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About

We’re creating a valuable poetry collection — Branches Abound — open to anyone in Suffolk, England, aged 16 and over.

There are three themes:

  • The Environment
  • Positive Mental Health Recovery and Wellbeing
  • Covid Reflections

Submitting your poem to the collection, we hope, will bring value to you and encourage others to express themselves and be open about these topics.  For submission guidelines and further information, visit the 'Submit Poetry' page.

This initiative is sponsored through Suffolk County Council's Engaged Communities Responses and Recovery Fund and Art Branches CIC and is part of a wider creative project working with volunteers in recovery.

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Art Branches is a not-for-profit community organisation specialising in inclusive creative projects for improving wellbeing in communities across the East of England. It aims to help people express themselves through words and other creative media.

To find out more about Art Branches and see more of our projects, visit our main website at ArtBranches.org and the dedicated sites for our creative wellbeing workshop project, Space to Breathe, and our multifaceted creative heritage project, Chronicles of Greyfriars. For the latest announcements and project stories, follow us on Facebook and Instagram.

Art Branches and Suffolk County Council logos


 

Currently Popular Poems:

Twisted Love

Twisted trunk and milky stream, A glacial meltwater on serpent skin. Whirling optimistic messengers, Coherent and flowing, Yet random and broken Waiting to be spoken. Snake bark maple, And milky stream, Twisted love and shattered dreams. Anon .    

River Stour, Sudbury

Mirror of ripples, floating tangles and bubbly foam. Swans racing The togetherness Of aqua. Sallow splashes Poplars tremble And minds drift. Jungle of reeds On vertical plane Moorhen hideout. Anon.

Pandemic

Piecing together all our hopes and dreams, joining the broken fragments of our lives, managing the pain of another loss, full of joy when finally together, society’s fabric hangs by a thread. Julia Duke

Chromatic Cornflowers

Chromatic cornflowers Pigments aplenty blooming Nowton park trooping. June colours endeavour A visual adventure Periwinkle magenta. Wedgwood, Delft blue The colours a clue To nectar collecting. Not Sainsburys points But food for honey A botanical checkpoint. Archie

Hidden Behind Plastic Shields and Masks

Hidden behind plastic shields and masks they smile at me but only with their eyes, there is love in each iris, lash and wrinkle wink. Who silently steps in the space between being neither here nor there? He watches her laboured breathing as tubes that had filled her lungs with life are now removed. I’ve breathed in and out without a thought for sixty-seven years but not now, I needed a machine but not anymore. Alone now and strangely calm - this is how it ends, the final cut. He looked at her gravely and slides beside her under covers of night. I feel his presence as a chill - wintery, I’m not dressed for this journey. A lantern held aloft in the forest of firs underfoot pine needles and snow the smell of resin and the crack of footfalls on icy ground. He smiles and I find myself smiling back a new doctor without a mask, weary eyes that have seen this all before and see too much I am weightless as a white feather drifting skyward. Ian Hartley

Counterbalancing

Fleeting sideways glimpses smash a rib I fall silently on my wing repair I despair. Fragments and bones crush a thought I rise and counterbalance a further day. Paula

Lost Moments

Lost Moments And searching souls Wasted time Looking for justice. Enters the courtroom A shudder of silence. Reflected sadness And searching souls A blanket covering Masking identities. Seeking survival of ideas and opportunities. Jenny

Cropped Birch

Cropped birch Waves scratching The shore Dropping lime green oaks Towering pines Rising above the moss drenched rock Candyfloss hawthorn softly breaking the dappled shaded rock. Maureen

Reason for Joy

Grey clouds smudge the skies, like a small child learning to write his alphabet. Grey skies oppress me, bear down on me. Stumbling on cobbles, I climb hump-backed bridges, watch raindrops bounce, falling then sinking into inky waters. Light gleams from shop windows, falls in yellow pools on the pavement; white lights string out along the canal. Darkness descends on wet streets, feeding depression. The bitter wind probes my upturned collar, bites hard with its vampire fangs. Mid-afternoon. The curtain falls; the solstice has arrived, darkest before dawn. On the shortest day things can only get better. Julia Duke

Voices Unknown

An unknown voice Aside the thought Asked who am I? Replied the force within, “I am all I can feel And reach. “ Daniel