Corinna Board

@corinnaboard.bsky.social

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EAL teacher. Tree lover. Likes to write poems. She/her. https://linktr.ee/parole_de_reveuse

Two moss green chapbooks on a wicker table. One is open on the title page ‘Little Book O’Moss’ and has marbled green and grey endpapers.
Photo of a bee on a purple flower with green grass in the background and an erasure poem titled ‘emergency for bees’.
Zoom launch invitation on a beige background with a botanical illustration of giant fescue grass. Text reads: Mædwe online launch - Tuesday 3rd March, 7.30pm. Hosted by Victoria Spires. With guest readers Vasiliki Albedo, Sophia Argyris, Tom Branfoot and Victoria Spires.
Mædwe a poetry pamphlet is beige coloured with a botanical green grass seed drawing. I have arranged it on a wooden desk with a small wooden field mouse and a corn dolly.
Under The Radar Magazine Issue 36; The Flight Issue. Cover is dark grey with an illustration showing flying tigers on a light green-blue background. The book is placed on a wicker table and decorated with feathers and a sycamore key.
Concrete poem in the form of a swan and its reflection. Swan and Shadow BY JOHN HOLLANDER (December 1966).
Poem text reads: IF YOU'RE GOING TO LOOK LIKE A WOLF THEY HAVE TO LOVE YOU MORE THAN THEY FEAR YOU The first deer had large teeth and no horns and were not afraid. The first deer did not have enough fear for the men who needed them to survive. A woman decided to let the men eat. grandmother decided her deer shall have horns and be afraid someone's mother decided the men shall eat and shall be feared. A man thought wolves should be used to cull the herd. And we who had been catching water dripping through stone in the homes we dug out of the earth we licked our long teeth clean and set to work. Abigail Chabitnoy
Poem text reads: KEEP YOURSELF AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BEGINNING Please try to help me go to the joy that is trying to go to the beautiful helpful helpful beginning of the beginning of the very trying freedom that we make our great great great light that is nothing but the laughter that is fooling us into believing that we go to the trash bin that is your life that become the treasures that live in the bottom of the bin that is your life yes yes yes yes - please try to dive down to the beautiful muck that helps you get that the world was made from the garbage at the bottom of the universe that was boiling over with joy that wanted to become you you you yes yes yes - please try to go to the colors that kiss you great great great person of the light that is becoming you you you yes yes - please try to keep yourself in the bottom of the bin yes yes - please try to go to the kissing muck that is very true to your life yes yes - please try to meet me there yes yes - please try to bring your beautiful nothing there yes yes Hannah Emerson The poem has a concrete form like mountains running sideways down the page or an open beak.
EXTINCTION SUBMISSION problems for moths include astroturf and overlighting if moths got problems so do bats so do cuckoos the unswooped lanes the silent trees their body clocks all fucked i am helpfully informed by the special nature issue of the in-flight magazine. it is time to quit being self-centred and reproduce i am helpfully informed by Brett in 2F i swallow the morning after pill in the loo's steel anchorhold my contribution to declining millennial birthrates i will sleep when i get there three flights in three days dear god should i change my Shein joggers. belly pains. airport garden in a pod art gallery in a pod vast paintings of grids swarmed over by dots with no respect for lines like life at its cellular level like germs says the leaflet it is about anthropocentrism about the things we cannot see. i dream on the plane of the earth after the last child and the moths to so many different mothkinds so many little mouthsounds the tick of corrugated membranes in the hindwings chattering through all the empty Starbucks so many and nameless this time after names. when i get there it is dark at 3pm i think my phone is unsynced i google time now here. it is 3pm. there is a smog over the lake from the burning trash. we have switched off the sun. the rooster cries dawn once an hour. you me both buddy the clocks in us hushed by planedrone by mallglow. small me once gutted a beloved beanie baby rooster spilling polystyrene we found the beads for years in the weave a heart plastic-tagged to its crest with a poem inside about birds and a warning about children choking. i am spotting weirdly my knickers look like the antianthropocentrism exhibition. i am trying to dream again go back to that crescendo of ultrasonic whispering over the razed ground but the rooster cries all day-night like a baby. Siri what time is it here now AV Bridgwood
Midden Witch by Fiona Benson - ebook version on my tablet.
Three poetry pamphlets on a wicker table. Fossil Record by Wayne Price, The Age of Olive Trees by Haia Mohammed, and Forest by JLM Morton.
A dunnock's prayer by Corinna Board O wingless wun, god o' smal bridds, spære my nest, my fif blue eggs. Bright sky-keeper, bringer o' frost, maker o' hip an haw, can ye hear my tseep tseep tseep in the heeg? I sing for ye in the blackthorn an the dogrose, in the hazel an the rowan. I, this tyne spearwa so smæl in yur hand. Written using a mixture of old English, modern English, and phonic variations of modern English.
A tiny skylark singing high up in a blue sky with large white clouds.
White blackthorn blossoms in the hedgerow
Heronless by Sophia Argyris. Cover shows a colour photo of a heron perched by a river.
A rook egg shell held between my thumb and finger.
Local rookery, trees full of nests and noisy rooms against a blue sunny sky.
A plantable poetry pamphlet ‘Hertz’ by Hannah Copley and Alycia Pirmohamed, placed in the soil of an empty stone planter with a stone bird.
woman | folk by Karan Chambers.
Close up of a wood anemone on the forest floor.
Woodland with primroses, wood anemones, ivy covered trees.
4 poetry books on a wicker table: Offworld by Kirsten Luckins, Every House Needs a Ghost by Timothy Fox, woman|folk by Karan Chambers, and That Broke into Shining Crystals by Richard Scott.
The brook and adjacent meadow.
Muddy bridge path over the brook into the meadow.
Redwings chattering in a tree in the park. Blue sky.
A view over the fields at sunset with grazing sheep and birdsong.
Bright green moss on a drystone wall with sporophytes and capsules growing upwards.
Noisy jackdaws and rooks at dusk in my favourite rookery of winter trees.
Winter trees at dusk with noisy rook and jackdaw residents.
The bridleway, grass verge, hedgerow, drystone walls and a low February sun in a light blue sky dappled with white clouds.
Poem text reads: Eyelid Amelia opens the tawny owl's eyelid And finds a concentration of the night. Michael Longley
B/RDS by Béatrice Szymkowiak.
A black and white cat sitting on a wicker table next to a pen and two books.
A gorgeous ball of light green moss on a licheny stone wall.
Song thrush in a tree
Video of a song thrush singing in a green tree
Poem text reads: Praise the Rain BY JOY HARIO Praise the rain; the seagull dive The curl of plant, the raven talk— Praise the hurt, the house slack The stand of trees, the dignity— Praise the dark, the moon cradle The sky fall, the bear sleep— Praise the mist, the warrior name The earth eclipse, the fired leap— Praise the backwards, upward sky The baby cry, the spirit food— Praise canoe, the fish rush The hole for frog, the upside-down— Praise the day, the cloud cup The mind flat, forget it all— Praise crazy. Praise sad. Praise the path on which we're led. Praise the roads on earth and water. Praise the eater and the eaten. Praise beginnings; praise the end. Praise the song and praise the singer. Praise the rain; it brings more rain. Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Poem text reads: Volcanoes of lo You thought you knew What matter was. Solid or gas Or fluid. These words And their slippery properties - Speed. Heat. Light. Mass - One seething molten Caldera, spitting gobs That cool on the surface Into gleaming, desirable Pennies, rolling Back into the furnace Like the old gods Slipping off their bodies Out of mischief, or pity. Katrina Porteous
Poem text reads: The Ghost Orchid Added to its few remaining sites will be the stanza I compose about leaves like flakes of skin, a colour Dithering between pink and yellow, and then the root That grows like coral among shadows and leaf-litter. Just touching the petals bruises them into darkness. Michael Longley
Poem text reads: 7 given limits exist, streets, oblivion and grass and gourds and goats and gorse, eagerness exists, given limits branches exist, wind lifting them exists, and the lone drawing made by the branches of the tree called an oak tree exists, of the tree called an ash tree, a birch tree, a cedar tree, the drawing repeated in the gravel garden path; weeping exists as well, fireweed and mugwort, hostages, greylag geese, greylags and their young; and guns exist, an enigmatic back yard; overgrown, sere, gemmed just with red currants, guns exist; in the midst of the lit-up chemical ghetto guns exist with their old-fashioned, peaceable precision guns and wailing women, full as greedy owls exist; the scene of the crime exists; the scene of the crime, drowsy, normal, abstract, bathed in a whitewashed, godforsaken light, this poisonous, white, crumbling poem
Poem text reads: Put on that KTNN By Kinsale Drake My mother was raised on Patsy Cline and Hank Williams country that bounced in on her father's radio. Even today, I know I am nearing home when the pop music crackles into KTNN, licks of fluent Navajo flitting between Loretta Lynn and Johnny Cash. They are interludes, too, for drumbeats and throaty covers of well-loved tunes put on by some local boys' gas station banjo and hot-rocket guitar, a strong woman that sings the seasons over a hand drum.
Gathering Moss and The Hidden World of Mosses
Poem text reads: HOW WAS EVERYTHING The vulture circles like a waitress on rollerskates asking have you finished with that? Caroline Bird - from 'Ambush at Still Lake’
Four books on a wicker table: My Hummingbird Father by Pascale Petit, Alphabet by Inger Christensen, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics by Carlo Rovelli, and Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer.
Poem text reads: SNOWS By my age, the snows of my father's life were already half-fallen. What is that sound? The white hart leaping through its dark estate. Frost on the eyes of the animals. Frost in the mouths of the trees - Seán Hewitt
Poem text reads: The Rainmaker BY NIALL CAMPBELL We needed it—and he stood there, feet on the dry porch, saying ‘rain’, cloud and skyful, the sound of drumming; the bath trough in the garden listened, white and bone dry, as he described a bright wash across the dust fields, the surest downpour, the flushed skin, my soaked shirt, heavy as a bell. Then off he went to the scorched fields, humming, and weighing what we paid. What did he say: ‘prayer is moisture; hope is a well’—I didn't care, I wanted just the words from him— what I couldn't dare say—not there beneath that sun, that blur of fire-sky. My thoughts all thoughts of water, I spun my head round—to hear the spill of the word rain across the boards, and nothing grew dark, nothing fell- but something fell, and the ground took, and something wild as garlic grew.
Pressed purple heather on a green notebook
My gloved hand holding a piece of puddle ice against a blue sky, the fields and bridleway.
Poem text reads: How the Dung Beetle Finds Its Way Home by Eugenia Leigh The Milky Way's glinting ribbon helps the dung beetle roll his good ball of shit back to the ones he loves. But blind him to the sky with as little as a hat, and he will swerve like a drunk who, if he makes it home alive, might find the family, soured with waiting, gone. Drawers cleared, beds cold, even the watercolor ark of giraffes and raptors pulled from the face of the fridge. See? I want to tell my missing father, it's a metaphor so simple it's almost not worth writing down: even beetles need the stars to nudge them back to where they need to be when they need to be there— toward their little ones' gummy grins ever pardoning the grisliest parent.
"Neanderthal Dig" by Don McKay 1. "When we dug up the grave we found a child's bones laid on a great swan's wing. They had never been, we thought, the sharpest flints in the cave, with thick skulls evolving toward NFL helmets. We'd applied their name (from Neander Vale, site of the first remains we found) to racists, sexists, and dull bureaucrats. "Now we stood abashed, trespassers on grief, thoroughly sapiens with artful implements and wit. What would it be like to be so stricken, with few words to call on heaven, hell, hope, grief? And what sharp words might we, the clever cousins, muster for the child who one day watched a Mute Swan (wingspan: five feet) lift from the river in two white swipes of Paleolithic air?
Path through the park with pink sunrise behind the treeline, and half moon in the right in a bluish sky.
Poem text reads: Rain at Night To be the last drop of rain each night is sadness. It shuts the last door and jumps. Victoria Chang
Poem text reads: Psalm V BY JULIA FIEDORCZUK TRANSLATED BY BILL JOHNSTON Beauty exists, la ermozura egziste and paradises are not artificial, yet how can one have fans of ginkgo, green right next to yellow, and human faces in the sunshine, pearls of architecture and thoughts about the dust that we become? Two days later I remember only theory, what we said concerning the mathematics of the Alhambra and the fragments of poems, so I undress quickly, to catch life red-handed, to relish the goodness of your home amid the hills encircled by a wedding party where I seek and find, seek and do not find, seek and disappear and — Translated from the Polish
Poem text reads: C. T. SALAZAR Noah's Nameless Wife Takes Inventory horse heart hyena heart swan spine silver fish shin -ing in black water yes timber wolf tooth yes pity the ark with its belly full of glow ing tongues touch the lion's paw only while it sleeps the red -tailed hawk with jewels for eyes swallows the field mouse and the mouse was the only proof the field existed what else will be forgotten the hawk will starve soon we will starve soon the dogs will howl like a god learning the word for light and nothing will howl back
A black spiral notebook, decorated with a black seaweed print. On the notebook: a pen and a small wooden mouse.
Poem text reads: A CATECHISM ON SUPPOSITION Suppose the soil to be destitute, to be barren. Suppose what is drawn is not restored, suppose grass when the land is ploughed up. Suppose ploughing in green begets further green. Suppose turnips grow from bones alone. Suppose crushing and sifting. Suppose bone earth. Suppose bone dust and vitriolic dissolution. Suppose mixing with seed, a growth of new grass. Suppose grazing and re-grazing. Suppose burned bones and gelatine. Suppose the land supplied with that of which it was robbed. New grass sprung from earth of bones. Suppose night soil, ammoniacal, suppose the slaking of lime, suppose a light constant fleering of rain, suppose the composition of barley, and this flint full land well-draining. Suppose a healthy stock state to supply the daily waste of bones, of salts in the blood, suppose a fattening stock, suppose rich juicy grass and fibrous mashes, suppose water clear and sweet, suppose rotten rock and dead matter And peripheral to a stood struck still, in the sulh sulh of the soil, I suppose the back and forth, the back and forth, the back and forth of the land. Eliza O’Toole
Victoria Spires Forensic Botany Another failure to deliver the expected outcome. At night, scant thunder taps at the window like the promise of an elopement, and I lie on my hands, to stop them tapping back. Rain cataracts just above the thought- field, the day's stems breaking open. I read about a woman who can comb a meadow with a single look, tell you where the subject stepped six months ago, through observance of tiny stalk depressions. I have combed and combed myself, found only Latin names, friends not lovers, distinct lack of indentation
Issue 102 of The Rialto, placed on a wicker table with sycamore seeds in the bottom left corner. The title is in shades of green on a pale background.
winter tree on the left, sun shining through thick fog, abundant frost over field and hedgerow
Poem text reads: Beneath the Snow, the Badger's Steady Breathing Beneath the snow, the badger's steady breathing. He does not count the cold as cold. He does not call his hunger fate. His sett is neither large nor small. Not dark. Closer to tree root than human. Closer to the wilderness than to its saints who sought to learn from where they'd moved. A life uninterrupting, without want or aspiration. A persistence. And yet not meager. Not unfeeling. - Sharp starlight coming all the way down to the snow. Jane Hirshfield