Poetry

Through poetry, I experiment with language to create images of my observations and experiences of a life lived in five countries.

All poems are copyright: Anna Goodchild 2025

Spume edies in a storm

Contained

where the centre could not hold the nihilated art thought-threads

of voice and choice sucked up in tornados of parental disapproval

shimmers nomadding dissipated over thousands of miles

into deep deep time

nesting nowhere

fledging never

separated

still

The book of the text and images White Shadows with a silk cyanotype cover.

A page from my experimental poetry and prose essay White Shadows.

Rocks

red, white, grey, blue, green, pink

mountains as they were

echo through time calling us to care

drowned memories

muffled under tidal songs

swallowed by louder shouts of

More! More! More!

shell dunes with seaweed flux

help us see clearly, feel closely

those pigments, those mountains,

those echoes from the rocks

all those colours are in us

all those voices of songs are in us

they are ours

Saltern cove haiku

wild thought in wise soul

struggling to knit you and me

time could still hold us

An aquatint on hard ground from the book WHite Shadows.

Silk

silk-water swells

snake to make and move

break and weave

wake and feed

people

water-silk swells

move currents to a

rhythm always changed by cries of

More! by

silky swells water

forests of jelly

photosynthesis-firm

while holding CO2 fast for

people

water-swollen silk

enlivens floating spheres

of sea and air

silk for

Numbers

numbers

numbing numbers

date

time

ticking time

and

quantities

and