Poet Profile

Guy Stephenson

I moved to Ireland as an eight year old, grew up in Northern Ireland, moved to Co Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, in the early ‘70s. Taught Ceramics and Design until retirement; I had an active career as a potter, specialising in Raku, for some of that time. In retirement I have directed my creative energies towards writing and gardening. I’m a member of a regional arts organization, North West Words and of a small writer’s group, Station House Writers. My ceramics were exhibited in Ireland, the UK and in Europe, in various group exhibitions and touring internationally with the Crafts Council of Ireland. Pieces are in private collections and in the collection of the city of Lyons, France, presented by the President of Ireland and of the Museum of Ceramics, Faenza, Italy.

painted wooden horse
rocks gently rotting
fifty-four fathoms down

sundew-crown
ericaceous mantle
sphagnum galoshes

snow rimes his flanks,
sun-fried salt thrown from
Sheep Haven by squalls

rain veil shifts―
trotter glimpsed in 
light gleaming hill

relict walls―
now lost
in wildwood’s tangle

at breast care centre
Letterkenny: waiting for
a dire gnosis

Credits:

“painted wooden horse” - Contemporary Haibun Online, October 2017, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Forty-nine Miles Southwest); “sundew-crown”; “snow rimes his flanks”; “rain veil shifts” — Contemporary Haibun Online, October 2016, Vol. 12, No. 3 (A Further Glance at a Geological Map); “relict walls” – Haibun Today, Vol. 11, No. 4, December 2017 (Ballyarr Wood); “at breast care centre” - Lagan Online, Nov. 11, 2017 (in Small Words: Haiku, Limericks and Palindromes).