Rebecca Gethin – Foxglove Journal

Choughs – Rebecca Gethin

Rebecca Gethin lives in Devon. She was a winner in the first Coast to Coast to Coast pamphlet competition with Messages. A pamphlet about endangered creatures called Vanishings is due to be published by Palewell Press in 2020. Two pamphlets were published in 2017: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who previously published a collection and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow and undertook a residency at Brisons Veor in 2018. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

April 12, 2020April 12, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, creative, creativity, Devon, elements, fauna, flight, landing, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, precision, Rebecca Gethin, rock, sky, sound, UK, wildlife, wind, wings, writing Leave a comment

Secret life of seals – Rebecca Gethin

January 20, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, creative, creativity, dance, Devon, fauna, flippers, laughter, life, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, rocks, seals, senses, sound, surf, UK, water, waves, writing Leave a comment

Skomer – Rebecca Gethin

Above the cliffs a swarm

of sea birds circles

the cinched waist of the island

a nimbus of puffins and auks

flying higher, faster,

almost silent except for beating wings –

a dervish dance

a typhoon rooted in one place

a lighthouse beam of dark motes

a spell to herald darkness

praise for another day of incubation

this ritual of summer evenings

and my small white face

watching from the bobbing boat.

September 29, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, birds, boat, creative, creativity, dance, Devon, elements, island, nature, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, ritual, senses, Skomer, spell, summer, travel, UK, Wales, wildlife, writing Leave a comment

What the wind said – Rebecca Gethin

I followed a drystone wall down the hill in a mist

wind pattering in my ears like a pony

on dry turf and snaking through gorse and reeds.

I caught a moaning, a voice lamenting

on just one note with breathy inhalations,

its instrument a welded gate

played on as though it were an organ pipe.

I pressed my fingers to the holes

and nothing stopped or changed the note,

air finding what it needed for an utterance

of sorrow, the little Os its mouthpiece

calling out from among the silent stones.

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor in Devon. In 2017 two pamphlets were published: A Sprig of Rowan by Three Drops Press and All the Time in the World by Cinnamon Press who published an earlier collection called A Handful of Water and two novels. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow. In 2018 she jointly won the Coast to Coast Pamphlet competition and has been awarded a writing residency at Brisons Veor. Find more at www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com.

February 3, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, creative, creativity, Devon, elements, gate, hill, mist, nature, note, pipe, plants, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, sorrow, sound, stones, UK, voice, wall, wind, writing Leave a comment

Seven sleeper/thruddle-crump/hazel mouse – Rebecca Gethin

Under leaves a furry apple of a one-ounce-mouse

sleeps fast in a cup woven with honeysuckle bark.

gaps darned with moss and grass blades.

Before sleep it gorges on rosehips, hawthorn

and blackberries, or hazel nuts, leaving little round holes

in the shells. Before seven months of sleep it must be fat.

With cold growing thicker, its metabolism slows to a tick over

inside its core. The furred tail is a scarf wound across its face,

as it curls itself into the pips of its heartbeat.

January 23, 2019January 23, 2019 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bark, cold, core, creative, creativity, Devon, food, grass, heartbeat, life, months, moss, mouse, nature, poem, Poetry, Rebecca Gethin, scarf, shells, sleep, tail, UK, writing Leave a comment

Crepuscular – Rebecca Gethin

At the wooded creek, a sheen

on hexagons of damp basalt

water like charcoal silk

where a pied cormorant has settled on a branch

and a catbird yowls nearby

till kookaburra unswallows

the songs of day –

we hold a breath, nudge each other

when the surface puckers, ripples

but it isn’t the platypus.

The moon is in two places

stars speckle the water

we can still just see enough

with the surface shine

but it isn’t the platypus.

We shift, feeling it’s time to give up.

As the darkness tightens

a thread of droplets needles the water

and air clusters with presence –

cloak-winged flying foxes

queue to swoop-drink

first one way, then the other

but not the platypus.

November 19, 2018November 19, 2018 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: air, animals, birds, creative, creativity, darkness, Devon, elements, moon, nature, platypus, poem, Poetry, presence, Rebecca Gethin, senses, songs, sound, stars, time, UK, water, writing 1 Comment