this week we are thrilled to announce the winners of our first monthly writing competition, the winged muse. our September monthly ‘muse’ was an evocative photographic artpiece that caws loudly through the imaginal realm by Seraphine Saintclair.
this month we have two incredible winners, Saraswati Naganpal and Noel Cowley, they will each receive a two month paid subscription to our magazine with the all of the new work, writer craft support and monthly write alongs. we’d love to invite all of you on this winged journey with us.
thank you to them both for their poetry and for making it so difficult for us to choose between them! thank you as well and congratulations to the other poets, whose work was equally compelling yet didn’t win this time. we have included all the work accepted in a micro magazine for you all to enjoy.
ORISON FOR THE LOST Saraswati Nagpal Weigh me in the vault of unspoken dreams. My lament is crimson, tasselled with rue. I invoke feathered flight, a wilderness of stars, a lapis terrain’s salted cry to be mapped. At the threshold of Cimmerian self, Time cedes her onyx realm. This sable song is my darkling river to the Night before night was born. I scry my fate in canny eyes, sentinel diamonds doused in ink. Allow me passage. Wing-blessed, I will be thrice found. AS IF Noel Cowley As if Sinéad, staring down a camera, Soul portals trained on mine, and I... transfixed. As if Sam - damned to immortality, Piercing spectrally the time between us. Sword-sharp matt black beak, Equine black-shine eyes enlist attention, Kitchenering me, as if: "If only you'll listen better, I'll teach you the one about hamartia." GLOWER Jennifer Patino seized in obsidian, the sentinel’s glare declares migratory disorder a winterbourne, weathered sigil stains the rock face onyx gall seeps adrenal ambivalence from flinty seams this crone, masquerading as a messenger, marauds the terrain, wards the death ring from a hemlocked pose, & culls away the seer’s forecast, inked in mire, immutably eroded on stone WHAT THE BLACKBIRD SEES Haley DiRenzo The screams hurled at it, tourists with their oversized sunglasses fluttering their arms to move it along. Nests knocked down from hotel peaks, broken eggshells against the sidewalk. The rising and falling tides of the sea, like the breath of a mother rocking a baby to sleep. Leather-slick seals birthing puppies on rocks warmed by the sun. The path it took to get into town, carried on the wind’s exhale away from the beach towels and sandcastles. The frightened eyes of a woman through the window of the asylum that it meets there. The recognition through its amber gaze that the woman is also a creature of the earth, deserving of her place in the sky. The understanding in the woman’s face that one day there will be mornings by the ocean, the blackbird circling above her head, her baby back in her arms, again. BETWEEN THOUGHT AND MEMORY Rose Norman raven amongst the rocks perched with darkest eyes a soul-piercing stare stripping civilisation's veneer you see me naked and yet more whole my truest self despite or, because of everything here among the boulders under a tumultuous sky in a land of gods and giants strange possibilities glimmer the wild places bridge the boundaries of reality and myth there is undiminished power in a twilight hinterland as you stare back, unafraid messenger or omen I wonder if you can see the tapestry of my past and future yet as my lips part to voice a question which may be forbidden you soar away on silent wings BOOK OF BONES Emily R. Paget I am the book of bones. Symbols stitched in silk and the scent of unrest. Sonorous breath that echos into night’s slow becoming. This ghost drawn by a Hunter’s moon. Light on snow; An absolution. THE WINGED MUSE Molly Painter When my own mother was dying, we talked about white feathers and how they were often interpreted as a message from the other side. She joked that, after she died, if she were to leave me any messages in the form of feathers, hers would be black – fitting for the women who liked to wander the wind whipped moors and who fed the skinny foxes and the crows that waited for her in the deep-rooted twisted hawthorn in her back garden, eyeing her with recognition and playful curiosity, waiting for their peanuts. After she died, I was heartened to read that crows really are seen as messengers between the earthly and spiritual realms, and I treat them now with a new kind of reverence and respect. They are not black at all, but a stunning mix of all the colours, their wings a rainbow medley, like the oil spills in rain puddles that enchanted us as children. When a crow catches the light just right, their secret colours are revealed - light in the darkness, if you are willing to see it. These magnificent, clever Corvids can recognise human faces and have been known to bring gifts, little talismans, to the people who feed and treasure them. After her death, I studied the crows, and they helped me feel less afraid of dying and the question of where we go when our time in this realm is over. The black feathers that we joked about hold a deep significance now, and when I see one unexpectedly, I treasure it because I know that the darkness is not to be feared – the inky blackness is the home of all the colours; you just have to look long enough to see it. UNTITLED Meagan Sexton Your locked stare lacks the sharpness of intrusion; piercing inquisition speaks through contact. My curiosity, an unbroken stone, as your lessons outweigh your wonder. Speak to me in syllables of strength- of expansion and wisdom, of exposure and foreshadow’s patient song. Your gaze sticks between the teeth of my awe; a wild vision of your river path woven with flight between canyon acuity. I lie down with echo in your silence, feel the vapor of your wing jaunt; a breath of life for reason, a reminder of capacity. ROUGH DRAFT River Ripa Within the bark and sandstone Within the humming valleys With my knowing And my faltering I circle the land As water As air Tracing And scribbling out Retracing And coloring in As wizard As woman Layers of existence Mirrored by Layers of raw rock Softened by Stories of quiet leaves Always a rough draft This earth But the birds Will forever remain THEY ARE NOT OF THIS WORLD Thomas Caton Watch them in flight- Spiralling out of another dimension As though scissors have snipped them from a magazine As though tweezers have teased them from a ravine. Altering seascapes Menacing the horizon They need not fight They are not of this world.
did you enjoy the poetry? we would love to hear from you in the comments.
until next week where we will reveal next weeks muse and also open submissions for our next print edition, HINTERLAND. we are so happy to share this with all of you!
Congrats to the winners! All the submissions are so wonderful. Thank you for including mine.
Thank you for including my effort.
Amazing talent on show and congratulations to the winners 🐦⬛