Kate Landishaw
Verdant Incandescence
She felt the greens
………leaning
……..nearing
……wavering
….intercepting
Bits of Otherness
………mixing
……………sounding
……..colliding
……………dizzying
Too much time
…………………moving
……………folding
……scattering
….burning
Broken flames
……………………….adrift.
_______________
Kate Landishaw writes and paints as her heart meanders through a treasure trove of words and art supplies. She won 1st prize in Lake Erie College’s Dawn Powell Alumni Poetry Contest in 2025 and has been published in Geelong Writers’ ekphrastic challenge. Her visual art and poetry will be published in SC’s Upstate Forever online portfolio this winter. Kate works in her century-old home, and her studio at The White Whale in Greenville, South Carolina.
Author’s Notes/Backstory: [The She in “Verdant Incandescence”]: She’s an essence in a painting, a spectre in oil paint, among other wafting shapes (She, too, has to waft to keep her position, to try to stay grounded). She needed me to explore her situation, ponder her plight, give it voice, as I’m the one who put her there.
Although She is mostly blue (in color, and sometimes in mood) her surroundings are mostly greens, drifting throughout her space; She has no control over this motion, can barely settle herself.
My task drew me back into my own painting, required me to look at and think about what was there. Turns out all of it is activity, albeit mostly smooth, unhurried activity. The poem itself reflects that movement in She’s quiet realm, but also with scruffy, stiff areas, the Otherness, the yellows She finds burning, and broken.
She hasn’t yet recognized the tall dark blue uprights as the narrow portal to her potential escape path, although She sits quite nearby.
As for the poem, its layout might be She’s path, should she find her way through the all-blue uprights, floundering a bit but forging most ahead.
As for the poet, I speculated about being able to write a speculative poem. This is it.
Editor’s Notes: Kate is also a visual artist who kindly provided the artwork that inspired the poem: 16” x 20”, oil & acrylic on canvas, “Layered in Greens.”