What people are saying:
So many of the poems really speak to me
they drew me on like a story
love the shape-shifting link between angels, birds, flight and our own creature selves
magic!
just £4 plus p+p from Rose 🤍
New collection out…
‘Shedding Feathers’, exciting new poetry from Rose Cook
I am happy to announce a slim volume of new poems –
Shedding Feathers: Rose Cook published by Hen Run at Grey Hen Press
now available from me or email: info@greyhenpress.com
£4 plus p&p
We must be ready for sadness,
fragility, uncertain journeys
or simply to kneel on the ground.
The old ways no longer serve.
– from Dark Feathers
Finest: Rose Cook – “On Love and Aviation”
Each week, I’ll be asking a poet to nominate one of their own pieces and to tell me a little about it – how it came to be written and what it means to them.
On Love and Aviation
And so as we take off,
the cheerful man in the seat next to me
with his giant RAF watch
with gold wings for hands
and his crowned winged badge in his lapel
and his blazer with brass buttons
asks me if I understand the principles of flight.
He takes out his pen
and draws me a diagram on his paper,
explaining in a friendly voice about wing shape,
drag and lift and airflow.
It is all a question of balance.
I understand.
It is the same impossibility with love.
Later, I point out the light auras on the propellers,
how they look like cartoon drawings.
Ah yes, he says,
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Petrosinella – a glimpse into myth in covid-19 times
Many thanks to the Snakeskin Poetry magazine for including this poem in their September 2020 issue @ http://www.snakeskinpoetry.co.uk
Petrosinella
During lockdown I have fantasies about getting a puppy
or kitten, guinea pig, rabbit, mouse…it appears I have regressed
to four again, longing for something furry to hold.
My granddaughter wears a full length, purple, princess dress,
perhaps as a brilliant piece of subconscious, escapist theatre.
It is her Rapunzel dress she tells me. But I am Rapunzel,
shut in my town house, ‘sheltered’ for the foreseeable future.
She laughs, thinks I am joking. Ha ha.
Granny in a long, purple, rustling dress and crown.
Where is your wand then?
My wand is research. I eat parsley, which I love, find out that
the real Rapunzel was a third century saint called Barbara,
beheaded by her father. I see the similarities. She has her food
delivered in a basket on a rope and my house is tall with windows,
plus my Dad did try to behead me (intellectually). Another version
has Rapunzel named after parsley, which she feeds to her rabbits.
My hair is growing long. I must break out.
Rose Cook
Note: Petrosinella is the old Italian word for parsley
August…Lammas blessings
Crowning Party
This year the weather changed with rain
and cold in the North, hints of autumn.
When our children were small, we always held a party
when August began. Each wore a crown.
The barley fields wave theirs in a golden sea.
Farmers will begin to gather the grain.
My mother took us bilberrying up on the moors.
A whole wild day scrambling through heather.
Special sandwiches and pop.
photograph and poem Rose Cook
poem from Sightings available http://www.greyhenpress.com
