Frances-Ann Norton: Poetry

Delighted to be showing a poem - Golden Bird Sestina in this edition of Haus a Rest zine. https://www.haus-a-rest.com/issue-36-writing-the-space-between . Written during the critical thinking club sessions. The Golden Bird - a sestina   Connections in this story have long lines of multi-coloured Threads. And at the heart of timeless-time, is the Time of Gold .     Enchanted-fox-sister, birds, horses, forests and brothers intertwine in narrative patterns.               The story is an old one, and she who tells it has learned well her craft.     It is embroidered with rich stiches of characters and landscapes of colour.             It begins, as so many tales do, with two brothers who are most outertoumat.   Pulling the wool over the eyes of an indulgent Father is the gift of the outertoumat...

  Fantastic to be featured in Mood Muse Zine on the theme of Hope see the below links to access my poem https://heyzine.com/flip-book/7ff7fc532d.html#page/39 https://www.instagram.com/mood.muse.co/ Stop smashing this puny existence   In the Post-Apocalypse, there is quiet submission, rebellious spirits and noisy thoughts. At the edge of the city is a landscape of slag and gravel, shale and landfill. Wet rills, leaking like silent tears divulge an archaeology of yesterday. Runnels of polluted water condense from drifts of toxic mists. Aimlessly she drives around seeking answers. A nihilistic hopelessness has settled here, an existential loneliness in postmodern moodiness. “SMASH THIS PUNY EXISTENCE” a placard commands. Not yet. Hope is not dead. I see the Little Flower herself, St Therese sitting atop the landfill crag, collecting the by-products of industry. Softly singing to herself and consumptively coughing every now and then. In her hand she reveals the vertebrae of a fish...

Fantastic to be published in this poetry zine from Canada. With thanks to the editors and organisers. Here is my poem, which was put into a word cloud format.  Icon virgins   Image of the Virgin, in a fountain with Jesus on her lap The water flows from the right Our Lady Life Giving Fountain.   Image of the Virgin, she with her baby, who is the fruitful, the nourishing, Our Lady of the Walled Garden. And on her face she ponders, she sorrows, she sits in a reverie.   Image of the Virgin, she is Our Lady of the Burning Bush. Her clothes are covered in branches of flame and fire. Red hot. Arms outreaching, face inward smiling. The promise of the Old Testament.   Image of the Virgin, she is Our Lady the Never Fading Rose. Her garment vined with plants and flowers, fruitfully pollinating and blooming in their prime. Her garments overgrown with fragrant fruitfulness. Baby in her arms.  

Thanks Lark Books, this was one of the first places to publish my creative works.   

Very pleased for my Three Poems on Loss and Grief accepted as part of this amazing exhibition.  ............................. Three Poems on Loss and Grief:  A Sounding Voice, Coming and Going & Pleated Heart. A Sounding Voice   The feet of my child, the mind of my child, the voice of my child. Yet I am on my own in a room. The feet of my child, the mind of my child… upstairs all the beds are made. The voice of my child… the whole building is quiet. Tear a piece of me away, that is what it is to lose that life, which was inside me. The bedspreads are flat and neat… the ache in my soul of the disappeared baby. The concrete grey, mint green and raspberry room, that now stands empty, Is ringing with singing, resonating with the voice of a woman who might have been. The colours in the room melt in a haze of cloudy diffusion, watercolour pathos. …………………………………. Coming and Going   Every breath is different and every breath hits differently ...

Silence Poem:   Let me scream and rage rend my clothes, sob my heart out in pure frustration.   Let my tongue be cleaved to the roof of my mouth with the wordlessness of my fury and despair.   Let me smash priceless porcelains. Rip costly canvasses. Fling myself into the torrenting vortex of the sea in the thunder storm.   Let me throw all the furniture from an upstairs window to splintering crunch and splitting asunder.   Let me bloody my knuckles punching time on the kitchen cabinets.   If you need me not. If you want me not. If you love me not.   If this be so…   Let me dive to bell-depths of the ocean floor deaf to sound. Let me close myself in a silent sauna of tears. Let me bury my head in the sand of peacefulness.   Let me become another self, a silent one. Half bird, half snake, half woman. To fly the somber skies, shunned by every other creature.    First...

Willow Pattern:   Snappy handbags and porcelain ginger pots The lovers banned from the Spar Local For smooching in the aisles.   Why are Dads such a pain in the ass? What do they know anyway? Were they ever really young and in love?   The boat is waiting A banged up beater of a boat They have paid the captain two crates of Newcastle Brown. Their destination? Love Island, In the Melanesian Pacific.   The edge of the pattern is theirs to create anew The snapped willow, the kicked in fence, the smashed pots the shattered mirror where the motif runs out, what happens there?   This is where their story begins The old repetitions are left behind, forgotten in the amnesia Of true love The pattern is changing, mending, re-growing, piecing itself back together The willow, the boat, the fence, Set sail and don’t look back. First published in Magical Women Magazine , October 2020