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 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:

View From the Window

Nature flourishes; society’s fabric hangs, this spring, by a thread. Green fronds of bamboo peer over our wall and wave at me through the glass. Spreading her palms wide, Fatsia Japonica plays the drama queen. A small fishing craft manoeuvres its way back home to harbour’s safety. The black cormorant with horizontal plumb line flies directly home. Billowing white clouds recall lazy days, laid back, dreaming, on the grass. A small patch of blue parts the clouds high above me, lifting my spirits. Cerulean skies, like a vast ocean without visible limits. Pink, turquoise and grey offer us celestial colour therapy. Irrepressible, waving tamarisk defies winter’s harsh pruning. Copying nature, we wave from our balconies, applauding heroes. Julia Duke

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Solitude of Pines

With a frail And uncertain future Breathing in rhythmical pines Calms my thoughts. Solitude I seek Within the forest Amorphous blankets of snow Covering crestfallen waves. Spirited wind Melancholy whispers A tear falls Past traumas relived. Ephemeral bird calls Wispy clouds and frost Revitalises lost energies I no longer feel lost. Matthew

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Hawk Moth

Hawk moth Waiting alone Tenderness revealed, In the Shadow of the Friary. Cushioned wind Stifling air Song thrush Beckons the Spirit of the summer. Afloat with thoughts Memories of Parched earth and forgotten Spheres. Suzanne

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Dunwich

Dunwich, once second to London its bells still ring far out to sea when I was young I used to find skulls, ribs and femurs scattered down its cliffs, all now buried in my heart John

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Alive

All of a sudden, I am awake and the sea is licking round my feet. A wall of muddy grey fringed with white assaults my mind and spirit jostling me from sleep. A wave has broken. I am alive. Felix stands on the sea’s edge; hardly a split second’s pause before he is stumbling forward, fearless into the waves, embracing the ocean, saying yes, yes I will, yes to his new friend. I have been sleep-walking, a spectator, unable to grasp this new role, the forgotten skills of grand-parenting lost in the wreckage that is Covid. Standing bemused in playgrounds, waiting for the light to dawn. Suddenly, I am woken by the waves, remembering what life consists of, remembering how to say yes, remembering how to say no, remembering what makes me who I am. Child of the sea. Julia Duke

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Ballinasloe Station

Flood plains replenished and diminished, a deceiving here-and-there fluidity and the flat statement of stubborn water. Occasionally trackside trees are stranded, littered in swirling pools that soundlessly disappear. On the horizon, tall walls and radio mast mark the far-off asylum neatly screened with its avenue of trees. The people are hidden beyond the town, their tears reaching as far as the railway lines. The train navigates the flood’s edge like logic escaping emotion, trim engineering escaping danger, holding firmly onto the rails. (Ballinasloe was a major mental home in County Galway) Pat Jourdan

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Sweet Diatoms

Sweet diatoms You make me smile Algal atoms Too small to see But for my eye Peering microscopically Your fiddly frames Of filigree silica Seem big to me Tim

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Wind Rush

With wind rushing through the reeds I close my eyes I feel the breeze on my cheeks and take a deep breath in. I hear the grebe calling across the water. I breathe out deeply; The warm day has brought spring birds whistling from their canopies. I open my eyes I smell the freshness through my nostrils. The swan glides past smoothly, unaware of myself. The comfort of nature surrounds me. Melanie

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River Stour Haiku

Wandering the bend, Bending around the wonder Meander reveals. Freda

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Becalmed

I can no longer dot the i’s, nor cross the t’s. A pale haze, like Sunday afternoons, pleasant after a glass of wine too many, drifts across my day. I am at peace. I find myself disposed to acquiesce, content to live life at this gentle pace, content, it seems, with how life’s focus, now diminished, takes on the softened blur of evening light. Something sharp is lost. But the time for mourning it is done. The wind that swelled the sails has dropped, the tide recedes, the fierceness of the sun is quenched, leaving the sunshine’s golden glow that speaks the lateness of the hour. A taste of salt upon my lips - no call for worry or regrets - a bitter-sweet recall of what has gone. Julia Duke

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