Phil Wood – Fevers of the Mind

Collaboration Poetry & Photography from John Winder & Phil Wood

Portents

This morning the portents are ovular.
Her spoon cracks the crown
with a deft tap like Debussy
orchestrating the life of possibilities
over a freckled sea; as light flickers
her painted nails begin to peel the shell,
an act that's delicate and clinical:
the albumen is pure, an oval of white.
Her palette knife slices the top off
and yolk spills towards the rim
with a slow promise quickening
to stains and stickiness,
a Hodgkin splodge of illumination
spreading over the frame
papering walls with a summer's day.

Butterfly

Within the butterfly net
the black and white 
flickered a film of when
I fidgeted in the leather chair,
where granddad wintered
and fought his ire of clocks 
with a spice of briny tales
to ungrind rainy days.

I chew a Black Jack 
in the fossilized light
of my study, the flutter
of childhood escapes.

She Bought Me Coffee

I shiver in my jumper, the skin
I knitted before she moved in.
The path shimmers. Her diva face
pouts and poses - it's getting late.

The zigzag home: a venture rite
of inclines, a puddle theatre of night.
My jumper snags on fate. I comb
the air and fall. She buys me coffee.

Bio Phil Wood

Phil Wood was born and lives in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various publications, including: The Wild Word, Autumn Sky Daily, the Abergavenny Small Press, Ink Pantry, Fevers of the Mind.

Bio John Winder

John Winder is a creative photographer working in both colour and black and white. He began creative photography 40 years ago and enjoys trudging around outdoors, hauling camera gear, and spending time behind the camera. He has art work previously published in The Bangor Literary Journal, The Fly on the Wall Press and The Abergavenny Small Press.

Bare Bones Writings Issue 1 is out on Paperback and Kindle

Cover photo by Paul Brookes of Wombwell

Bare Bones Writings is an extension of http://www.Feversofthemind.com . Themes we are Looking for Poetry/prose/articles/other styles of writing are for Adhd Awareness, Mental Health, Anxiety, Culture, History, Social Justice, LGBTQ Matters/Pride, Love, Poem series, sonnets, physical health, pandemic themes, Trauma, Retro/pop culture, inspired by music/songwriters, inspired by classic & current writers, frustrations. Artwork. Music, Poetry, Book reviews.

Issue 1 includes tributes to poets/writers that contributed to Fevers of the Mind in the past including Kari Ann Flickinger, Scott Christopher Beebe & Dai Fry.

A Fevers of the Mind Musician Spotlight on the albums of Marissa Nadler.

Short Interviews from the Quick-9 interview series with Khalisa Rae, Ron Sexsmith, & Shaindel Beers.

Poetry/Writings from Kari Ann Flickinger, Dai Fry, Scott Christopher Beebe, Paul Brookes, Bill Abney, Ankh Spice, David L O’Nan, Robert Frede Kenter (with poems about Lou Reed), Glenn Barker, Rc deWinter, K Weber, Robin McNamara, Elizabeth Cusack, an art/poetry collaboration between Lia Brooks & Phil Wood, the first 5 poems from Hiraeth Series by Kushal Poddar, Barney Ashton-Bullock, Spriha Kant, Jennifer Patino (with a poem inspired by Audrey Hepburn) and artwork by Maggs Vibo, Matthew M C Smith, HilLesha O’Nan, Lily Maureen O’Nan, Ken Benes, Jessica Weyer Bentley, R.D. Johnson, Ojo Victoria Ilemobayo, Norb Aikin, Andrew Darlington, Liam Flanagan, Christina Strigas, Lorraine Caputo, Conny Borgelioen, Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Colin Dardis, Petar Penda, Helen Openshaw, Matthew Freeman, Christian Garduno, Eileen Carney Hulme, Colin James, Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, Marisa Silva-Dunbar, Kate Garrett, A.R. Salandy, John Chinaka Onyeche, Doryn Herbst

Links:

https://tinyurl.com/ypax2vte United States

https://tinyurl.com/54datkad Canada

https://tinyurl.com/mt2h72aj Australia

https://tinyurl.com/ye5mvrfh India

https://tinyurl.com/mvcuxe8c U.K.

https://tinyurl.com/54sjsnxv Spain

https://tinyurl.com/zesshx9a France

https://tinyurl.com/28h47hdd Italy

https://tinyurl.com/4a8ta8f5 Mexico

https://tinyurl.com/mrya4uww Japan

https://tinyurl.com/yvuz8thd Netherlands

https://tinyurl.com/y65mt5c3 Poland

https://tinyurl.com/5ee9dh3b Turkey

https://tinyurl.com/2v26mwuj Sweden

Current bio for Fevers of the Mind’s David L O’Nan editor/writing contributor to blog.

Hard Rain Poetry: Forever Dylan Anthology available today!

Available Now: Before I Turn Into Gold Inspired by Leonard Cohen Anthology by David L O’Nan & Contributors w/art by Geoffrey Wren

Poetry & Art “Not Walking” by Phil Wood & Lia Brooks

Not Walking by Lia Brooks 
inspired by Phil Wood's oil painting of the same name

I came across them in the late afternoon of my body –
five tangled pillars bracing the dream of a calm dusk:

each one in turn, the shape of an idea as if another leaned in
and painted five tenets into my thinking. And there,

reaching with deep roots through the marrow of me, beauty,
so I might find it far beyond and below the lens of my eye.

The second shimmered as it leapt to freedom like a lilac salmon
from the current I claim. Next, a spine curving as if I should fall

but never would, made balanced by the fairness of my palms
as the fourth sprawled with the honesty of these limbs no matter

the weather risk or the snap. And then, finally, flashes of storm
through every vessel in that waiting muscle – clamouring,

ready, messy and unknowable yet fully known: love
in its bright hurt; this road beneath me, trees ahead, the journey home.

Biography: Phil Wood was born in Wales He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. His most recent published collaborative work, with photographer John Winder, can be found https://feversofthemind.com/2022/01/05/photo-poetry-from-phil-wood-poet-and-john-winder-photography/ This current collaborative work was a matter of happenstance: his oil painting inspiring Lia's poem. Phil is a great believer in crossing boundaries, including those between art forms.

Biography: Lia Brooks was born in Epsom, Surrey, to a painter and a map maker, and now lives at the edge of the New Forest with a river beyond the doorstep. She has worked with children and adults for the majority of her working life, and is continuously fascinated by nature and people, and how the two meet and overlap. Her work can be found in Poetry London, Spelt, Mslexia, Agenda and Magma, among others. She has been commended in the Troubadour Poetry Prize, Mslexia's Pamphlet Competition, the National Poetry Competition, and was recently a finalist for the Aesthetica Writing Award.

Photo/poetry from Phil Wood (Poet) and John Winder (Photography)

Pod

You emerged
from your pod, humble
with grace.

I was clumsy,
crumbled in faith,
a clay man.

I knelt
to worship, but
stumbled

and you,
puzzled, you gracefully
swam away.

Mesmerized

She worries over her missing cat,
but tiptoes round the bric-a-brac
of right and wrong. Outside she shivers,
fireworks are fab. She finds the cat.

Puddlework

Not windy, but loud with rain.
Both wellied up, two umbrellas,
his black and hers polka dot bright.
The path puddles syncopation.

The sodden vegetation verbs
pitter patter tip tap pat pit.
A childhood code unlocks first love.
They splash. They splish, splash, splosh!

The Labrador looks quizzical,
but fun is fun. She bounces in.
What does a dog know of why
the world weeps in muddy pools?

3 pieces of work jointly created by Phil Wood (poet) and John Winder (photographer). These pairs of work demonstrate a conversation between poetry and photography. The elements are both individual and interconnected. The conversation between them is layered, implicit and explicit, exists and existed. Boundaries between the media have proved porous with one medium influencing the interpretation of the other. It has been a conversation of rewarding discovery.
The works are entitled “Pod”, “Mesmerized” and “Puddlework”
A version of the poem “Puddlework” was previously published by ‘Poetry in Public’

Bio Phil Wood
Phil Wood was born and lives in Wales. He studied English Literature at Aberystwyth University. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys watercolour painting, bird watching, and chess. His writing can be found in various publications, including: The Wild Word, Autumn Sky Daily, the Abergavenny Small Press, Ink Pantry, Fevers of the Mind.

Bio John Winder
John Winder is a creative photographer working in both colour and black and white. He began creative photography 40 years ago and enjoys trudging around outdoors, hauling camera gear, and spending time behind the camera. He has art work previously published in The Bangor Literary Journal, The Fly on the Wall Press and The Abergavenny Small Press. He enjoys walking, the cinema and sailing.

3 poems inspired by art by Phil Wood “Escaping the Frame” “Alfred” & “Pearl”

escaping the frame

as the light pours/ ice shatters/ glimpse
into the maze/ of his mind/ where she
wanders/ in his striped shirt/ casually
loosening/ a button or two/ stretching
venal curves/ to paint what hasn’t
been learnt/ tradition to unlearn

Demoiselle d’Avignon/ prostitute
staring vacant/ from the canvas/ strides
beyond fantasy/ into the room/ Picasso
with appetite/ waking/ and her
poised/ masked/ primitive/ savage
aura of light/ escaping the frame

he was a thug and rapist/ her voice says

Alfred

A fisherman no more,
he’s strolling down St Ives,
the curve of cobbled streets
towards the pebbled beach.
Some label him naïve,
his neighbours furrow brows.
Each day he paints those times
of boats with thirsty sails,
the sky a rash of gulls,
that harbour of flightless hours
and anchored names. He climbs
the rigging with bristled brushes.
His canvas, cardboard torn
from discarded packing cases.
His wife is graveyard stone.
He paints for food and friends,
that distant ebb and flow,
but dies in the workhouse.
His paintings breathe salt air,
hang in the Tate, St Ives

Pearl

Translucence, a simple glaze
of indigo and woad for her background.

There is no clutter of lovers’ letters,
no stage of maps and lutes.

In abeyance she turns to gaze at him,
a brush of light parting her lips.

A servant, yet the cloth of lapis lazuli
about her head emboldens her eyes.

Ochre blended with lead, and poisonous
vermilion, giving life to flesh.

His final act, a fleck of impasto
adorns this maid with pearl.

Phil Wood was born in Wales. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. His writing can be found in various publications, including: Snakeskin Poetry Magazine, Fly on the Wall Magazine (issue 6), Ink Sweat and Tears, London Grip, The Bangor Literary Journal, Allegro.

Pearl was published in the Open Mouse (now closed)

photo by Skye Studios