You can order your copy right here. Local Gems Press developed this anthology to honor the rich poetic traditions in both America and the United Kingdom.
Bards Across the Pond includes work from over 120 poets across the United States and over 50 poets from various regions in the UK. (I am one of the former — if you purchase the volume, I hope you enjoy “The Rough, Violet Stone.”) 😉
I took this shot because it shows how mountains encircle Roanoke. (From this one particular place on Hershberger Road, you can see them in the distance in the west, north and east.)
For newcomers hailing from a very flat place like Long Island, this can actually mess with your sense of direction — because your mind might unconsciously use the nearest mountain as a frame of reference. (It should be noted here, however, that I have always had a lousy sense of direction. I was legendary in New York for easily becoming lost.)
Krispy Kreme.
Roanoke, Virginia.
Seen from the Fredericksburg train station.
I was at first taken aback by my need to seek (sigh) bifocals. But that feeling was mitigated entirely by the return of … the world!! It is rendered in such exquisite detail — even things that are far away!! (I had no idea that I needed glasses so badly.)
Roanoke’s sweeping wooded vistas are once again completely novel to me. It’s beauty times two for a transplanted New Yorker. 🙂
The local artist is John Murrill; I think this was completed last year.
My photo here is terribly cropped, but I just loved those tree branches at top and wanted to keep them.
Check out these awesome Christmas presents I received from some totally cool Roanoke friends — bookstands for displaying some of the publications that have featured my poems. 🙂
Also among the Yuletide goodies were an Irish coin and a piece of Connemara marble — ideal for setting up beside my copy of The Galway Review 12.
The picture below illustrates something that I still find novel about Southwest Virginia, simply because it is so different from the interminably flat landscape of my native Long Island. When viewed from a distance, mountainside buildings have the illusion of being at the level of treetops.
Those look like really nice townhouses, and they are indeed on level ground. (There is a road beyond them.) But their position at the top of that rise makes them seem a little bit like mountain fortresses to the kid in me.
Campbell Avenue.
Well … it WAS snowing in Roanoke a little while ago. And it was coming down pretty hard too. Then the sun came out and it vanished completely.
Campbell Avenue at Market Square.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 