Such vibrant imagery, and sense of movement.
From a brilliant and varied shortlist, Rosie Garland’s ‘Poem inspired by an imaginary painting by Leonora Carrington’ has emerged as the IS&T Pick for July/August 2023.
Voters praised the poem for its imagery and, in particular, for its inventiveness. They loved its take on the ekphrastic, one that took them into a painting that did not exist and yet somehow captured all of Carrington’s work.
Writer and singer with post-punk band The March Violets, Rosie Garland’s poetry collection What Girls Do In The Dark was shortlisted for the Polari Prize 2021. Val McDermid named her one of the most compelling LGBT+ writers in the UK today. Website: www.rosiegarland.com Twitter @rosieauthor
Rosie has asked that her £20 ‘prize’ be donated to Macmillan Cancer Support.
Poem inspired by an imaginary painting by Leonora Carrington
Her hair is an updraft of orange flame, expression blurred
like an early photograph where the cat is a flurry of paws.
She has the small feet of an infant, but calloused
from a lifetime of running out of burning buildings.
Her clothing undulates like a forest of sea-trees.
I smell talcum powder and sultanas steeped in rum.
I want to swing over the banister and take her hand,
in the way I once believed I could step into paintings;
each one a door to elsewhere. I want to know
if her raised finger is warning or invitation,
if she’s a ghost haunting the rooms behind all those locked doors,
whether she’s dangerous or kind. She is wholly at ease
with her wildness. I want to ask how she manages it,
when I’ve spent years failing to vacate my interior debris
and achieve negative space. She unbuttons her blouse
to reveal the gleaming cogs of her body’s workings.
Not an automaton, not anything so lifeless.
It’s the way she’s forged her shivering insides into steel.
However many times she’s been crumpled up
and trashed, she has reappeared, resplendent
in strangeness. She has outlasted every witch fire.
Yes, all that is astonishing. But what I like best
is tucked quietly behind all the weird and whirring machinery:
something small and steadfast, pulsing with determination.
More voters’ comments:
The beauty, the depth, and a sense that here, the magical realism is actually real, waiting around a corner to take you, unaware, to it’s poetic heart
So much beautiful imagery I feel soaked in imagined memories.
just love the inventiveness and energy of it
Elegantly evocative.
Beautiful, came alive off the page
I could just imagine every word. I could see it, no matter how fantastical. I love the way Rosie works with words
Rosie’s mix of ethereal images and grit give her poetry a life that jumps off the page and into your dreams where is festers and floats long after you have finished reading.
The concept of being inspired by an imaginary Painting fascinated me
I just loved the imagery and the way it evoked something of the surrealism of Leonora Carrington’s art.
It evokes a life journey, the imagery is exquisite and consistent with Leonora Carrington’s work. It just felt true.
There’s something very beautiful and visceral about Rosie’s poetic offerings that speak to the heart of reader. Or maybe it’s because she is our ultimate fairy gothmother 🙂
It’s just the use of language that makes you feel and think about the imagined painting in the title.
I was picturing the work whilst reading at it came to life. The power of great poetry!
Rosie is a phenomenal whirlwind of a writer and spoken word performer. This poem is equally glorious.
This lady has inspired me for many years. I love her style of writing, whether it be fact or fiction. She takes me to the depths of my imagination when I read her words. Thank you Rosie
Her words are gravity.
There’s a Leonora Carrington painting in my local art gallery, and I think about it a lot.
Striking images, and an underlying tenderness
it beautifully described human vulnerability
this poem made me want to find out about Leonora, it made me want to paint, it felt like home.
I still believe I could walk into a painting. What’s reality got to do with anything?
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THE REST OF THE SUMMER 2023 SHORTLIST
Mark Connors is a poet from Leeds. Life is a Long Song was published by OWF Press in 2015, Nothing is Meant to be Broken by Stairwell Books in 2017. Optics was published by YAFFLE in 2019 and After in 2021. www.markconnors.co.uk.
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Breaking Bread with Strangers
When the stranger came to my house, he brought bread. “Here,” he said, “You take it.” And then he sat down at the dinner table, waiting to be served. I placed the bread on a board. My wife brought in the brisket and potatoes. My daughter carried in a platter of braised carrots and roasted broccoli. “Why did you come here,” I asked. “I saw a light burning in the window and thought you might be generous people.” “We are generous people,” I said. My wife smiled with her beautiful lips. My daughter smiled also, a young version of her mother. I said a prayer asking for health and prosperity for all of us. The stranger said “Amen,” bowing his head. His shirt was faded and frayed like his knotty beard. I picked up the bread and tried to break off a piece, but it wouldn’t break. It was hard like wood. “You can’t break this bread,” he said. “You can’t eat it.” He took it from me and placed it on the tablecloth, and for a long time while he filled his plate and began eating, we stared at it with admiration as though it were a sacred gift.
Jeff Friedman has published nine collections of poetry and prose, including The Marksman, and The House of Grana Padano (Pelekinesis, April 2022), cowritten with Meg Pokrass. He has received an NEA Literature Translation Fellowship and numerous other awards and prizes.
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Bee Dress
After Girl with a Bee Dress image by Maggie Taylor
For your sixteenth birthday,
you got a dress made from a swarm
of live bees, pulled in at the waist
with a drawstring,
which you were made to wear
on special occasions. If you refused
to put on this carefully chosen gift,
you were told what an evil creature
you were.
So, you wore the dress.
Spoke quietly, moved slowly,
didn’t laugh and didn’t cry
to avoid provoking the bees,
to avoid being stung.
People said how sweet you were
and how demure you looked
in your honey-bronze dress
edged with black needlepoint.
Doryn Herbst, a former water industry scientist in Wales, now living in Germany. Her writing considers the natural world and themes which address social issues. Poetry in: Fenland Poetry Journal, Amsterdam Quarterly, Green Ink Poetry and more. Forthcoming in: Osmosis.
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The Anniversary
Every February I remember.
I have it marked in my diary
and sometimes I take annual leave
but that’s not to say
I don’t remember at other times –
like when a song comes on
or I’m buying magazines in the Co op
and I’m back in that car and on the way to hospital
wearing my pink coat that I loved
more than any other coat I’ve ever owned
and nearly lost that time
when I left it on a hook
in an unfamiliar place
like this unfamiliar place
where I’m staring up at the light
and there’s laughter in the corridor
and someone is telling me
I’m very sorry, but there is no sign of a pregnancy
Laura Strickland is a poet, MA student and carer based in North Yorkshire. Her work has appeared in The North, Northern Gravy, Yaffle Press, Black Cat Poetry Press and Dreamcatcher (next issue). Laura is working on her first pamphlet.
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For a brief moment
the illusion of life
the wind is a wild puppeteer-
pulling, weighing,
coaxing a last flight
into the air.
I cannot leave you here to the jaws
of the sugar ants
to the feet of those
who scarcely look down
at the fallen treasures
they may trample on.
I will hold
your smudged paper lightness
your last outlines in ink
before returning you
to the dampness
of the patient earth.
Sow your chitin-
hungry winds eat you
scale by scale.
Oormila Vijayakrishnan Prahlad is an Indian-Australian artist, poet, and improv pianist. She lives and works on traditional Gammeragal land. Find her @oormilaprahlad and on Instagram @oormila_paintings.