dey, change, clouds, creative, creativity, day, earth, elements, garden, India, landscape, light, movement, nature, place, poem, Poetry, senses, sound, time, writing 2 Comments