Six Poets

Rita Ray

I have published poems in magazines and journals. I also enjoy writing stories and poems for children and these can be found in several anthologies. At the moment I'm working on more poetry as well as trying to write a longer work of fiction for children.

I like to travel and frequently visit family in Quebec . A couple of trips to China, working in remote areas, inspired several poems. I take paints and sketch book whenever I go away and find art a rich source of ideas for poems.

The road to Lanzhou

We drive by terra cotta dunes,
through building sites in the wilderness.
Beside the unmade road groups huddle to play cards
A woman brings drinks to a rickety table
under a wind tattered parasol.
People are claiming their pockets of paradise.
Solid gaudy doorways lure the gods
into ancient mud-brick compounds.
Unidentifiable goods, folded and flattened,
are piled impossibly on bicycles.
The scroll unrolls to show a thousand timeless figures
like slaves on sandy pyramids –
their parchment tents, their blackened cooking pots.

(Published in Orbis , No 130, Autumn 2004)

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