2 Poems, 2 Articles, and a vacation

A brief post this week because I am on vacation in Ireland. Of course I've snuck in some poetry, reading 6 poems at Fermanagh Writers in Enniskillen on my birthday. I started with a poem Study in Red, which you can read more about later in this post; then I read 4 poems from my forthcoming pamphlet, Dressing Up, and finished with a haiku about blindness.

I have an article and poem pairing published in the new #CorncrakeMagazine last week and you can view it on the Corncrake Magazine website.

I also have a second article and poem pairing, titled Embracing the Visual, coming soon in the summer issue of Poetry Wales, in which I take a closer look at what visual means to poetry, and how the two areas can mix — including how I, as a blind poet, can be inspired by visual stimuli. I'll post more info on that as soon as the issue launches.

The two poems you will be able to read are Study in Red (in Corncrake) inspired by a painting of the same name by profoundly deaf painter Lucy Chaplin, and Tomorrow's Dancers (Poetry Wales) inspired by the painting Blue Ballet Slippers, mouth painted by Rosie Moriarty-Simmonds OBE, who was born with 4 fingers and thirteen toes resulting from Thalidomide. I have prints of both of these paintings hanging on my wall, because they represent very effective proof that no matter what challenges you face in your life, you can still be intensely creative.