Scarlett Ward Bennett (ed.), "Elements: Natural & The Supernatural"

About Elements: Natural & The Supernatural, ed. Scarlett Ward Bennett

Elements is an anthology of poetry inspired by the natural and supernatural elements of the universe and beyond. From the molecular chaos of running water and the impatient budding of leaves in Spring, to the whispering aether that fills the darkness of night, this anthology explores and celebrates the natural world, spiritual entities, and the forces at work all around us. It is the first title published by new publisher, Fawn Press, and is edited by Scarlett Ward Bennett with the help of Lexia Tomlinson and Konnie Colton.  

About the editor

Scarlett Ward Bennett is a poet, workshop facilitator, editor and Director of Fawn Press. She founded Fawn Press in August 2021, with a vision of helping to bring beautiful poetry anthologies, pamphlets, and collections into the world. Her debut poetry collection Ache was released in 2019 with Verve Poetry press, and her work has featured in Under the Radar, Eyeflash Poetry, and Burning Eye. She is a workshop facilitator for Writing West Midlands and Homegrown 31, and visits schools around the country to deliver fun and engaging workshops to young people. She has worked as editor for On Your Doorstep Magazine and has worked as an editor for single-poet projects. She came runner up in 2019’s Verve Community competition, judged by Joelle Taylor, and the Wolverhampton Literature Festival Competition, judged by Roy McFarlane. Scarlett was nominated for a Sabotage Award for Best Spoken Word Artist in 2018, and in 2016, her poetry evening Cafe Del Nino was nominated for Best Spoken Word event.

About the publisher

New publisher Fawn Press aims to publish beautiful books of exceptional poetry, as we believe that poetry has the power to change lives through that transcendental connection between writer and reader. Storytelling lies at the very soul of our experience as human beings, connecting us since the dawn of time. We hope to be a platform that welcomes all writers, rejecting elitist and pompous attitudes to publishing in favour of an inclusive approach, whilst maintaining a high quality of exceptional writing that excites and inspires: “Poetry that takes you by the hand and leads you into the woods.” Fawn Press emerged from a passionate love of books and literature, as well as the recognition that the world needs more representation of new and under-represented poets. We are dedicated to the continual growth, education, and application of diversity.

Below, you can read two sample poems from our new anthology.

 

From Elements

Oxygen

Think of a million mouths pursed into an O
and inhaling together, one giant in-suck.

Forget that dream where you always wake
gasping and clutching at your throat.

Think of bubbles rising in a lake –
like them we must release ourselves towards air.

Now that the cool has come, the edges
have softened in the garden a little, our wren

is at ease with herself and we of late
have taken to sitting out, fanning ourselves

and watching the deepening shadows.
There is an art to this – to breathing easy;

half lung-capacity and half blind faith
that the next breath will come, 

that we will not flounder and choke
on our filthy emissions, on sticky particulates,

that we will, somehow, mostly, get it right.
Not unlike like that river fish, the pike,

who lords it over his river underlings,
his green slime-shimmer stalled among the weeds,

his razor- jaws, so cruel, so cannibal,
his habit, or if you like, his trick

of flicking his prey to swallow it head first,
and whole, and live.

How he only rarely misjudges, gags,
thrashes a little, turns belly up and dies.

- Róisín Tierney

 

Ode to the Mirror Carp

I.
Look! How they spin, fins vibrating and O-mouthed, 
scales beating in a blood-rush. 

Mother asks: have you ever heard a fish scream? 
It’s like a body rupturing, eating itself whole before re-entering the womb.

This is how girl becomes woman.

II.
There’s a burning in their stomachs only death can cure.
Their hunger? Watch it rage, it’s the only thing that draws fish out of water. 

See their bodies pirouette for the last time,
they’ll stop squirming soon. 

This is how a woman lives. 

III.
Mother reels them in. 
I have her hands – I know, mine are just as impossible to hold.

Dinner will be served soon. 
I open and close my mouth, and swim, and swim. 

This is how we survive. 

- Nabeela Saghir

Bert Flitcroft, "Just Asking"

Bert Flitcroft was born and brought up in Lancashire but now lives in the Midlands. He has three collections of poetry published: Singing Puccini at the Kitchen Sink and Thought-Apples, and recently Just Asking. His work has appeared in a number of national magazines and anthologies. He is a prize-winning poet, has been Poet in Residence at the Southwell Poetry Festival and has performed at a number of national festivals including The Edinburgh International Book Festival. He was Staffordshire Poet Laureate 2015–17 and curated the on-line Staffordshire Poetry Collection. He has worked as resident poet with one of our ‘National Treasures,’ The Wedgwood Collection at the V&A; as resident poet with the prestigious R.I.B.A. exhibition ‘The Road Less Travelled’; and recently as part of the University of Keel project ‘Labelling the Museum.’ His website is here. 

About Just Asking

As the title suggests, this is a collection in which most of the poems set out to pose a question, either directly or by implication, for the reader to consider in the light of their own experience and feelings. These questions may be about specific situations, or more generally about our own sub-conscious, unspoken attitudes to people, places, events and so on. Bert's poetic voice is clearly evident in the collection but with this in mind there are also poems written in the voices of a range of characters.

From Just Asking

To my friends: just asking…

Some days I have nothing new to say

of consequence. No opinion about the rain,

no forthright view about the latest scandal

or the smell of crusty bread.

But should something startling happen:

an angel threaten to descend

or a best friend lost, or an old love found,

these are surely pearls worth diving for.

We have swum in the same sea for years,

so why, when the water feels deep

do you lapse into awkward silence,

close up your hearts and seal them

as tight as oyster shells?

Why the need to keep a cancer secret,

or treat a shortage of sex as a shame

as if it were a sweet grape

withered to an unspeakable raisin?

Or admit to the heat of unrequited love

that has scorched the heart of all of us?

As if these things were a moral failing

or a sign of weakness.

My life is full of conversations I do not have.

This is a matter of soul.

Some days I might as well be up a mountain

shouting into the ice-blue emptiness,

or in the supermarket buying beer and oranges.

It’s grim...

Have you been, to The North?

They say, up there they have an ugly angel,

a rust-coloured, furnace-welded crucifix

with the wingspan of a stadium,

a man of steel holding up the sky

around the fraying edges of the city.

Like Lear, it seems, he is a challenge

to every storm and bolt of lightning.

And he casts a shadow on our conscience,

yours and mine, they say, like a sin.

Sad, really. I’ve seen a photograph.

They say it is deliberately a shocking sight.

Like celebrating grime, I’d say.

You cannot see love in his eyes,

he has no eyes.

Beauty? It can’t be in his smile,

he has no mouth to smile.

No fallen angel this, they say.

Stand at his feet, they say. Look up

at his thick-ribbed pride,

his barrel chest, the bulging calves,

that muscle out their industrial presence,

as if he is watching over them. As if

he is bolted into the bedrock of their being.

It’s how they stand up in the world,

apparently.