The Lonely Crowd will feature new work by a different poet each month throughout 2026. For April, we are delighted to publish three new works by Lorraine Carey. The first of these, ‘A Year of Mountain’, is published today with two more poems and an accompanying essay to follow throughout the month. 

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A Year of Mountain

 

The mountain light’s a beautiful bruise.

Ling, bell and cross leaved heath brush hills

burgundy and damson. Snow cloud pillows

 

fill sky with slate, marl and gunmetal

slush. The bog asphodel,

crowberry, pickerel and orchid.

 

Dormant pixie cup, antler horn

and match stick lichen prompt ice crystal layers.

Compressed layers, dark as tar and deep

 

as fossil. Spring’s a salute of crocus

blades as mowers sputter into life

with all the throat clearing of a man sated

 

on Woodbines and whiskey. The cuckoo

returns to pillage dunnock nests. Summer’s

a siskin bobbing on larch : whirligig

 

beetles, midge bites and bees nosing tutus

of fuchsia folds for nectar. It’s the lure

of sticky sundew, the glistening glue

 

turning tables for plants to eat insects.

Linnet and skylark melodies. Peregrines

circle the blue, hungry for vole, shrew

 

or meadow pipit. Ghost feathers of curlew,

corncrake, snipe and grouse swirl

to a year’s closing prayer.

 

Lorraine Carey’s poetry, haiku and art explore ecocentrism, environmental responsibility and resilience. She uses landscape, ornithology, migration and delicate systems as conduits to explore loss, survival, marginalisation and belonging. Her poems are widely anthologised and feature in Magma, The Stinging Fly, Spelt, Allium, Poetry Ireland Review, Bracken, Loch Raven Review,14 Magazine and The Cormorant among others. Her art has appeared in Skylight 47, Olentangy Review and Barren Magazine. Her first collection From Doll House Windows was published in 2017 by Revival Press. An Agility Award recipient in 2023, she was selected for The Freedom to Write Project 2024. As an artist, she works mainly in oil and watercolour, often experimenting with sea glass, stone and slate. Her palette evokes intricate coastal and rural tapestries, where unspoilt areas thrive and adapt naturally.

Main image by the author.