Welcome, Dennis

Today I am delighted to host a guest poem from fellow member of Poetry I-D Dennis Tomlinson. It is from his collection Over the Road, just published by Dempsey and Windle.

Plum Tree by a Church

An explosion, frozen in space:
pink-white blossoms hang
for a moment
on the evening air.
A scent of honey
by the roadside.
Brightness
more enduring
than the shadowy branches.
On the way home
a petal sticks to my black shoe.

First published in Genius Floored: Uncurtained Window (Soaring Penguin Press, 2013)

Dennis Tomlinson grew up in Knebworth, Hertfordshire but eventually moved to London in 2013. He worked as a postman for a long time but took early retirement last year in order to look after his wife. He has been associated with Poetry ID since 2006. Over the Road is a short poetry collection on the theme of places that have made an impression on the author. It is his second poetry pamphlet after Sleepless Nights (Maverick Mustang Manuscripts, 2019).

Pic: John Salmon: St Martin, Knebworth, Herts. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

News and a Sonnet

Two bits of news for you today.

First, next Thursday (7 Oct) evening (which happens to be National Poetry Day), fellow Holmfirth Writer and Maytree poet Anne Steward has kindly invited me to join her in a poetry evening at 7pm at Holmfirth Library. Open mic slots are also available. Hope to see you there!

Secondly, I’m delighted to have three poems in Extreme Formal Poetry, just published by Rhizome press. I thought I’d share one of them with you:

The Alchemist

Alone in his laboratory he stands.
In glass alembics noxious liquors boil.
He pours and stirs, and with a crabby hand
obsessively records his fruitless toil.
Thus ends the long night’s work. Completely spent
he takes a sup of ale, a crust of bread,
laments another failed experiment,
at last retires defeated to his bed.
No treasure will reward the pains he took 
and yet we must be glad of his defiance:
he struggled on, and left us, in his book
ungerminated seeds of future science.
A red sun brings the dawn – pale, clean and cold –
and dusts upon the glass small flecks of gold.