A Thousand Shades of Green

The idea for A Thousand Shades of Green came about when Susan was listening to an episode of the poetry podcast, Eat the Storms, created and hosted by Damien B. Donnelly. During this episode, as a gift to writer and publisher Annick Yerem, Damien read a poem from her debut pamphlet, St. Eisenberg and the Sunshine Bus, entitled Hospital Reports. It was an incredibly beautiful and moving reading, which led Susan to reflect on the privilege of experiencing truly exceptional writing every day.

Not long after Damien’s reading, Annick read and recorded a poem of Susan’s from the anthology, Our Own Coordinates Poems about Dementia, published by Sidhe Press. It was an incredible gift for Susan to hear Annick read her poem, and she thought it would be wonderful to create a platform for sharing the work of some of her favourite writers; a space to explore writing that inspires new ways of thinking, seeing and imagining, and to give the gift to other writers that Annick gave to her. And so, A Thousand Shades of Green began.

graveyard, lake, fields and mountains in Kilarney

The name of our podcast comes from a poem Susan wrote, before moving to Ireland, before even knowing she and Joe would be moving to Ireland; a sort of prophetic poem, if you like. She wrote the poem in response to a piece of artwork created by Jane Cornwell, and the poem appears in their ekphrastic collaboration, Tiger Lily. Susan also read the poem on the podcast, Eat the Storms, representing Tipperary for Ireland’s National Poetry Day. It is a poem that is very close to her heart and felt like the perfect name for a podcast celebrating the diverse and dynamic voices of contemporary poets and writers from around the world.

A Thousand Shades of Green

I haven’t been sleeping,
stuck in the affliction of toss and turn,
thoughts tethered to the moon
and far -away places.

I press my cheek to the window pane,
eyes shut tight,
imagine something beautiful
just beyond the glass.

A landscape with open hands,
offering itself as a canvas to the seasons,
succumbing to a palette of colours
chosen by time and the sky.

I see the jewelled fingers of Autumn
turning stars to amber,
stretching to the edges of sound,
where everything falls into darkness.

I watch the clouds transform,
strokes of charcoal and silver
smudging out the sky,
catch the first snowflakes on my tongue,
breathe in the scent of the soil as it freezes.
The winter in my mind settles on barren branches.

I open my eyes to a scarred window screen,
remember the filthy taste of noise,
the scent of a city that sprawls beneath me.
I peer down at a cracked sidewalk
that waits with gaping jaws to swallow dreams,
whisper to myself,
it won’t be this way forever.

One day I will stand beneath a clean sky,
eyes glorious,
bathed in a thousand shades of green,
and know I am finally home.

A Thousand Shades Of Green

A Thousand Shades of Green

A Thousand Shades of Green Team