“Take Flight 2023” has landed. I was thrilled yesterday when the post office delivered my copy of a just-published poetry anthology that has one of my dragonfly photos on the cover.
Since 2020 I have attended almost monthly Zoom poetry readings conducted by Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word, a UK-based poetry group, and feel blessed to be part of this community of incredibly talented poets and writers. Pre-pandemic, the group hosted poetry readings at a pub in Brighton, but during the pandemic its readings became virtual and its reach became worldwide.
Flight of the Dragonfly inaugurated a quarterly e-journal of poetry, prose, and flash fiction called Flights and is currently working on Issue 10 of the journal. “Take Flight 2023” is a printed anthology of selected poems from Flights issues five to eight. A little over a year ago Flight of the Dragonfly Press was founded and has already published a number of poetry collections.
In case you are curious, I captured the in-flight shot of the Migrant Hawker dragonfly (Aeshna mixta) in 2018 at the Botanical Garden in Brussels, Belgium during a work trip there. If you would like more details about the circumstances surrounding the capture of the image, check out my September 2018 blog posting entitled “Migrant Hawker in flight.”
I am one of the few non-poets who regularly attends the poetry readings—thought I have been encouraged on multiple occasions to start writing poetry. I believe that it is important to support the creative people who pour themselves into creating works that touch me deeply in so many different ways. I was deeply moved by the words in the “Thanks” section of the anthology that said, ” A very special thanks to Michael Powell, who has been turning up and cheering for the last three years and who has now allowed us to use one of his fabulous dragonfly photographs as the cover for this book.” Thanks, Darren and Barbara, the co-founders of Flight of the Dragonfly, for those very kind words.
I encourage you all to support your local poets, writers, and artists. The next Zoom poetry reading of Flight of the Dragonfly Spoken Word is on 28 November—click on the link at the beginning of this sentence to get details on how to sign up for this free event. The featured poets for this reading will be Gaynor Kane and Damien B. Donnelly, two of my favorite poets. For further detail on Damien, whom I met in Paris in 2019, check out this December 2019 blog posting and for information on the dynamic duo, check out my March 2021 posting entitled “I joined a cult.” I hope to see some of you at the event.
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Mike Powell 