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Hello poetry people,
You're welcome, Nigel. Yes, the mainstream publishing houses like to play safe on the whole. Did you consider self-publishing? There are a few options in that field. I once copyedited a book of WW1 poems, one of my favourite publishing jobs to date, quite early on in my career.
Thanks for enjoying the portrait and I'll take a look at the parody anthology soon.
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mignon, thanks very much for posting this. It's always good to escape to the woods. I like everything about the poem, but my highlights are the woodpecker and the little animal, as you might expect.
Well, what am I doing? I'm still working towards a deadline today. So here's an old ode, something commissioned in 2015. There's quite a lot of colour in it, I suppose. Esmeralda was once thought to be female, but things change. This Bird Island is in the Seychelles archipelago.
Ode on Bird Island
A pocketful of paradise, bird isle,
00immersed in cyan seas, beset with shoals
of spot trevally crossing coral pile,
00electric-blue carangue on food patrols.
Ashore, brown bar-tailed godwits chirp a'ights,
00while speckled plovers skate the slick white sands
0000and turnstones probe for periwinkle treats;
then ak, ker-ak! a sooty flock alights
00on coco-palms within the forest lands
0000of vines and orchids, pink rain lily streets.
Paean to conservation, ground doves sing
00as white-tailed tropicbirds may safely nest
among the roots of she-oak trees or wing
00the Seychelles skies in smart tailcoat and vest.
How Esmeralda smiles and nods his head
00in rapt approval as his friends are tracked
0000and granted haven beach to lay their eggs;
for all long winter, in a tunnelled bed
00a tiny turtle leaps from shell fresh cracked
0000and scrambles seaward, flapping arms and legs.
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Tomorrow: tbc. (Am shaking at the moment; need Fortisip.)
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