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:

Seasons

To each a season: the planets Turn in Kepler's gyre, Swelling the mental weather, Fattening the wealth Of light and dark I weekly Feel in my own solitude. To each a season: a death Of what was hard and cold: A burst of sun to break My hoary sadness And gild the shining tower I build around your smile. But let's not talk of sun But speak instead of life And all the things I feel When living through mortality. The lovely times We feast and meagre times We only feed on memories. I have my seasons. Tim Holt-Wilson

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Ode to a Tilted Tree

Your body tilted Your leaves wilted Your energy royal, your friendship loyal. But you are discouraged and tired of being sparingly admired. Your head bends steadily towards the water, The by-standers do not seem to bother to listen to the stories you can reveal, Allowing the history and your presence to heal the wounds one carries in her mind; You seem exhausted yet humbly kind. Welcoming strangers with a warm embrace Your wrinkled skin and a weather-beaten face contrasts with a jovial and mischievous grace of the young branches so naive but stable… How much you must be grateful - for these smooth slender arms, With your inner protection nothing harms. Anon .

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To Dance Beneath the Pine

In a storm I glimpse my soul Searching for lost branches Fallen to the wind Decomposing with time. Michelle

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A Misplaced Death

To wander like the wind of one thousand faces amplified by silence, the shadows beckon me to the earth, with forgotten and smoked memories, I glide my way through unwelcome fields. Cast ashore by the concave sky beckoning me adrift on a sea of darkness, a stranger of many faces. Haunted by extra commas, the landscape between our past and present separates and unites us with misplaced and loyal passions. Anon

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Stone Souls

Abbey stones Hold tales of the untold A rich tapestry of thoughts, Echoes and patterns and times ancient by. Of weathered landscapes Broken angel wings, Jumbled thoughts and crumbling terracotta Secrets lie beneath. Of drifting monks And whispering clouds Beneath us lies Hidden skulls The stone souls. b y Art Branches recovery project group

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Woodpecker Squall

The five feathers of Autumn weather Were a woodpecker’s downed chatter Under an Oaks wings And the rain’s prism sang in my lashes Over and over Ring in fast skies September October The beak of the sky Pummelled the wood But I dried it’s staccato why By waving the feathers of my hand Until the spots merged Back to fine weather Then left altogether. Stephen Kirin

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Ecocide II. Lost Madagascan Solitude

Sloping crystalline falling away skies nudge a luxuriant forested isle - wide-eyed tree-skipping lemur-strewn - obediently it slides eastward, ever further distant from anchoring shores. A boat-less earth. Hunched up blood-licking apes locked into fruit-held rift valleys. Sharpening their flints. The sautéing sifaka, jitters, nervy, princely pirouettes. Esoteric treasure trove, trust-bound, assembled exotica anciently unfolds. In solitude, a jolly party contained together in pacific balance: reptilian bug-eyed chameleons sure and slow-footed, shy slinking Fossa, a lone long-fingered aye-aye absentmindedly tapping out dangerous omens in primeval morse code. Waves crash, anguished howls - one rogue boatful with hungry bellies and hatchets. Chameleons adjust multi-coloured jackets - to hide away fast. The island’s grizzled chains slip their moorings grind down Noah’s Ark of charms. Axes sear, slice, ricochet Malagasy’s pristine wonders slump - wounded, bloodied, defiled. The world’s ...

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Albatross

Life is a wilderness, A struggle through the weeds, Boggy marshes underneath, Life held in wildflowers, Scattering their seeds. Seeds strewn randomly, Fields of colour so vast, Thoughts murky as puddles, Conquering ideals hopes that last. Meandering through seasons of time, Struggles begin to show through, Ideals and beginnings all mixed up, Summer arrives giving a wonderous view. Seeing a brightness rich in colour fragrant to follow, Thoughts placed into a perspective view, Perhaps today or another tomorrow. A clearing is a footpath journey to succeed, Joyous outcome of happiness, For that a need to believe. Blinded is my kaleidoscope body mind and me, Guiding me into this wilderness, Regain normality as another, To leave this murk of my distress. Reliant I am to those I love, Unleash the colour to those that are dear, Control my inner tiger, Without consequence or fear. Sun bright as fire extinguishers at night, This wilderness a fork in the road, To take the correct route follow a s...

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Social Distance

Hot and sultry, early June, sitting on my doorstep, late afternoon, watching the traffic flying by: skylarks, melodious, up high; swallows above the stable, diving around the sky; buzzards in tandem, cruising above the dark woods; rooks, darkly purposeful, circling over the pines; wood-pigeons, fat and fast, flying noisily by; two pairs of wild geese landing in the paddock; low-flying blackbird dashing across my field of vision; bumblebee, bluebottle, ladybird buzzing about the apple tree. To say nothing of the that on the ground: magpie striding decisively; a gang of crows on the path, conspiratorial; fifteen guinea fowl in haste, holding their skirts, their rasping calls jarring; yearling pea-hen, tame, hand-reared, pecking my bare toe; two little partridges scurrying by; a pheasant in his finery; a pair of collared doves, courting prettily; five hens, four black and one gold, busy-bodying around; two cockerels, one young, the other magnificent, strutting self-importantly. Oh so bus...

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Who Is Saving The World?

The recycler, bicycler, bio-masser and solar paneller, the sustainable developer, the charity worker, the medics (sans frontieres?), fundraisers and carers, givers and listeners, growers of organics, designers of biodegradables. Genetic engineers? Surgeons and researchers, forgivers and forgetters, Billy the bug hunter, Immy the mathematician, Troy the paratriathelete, Wendy the wigwam maker. The ones who go last, the ones who smile, the ones who don’t want to argue about it, the ones who give up their seat, the ones who calm a storm, the ones who cook up a feast, the ones who sing praises, the ones who shine, Auntie Gwen and Malala…… ….and I drink water from a glass bottle. Sue Foster Image by Fernando via Unsplash .

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