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Corinna Board

@corinnaboard.bsky.social
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EAL teacher. Tree lover. Likes to write poems. She/her. linktr.ee/parole_de_reveuse

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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Only a few copies of this limited edition handmade chapbook left!
Two moss green chapbooks on a wicker table. One is open on the title page ‘Little Book O’Moss’ and has marbled green and grey endpapers. A microchapbook open on the poem ‘might I live like that?’ With an illustration of a moss leaflet.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
A poem from ‘Mædwe’ and a bee for #worldbiodiversityday 🌏💚🐝
Photo of a bee on a purple flower with green grass in the background and 
an erasure poem titled ‘emergency for bees’.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Link in bio, would love to see you there! 🌱
Zoom launch invitation on a beige background with a botanical illustration of giant fescue grass.
Text reads:

Mædwe online launch -
Tuesday 3rd March, 7.30pm.
Hosted by Victoria Spires.
With guest readers Vasiliki Albedo, Sophia Argyris, Tom Branfoot and Victoria Spires.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Mædwe is officially out in the world! With thanks to Andrew and Sophie @salopress.bsky.social, to my lovely endorsers Sophia Argyris and Tom Branfoot, and also to the journals who first published some of the poems (see acknowledgements photo!) www.salopress.com/store/mdwe-c...
Mædwe a poetry pamphlet is beige coloured with a botanical green grass seed drawing. I have arranged it on a wooden desk with a small wooden field mouse and a corn dolly. The acknowledgments page from Mædwe.Endorsements from Tom Branfoot and Sophia Argyris.Me looking excited and terrified holding my pamphlet. White woman with long brownish hair and glasses and a blue jumper.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Received my contributor copy of the brilliant Under The Radar @ninearchespress.bsky.social edited by Roy McFarlane. There’s so much great stuff in here. Thanks Roy, Jane and Matt for including two of my poems! 💚🪶 If you’d like to have a read, there’s a link in my bio to purchase a copy.
Under The Radar Magazine Issue 36; The Flight Issue. Cover is dark grey with an illustration showing flying tigers on a light green-blue background. The book is placed on a wicker table and decorated with feathers and a sycamore key.A page from Under The Radar partially showing my poem ‘Passerine’. In the background, there’s a Christmas tree.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 01/08/2025
‘Swan and Shadow’ John Hollander (Poetry Foundation). 🦢 #poetry
Concrete poem in the form of a swan and its reflection.

Swan and Shadow
BY JOHN HOLLANDER (December 1966).
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
Abigail Chabitnoy 🔥
Poem text reads:

IF YOU'RE GOING TO LOOK LIKE A WOLF THEY HAVE TO LOVE YOU MORE THAN THEY FEAR YOU

The first deer had large teeth and no horns and were not afraid.
The first deer did not have enough fear for the men who needed them to survive.
A woman decided to let the men eat. grandmother decided her deer shall have horns and be afraid
someone's mother decided the men shall eat and shall be feared.
A man thought wolves should be used to cull the herd.
And we who had been catching water dripping through stone in the homes we dug out of the earth we licked our long teeth clean
and set to work.

Abigail Chabitnoy
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
The joy in this poem by Hannah Emerson is contagious: #poetry
Poem text reads:

KEEP YOURSELF AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING

Please try to help me go to the joy that is trying to go to the beautiful helpful helpful beginning of the beginning of the very trying freedom that we make our great great great light that is nothing but the laughter that is fooling us into believing that we go to the trash bin that is your life that become the treasures that live in the bottom of the bin that is your life yes yes yes yes - please
try to dive down to the beautiful muck that helps you get that the world was made from the garbage at the bottom of the universe that was boiling over with joy that wanted to become you you you yes yes yes - please try to go to the colors that kiss you great great great person of the light that is becoming you you you yes yes - please try to keep yourself in the bottom of the bin yes yes - please try to go to the kissing muck that is very true to your life yes yes - please try to meet me there yes yes - please try to bring your beautiful nothing there yes yes

Hannah Emerson 

The poem has a concrete form like mountains running sideways down the page or an open beak.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 24/05/2025
So much love for this poem by AV Bridgwood which came 2nd in The Rialto Nature and Place Competition 2024 and appears in Rialto 102. @rialtopoetry.bsky.social 💚
EXTINCTION SUBMISSION

problems for moths
include astroturf and overlighting if moths got problems so do bats so do cuckoos the unswooped lanes the silent trees their body clocks all fucked i am helpfully informed 

by the special nature issue of the in-flight magazine. it is time to quit being self-centred and reproduce i am helpfully informed by Brett in 2F i swallow the morning after pill in the loo's steel anchorhold my contribution to declining millennial birthrates i will sleep

when i get there three flights in three days dear god should i change my Shein joggers. belly pains. airport garden in a pod art gallery in a pod vast paintings of grids swarmed over by dots with no respect for lines like life 

at its cellular level like germs says the leaflet it is about anthropocentrism about the things we cannot see. i dream on the plane of the earth after the last child and the moths to so many different mothkinds so many little mouthsounds the tick

of corrugated membranes in the hindwings chattering through all the empty Starbucks so many and nameless this time after names. when i get there it is dark at 3pm i think my phone is unsynced i google time now here. it is 3pm. there is a smog over the lake from the burning

trash. we have switched off the sun. the rooster cries dawn once an hour. you me both buddy the clocks in us hushed by planedrone by mallglow. small me once gutted a beloved beanie baby rooster spilling polystyrene we found the beads for years in the weave a heart

plastic-tagged to its crest with a poem inside about birds and a warning about children choking. i am spotting weirdly my knickers look like the antianthropocentrism exhibition. i am trying to dream again go back to that crescendo of ultrasonic whispering

over the razed ground but the rooster cries all day-night like a baby. Siri
what time is it here now

AV Bridgwood
030
Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
Also reading Fiona Benson’s new collection which is, as expected. phenomenal!
Midden Witch by Fiona Benson - ebook version on my tablet.Poem text by Fiona Benson reads:

Lark Ascending

Up here, the sky is drilled with vanishing holes - 
the disappearing routes of larks diminishing to specks,

and late-spring light is riddled with the thrill 
of their long song, their desperate incantation.

See how this near lark draws you off, lays bare 
its little piece of flesh, decoy in the sky's mouth -

I am take-meat I am morsel -

Watch where it sinks, silent and inconspicuous 
in meadow grass, and you betray the song's bright clamour,

its seduction of your gaze up and away from offspring nested soft and subtle in the verdure.

It falls to rise again, as all our prayers 
feint and rise and batter, panicked at the door

of whatever wrung-out mother we dream enskied, 
and beg to ward off harm from children who,

despite our subterfuge and voodoo, will one day nonetheless 
be drawn to their father's house, will fly undefended

in the temples of the air - each tiny, tremulous force 
with a vast inheritance of voice, and strident, coloratura cry;

I am take-meat I am morsel - don't look there look here -
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
May reading pile, with a poem from each pamphlet, all highly recommended! 💚 🇵🇸 🌲 #poetry #poetsonbluesky @jlmmorton.bsky.social @outspokenpress.bsky.social @poetrybusiness.bsky.social
Three poetry pamphlets on a wicker table. Fossil Record by Wayne Price, The Age of Olive Trees by Haia Mohammed, and Forest by JLM Morton. Poem text by Wayne Price reads:

Fossil Record
I’m 
Wind was stammering at the windows all night.
If I slept at all it was a half-sleep
filled with thoughts that halved into dreams and back again. The first cells divided identically, for millions of years.
Millions of years before difference began.

Slow learning life. Slower than stone. I would
like a sleep as deep as those first fractal
animals, colourless, rooted in the dark 
of empty oceans, carbon-paper thin.

Everything in the wind says give me time, 
I can change: minerals in the rocks and streams; 
proteins in warm seas; memories; children who will remind us they never asked to be born.Poem text by Haia Mohammed reads:

I AM GAZA, I AM HAIA

Daughter of a land that cannot be defeated a voice of a sky that never betrays

I'm the blood that flows through its streets the pulse beneath the rubble that never ceases

every day my eyes witness death but my heart 
knows only life

I carry on my shoulders the pain of a nation 
and on my lips the voice of defiance

I'm the story the world cannot forget
the sword that will not break the soul

to the world I will not ask you to save me 
I will not seek your pity

In the face of my strength you will feel powerless
I am Haia - daughter of Gaza

my voice is louder than any bomb 
my spirit deeper than any wound.Poem text by JLM Morton reads:

FOREST
I

In the beginning was the sun

which begat wind

which begat rain 

which begat seed 

which begat sapling 

which begat black pine

plunged through the first layer of rot, 
musk mould, moist treasure on the brown 
saddle of the escarpment,

tasting the pure potential of limestone, water.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
For Earth Day, a little bird poem originally published by Carmen et Error (@thebraag.bsky.social) 💚 🌍 (photo RSPB) #poetry #Earthday
A dunnock's prayer by Corinna Board

O wingless wun, 
god o' smal bridds, 
spære my nest, 
my fif blue eggs.
Bright sky-keeper, 
bringer o' frost,
maker o' hip an haw, 
can ye hear my 
tseep tseep tseep 
in the heeg?
I sing for ye
in the blackthorn 
an the dogrose, 
in the hazel
an the rowan.
I, this tyne spearwa 
so smæl in yur hand.

Written using a mixture of old English, modern English, and phonic variations of modern English.Photo of a dunnock in the hedgerow.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 14/04/2025
Spot the skylark! (Shame the wind ruins the sound a bit.) #nature
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 12/04/2025
Feeling very lucky to live in such a beautiful place! #oxfordshire #thecotswolds
White blackthorn blossoms in the hedgerowTwo white swans, one in the lake, one resting on the grassy bank. Fields and trees in the background.The lake like a mirror reflecting back trees and blue sky.Sheep and young lambs, probably a week old, in the field.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Enjoying some beautiful poetry by @sophiaargyris.bsky.social in my mum’s garden. ❤️ #poetry
Heronless by Sophia Argyris. Cover shows a colour photo of a heron perched by a river. Poem text reads:

Fox Names The World

Fox calls the night solace, calls the stars home-light 
calls the clouds her fickle friends. Fox calls hedges hatchways. Her claws chatter like teeth 
on roads, she calls concrete strange stone hears her own steps on its grey skin, pauses 
scents the air again. Fox knows
 
some places are too dead to hunt in nothing warm blooded can live 
where strange stone rises too tall 
leans too close, but she can slip between the jaws of these mountains, find little bits of life.
Fox calls rat hope or taste or joy-fur.

Sometimes she finds other things to eat left lying wrapped in shuffle-mouth stuff that must be shaken off. Fox moves in silence 
calls the dark her own, haunts the dimming sky 
with her voice to say so. Fox calls the world 
fierce gladsome mine known.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Found a rook egg on the ground below and managed to not get pooped on!
A rook egg shell held between my thumb and finger.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
The rookery is getting busy. 🪺
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 04/04/2025
Gorgeous poetry collaboration in the form of a plantable pamphlet. 🌱💚 @dialectwriters.bsky.social #poetry
A plantable poetry pamphlet ‘Hertz’ by Hannah Copley and Alycia Pirmohamed, placed in the soil of an empty stone planter with a stone bird.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 31/03/2025
My #lifttothesky is for @karanchambers.bsky.social and her superb pamphlet ‘woman | folk’ - grab yourself a copy from @salopress.bsky.social, it is packed with powerful & raw poems about womanhood like this one:
woman | folk by Karan Chambers.Poem text reads:

the fisher queen

i didn't know the right question to ask & so he fished. every day. he contemplated the water, tracking currents & ghosts. out in his stupid little boat while the land withered around us. i sowed & tilled & coaxed the soil, desperate as my efforts bore no growth. i walked the kitchen gardens, knelt in dust & turned its ashy grey, hoping to find dark loam if i just dug deep enough. each time i pulled my fingers dry & grieving from the earth, the dirt fell away like soot. & when i took my basket to the fields for harvest, corn ears drooped before me & i couldn't bring myself to uproot their shrivelled forms. still he fished. when i took my daughter to the woods to forage, hunting berries & seeds like starving birds, we brought home scraps to make a soup that made our bellies twist & gripe. & still he fished. when the grass crisped under the scorching sun, turning sickly ochre before the wildfires raged. he fished. when the bloody flux came, turning our insides out & killing our old folk in its spite. he fished. when our milk dried up & our babes perished at our breasts, wails becoming whimpers before silence. he fished. when my daughter sickened, turning white & pallid, & i begged him on my knees - he left as usual, peeling my fingers from his ankles, rod slung over one shoulder. i held her hand as she wasted with the land around us, folded hands to shoulders, placed the coins & wound the cloth, as i had done for four small forms before her. only then did i walk down to the shore & let the water close over my head.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Close up of a wood anemone on the forest floor.A clump of wild primroses on the forest floor.Yellow lichen covering the thin twigs of a tree.Pinky-red catkins.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/03/2025
Today’s walk: #moss #nature #lichen
Woodland with primroses, wood anemones, ivy covered trees. A piece of moss-covered wood with wood anemones growing next to it.A wild violet on the forest floor.Moss growing on branches.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
March reading pile ❤️ @thebraag.bsky.social @karanchambers.bsky.social @salopress.bsky.social @faberbooks.bsky.social
4 poetry books on a wicker table: Offworld by Kirsten Luckins, Every House Needs a Ghost by Timothy Fox, woman|folk by Karan Chambers, and That Broke into Shining Crystals by Richard Scott.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
The brook and meadow.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 08/03/2025
Spring walk. Muddy paths, blue sky, first primroses and tree hugging! 💚 #nature
Muddy bridge path over the brook into the meadow.Trees over the brook with grass and blue sky.First yellow primroses Hugging a tree on my walk. I am wearing black honeybee wellies, a dark blue jumper, black leggings and sunglasses and my brown hair is tied in a ponytail. In the background - grass, hedgerow, wooden fence and gate into the next field.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 04/03/2025
Was late for work as I stopped to listen to these redwings chattering… 😆 (Also: look at that blue sky!) #nature
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Evening walk with sunset, birdsong and sheep. 💚
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Thanks so much Clare Shaw @clareshawpoet.bsky.social and Anna Chilvers for the glorious workshop last night. I loved spending time thinking about bog bodies, moss and very small creatures. Here’s a couple of moss pics from my camera roll to celebrate! 💚
Bright green moss on a drystone wall with sporophytes and capsules growing upwards. Clusters of green moss on a lichen covered stone.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
My favourite rook/jackdaw community at dusk: #nature #corvids
Winter trees at dusk with noisy rook and jackdaw residents. Canopy of a rookery at dusk.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 17/02/2025
What’s that yellow thing in the sky?? // Lichen sun.
The bridleway, grass verge, hedgerow, drystone walls and a low February sun in a light blue sky dappled with white clouds.Bright yellow lichen on a drystone wall = lichen sun.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 16/02/2025
‘Eyelid’ by Michael Longley for #smallpoemsunday 🦉 @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #poetry
Poem text reads:

Eyelid

Amelia opens the tawny owl's eyelid 
And finds a concentration of the night.

Michael Longley
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
I adored this collection of ecopoetry by Béatrice Szymkowiak - an innovative erasure of John James Audubon's Birds of America (1827-1838). #poetry #ecopoetry
B/RDS by Béatrice Szymkowiak.Poem text reads:

The Remembrance of Thousands

Twig, twig, be/loved. A field of quivering c/lover & there, perched on a fence-stake / adieu boughs & mosses. B/orders breed through the night.
Wings hatch from blades of grass, cleave. Another, an/other. Note louder than a love-call / perched on a fence-stake. Adieu gentle, as if Spring or Autumn. / The hatchets have mangled the last pines deaf / a chattering unsettles, flocks after flocks.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 15/02/2025
Reading companion (the neighbour’s cat!)
A black and white cat sitting on a wicker table next to a pen and two books.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 14/02/2025
I am not particularly fond of Valentine’s Day. But I do like moss. 💚 #moss
A gorgeous ball of light green moss on a licheny stone wall.Luscious green moss with sporophytes on a dry stone wall.Dark green moss with sporophytes, growing on a wall.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Here he/she is!
Song thrush in a tree
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
Spotted a song thrush on the way home from work! 😍
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
‘Praise the rain; it brings more rain.’ For anyone who needs it, this poem by Joy Harjo: #poetry
Poem text reads:

Praise the Rain
BY JOY HARIO

Praise the rain; the seagull dive 
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack 
The stand of trees, the dignity— 
Praise the dark, the moon cradle 
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name 
The earth eclipse, the fired leap— 
Praise the backwards, upward sky 
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush 
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup 
The mind flat, forget it all—
Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we're led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Katrina Porteous - from ‘Edge’ (Bloodaxe). #poetry
Poem text reads:

Volcanoes of lo

You thought you knew
What matter was.
Solid or gas

Or fluid. These words 
And their slippery properties - 
Speed. Heat. Light. Mass -

One seething molten
Caldera, spitting gobs 
That cool on the surface

Into gleaming, desirable 
Pennies, rolling
Back into the furnace

Like the old gods
Slipping off their bodies 
Out of mischief, or pity.

Katrina Porteous
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 09/02/2025
For #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social ‘The Ghost Orchid’ by Michael Longley. #poetry
Poem text reads:

The Ghost Orchid

Added to its few remaining sites will be the stanza 
I compose about leaves like flakes of skin, a colour 
Dithering between pink and yellow, and then the root 
That grows like coral among shadows and leaf-litter.
Just touching the petals bruises them into darkness.

Michael Longley
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
From ‘alphabet’ by Inger Christensen (translated by Susanna Nied). I love this book so much! #poetry
Poem text reads:

7

given limits exist, streets, oblivion 
and grass and gourds and goats and gorse, eagerness exists, given limits
branches exist, wind lifting them exists, and the lone drawing made by the branches of the tree called an oak tree exists, of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree, a cedar tree, the drawing repeated in the gravel garden path; weeping exists as well, fireweed and mugwort, hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young;
and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard; overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants, guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up chemical ghetto guns exist with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision
guns and wailing women, full as
greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists; the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract, bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light, this poisonous, white, crumbling poem
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 05/02/2025
‘All contradictions/find a home in the body, the insect-skin/ of the car sluicing the Arizona desert/as the cicadas pick up their grand/instruments’ I’m starting the day with this gorgeous poem by @kinsaledrake.bsky.social 💚 #poetry
Poem text reads:

Put on that KTNN
By Kinsale Drake

My mother was raised on Patsy Cline
and Hank Williams country
that bounced in on her father's radio.

Even today, I know I am nearing home when the pop music crackles 
into KTNN, licks

of fluent Navajo flitting between 
Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash.
They are interludes, too,

for drumbeats and throaty covers 
of well-loved tunes put on 
by some local boys' gas station

banjo and hot-rocket guitar, 
a strong woman that sings 
the seasons over a hand drum.Then it is back 
to more Loretta Lynn.
All contradictions

find a home in the body, the insect-skin 
of the car sluicing the Arizona desert 
as the cicadas pick up their grand

instruments. How else to know 
you enter a land of monuments, not 
a wasteland, loved by radio waves

and peach trees
and small, silly dogs that bridge 
the distance between a chapter house

and the nearest Sonics in a city.
The moon rocks darken into pine, 
pine into slickrock,

and the whole world remembers 
what it once was—
grand ocean: sun, plankton, pearl,

blood, ancestor, cloud. Radio rainbows 
the most violent parts of the land 
thrashed by thunderstorms & sea

as the rattles pick up their backing track and Hank Williams rolls in 
all over again, easy and easy

and blue.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 03/02/2025
Actually I’ve got two on the go! 😆 x
Gathering Moss and The Hidden World of Mosses
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 02/02/2025
This one by @carolinebirduk.bsky.social for #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social:
Poem text reads:

HOW WAS EVERYTHING

The 
vulture 
circles 
like 
a 
waitress
on 
rollerskates 
asking 
have
you 
finished 
with 
that?

Caroline Bird - from 'Ambush at Still Lake’
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
February reading pile: #poetry #reading
Four books on a wicker table: My Hummingbird Father by Pascale Petit, Alphabet by Inger Christensen, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli, and Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
This one from ‘Rapture’s Road’ by Seán Hewitt for #smallpoemsunday @tomsnarsky.bsky.social #poetry
Poem text reads:

SNOWS

By my age, the snows of my father's 
life were already half-fallen.
What is that sound? The white hart

leaping through its dark estate.
Frost on the eyes of the animals.
Frost in the mouths of the trees -

Seán Hewitt
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 26/01/2025
I know we don’t really need rain here in the UK at the moment, but I’d still like to share this truly beautiful poem by @niallpoetry.bsky.social which I re-discovered thanks to @marjorielotfi.bsky.social’s January writing reset sessions. #poetry
Poem text reads:

The Rainmaker
BY NIALL CAMPBELL

We needed it—and he stood there, 
feet on the dry porch, saying ‘rain’, 
cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming;

the bath trough in the garden listened, white and bone dry, as he described 
a bright wash across the dust fields,

the surest downpour, the flushed skin, 
my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell.
Then off he went to the scorched fields,

humming, and weighing what we paid.
What did he say: ‘prayer is moisture; 
hope is a well’—I didn't care,

I wanted just the words from him— 
what I couldn't dare say—not there beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky.

My thoughts all thoughts of water, I 
spun my head round—to hear the spill 
of the word rain across the boards,

and nothing grew dark, nothing fell-
but something fell, and the ground took, and something wild as garlic grew.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Found this pressed Dartmoor heather in an old journal, remember stopping there on the way to Helston 3 summers ago.
Pressed purple heather on a green notebook
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 25/01/2025
Puddle ice, moss with spore capsule stalks, pink sunrise 💚
My gloved hand holding a piece of puddle ice against a blue sky, the fields and bridleway.A small clump of moss on a stone wall, with spore capsules emerging from it on long thin stalks.A line of winter trees in the park with a pink sky sunrise.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 23/01/2025
There really aren’t enough beetle poems. Here’s a great one by @eugenialeigh.bsky.social which I discovered through Pádraig Ó Tuama’s podcast: #poetry
Poem text reads:

How the Dung Beetle Finds Its
Way Home

by Eugenia Leigh

The Milky Way's glinting ribbon helps the dung beetle
roll his good ball of shit back to the ones he loves.
But blind him to the sky with as little as a hat,
and he will swerve like a drunk who, if he makes it home alive,
might find the family, soured with waiting,
gone. Drawers cleared, beds cold, even the watercolor ark
of giraffes and raptors pulled from the face of the fridge.
See? I want to tell my missing father, it's a metaphor so simple
it's almost not worth writing down: even beetles need the
stars
to nudge them back to where they
need to be
when they need to be there— toward their little ones'
gummy grins ever pardoning the
grisliest parent.Poem text reads:  (2/2)

I am thirty-four with a son the day my mother tells me she enrolled in a four-day seminar about how to be a good mom.
A little late, I know.
Once, in a rage, I left my husband and our sleeping child.
Where did you go, friends ask when I tell the story.
I wish I'd had a grander plan. I wish I'd stood on the roof of our building and, empowered by that single Brooklyn star,
I'd ripped up the book of my parents' sins.
Or I wish I could tell someone the
truth: that I fear
I am the kind of woman who could leave the one good family
God had the gall to give her.
Really,
I sat on the stairwell leading up to
the roof and wept
until a large bug threatened my life, at which point I recalled the dung beetles, stopped blaming my parents, and— thanking the metaphorical stars—
I rolled up my pile of shit and trudged back home.
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Corinna Board @corinnaboard.bsky.social · 21/01/2025
Here’s the full poem by Don McKay in all its beauty:
"Neanderthal Dig" by Don McKay

1.
"When we dug up the grave we found a child's bones
laid on a great swan's wing.
They had never been, we thought, the sharpest flints in the cave, with thick skulls evolving toward NFL helmets. We'd applied their name (from Neander Vale, site of the first remains we found) to racists, sexists, and dull bureaucrats.
"Now we stood abashed, trespassers on grief, thoroughly sapiens with artful implements and wit.
What would it be like to be so stricken, with few words to call on heaven, hell, hope, grief? And what
sharp words might we, the clever cousins, muster for the child who one
day watched a Mute Swan (wingspan:
five feet) lift from the river in two white swipes of Paleolithic air?2.
"What manner of wreath might honour this death?
Some wing of language entering earth?
Wherever you're gone may your spirit wander wild as a swan in the Vale of Neander."
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