<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The nurseryman<\/strong><\/p>\n and then the government attacked <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Phil Vernon<\/strong> lives in Kent. He started writing poetry again in 2012 after a twenty-year break. Whereas in the past his poems were mostly written in free verse, he now embraces more formal forms, and finds this means his words and ideas surprise him more often. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Other Poetry, Ink Sweat and Tears, Elbow Room, Gold Dust <\/em>and Pennine Platform,<\/em> and he was shortlisted and commended for the 2015 Ealing and 2016 Binsted Festival Prizes, and in the Out of Place poetry and music collaboration competition in 2016. Some of his poems are on his website: https:\/\/philvernon.net\/poetry\/. <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The nurseryman and then the government attacked and fire leapt from roof to roof and all the colours bled to black for days the greatest rainstorm sluiced the soot from stumps of home to stain the soil I lost my wife to war our girl to floods our boy to flames I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12410"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13164,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12410\/revisions\/13164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nand fire leapt from roof to roof
\nand all the colours bled to black
\nfor days the greatest rainstorm sluiced
\nthe soot from stumps of home to stain
\nthe soil I lost my wife to war
\nour girl to floods our boy to flames
\nI fled with only what I wore
\nI hid in fields in ditches nights
\nI named the rose I bred for each
\nrepeatedly and hugged them tight
\nI walked in circles weeks then reached
\nthis pebbled shore at Dungeness
\nawaiting boats to France or death<\/p>\n