Colin Honnor is a poet and fine arts publisher based in the Cotswolds, where he runs an independent fine arts press dedicated to high-quality literary and visual work. He is widely published in both print and online journals and has an extensive presence across contemporary poetry platforms. A former editor of Poetry and Audience, he has contributed significantly to literary discourse through both his editorial and creative practice. His poems have appeared in numerous respected publications, including Rye, Missing Slate, Euonia Review, The Wolf, A New Ulster, among many others.

Liberation

On the snow Inthe leave in the fallen leaves
On the tree bark
In the iced frozen lakes
In the lakes of your eyes
On the rime on gates and stiles
On frozen water butts
On rivers floes

I Inscribe your name

Mermaid pool

The buzzard flies over the worms head as the Cambrian
as the Cambrian meets the bald snow heads
As the Celts bones form the limestone
As the driven posts retted to anthracite
As the fossil forest drove itself to each
And the salted branch is a grasped arm of history
As the Caledonian granite crossed
Ises to St Columb in forgotten causeway
where Celts fastness huddled
their stone burghs, assaying gold runes
Ogham of mystics, the scars ache and sting
To dissolve everything
In sea weed breath,
The buzzard flies over the worms head as the Cambrian
as the Cambrian meets the bald snow heads
As the Celts’ bones form the limestone
As the driven posts retted to anthracite
As the fossil forest drove itself to each seam
And the salted branch is a grasped arm of history
As the Caledonian is a Carven chalk pebble
A sack of mud, a luteal gulch, grips, great
Protean protoplasms Promethean still
Les oiseaux chanson qui arrête
As the Pict woad wood wooed wall
Ditch spall winter wane wyre

The brown grey weal gazes on nirvana
Gazes on dharma
Gazes on
On kharma
Gazes upon shanti
Dayadvham
What the seal hunter said

Where the mermaids become lobsters
Where the mermaids
Datta
Weilala
Weilala
Mermaids do not sing sing Hart, melodeon man, climbs taffrail
Leapt
Dayum
A sprinkler permeates golden years
Golden sprinkler emeralds
A seals grey eyes gaze
Unlock
A bridge to the red dawn
The fifth seal
As the seal hunter
Dayadvum
Gaze
as the seals liquid eyes dissolve
As the whales amphibian music reverberates
It’s transmitter of sonar,it’s plasmic ASDIC xylophone
as the cormorant cruces on pile lunges
as you turn it becomes a walrus
Clouds comic san serif blurt
Their vapoured saxophone spittle.