Photography Contributor
Foy Timms is a writer/poet/photographer based in Oxfordshire, U.K. She is published in Abridged, Dust Poetry, Fevers of the Mind, Green Ink Poetry, Peeking Cat Poetry, Pulp Poets Press, Sage Cigarettes, Selcouth Station Press and Twist In Time, amongst others. Foy Timms is also a Fundraiser working in the Charity Sector.
Letter from the Editor
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for picking up our latest issue, growth. 2021 has been a hard year for our staff and, by extension, the lit mag, press, and its imprints. Between health concerns, the ongoing effects of COVID-19, and other crises, it’s been difficult to coordinate our team, especially as we bring on some new recruits (who should be making their Nightingale & Sparrow debut with our autumn issue!). Nevertheless, we’re delighted to bring growth to life.
In our second issue, renaissance, we featured a photo by N&S contributor Isidra Pendragon. That image, titled Growth, stuck with me. In part, it stuck with me because it reminded me of my own photos, published in the lovely Marías at Sampaguitas as a collection titled “les fleurs de la vie.” These images, together, inspired our eleventh issue, growth.
[As an aside, Marías is a favourite of ours—be sure to give them a read!]
Like with every issue, we presented our submitters with a prompt alongside our theme: “We aren’t only looking for notes on flora. From children growing up to emotional growth, we want to see your interpretations of this term in its many forms.” If you’ve read my previous editor’s letters, you won’t be surprised to learn that our contributors gave us that and more.
From “Echo Realizes” by Issa M. Lewis and “Grounding” by Lin Lentine to Kevin Browne’s “Creekside Impressions” and Roselle Farr’s “Dream Big” (which graces our cover), this issue discusses growth in a more multifaceted interpretation than we could have imagined.
growth is also noteworthy because it’s our first issue considering visual art besides poetry. We’re delighted to have artist Sarah Beck Mather’s work as a part of this issue and can hardly wait to see the pieces that will follow it in issues to come.
As always, thank you to everyone who makes Nightingale & Sparrow possible, especially as we adapt to our own “new normal.”
Here’s to growing and to growth.
Juliette Sebock
Editor-in-Chief, Nightingale & Sparrow
Poetry Contributor
Ellen lives in Suffolk, England with her husband and three young children. She is an avid reader and enjoys writing poetry in any spare time she can find. Ellen’s writing often focuses on her experience of motherhood and she began sharing it on social media during the lockdown in early 2021. Her poetry can be found on Instagram @ellen_writes_poems.
Poetry Contributor
Madalena Daleziou is a Greek writer, researcher and content creator, living in Glasgow where she studied an MLitt in fantasy Literature. Her work has previously appeared in Lucent Dreaming, From Glasgow to Saturn and other venues. Madalena is currently finishing up her neo-Victorian fantasy novel. She can most often be found in a bookshop or behind a keyboard, writing stories with too many ghosts.
Jody Burke-Kaiser
I am playing at Persephone,
visiting my mother on her knees
planting French marigolds.
Little reeking suns
to keep pestilence from the garden.
Here the rows are straight and measured
six to eight inches between plants.
Taught string trellises waiting for the vine.
Blooms open and fruit
in the troweled holes
she has made for them.
Onion sets stay
where she has set them.
I am only visiting,
but she presses mint leaves to my lips,
seed corn into my hands,
loans me her muddy shoes
and tells me, pointing
to the back of the seed packet
exactly how deep
into the earth
this conversation can go.
Indira Fernando
Illnesses flowered in my abdomen,
So I grew around it,
Vines stretching over cracking trellises,
Curling to accommodate nails and pill bottles,
My leaves spelt out each prescription,
And my flowers wilted at each doubtful question,
I stretched so my growth was as chronic as my pain,
And slowly I begin to overtake it,
My branches become thicker than my patient notes,
And my fruits more abundant than the rot,
All at once and over an era,
I begin to bloom.
Resolute Lee
I did not fall
at first sight,
my love grows
as the Hyperion grows.
A quiet rising
from deep depths
of dark shaded soil,
slowly inching skywards
towards itinerant clouds.
Nurturing throughout
turning seasons and
beneath all skies. Silently
under midnight moons,
unapologetic in driving rains,
softly amid snowfall,
passionate at Sun’s
rising and setting.
My love rises
akin to nature,
slow in pace,
conscious in thought,
meditative touch
of unhurried time.
A love deeply rooted,
risen to the Heavens-
the quiet growth
of a steady love.
