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The poet's Merc

Exit Strategy acaciapublications.co.uk/2025/04/27/exi… Thanks to Dr Patrick Wright our guest poet. Four poems inspired by art, exploring grief and loss. Broken Sleep Books #poetry #poem #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity #writing #WritingCommunity #WritingTips

The sun climbs through blossoming oaks whispery with wind. Pileated woodpeckers exchange volleys of thunder. A downy woodpecker rattles like a beggar with a cup.

Sunrise gutters in a gray bank of clouds. It's cold. My breath hangs in the air like winter's ghost.

Sunset Beech

The beautiful cafe at Leeds Art Gallery

Early stroll image: a fork in the road.

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Clear and cool at sunrise. A feral cat slinks through the coverts at the woods' edge, pursued by a small, mostly silent entourage of chickadees and titmice.

Foggy at sunrise. A turkey gobbles non-stop from up in the field, and the woods ring with vireos and ovenbirds. At the edge of the porch, a gray squirrel nuzzles her almost-grown ​offspring.

"I knew I shouldn't have taken the goddam road less traveled!" -- Frost in England, 1957

Cold rain drumming on the porch roof. A ruby-throated hummingbird buzzes in to study his reflection in my green steel thermos.

Many thanks to Sarah Frideswide for this review of Exit Strategy - available now from Broken Sleep Books #poetry #ekprasis #poetrylovers #poetrycommunity vocal.media/bookclub/exit-…

We're approaching full leaf-out, and I'm still not bored of watching the simple play of sun and shadows. And how many red-eyed vireos are within earshot? I count five.

RIP Paul Durcan. This was the first poem I read by him, and it absolutely broke me.

Overcast and cold​. A phoebe hawking insects from the lilac does far less flying than sitting, tail bobbing with what probably only looks like impatience.

Mine acaciapublications.co.uk/2025/05/25/min… via Fokkina McDonnell Four poems from guest poet Jane McKie (Mine, Cinnamon Press, 2025) - marvellous economy and vivid, clear, embodied images.

‘This book … is immensely powerful and immensely ambitious; its ambition held in the way it maintains, with real deftness, both the centripetal and the centrifugal.’ - Ian Pople brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/p… Broken Sleep Books Open University English & Creative Writing #poetry #PoetryCommunity #ekphrasis #art

Georgeous and cool. I stay out until the sun clears the trees, letting the birdsong and the poems I'm reading intermingle in my ear: stanza after stanza of red-eyed vireo, tanager enjambment, the redstart's end-stopped line.

Many thanks to 𝕄𝕒𝕣𝕜 𝔸𝕟𝕥𝕠𝕟𝕪 𝕆𝕨𝕖𝕟 for publishing my #poem ‘Robert Rauschenberg’s Untitled’ After... Poems inspired by other art - one of the anchor poems for Exit Strategy Broken Sleep Books #poetry #phd #poetrycommunity #ekphrasis afterpoetry.com/poem/may-27-20…