Notes
Geraldine wrote the poem while living just outside of a small fishing village on the North Coast of England. She recalls the starkness and beauty of the silhouettes of Cedar trees perched on nearby hills created by the light. When asked what music she would align with the poem, she chose Henry Purcell's Winter Song as performed Nanette Scriba. The poem’s words and the music are a powerful and dramatic combination. The images and calligraphy draw inspiration from the North Coast setting and the somber beauty of the music.

Geraldine Monk
Geraldine Monk was born in Blackburn, Lancashire in 1952. She has been a vital member of the British poetry scene since the mid-1970s. Monk gained a B.A. Hons English Studies, Sheffield City Polytechnic in 1988, and between 1992 and 1995 was Visiting lecturer in Creative Writing & Communication Studies at Chesterfield College. Between 1992 and 1999 she was Creative Writer at St. Luke's Hospice. She has written eight major collections of poetry Interregnum (Creation Books,  1994), Escafeld Hangings (West House Books, 2005), Ghost & Other Sonnets (Salt Publishing, 2008), Lobe Scarps & Finials (Leafe Press, 2011), and They Who Saw the Deep (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2016).
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Her writing has appeared extensively in the both the UK and the USA. As an extension to her activities in poetry she collaborates with many musicians including Martin Archer, Charlie Collins and Julie Tippetts. A collection of essays on her poetry, The Salt Companion to Geraldine Monk, edited by Scott Thurston, was published in 2007 by Salt Publishing. 

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Cedar Trees on a Hill at Dusk
Fins of pure venom
trespass this sky
and knock it like a funny-bone into painful laughter
and the sway of precious demons rock the sea anemone.
These trees
drenched with weight
and viridian,
these collapsed tissues
of silhouettes,
close hard around my heart 

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