Frances Pankiewicz from Bridgwater, Somerset, UK recently sent us this wonderful cloud poem.

Dianella Bardelli of Bologna, Italy recently sent us her Cloud Haiku

Cielo al tramonto
un’allucinazione
di rosso e sangue
……………………….
Poche le nubi
sopra il mare cobalto –
sfioriscon lente
………………………
Nubi di notte
le illumina la luna –
diventan grigie
……………………..
C’è anche il giallo
nel rosso dell’aurora –
diventa rosa

© Dianella Bardelli

Christopher Fernie has written a number of poems inspired by clouds and wrote to us saying that he would like to dedicate this one to the Society; it was written in 2006 and first appeared on the poetry website, Poetbay.

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]This poem came second place in poem in the Cloud Poetry Competition that we ran with Candlestick Press. Sarah’s poem will appear in the forthcoming leaflet from Candlestick Press, Ten Poems about Clouds.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Flight

If love was like clouds and I leapt
from the plane, could I fall into you?
Could you bear me softly like faith,

muss my shadow with woolly devotion,
fold me into your core, where I could not feel
the rush of grave air?
Would you blind me, temporarily, please?

Let me glean this when I unbuckle, head for the exit:
your turning mass like milk in the belly,
your lack of certainty, the way your edges furl –

Or let me make my own cloud
here on the pane – let me hush you into an oval window
wipe a line through my breath with a finger
as if proving I have agency over love, and water and air.

© Sarah Westcott[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]Sarah Westcott’s first collection, Slant Light, was published in 2016 by Pavilion Poetry, an imprint of Liverpool University Press. Sarah’s poems have appeared in magazines including The Poetry Review and Magma, and in anthologies including The Forward Book of Poetry 2017 – as well as on beermats, billboards and the side of buses. She is currently Manchester Cathedral Poet of the Year and lives in Kent with her family.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

[vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_column_text]This is the winning poem in the Cloud Poetry Competition that we ran with Candlestick Press. Lesley’s poem will appear in the forthcoming leaflet from Candlestick Press, Ten Poems about Clouds.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]

Hazy, Massed, Dappled

after Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, Annuaire Méteorologique 1802

Hazy, massed, dappled, their cotton shifts, their furs and velvets; bringers of lambs’ tails and almond-blossom, suspended ceilings of heartbroken thunder and storm-damaged childhoods – you are never as alone as you think you are. But in the walled garden all that fills you is sky and the wisps of someone else’s weathers: spring snow, a rag of fire in a bare tree, roofs smoking with dew-mist. A cirrus of midges. Then sunlight bursting each pane of glass as it passes, like a housemartin crashing softly against the picture-rails. Afternoon darkening in all its parlours and pigeon-holes of grey. Now move hands like clouds (seven times). Carry tiger to mountain.

© Lesley Saunders, 2017[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row row_type=”row” use_row_as_full_screen_section=”no” type=”full_width” text_align=”left” css_animation=””][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Lesley Saunders is the author of several books of poetry, including Cloud Camera, a book of poems about the dream lives of scientific instruments and medical techniques (Two Rivers Press 2012). She has performed her work at literary festivals and on the radio, and has worked on collaborative projects with artists, sculptors, musicians, photographers and dancers. Otherwise, she works as an independent researcher in education. www.lesleysaunders.org.uk[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Julie Stein, member 29213 from Athens, Greece has sent us this poem.