Burying the Goldfinch: This poem tenderly mourns the fragile weight of a goldfinch whose life was ended by a collision with glass. With precise  sorrowful detail  it captures the immediacy of loss  the feathers left on the window  the still open eyes  the bird's body cooling in the speaker’s palm. The repeated refrain  “My fault " threads through the piece like an unshakable echo  binding grief with guilt. More than an elegy  it is a meditation on responsibility  fragility  and the way even the smallest life can leave an indelible mark on the heart.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor 
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause 
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life 
With sweeter manners  purer laws.

Ring out the want  the care  the sin 
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out  ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Rooted in memory and the textures of place  this poem returns to Lily Pond as both a landscape of childhood and a reservoir of Christmas spirit. Sheehan entwines skating  laughter  and the turning of seasons with the continuity of friendship and song. The lines move like the skaters themselves  sometimes swift  sometimes lingering  until they resolve in the heartfelt simplicity of “Merry Christmas." It is both nostalgic and enduring  carrying forward the warmth of community and tradition.

Ring out false pride in place and blood 
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right 
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old 
Ring in the thousand years of peace.





Ring in the valiant man and free 
The larger heart  the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land 
Ring in the Christ that is to be.



Alfred Lord Tennyson
An excerpt taken from In Memorium.

This poem confronts the brutal legacy of the First World War through both history and personal memory. Written for the poet’s grandfather  a survivor of Kut-al-Amara  it weaves together battlefield horrors -- shrapnel  gas  burning oil fields-- with the inherited grief and futility of conflict. The piece bridges 1918 and today  questioning how war is remembered  justified  and repeated  its closing lines an indictment of ongoing violence in the name of empire and resource.

Powerful and unsettling  this poem gives voice to the haunted history of Rottnest Island  once used as a prison for Aboriginal people. The boy’s voice becomes a guide through its layers of violence and erasure -- unmarked graves  starvation  hangings --beneath the surface of today’s tourist idyll. The repetition of “Starved  Hung  Banished" tolls like a bell  reminding readers that beneath leisure and landscape lies memory and mourning. Winnaitch  “the forbidden place " is revealed as a site of both pain and ancestral endurance.

A bilingual poem written in Scots and English  Dark Matter imagines the unseen substance of the universe not as physics describes it  but as the collected dreams  thoughts  and stories of all living beings. With playful yet profound turns  it suggests that memory  imagination  and literature are themselves the hidden fabric binding existence together. The poem moves between Scots’ rooted  musical language and English reflection  inviting the reader to close their eyes and glimpse this vast invisible weave.

This layered poem meditates on the act of lighting a candle  both ordinary and profound. It moves from the pragmatic (hydrocarbons  by-products of the ocean bed) to the personal and ancestral  where flame becomes memory  devotion  and continuity. The candle is at once science and symbol: a way to measure time  to honor the dead  to kindle warmth against winter’s dark. Oonah Joslin captures how ritual survives in the smallest of gestures  glowing with both practicality and longing.

This poem paints winter as if on canvas  its palette borrowed from Degas and Van Gogh. The everyday becomes luminous: swans flying close  sunsets spilling across the sky  old streetlights glowing against snow. At once visual and musical  the poem carries the reader from festive holidays into quiet recall  where even the birds--robins  blackbirds--become strokes of color and character. It celebrates art’s power to suffuse ordinary life with beauty and memory.

This poem wanders across oceans and clouds  meditating on memory  travel  and the riddles left in sand and sky. With playful shifts between Hawaii  the Skeleton Coast  the Copper Coast  and the Caribbean  it blurs boundaries between place and imagination. The closing image  lying down on "speckled pieces of the world" to look at clouds  ties the vast globe to the intimacy of a single vision.

This poem journeys through industrial history into present decay. Once a line of coal  iron  smoke  and muscle  the Penrhos Branch Line is now reclaimed by brambles  ash  hazel  and silence. Bowman contrasts the grit of navvy labor with today’s natural quiet -- woodlice  willowherb  woodpeckers. The poem honors both the human effort that built it and the patient reclamation of nature  showing how history dissolves into landscape  leaving memory in the rustle of weeds and the drone of insects.

Steele’s poem is both elegy and irony: the sculptor denied marble  chisels  and fame  instead carving tunnels through Lanarkshire coal. His body becomes his chisel  his life the material of sacrifice. It is a work of art measured in dust  sweat  and silence -- artistry hidden underground  rarely seen but no less profound

In this quiet entanglement of body  nature  and myth a reclining figure seems suspended between water and air  as if caught in the fine tracery of spider silk threads. The translucent tones of water suggest both fragility and strength -- threads binding yet freeing  tethering yet allowing drift. The imagery of ripples  reeds  and a beached mermaid resonates here  as the script captures that liminal state between movement and stillness  belonging and release.

Art: Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)  The Mice at Work. Threading the Needle  1902
Style: Art Nouveau (Modern) | Series: Illustrations for The Tailor of Gloucester*

Potter illustrates a mouse deftly threading a needle while others tangle with pink thread in the background. Created for The Tailor of Gloucester  the scene blends Art Nouveau detail with whimsical storytelling  capturing the charm and industry of her beloved animal characters.

Epiphany by Oonah Joslin finds light in the act of dismantling festivity. The poem begins with the stripping away of Christmas tinsel  baubles  pastel lights boxed away  yet what might seem like an ending becomes a revelation. Out of discarded brightness rises a new clarity: the natural world resumes its rhythm  trees reclaim their greenery  and birds announce the shift toward spring. It is a meditation on renewal  showing how what is put away in one season gives way to the promise of another.


Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947)  Kiss the Earth  1912
Style: Art Nouveau (Modern) | Genre: Design | Medium: Pastel  Tempera on Cardboard

Roerich depicts a solitary  twisting tree rising against a dramatic sky  set in a luminous landscape of rolling hills. The work reflects his symbolic approach  blending nature  spirituality  and the decorative elegance of Art Nouveau design.

In Vergunst poem the scene itself gathers like music: a square alive with breath and brass  pipers marking midnight as fireworks scatter their colours across the black canvas of the sky. Notes rise like sparks  weaving with laughter and coffee steam  while dawn brings the sound of Vienna's violins. The old year folds into silence as the new one takes the stage  a concert of light and renewal.

Art: Frans Snyders (1579-1657)  Study of Birds
Style: Baroque | Genre: Animal Painting | Medium: Oil on Canvas

Snyders assembles a vivid array of exotic and native birds  parrots  eagles  cockatoos  and songbirds  perched in a lively composition. Characteristic of Baroque animal painting  the work emphasizes texture  color  and natural vitality.