Patricia M Osborne

I’m delighted to introduce poet, Lawrence Moore, to Patricia’s Pen. Lawrence is sharing his poetry journey so without further ado, it’s over to him.

My Poetry Journey

Lawrence Moore

Hi, I’m Lawrence Moore and I’ve been writing poetry most of my life, but in 2018, I became more committed to the art of poeming, and have been rewarded with a series of friendships and adventures ever since. Perhaps my most distinctive creative trait is my love for musicality and flow. Meaning and self-expression are very important to me, but I often let the shaping of a poem be led by the sounds and rhythms that bring me most pleasure.

I often make use of crypticness and phrases with multiple interpretations, partly because it enables me to say things I might not otherwise be foolish enough to say, but also because I quite enjoy being mysterious. That said, I value candour highly and consider my poems to be rather accessible as poetry goes, because that’s what appeals to me as a reader.

In early 2022, I released my first chapbook Aerial Sweetshop with Alien Buddha Press. Dedicated to my late Dad, a passionate model aircraft enthusiast, it featured many flight themed poems. Moreover, I used the metaphor of flying to thread together various other subjects I wished to visit, a prevalent one of which was love. Along with hope, love is a matter never too far from my creative mind.

I began work on my next ‘big project’ in a similar way, this time weaving poems connected by adventure, misadventure, the natural world and the fantastical. Appropriately enough, they led me to The Breadcrumb Trail, my first full length collection, produced by illustrator Jane Cornwell via Jane’s Studio Press.

This partnership has been immensely beneficial, with Jane immediately getting on my wavelength and weaving beautiful threads of her own to reinforce mine. The result is something more cohesive, and also more special to me, than I ever could have achieved on my own.

As I have said, it is a book of adventure and misadventure, of compliments and of juxtapositions, so I shall leave you with the following two poems, which I think give a hint of what lies in store, should you decide to wander the trail.

Buy a copy of The Breadcrumb Trail on the following links.

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About Lawrence Moore

Lawrence Moore has lived in the coastal city of Portsmouth, England since birth and shares a house overlooking Kingston Cemetery with his husband Matthew and their nine mostly well behaved cats. A firm believer in environmentalism and animal welfare, he spent many teenage days involved in protesting and direct action. His poems have appeared in publications including Sarasvati, Feral, Fahmidan Journal, Green Ink Poetry, Dreich and The Madrigal. He previously released a debut chapbook, Aerial Sweetshop, with Alien Buddha Press in January 2022.

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Back in 2015 after losing my Mum I embarked on an MA creative writing course to help overcome the huge void. As part of the MA our group was offered the chance to visit Bucharest and see how other MA creative writing students worked. Unfortunately not long after arriving I broke my hip. I’m sharing my story in the public domain for the first time on Fred’s Blog. Pop over HERE if you’d like to read it.

I’m delighted to introduce poet, Sue Finch, back to Patricia’s Pen. Sue is here to chat about her new release, Welcome to the Museum of a Life. Without further ado it’s over to Sue.

Welcome to the Museum of a Life

Sue Finch

Thank you so much for inviting me to talk about how my second collection, ‘Welcome to the Museum of a Life’, came into being.

I was eager to have a second collection of poetry almost as soon as the first one was finished. I kept a list of poems that I thought people would enjoy reading, but I was not entirely sure at first what was pulling these poems together.

When my poem, Museum of a Life, was published by Out on the Page in 2021, I recorded a reading of it and realised it was one of my favourite poems. It was written as a result of attending an Arvon online writing week with Caroline Bird and Richard Scott and I can clearly remember that wonderful feeling of being in the flow of writing when I was working on it. This is the original version of that poem which was then adapted for my book when I worked with Black Eyes Publishing UK.

MUSEUM OF A LIFE

Exhibit A: the bath where she was made to wash by her
first lover.

Exhibit B: the shower where she was lime-soaped by
her second.

Exhibit C: an unwritten postcard from Herm where she
floated in the bay laughing with her third.

Exhibit D: dinner plate of sliced tomatoes kaleidoscoped
with red onion rounds, drizzled in olive oil. Photo,
France.

Exhibit E: white bread roll. origin, Las Vegas.

Exhibit F: Barcelona street map displayed here in the
front pocket of the rucksack she wore against her
breasts to minimise the risk from pickpockets.

Exhibit G-I: the green carnation, the dropped pound
coin and the fucking hostile badge from the blind date
with the woman who went on to become her wife.

Exhibit J: the stars she couldn’t believe she saw when
she tipped the bucket chair back so much she fell and
hit her head.

Exhibit K: the missed beat from the intro to the first
dance at her wedding.

Exhibit L: 60-watt lightbulb previously inserted into
her mouth while she pretended to be a lamp on a car
journey back from Whitstable.

Exhibit M: the orgasm she had while watching Wendy
James from the edge of the stage, Hammersmith
Odeon, 1989.

Exhibit N: yellow sailing trousers and blue t-shirt from
the Saturday night disco at Manchester Pride (year
unrecorded).

Exhibit O: the kitchen counter she leant on to tell her
Mum she was gay.

Exhibit P: her mum, who already knew, who had done
for years and wondered why she hadn’t said it herself
sooner.

Exhibit Q: snakebite and black from the bottom of her
boots the night she danced with Chris’s girlfriend.

Exhibit R: two Dolly Parton backstage passes and
associated Meet and Greet photos.

Exhibit S: a jar of Smurfs.

Exhibit T: Ronnie (cuddly toy and photogenic alter ego)
purchased Chester Zoo, 2002.

Exhibit U-V: black velvet smoking jacket and size 10
jeans.

Exhibit W-Z: this space is reserved for future exhibits.

When I was little my brother would let me in to his museum for a small pocket money fee. I liked looking at the shells and fossils and interesting finds he had gathered together there in his attic bedroom. He knew stuff about the exhibits. I liked the way they were laid out and the textures and shapes. I also liked spending time in his company and finding out what was new. Amongst the sharks’ teeth I think there was also a large dinosaur tooth of some kind. I remember the shine of the fool’s gold and of the mercury which we rolled across the lino to one another.

I really like some housework jobs, but I dislike dusting. This means that I choose to put the peculiar things that I collect in jars on my shelves so they are easier to dust. One night in lockdown I had a vivid dream where a large jar was being delivered to the garden so that my wife could exhibit me in it. I wrote the poem ‘Jars’ based on this dream.

So there has definitely always been a part of me that is interested in exhibits. (Mind you I am also very interested in the tea room and the gift shop when I go out and about visiting exhibitions.) The idea of having my own museum of artefacts entertained me and I found I could picture the whole museum. Fortunately when I sent this manuscript to my editor and publisher they liked the idea and we were able to work on it together.

It was good fun to arrange the poems into five galleries and to picture a gift shop at the end where visitors could purchase blue apples, inflatable ladders and wind-up plastic pelicans as souvenirs. Having a clear idea for the overall structure of the book, allowed me to put aside poems that didn’t fit with the theme and focus on a specific order for the work. The gallery of dreams brings together some of my favourite poems that emerged during the nights of lockdown and I like the way they are showcased together. During this time I really enjoyed my writing and I would wake up and go straight to my desk to write something down because I didn’t want the vivid images that had been in my mind to evaporate.

Damien B Donnelly calls this collection Daliesque and says I do peculiar well. I’ll take that.

About Sue Finch

Sue Finch’s first poetry collection, ‘Magnifying Glass’, was published in 2020 with Black Eye Publishing UK, and her second full collection, ‘Welcome to the Museum of a Life’, is due to be published in Spring 2024. Her poems have also appeared in a number of online magazines. She loves the coast, peculiar things and the scent of ice-cream freezers. ‘Vortex Over Wave’ was published in 2023 and features a selection of her #ElasticBandPhotos and poems for the full moon.

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Please join me in congratulating Sue Finch on the launch of Welcome to the Museum of a Life published by Black Eyes Publishing UK.

On entering this Museum of a Life, feel free to wander at will. However, don’t miss a single gallery, as every exhibit invokes a small part of the life of Sue Finch. By the time you leave the museum for the Gift Shop to buy a blue apple for a loved one, you will know her well.

Order your copy HERE

Sue Finch will be back tomorrow with a guest feature where you can find out more about the writing of Welcome to the Museum of a Life.

Please join me in congratulating author, Sarah Scally, on the launch of It Started with a Shoe.

Can Phoebe’s life get any worse?

Single mum Phoebe Ellis is having a bad time; her boss is acting weirdly and now she’s been passed over for promotion again.

On top of that her car is on its last legs, the credit card company is after a payment, and she almost ruined her favourites shoes.

On the plus side she did meet Mike her ‘shoe saviour’ and together with the Happy Wanderers, Phoebe decides to uncover exactly what her boss is up to.

But will she find out before everything crashes down around her? And, more importantly, is Mike really who he seems?

Second book in the Happy Wanderers series.

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This week is a chance to revisit launch features on Patricia’s Pen for this quarter of 2024.

Gill McEvoy kicked the year off on February 14th with Selected Poems – Read HERE

February 17th brought a collection of poets with this gorgeous anthology The Whiskey Tree curated by Alan Parry. Read HERE

On February 21st The Tangle of Terror by Brian McManus was launched. Read HERE

Wolf Eye Territory by Paul Brookes was released on March 22nd. Read HERE

On March 24th Thrift by Alison Lock was launched. Read HERE

Coming up in April – Lawrence Moore and Sue Finch

Please join me in congratulating poet, Alison Lock, on the launch of her new poetry collection Thrift published by Palewell Press.

Melting Iceberg is included in Thrift

Alison Lock’s new collection, Thrift, grows out of a ‘communing in slow grief’ for the Earth and its vanishing creatures – an experience as painful as any personal bereavement. The collection’s poems are grouped into three sections: Rue, Thrift and Sage – herbal names that lead readers on a spiritual journey from despair through learning to be more frugal and sustainable to a new wisdom and potentially more hopeful future.

Travelling with Old Man’s Beard is included in Thrift

Moths is included in Thrift

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Please join me in congratulating poet, Paul Brookes, on the launch of his new collection, Wolf Eye Territory.

Wolf Eye Territory is about dispossession. How we become dispossessed of employment, livelihood, identity, nature, landscape and our own history. This is viewed through various means of seeing, and how our own actions, and those done to us change the world around us.

And here’s a little teaser from Wolf Eye Territory to get you in the mood

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I’m delighted to introduce poet, Jane Dougherty, to Patricia’s Pen. Jane has recently published night horses. Find out more about Jane’s poetry and her latest collection.

night horses

Jane Dougherty

First I’d like to thank Patricia for inviting me to write something about what I do and why I do it. The occasion is the publication of my third poetry collection, night horses.

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My first published poem, a poem about fog, was in the school magazine when I was eleven. I still remember the opening, and being irritated that the word ‘footfall’ had been changed to ‘football’ by some sixth form editor with the poetic sensitivity of a clam. I have never stopped writing poetry. My dad was a poet, published in literary journals, but essentially a poet who wrote, read his poems aloud to whoever wanted to listen, and didn’t care about finding an audience. I grew up with the idea that poetry, writing in general, was something that everyone did, just because. I still do really.

Six years ago we moved from the centre of Bordeaux to a very old, very uncomfortable tenant farmer’s cottage in a rural region of the south west. It sits on the side of a valley in two hectares of meadow that used to be pasture for four cows, with a vine, vegetable garden, fruit trees and a few pigs. After the last couple to live here grew too old to cope with livestock, the place gradually went back to nature. The proximity of nature and what it does if it’s left alone has been a revelation to me, given me a different and deeper perspective on my place in the world and the long path from past to future, where I come from. The quiet, the birds, trees, little rivers, the Garonne over the hill, have become my very circumscribed world, but far richer than anything I knew in the city.

In my poetry, I try to describe what I see and hear, to put it in the context of the bigger picture of destruction of the environment, changing weather patterns, fluctuations in the wild populations. It’s sensorial, emotional, and I hope, limpid. The quality I most value in poetry is beauty, words strung together to create something simply beautiful and beautifully simple. For me, a poem with no pearl at its heart is an unreconstructed clam.

The leitmotif for this collection is the night, terrible and tender, its voices and its silences, the remnants that linger in deep pools and dark places, the hush that follows the ferment of daylight, and the horses that gallop and graze the great starry plain that stretches from dusk to dawn.

I write ferociously, and as well as a mountain of unpublished poems, I have an even bigger mountain of unpublished novels. I have one coming out with Northodox Press next year, but that’s another story.

About Jane Dougherty

Pushcart Prize nominee, Jane Dougherty’s poetry has appeared in publications including Gleam, Ogham Stone, Black Bough Poetry and The Storms Journal. Her short stories have been published in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Lucent Dreaming among others, and her first adult novel will be published in 2025 by Northodox Press. She lives in southwest France and has published three collections of poetry, thicker than water, birds and other feathers and night horses.

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Patricia’s Pen has great pleasure to welcome its first photography feature with Michael Q Powell. I became acquainted with Michael’s work via Twitter when I immediately followed his blog to ensure I didn’t miss out on a single shot. His photographs have inspired me to write many poems. Below Michael shares his journey through photography.

My Journey through Photography

Michael Q Powell

I’m a photographer, so what am I doing on a blog about writing? As I started to contemplate this conundrum, I realized that I am a writer. The Latin root words for photography literally mean “light writing.” While poets write with words, I write with light, a light that can be broken up into many colors and can illuminate or hide, a light that at times can be controlled, but is often untamable.

I’m an amateur wildlife and nature photographer. My primary motivation is love, not monetary gains or even personal fame. It sounds a little selfish, but I take pictures primarily for myself, though I post the ones I like in a daily blog and in various social media channels.

Visible song

I’m convinced that beauty is everywhere, and my main goal is to increase my sensitivity to that beauty, to develop a mindfulness and heightened awareness of that beauty. Sometimes it seems that I discover beauty in unexpected places and surprising ways, but more often than not, I realize that I’m merely uncovering a beauty that was always there.

Dorothea Lang, a famous American photographer, is reported to have said, “A camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera.” Even when I don’t have a camera in my hand, I feel like I am experiencing the world in a different, deeper way.

Sometimes my friends will visit the same locations as I do and are astonished to see the variety of subjects that I’ve photographed. They ask me, “How is it that you see so much?” and I often respond to their queries with my own Zen-like question, “How is it that you do not see?”

What is the secret to my photography? Many people think that I have expensive gear. It frustrates me a bit when someone looks at one of my images and exclaims, “That’s a great photo—you must have a fancy camera.” I try to bite my tongue and not respond flippantly that it is a great photo because of me, not because of my camera.

fox on ice

I’m very patient and persistent—that is the simple secret. Most of us live our lives at a high speed and we miss so much because we’re unable to slow down.

Solitary silence is also a key component to my success and photography has become almost a meditative practice for me. Our lives are full of distractions and long walks with my camera help to still my soul and bring me closer to my subjects.

I’m an opportunistic photographer, which means that most of the time I walk about and react to a situation that presents itself. Knowledge and research have helped me decide when and where to walk and countless hours of practice have honed my reflexes so that I am ready to react quickly and accurately. Luck may provide an opportunity, but skill helps me to take advantage of it.

What about creativity? Some people think that photographers merely record and document “reality,” but is there actually an objective reality. Every time that I take a photograph, I make a series of creative choices. I choose camera settings, the angle of view, and the actual framing of each shot to capture my personal perspective, i.e. the world as I see it.

bluefacemeadow hawk

Like other writers, I seek to share my unique perspective. Sometimes I will focus on the “big picture” or zoom in on tiny details. At other times I may try to capture the mood of a moment or a particular emotion. It is a bit of a cliché that “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but sometimes I use my photos for storytelling.

When possible, I try to capture key moments of action, what French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson called “the decisive moment.” As he said in the interview with the Washington Post in 1957, “Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative.”

Visible sound

Creativity is still a new, largely unexplored world for me. I used to look at “creative” and “analytical” as being polar opposites, but increasingly have to come to realize that this two traits can actually be complementary, particularly if used in a constant internal dialogue as I try to cultivate a greater consciousness of what I’m thinking and feeling.

About Michael Q Powell

Mike Powell is a former U.S. Army military officer and government foreign policy analyst who rediscovered his passion for photography twelve years. He focuses much of his energy on capturing the beauty that he encounters, primarily in wildlife refuges and nature preserves in the Washington D.C. area. He features his photos, observations, and musings in a daily blog at michaelqpowell.com. Two of his images were included in the inaugural edition of The Storms, a journal of poetry, prose, and visual arts and his photograph of a Migrant Hawker dragonfly was the cover image for Take Flight 2023, A Selection of Poems published in FLIGHTS e-journal issues five to eight.

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